Consider your affiliates your sales team. You produce a product, you recruit other people who have used and love your product to recommend it to others, and you pay the affiliates a small commission for each purchase that comes through their unique link.

Built in sales team without having to pay salaries or for healthcare benefits!

But how do affiliates help build your list? There are two ways to approach this idea:

1. Pay your affiliate for each referral who signs up for your list
2. Every person who buys your product should get put on your customer email list automatically

How To Start

First, you need to purchase a software or service that manages affiliate information (Here at Blogelina we use and highly recommend the WordPress plugins eStore and eAffiliates – both are very user friendly and work together well!). Many affiliates prefer getting paid via PayPal but if they prefer a check instead, you’ll need to have their address in the records, too. There’s too much information and record-keeping to do this manually, so don’t skimp on the software.

The software should also keep track of how many times a customer clicked through their unique affiliate link and their commission rate. There should also be a section where you can upload graphics of your product, sample emails or even reprint articles your affiliates can use to promote your product or list.

Once you have your affiliate management system set up, you can start promoting the opportunity to your readers or current customers. Simply mention to them this new opportunity to earn money for recommending your business. As these affiliates sign up at your affiliate membership site, you are collecting email addresses for your Affiliate List.

Now that you see some action with affiliates signing up to your program, export those names to your autoresponder (I use Aweber for my autoresponder service). This is the easiest way to keep in contact with your affiliates regarding new products, promotions, or contests.

To grow your prospect list, consider offering a monetary payment to your affiliates for every name that gets added. Your affiliate will tell their own audience about your great newsletter, provide them with a unique link to click, and when these new readers sign up, they get the referral fee. It’s up to you how much you want to pay for each referral but check your budget carefully. If you have a huge influx of new subscribers, you need to have the funds to pay these affiliates.

Each affiliate link is unique to that person for the purposes of tracking click throughs and purchases. Usually cookies are attached to each affiliate link, so when someone clicks through, if they make a purchase within the next 60 days for example, that same affiliate will get that sales credit. Now that your affiliate sent you this prospect lead, you can turn this lead into a purchasing customer by providing valuable information in your newsletter, on your website and in your products.

Of course, affiliates can also promote your products and when sales come in these names are added to your customer email list. Maintain this relationship with your customers by sending out regular emails or by offering discount coupons or other special offers.

This Is How Incredibly Important Having Affiliates Is…

If you’re still questioning why you would want to pay someone else to sell your products when you’re fully capable of selling the products yourself, think of the old adage, “many hands make light work.”

The web is a vastly huge environment and you are just one person. How many people do you plan to reach everyday with your message? How long will it take for these potential customers to know, like and trust you?

Instead of tackling the world wide web by yourself, recruit those people who already know you as affiliates and have them sing your praises and promote your products. You can still conduct your own sales and continue to network but affiliates can spread your message faster and rewarding them with a commission is simply the right thing to do.

Anyone with an online business can set up an affiliate program and anyone who has an interest in promoting your products can sign up to be an affiliate. There is no charge to sign up; the affiliates are only rewarded for the sales they make.

Of course, some affiliates will be better than others at making sales. Many people sign up to these programs thinking it will be easy, they send out one email to their own list, and then forget about you when no sales are made. Staying in contact with your affiliates through your Affiliate List and making them excited about your program will help to keep them active and growing your list.

Need Help Starting Your Own Affiliate List?

I’m happy to help – just leave a comment below with your questions and we can get you set up asap!  Don’t miss out on another potential sale!