subject: Tried And True Methods For Finding Affiliates [print this page] Good affiliate program management depends on one thing above all- having affiliates. It's a bit of a no brainer, but you can't manage a successful affiliate program if you don't have anyone to manage. You can have the best affiliate management system out there, but none of it matters if you don't have anyone to manage. Thankfully, there are a couple of tried and true methods that all but guarantee that you will have all the affiliates you want in no time.
Now, I just want to mention first and foremost that the companies with affiliate programs that tend to do the best don't always aim to have the most affiliates. Instead, they aim to have the highest quality affiliates. There's no point in having thousands of affiliates if they aren't actively making any sales. It's much better to have a handful of super-productive and successful affiliates instead. Still, it can be something of a numbers game to get to the point where you weed through the duds and attract and focus on the winners, but this is just part of all successful affiliate program management.
The first way to get affiliates is to simply advertise for them. There are specific websites devoted to affiliates and products that affiliates might be interested in that you can buy ad space from. This will make your product stand out much more than simply being another product listed on or mentioned once by these sites. You can also buy adspace on the search engines for the products that you are selling, or based around keywords that you know affiliates are searching for.
Next, you can list your product on one of the major affiliate marketplaces, like Clickbank. There are some pros and cons to this. First, your product will need to be successful pretty quickly before you start getting high in their rankings, and thus start attracting a lot of attention from affiliates. Also, you will attract a lot of affiliates but that doesn't mean you'll be attracting the highest quality affiliates automatically. You'll still have to put plenty of effort into affiliate management before you will be able to build up all the high quality affiliates you need.
Finally, you can personally go to affiliate forums and talk about what you have to offer them. This cuts out the middle men, as you will be going directly to affiliates and speaking directly to them. This can be a great way to get high quality affiliates quickly, but the companies with affiliate programs who are most successful with this tend to have a really great offer and product from the start, you might want to make sure what you are selling is up to par before you talk directly to these affiliates.
