Recently I have been focusing on how to recruit affiliates as my primary source of traffic.

Whilst I have been taught the theory by my coach, Marc Milburn, I have been strangely reluctant to follow his advice.  This puzzled me and I therefore requested his help to discover the reason why.

All internet marketers face a problem initially – they have few online friends, few good contacts, no proven track record, and little or no authority.  This presents a major hurdle because affiliates will usually prefer to mail for people that they know, like and trust.

Put Yourself in The Shoes Of The Affiliate

Affiliates are only human after all:

• they only want to send good quality offers to their list (- as their list is their most important asset.)
• they don’t have a great deal of time to check out new products from new marketers
• they already have a lot of product offers that they could send to their list – many of them with a proven track record
• they want your proposal to be ‘presented on a plate’ – i.e. they want all the relevant information in an easily digestible format so they can make a decision – this is why your JV page or blog is so important. It helps if you have some metrics on how your offer is likely to convert and the Earnings Per Click.
• they want to be incentivised with prizes and competitions i.e. top performing affiliates get rewarded for taking action.

However, something that Marc said really resonated with me – he said that he would mail for a friend ahead of any other consideration, such as a great offer or product.

He then said that recruiting affiliates was really about ‘making friends’ with people who have lists in your niche.

So how do you make friends with people who have lists in your niche?

Here are just a few of the ideas I have come up with:

• interact with them on Facebook and show that you have some value to offer – good advice, an opinion, a tip, a free product or download for their Group or customers(no subscription necessary)
• buy their product and interact with them and their customers within their membership site or product Facebook Group
• offer to help them in some way – a testimonial, a service that you can provide, by resolving a problem they may have or you identify
• going to live events and meeting them in person
• interviewing them and promoting their product at the end of the interview (- give them a copy and a transcription)
• supporting their launch and making sales for them as an affiliate

These are just a few suggestions – you can probably think of more.

Act With Purpose

In order to be effective, I think that you must act with purpose i.e. identify who you want as a partner and then deliberately take action to get yourself known to them in a good and ethical way.

Building relationships takes time but think of it as building an asset – it’s not an asset that you can touch, see or even value accurately but nevertheless it is a major asset because a friend will help and support you ahead of any stranger.

In order to act deliberately, set time aside to identify your preferred partners and then record their contact details, website etc on a spreadsheet and then take action to contact them in some way.  Record your contact with each of them on your spreadsheet and take deliberate action to start and maintain a relationship with them.  If you have access to CRM software like Sage ACT, this is ideal but an Excel spreadsheet will do.

Personally, I like the idea of interviewing potential affiliates because:

• you can make a much deeper level of connection and relationship
• you can make content or a product out of the interview for the benefit of both parties
• both parties can quickly decide if you think the relationship is worth developing
• you are not trying to ‘sell’ anything other than a conversation

My Mindset Block

And that brings me back to the mindset block I was having about contacting affiliates – the knowledge that I was trying to ‘SELL’ them on promoting my product.

That word ‘sell’ was the block in my mind.  However, at the end of an interview it will be very easy to transition into asking them about what products they have available to promote, and visa versa, don’t you think?

Also, make a friend of them on Facebook and just keep them informed of what you are doing and your blog posts – I think a more natural relationship will develop as a result.

Where To Find Potential Affiliates

You may be wondering where you can find potential affiliates.  Here are some good suggestions:

• marketers connected to you on Facebook
• marketers whose products you have bought
• JV’s in JV Facebook Groups – I am a member of at least a dozen such groups
• coaching students and colleagues who are taking action to build a list
• Google your products keywords and the owners of the websites on the top few pages will no doubt have lists of people that are interested in your product.
• vendors of similar products on affiliate platforms like JVZoo, Warrior Plus, Clickbank etc

Finding affiliates is not the main problem – building a solid relationship is much more difficult and time-consuming.

I will be using Skype (and Pamela) and/or Google Hangouts to carry out my interviews – I recently wrote a short eBook about how to use Google Hangouts to make online connections because I think that it is a great way for newbies to get started online – you can simply register here to download a copy of my eBook entitled ‘Quite Possibly THE Best Internet Marketing Business Model for Newbies’ :

Hopefully, this article about how to recruit affiliates will give you some good ideas.  Oh, and look out for my interviews with some cool marketers shortly!