MarkTse.com Internet Marketing Blog

“If you make dramatic changes to your offer, or create some other kind of “story” or “news” that warrants discussion promptly, you’ll find you can get many fence-setters active in promoting you.” – Jimmy Brown

This article revealed three critical methods to get your affiliates to promote your offers fast and actively.

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Featured Article by Jimmy D. Brown

See if you can spot the similarity.

What do the following three statements have in common?

1. I can’t do it right now, but maybe later.
2. I’ve already got my mailings scheduled.
3. Let me get back to you.

Got the similarity spotted?

These are all typical responses that most people get when asking partners and affiliates to promote their offers.

Chances are you’ve gotten answers much like these, right?

Don’t despair … there are ways around the barriers of reluctance and passiveness.

Let me share some simple ideas for getting affiliates to take action on your promotions quickly. I use the acronym “N.O.W.” to describe three ways to get others to promote you now…

N – News

In journalism, no one wants to be “scooped” when it comes to newsworthy items. Sharing some big story that another network or publication broke days ago is a big “no-no”. You always want to be first when it comes to getting the word out.

That same philosophy applies to what I’ve labeled “The Principle of First”. The idea is simple: being “first to market” aids in responses. Those who let their contacts know about your news promptly will generate the greatest results. If they wait, someone else will break the news.

So, to apply this principle, you simply need to create some newsworthy buzz that your affiliates and partners can’t pass up on sharing with their network of influence.

**CASE STUDY**

Several months ago I decided that I was going to remove the archives from one of my membership sites. This announcement served as a strong motivator to get my affiliates to promote my site promptly before someone else did. The result was almost 500 new members paying monthly fees!

If you make dramatic changes to your offer, or create some other kind of “story” or “news” that warrants discussion promptly, you’ll find you can get many fence-setters active in promoting you.

O – Occasions

Another great way to motivate affiliates to get active is to use “occasions” that have a real deadline involved.

Some examples include –

* Product launches
* Firesales
* Live events (teleseminars, workshops, etc.)
* Contests
* Special offers
* Limited quantities

This is what might be referred to as “The Principle Of Force”. That is, you MUST promote the offer now or miss out simply because the offer will no longer be valid. You “force” participation.

For example: If you have a 3-day “firesale” set for a specific date, then anyone interested in earning commissions for referring customers to the “firesale” would be “forced” to promote it during your pre-determined timeframe or they’d miss out because the event will end.

My recommendation is that you schedule some kind of “occasion” every quarter. That should give you four significant spikes in your revenue each year, which can be a tremendous boost to your bottom line.

W – Wants

What do your partners and affiliates want? Seriously, stop and think about that for a moment. In fact, go one step further than that and ASK them a simple question…

“What would it take for you to promote this offer this week?”

Make it happen.

I want you to remember the intangibles here: the sales of your initial offer aren’t really all that important. (Don’t freak out, hear what I have to say It’s building a lead list, an affiliate list and a customer list along with ADDITIONAL offers over time that makes the real money.

Consider this –

Option A:

Miss Ima Guru ignores your request to promote your offer as it currently stands.

Option B:

Miss Ima Guru accepts your modified offer which includes giving her 100% of the revenue she generates. You make nothing off her promotion…but in the process of her promotion she adds 500 new subscribers to your list, 75 new affiliates and 60 new customers.

Which would you rather have?

Whatever it takes to get people to promote your offer now, make it happen.

*** NOTE ***

Now, let me make a simple suggestion here: The deal you make should be directly proportional to the potential results the partner represents.

Some affiliates and partners bring more to the table and should be offered more in order to get them to participate.

That being said, you can get virtually any affiliate to promote you now if you make it worth their while. So, ask them, “what will it take?”

This is what I call “The Principle Of Fear”. That is, a feeling of “This is such a compelling offer, I can’t afford to miss out on this deal.”

All of this adds up to more involvement and participation among your affiliates and partners…

N – News +
O – Occasions +
W – Wants =
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Other people promoting you NOW!

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Jimmy D. Brown is the author of the course, “5 Practices Of Highly Profitable Affiliate Programs”. For your free copy, drop by ==> www.marktse.com/recommend/sales-secrets/

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You may reprint this free article on your own website, blog, and ezine by reserving the resource box with clickable active links.

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“If you are using a blog as a platform for your membership site, use the same design, or one very similar, on your landing page as well as on the protected pages.
” – Britt Malka

“A good affiliate manager can bring in affiliates, train and motivate them, and run your operations for you. Her efforts bring in the traffic; your efforts turn the traffic into orders.” – Jimmy Brown

This article exposed one secret traffic tool that every online business owner need to use, and how to use this tool effectively.

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Featured Article by Jimmy D. Brown

What if there was a magic bottle that you could rub and a traffic genie would pop out to beckon to your every internet marketing command?

After the initial shock wore off, you’d be quite happy to have it in your possession, right?

Well, in a manner of speaking, such a genie exists. She exists in the form of an “affiliate manager”.

An “affiliate manager” is someone who oversees the operations of an affiliate program in exchange for compensation.

And, out of all the traffic “tools” on the market, the affiliate manager is the one that you should be using daily in your business if you own your own product.

Why?

The bottom line is: more traffic, which results in more revenue for you.

But, specifically, there are 3 reasons why you need an affiliate manager…

1. Recruiting.

Your affiliate manager can recruit new affiliates into your program for you. Instead of you spending time trying to find (and then convince!) affiliates to join your program, your “affman” can do this for you while you focus on other things.

2. Rewarding.

Everyone knows that simply getting people to join your affiliate program is not enough. It takes a lot of effort to get passive affiliates to become (and stay!) active. An affiliate manager is responsible for motivating your team to remain involved in your promotions.

3. Running.

Beyond getting affiliates into your program and making sure they stay active, your affiliate manager can “run” as much of your operations as you want her to. Here are just a few things my affiliate manager (props to Nicole!) does…

* Creates training materials
* Write follow-up mailings
* Communicates with affiliates
* Answer affiliate support questions
* Monitors contests and incentive programs
* Posts to our blog
* Clerical stuff (creates rebrandable files, etc.)
* Circulates content (article directories, etc.)

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Perhaps the best part of hiring an affiliate manager is the fact that it doesn’t have to cost you a penny in out of pocket expenses. That is, you can setup your agreement to be performance-based: you pay the affiliate manager a percentage of the overall revenue generated through her efforts … the more revenue she brings in through the affiliate program, the more she earns.

Now, the question is –

** Where do I find an affiliate manager? **

There are actually quite a few ways to find quality (emphasis needs to be on “QUALITY!”) affiliate managers for your program. Let me share just one…

One of the easiest ways to find an affiliate manager is to visit your favorite affiliate marketing (or internet marketing) forum and post a request asking for recommendations or responses for your needs.

You can do this in two ways -

1. Post a PUBLIC Request.

That is, you post a message for everyone to see, with brief details on the position you have available and that you are seeking recommendations or interest to explore further.

2. Post a PRIVATE Request.

The other option is to identify those participants at the forum who appear to have experience and/or knowledge in affiliate marketing who might be good affiliate manager material. Then, you would simply contact them privately to see if there is interest in discussing your needs.

Running your own affiliate program is a tremendous traffic generation tool, but it has a lot of parts. There are many different activities that are involved in successfully running an affiliate program, and hiring an affiliate manager to oversee your operations is a great way to free up your time to work on creating additional products and other “creative” work.

A good affiliate manager can bring in affiliates, train and motivate them, and run your operations for you. Her efforts bring in the traffic; your efforts turn the traffic into orders.

It’s the closest thing to a traffic genie in a bottle that you’ll find. Rubbing is optional. Using this strategy isn’t.

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Jimmy D. Brown is the author of Sales Army Secrets, full of meaty details on ways to find affiliate managers, how to structure your agreement with them and tasks to have them handle.

Details at ==> www.marktse.com/recommend/sales-secrets/

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You may reprint this free article on your own website, blog, and ezine by reserving the resource box with clickable active links.

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“Nobody likes to read BORING content. We turn off boring television programs, we fall asleep reading boring books and we keep our credit cards tucked firmly inside our pockets when we read boring sales letters, ezine articles, solo mailings or special reports.” – Jimmy Brown