I just published a new book, Affiliate Manager Boot Camp: Recruiting, Educating, and Retaining Affiliates, where I present a three-step approach for affiliate managers to recruit, educate, and retain affiliates in their affiliate programs.
Drawing on my ten years of experience as an affiliate manager and my work as an affiliate marketer since 1997, I reveal a process for cultivating and maintaining relationships with affiliates.
The book describes a method that focuses on quality over quantity when it comes to affiliates, and it recommends working side by side with affiliates as valuable partners in a mutually beneficial affiliation.
Affiliate Manager Boot Camp: Recruiting, Educating, and Retaining Affiliates is not about the other nuts and bolts of starting and running an affiliate program.
You won’t learn about policing affiliates, setting budgets and projections, determining commission rates, etc.
It’s all about recruiting, educating, and retaining affiliates for a strong affiliate program.
My process is based on one important thing, which is that affiliate marketing is all about relationships.
You want to have affiliates you can trust representing your brand. That means you should know each affiliate in your affiliate program and have an ongoing dialogue with them.
Sure, you’ll get some affiliates who apply to your affiliate program organically through exposure in an affiliate network, but it is your responsibility to actively recruit the affiliates you think will be the best fit for your company.
And, just like I was doing way back when, you should treat them like your sales team.
That means you provide them with the educational materials they need to best promote you; and you also focus on retaining them, because it’s a whole lot easier to keep the affiliates you have than it is to replace them.
You should be recruiting all the time so that your base of quality affiliates continues to grow.
Please read through my tactics, but don’t stop there. Apply them, too.
Affiliate Manager Boot Camp: Recruiting, Educating, and Retaining Affiliates is available in paperback and on Kindle at Amazon.com.
Shawn is Co-founder of Affiliate Summit and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine, and blogs at affiliatetip.com.
This article appeared in issue 24 of FeedFront Magazine, which was published in October 2013. Read issue 24 of FeedFront Magazine.
http://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs/ff24_final
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