Affiliate marketing – Finding affiliates
One of the keys to having a successful affiliate programme is by finding relevant affiliates to keep adding to it. I wanted to give you several ways to find potential affiliates to invite to your programme.
This works just as well for those running in-house programmes or those on a network. For those on a network, don’t be lazy and simply rely on the network to provide affiliates. Your best performing affiliate might not be on a network.
Here are five ideas to get you going…
Existing client base
Look at your current client base. Do you have people that are brand ambassadors and keep promoting you and sharing your stuff? They could become excellent affiliates with some help and support. On top of that, customers will have a slight advantage as they will have used the product or service, so are much more capable of writing about it.
Use Google and Bing (Yes, there is another search engine) to run keyword searches relevant to your product or service. Look at the sites on the first 2 or 3 pages for each search. Look for sites that are not competitor sites but information sites or review sites. They could be prime affiliates. Plus, they look like they could send you traffic almost immediately.
Advertise for them
One of the biggest mistakes affiliate programme owners often make, is they forget to promote it on their own site. Add a page to your site with all the details of your programme.
Then you can use that page as a promotional tool. Advertise for affiliates using Google Ads or Facebook Ads. This can be a great low-cost way to attract affiliates.
News
Keep up with your industry news and look for new entrants or stories on your space from other businesses. You can set up Google Alerts on industry search terms and look for the editorial sites appearing that are writing about your subject/product area. These could be great affiliates to approach. Set Google Alerts up for a weekly summary by keyword on the same day each week, so Google will literally send you potential affiliates each week.
Groups
Social media has given marketers many different ways to advertise to their client base but do look at group opportunities on these channels. You can find many affiliate groups or even industry groups that you can share content or ask for affiliates.
Check Facebook groups and also LinkedIn groups (while LinkedIn groups are dead from an engagement standpoint and not very interactive) you might find potential partners from the people posting content and links in them.
Keep checking back in these groups weekly or at least monthly, as new members are joining all the time, and these could be potential affiliates. You might not be able to pay to advertise in these groups, but by paying attention, you might find some great affiliates. Also do contact the group admins and ask if you can share a post asking for affiliates or partners.
Summary
I hope this has given you a few ideas. There are many more, but to honest, these five will help you grow your programme or even help prelaunch a programme. Make sure you build some of this into your weekly schedule, so you are always looking to add quality affiliates to your programme.
Jason is a 20-year veteran of affiliate and digital marketing. He currently co-runs Speedie Consultants Limited, a digital agency for finance and insurance companies. This has included running affiliate programmes and promoting affiliate offers for the last two decades. This part of the business is now run over on AffiliateDojo with useful info for those wanting to run their own affiliate marketing programmes or use other people’s programmes to increase revenue.
