One of
the big questions for any business contemplating
starting their own program is, where will I find my
affiliates? Even those affiliate managers that run a
program within a network will soon find that out of
the many hundreds and thousands of affiliates in the
network, only a handful of them actually make any
sales.
So what’s an affiliate manager to do?
If you want to find
good affiliates for a new, or up-and-coming program
then you have to get your hands dirty. You need to find
sites yourself and contact them with a compelling
offer to join your program.
Existing Links.
First of all, check out
the sites that are already linking to you. This can be
done by going to the following free sites, entering
your url and then looking at the results;
From these results you
now know who is linking to you, from what page, and in
what manner e.g. are they being favourable to towards
your company or not? They may have a text link on a
links page so you can email them and ask them if
they’d like to link to you by joining your affiliate
program as they could earn some money if they refer
sales.
Why ask sites to join
your program if they're already linking to you? They
could promote your site even more. They could add more
links to their site if they know that they can
actually earn money from them.
Link checking is a
useful tool in finding sites that link to you, and a
growing number of links is a good sign, but the actual
figure should not be deeply analysed too much.
Finally, check that
their links to you work and that they are not
misspelt, or that they go to a page that does not
exist.
Competitor Links.
That’s the friendly,
technical term for copying. Carry out link popularity
checks, as above, on your competition and find out who
is linking to them. You will probably find sites
linking to them that can also link to you as well. Let
these sites know that you exist, that you are offering
the same or a related service/product to your
competitor and that they are invited to join your
program too. I would not recommend that you contact a
site and ask them to delete a link in favor of yours –
that just isn’t cricket!
Piggy Back The Top Listings.
From your search engine
keyphrase research you’ll have a list of phrases that
you want to be found under. In the real world you’ll
never rank number one for all these phrases in all the
engines, but the sites that are stopping you from
achieving SEO greatness can still help you. If you
sell a particular comic, there’ll be sites that list
comics, sell other comics, have information on comics,
independent comic fan sites, etc. All these sites have
the potential to carry your link, and if they are
ranking number one for ‘comics’ then they’ll also have
a lot of relevant traffic.
Check all the main
search engines and directories to see what sites are
ranking highly for keyphrases relating to your site
and products.
Search For Your URL
Carry out a few
searches in a few search engines for your name – ‘www.yoursite.com’,
‘yoursite.com’, ‘yoursite’, ‘your company name’ or
even a product or service name. You’ll then find some
sites that have listed your name but not in a
hyperlink.
Directories.
Apart from searching
for the sites with top rankings in directories, you
should also examine all the sites listed in categories
related to your site/business/products. They’ll be
sites listed that won’t rank well but they could still
be good affiliates.
Most subjects tend to
have a niche directory or two. These will list good
potential affiliates, as well as the niche directory
itself that could be a good affiliate for your
program.
PPC Listings.
Look at the sites that
are listed within PPC results for competitor products
and services – Overture.com, Google.com (AdWord
listings), Espotting.com, FindWhat.com. Some of these
sites will be affiliate sites worth contacting to
persuade them to join your program too.
Submitting To
Affiliate Directories.
You can submit your
affiliate program to the affiliate directories below
and try to gain more affiliates that way;
If you haven’t got the
time to submit to a whole load of directories, you
could always contract Neil Durrant and his team of
little elf workers to do the submissions for you.
Click here to learn more about
Affiliate Announce.
Going Forward
These should be some
good starting points to recruit some affiliates and
get your program going. When contacting potential
affiliates take the time to write a personal email
letting them know that you’ve visited their site, you
know what it’s about and that you think your program
would be a good fit. Don’t send out a general email
that only says ‘Join our program it’s great’ –
remember the old Head & Shoulder’s advertisements –
‘You don’t get a second chance to make a first
impression’.
Also, during your
recruitment drive, be prepared to answer affiliates
swiftly. There’s no greater turn off for an affiliate
than being ignored by the merchant (apart from not
getting paid!).
Good luck.
