We signed up with an affiliate network and only a few affiliates signed up, why isn’t my network recruiting more affiliates? This is a common question in the affiliate program arena and reveals a major misconception of the purpose of an affiliate network. A network’s main purpose is for linking and tracking clicks and sales, not as your primary source of affiliate recruitment.

Granted, the large networks have many thousands of affiliates using their system but how likely are affiliates to notice your new program? What makes your program more attractive than the thousands of other programs out there? Is your goal to sign up hundreds of affiliates or to increase online sales? Those two goals don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. Another misconception is that more affiliates means more sales. We’ll discuss this in more detail a little later in this article.

Recruiting affiliates is an ongoing activity that should be done every month during the life of your affiliate program. In our program plan, this starts with the launch of the program and continues as long as we manage your program. Since one of our goals is to constantly increase your online sales, we actively recruit new affiliates. You don’t want to invest time and money in your affiliate program and then expect the affiliates to beat a path to your door. You need to find affiliate partners that are a good fit for your products and sell your program to them.

Are the affiliates that find you via the network good producers? Yes and no, there are those that make a very good living marketing their sites and their merchant partners and there are others who sign up for nearly every new program and rarely make any money. Likely, these smaller non-producing affiliates will take more of an Affiliate Manager’s time than the best producing affiliates. The networks should merely be one of your recruiting opportunities, not your total solution. A successful program is not launched and set on auto-pilot; it has meticulous planning from the ground up and has the proper amount of time and energy invested in it, continuously.

Part of what we offer with our Affiliate Program Management services is ongoing recruiting and your first point of contact for your affiliate sales team. We’ll recruit the top performers and take the time to foster excellent relationships and trust.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2005 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.