How can you Motivate Affiliates???

[lauraddirectnet]

Hello,

I am the new affiliate manager to my company. Affiliates will sign up for my program but many of them fail to grab the offers that are available. The payouts are competitive and we always have new offers, but still a lack of participation on their part. How can I make affiliates become motivated? Any thought, comments, and suggestions are more then welcome!

Thanks!!

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Laura,

By now I'm sure you've heard about the 90/10 rule of affiliate marketing. 90% of those that join just won't do anything. Now on the other hand there are lots of good strong busy affiliates that will join and take a long time to get active because they are busy and you are on page 10 of their to-do list.

One thing you can try is activation bonuses. Not sure how much that motivates people but you can try. Send an email to people who joined a month ago and have not put up links yet, offering them a bonus if they make a sale this month or even a bonuse for getting links up.

This time of year, don't even try to contact them, but in the new year you may want to try the Ultimate Affiliate Activation Email from the zZounds Affiliate Manager, one of my clients. Its on my blog.
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliat...ivation-email/

My blog is a wealth of info and the search button works really well when you are trying to find certain topics. You'll find some good info below.

5 Star Blog » Top 7 Reasons Your Affiliates Could be Inactive
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliat...ates-inactive/

This one has some good info too from a busy affiliate's perspective.
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliat...ion-campaigns/

Hope this helps!

Anyone else have any thoughts for Laura???

[lauraddirectnet]

Thanks Linda! I will be trying out your great suggestions in 2007. I will let you know how I make you. Also if anyone else has had success with monthly bonus programs, what are your thoughts.
Thanks again!

[AffiliateGuild]

Boat loads of money motivate me!

[MikeIMM]

Originally Posted by lauraddirectnet

Hello,

I am the new affiliate manager to my company. Affiliates will sign up for my program but many of them fail to grab the offers that are available. The payouts are competitive and we always have new offers, but still a lack of participation on their part. How can I make affiliates become motivated? Any thought, comments, and suggestions are more then welcome!

Thanks!!

just because you have a network with good paying offers doesn't mean success. Try to make your offers unique, if i can find the same offers you have in 20 other networks then you don't stand out.

Also get to know the community ... over time people will begin to trust you and feel comfortable working with you. I think a lot of affiliates have been burned by some bad networks so they are cautious when working with someone new.

Help to teach your affiliates how to make money with your offers, research what people are doing and look for ways to help them improve. I actually teach all my AM's how to be affiliates themselves so they know what the other side is like. Its hard to tell someone what to do if you havent walked a mile in their shoes.

[lauraddirectnet]

Great point! Well, I am currently in the process of adding more offers more often. We are shifting the focus to our program and are looking forward to it taking off. I agree it is hard to understand what the affiliates are going through if you have never been there. I try to get input from my affiliates to see if there are specifics that they need help with. One thing I like to use is AIM and Yahoo Messanger. It is much easier to communicate this way because it is quick and people can get a response from me quickly. Seems to be more personal than an email.
One thing we have started is a weekly newletter, hopefully this will help the affiliates see the new offers and gain their interest!

[Jenyfari]

Affiliate publishers generally have a number of sites on the go and in turn a number of merchants on those sites. This means that they receive a large amount of email from merchants. I know that in the past I have just deleted some of these emails without even bothering to look at them because at that point I may not even have much traffic to my site. There is no point spending time messing around with new offers until the traffic turns up.

The first thing then is to grab their attention with a snappy email subject or something a little more personal so they actually open the email. And my suggestion is to keep your emails short. If its a newsletter then have plenty of bold headings so the reader can just scan for the most important info.

I would also send an email stating the top 5 or 10 reasons why an affiliate should promote your offers. Why are you better than your competitor?

Competitions are always a good idea but don't just provide prizes for the top in sales. There are a lot of new affiliates out there just getting started who might not be able to generate the sales but who are willing to promote your product. You might offer a prize for the best promotion of your products or the biggest increase in sales for affiliates that have not yet had a sale of your products.

[EnigmaValdez]

Question: Where are the affiliate sign ups coming from? What are they being told before they get to your sign up page?

Once you pin point that, then you can get into their heads and figure out their hopes and desires. It may not necessarily be a matter of motivation, but perhaps a matter of qualifying your affiliate sign ups more closely.

Affiliate sign ups are the same as qualified leads for prospective buyers. Both bring in money and you don't want just anyone.

You want to make sure that your affiliates are a good match with you!

Hope this helps!
All the best
Enigma Valdez

[Jason30texas]

I looked over your site on your affilate page. I think you would be able to get more affilates if you provided more details on what the payouts are or what the percentage is. If I am looking for an affilate program I would like to promote I would like to see what the percentage is that I would make from a sale.

Also if you had a referral program to get other affilates involve.

[lauraddirectnet]

Thanks for the input! I will have to let check into making the payout details stand out a bit more. We are actually in the process of adding a forum. I think this will help keep open the lines of communications. What would be the benefits of a referral program as far as getting my affiliates to be more active?