by: Clay Mabbitt

After learning of the success many online businesses have had
increasing their sales with an affiliate program, you decided to
follow suit. You hammered out a compensation plan both encouraging
to affiliates and profitable to your business. You’ve got tracking
software in place. You’ve turned the key in the ignition of your
marketing machine… and nothing’s happening.

Your army of affiliates can be viewed metaphorically as a tree. Full
grown, it will thrive in rain and sunshine. Strong changing winds
can shake its branches, but the tree will continue to grow. In the
early seed stage, however, special care is needed if you want your
tree to break through the surface.

You spent a great deal of time, energy, and likely at least a little
money creating your affiliate program. You need to attract strong
affiliates that can rapidly build your customer base and return your
investment. How can you bring these powerful marketing dynamos into
your camp, ideally without drawing on your already diminished cash
reserves?

1.) Submit to Online Directories
The method that will show the most immediate increase in new
affiliates is listing your program in online affiliate directories.
These reference sites are the first stop for hungry potential
affiliates looking for the income opportunity that is going to allow
them to quit their 9 to 5 jobs. Many such directories exist, and
obviously some will bring you better results than others. Since
submitting to almost all of these directories is free, though, get
listed on as many as you can. Here are a few links to submission
pages to get you started, but by no means should you stop with just
these few:

http://www.becomeanaffiliate.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi
http://www.affiliatesoftware.info/joinaffiliatedirectory.php
http://www.affiliatescreen.com/suggest_program.php
http://www.affiliatematch.com/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.2-tier.com/cgi-bin/add_url.cgi
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/links/add.cgi
http://www.earnfind.com/addprogram-howto.php

2.) Advertise in Your Own Newsletter
Hopefully you’ve been collecting email addresses from your website
and sending a regular newsletter to your visitors. (If not, read
this article:
http://www.zeromillion.com/ebiz/creating-an-email-newsletter.html)
Your newsletter subscribers are a precious handful of people that
have expressed direct interest in keeping abreast of the latest
developments with your product/service and company. Give them what
they want! You can kick off your affiliate program with an article
in your newsletter explaining the benefits and encouraging your
subscribers to participate. Your future newsletters can contain
short blurbs about the affiliate program and how it’s progressing to
inform new subscribers and remind your original readers.

3.) Post to Affiliate Forums and Newsgroups
Approach this method with caution. No one will be impressed if you
post a blatant advertisement or a plea to join your affiliate
program. If you find a forum that contains such messages, don’t even
bother making a post there. The forum probably isn’t moderated, and
almost certainly isn’t read by many people. The place to include
information about your website and program is in your profile (and
in your signature line if other posters do so). A serious forum,
read by the type of people you want to have as affiliates, will only
contain posts with relevant and useful content instead of
advertising fluff messages.

How can you add relevant and useful content? The first step is to
read some of the existing posts and get a feel for the general
personality of the forum. At best, reading old posts will spark
questions that can be turned into relevant posts and generate
interested responses. At worst, you’ll see what’s been talked about
recently, so you don’t make the awkward mistake of asking a question
that was answered a few days ago.

If no topics come to mind after reading old posts, a possible
strategy is to ask for the advice of some experienced affiliates in
how you could improve your program. You’ll find different ideas on
what constitutes a solid compensation plan, tracking system, or
incentive program. Beyond getting attention for your program, this
is a great opportunity to improve your program by picking the brains
of people who’ve been in the game longer than you.

This list is obviously not comprehensive, but it contains a few
forums worth investigating:

http://www.ablake.net/forum/
http://iwiz2.richdad.com/jive/application2/forum.jsp?forum=33
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/forum/gforum.cgi?forum=7



About the Author
Clay Mabbitt writes articles about evaluating online
money-making opportunities. Need in-depth reviews of
the latest affiliate programs? Find them at
http://www.affiliatescreen.com/