{"id":728,"date":"2009-01-21T09:54:21","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T01:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whoisandrewwee.com\/?p=728"},"modified":"2009-01-21T09:54:21","modified_gmt":"2009-01-21T01:54:21","slug":"how-to-successfuly-recruit-and-retain-affiliates-in-your-affiliate-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/affiliate-marketing\/how-to-successfuly-recruit-and-retain-affiliates-in-your-affiliate-program\/","title":{"rendered":"How To SUCCESSFULY Recruit And Retain Affiliates In Your Affiliate Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the affiliate marketing professionals I constantly look forward to talking to is Heather Paulson, founder of internet marketing\/affiliate management agency <a title=\"paulson management group\" href=\"http:\/\/paulsonmanagementgroup.com\" target=\"_blank\">Paulson Management Group<\/a>. She&#8217;s simultaneously one of the most pleasant and knowledgeable people in the industry.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/images\/blog0901\/asw09\/heather-paulson.jpg\" alt=\"heather paulson\" width=\"450\" height=\"537\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Heather Paulson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Affiliates are constantly bombarded with the &#8220;highest payouts, best offers&#8221; line that too many affiliate managers fall into using whether out of habit, laziness or a combination of both.<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s a breath of fresh air to get useful information to <!--more-->enhance my network of sites from Heather at the sidelines of the recent Affiliate Summit West 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;re some hallmarks of a successful affiliate recruitment and management campaign:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Step 1: Get to know the affiliate<\/strong> &#8211; Paradoxically for some managers, the first step should not be an email from the contact me page, with the opening line &#8220;Would you like to make thousands of dollars a month from our highly optimized and proven affiliate offers?&#8221;. Wait a minute, I don&#8217;t recognize your name nor the merchant. Most of all, your product or service isn&#8217;t even one that I&#8217;m in. You&#8217;ve just wasted your time in mailing me and my time in skimming over and deleting your email.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Step 2: Do your homework<\/strong> &#8211; Unless you have a stealth\/underground affiliate on your hands, everyone leaves virtual &#8220;footprints&#8221; whether it&#8217;s through their blog, forum participation or social network profile. Even if they don&#8217;t have any of these, you can still recce the affiliate IRC channels or platforms like twitter, or even hearsay from other affiliates. During my past life as a journalist, I was able to sniff out the dotcoms teetering on the edge of collapse by keeping my ear to the ground. I didn&#8217;t have tools from the likes of <a title=\"syntryx\" href=\"http:\/\/www.syntryx.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Syntrx<\/a> to aid in my research.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Step 3: Engage the affiliates<\/strong>: Building friendships with affiliate is not mandatory, but it will go a long way in creating a long term business relationship. Most of us are more willing to stick up for and help a friend, rather than an &#8220;associate&#8221;. I haven&#8217;t had a need for this yet, but I have heard some affiliates even approach their affiliate manager for dating or relationship advice (maybe a consequence of too much time working on your campaigns and ignoring your significant other?).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Step 4: Equip your affiliates with the right tools<\/strong>: A number of forward thinking networks and agencies have in-house creatives teams which create custom graphics, landing pages for their affiliates. Some even offer the use of high end multivariate testing tools to their affiliates during the affiliate&#8217;s campaign optimization efforts. I mentioned in a recent interview that affiliate marketing has matured a great deal since it&#8217;s inception in the 1990s, and affiliate managers need to engage affiliates because at the end of the day, it&#8217;s going to be a win-win relationship all around.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the affiliate marketing professionals I constantly look forward to talking to is Heather Paulson, founder of internet marketing\/affiliate management agency Paulson Management Group. She&#8217;s simultaneously one of the most pleasant and knowledgeable people in the industry. Heather Paulson Affiliates are constantly bombarded with the &#8220;highest payouts, best offers&#8221; line that too many affiliate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[1769,1553,1130,1475],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}