Day 25 (Thursday) - Launching your affiliate program

Lesson Objective:

To set up your “affiliate toolbox” so your affiliates have the tools they need to make you
money!

Skills Needed:
· Basic Word Processing
· Basic HTML
· Basic FTP



Today’s Lesson:

Hey, we’re really motoring along – welcome to Day 25!

Today we’re going to focus on creating tools for your affiliates. This is critical!


Most people want everything handed to them and affiliates are no different. The easier
you can make it for them to promote you – the bigger your bank account will get.

Affiliate programs (also known as reseller programs, associate programs, etc.) are an
opportunity for you to get hundreds, even thousands of web sites all driving traffic to
your site and making sales for you…

And the best part is you don’t pay until they make the sale!


That’s the opportunity (and it really is a great one) but I’m going to give you my realistic
assessment from actually doing it. My affiliate program accounts for 50% of my traffic
and 40% of my sales so obviously I’m very happy with the results!

It’s been a tremendous success starting with the first month. It brought in approximately
$2900 in sales and I paid out $1400 in commissions.


From my initial investment of $650 ($450 for software and $200 for additional design
work) this came out to a $900 profit, or a 138% return on investment (ROI) in the first
month.


Six months later, it has provided me a 1900% ROI and I know it will continue to pay off
for many years to come. In the next few days we’re going to cover affiliate programs so
let’s get started with the first step…


(I’m already assuming you have a tested sales process, a good program and a good
payout to affiliates.)




The Affiliate Tool Box

I try to provide my affiliates all the tools and assistance they need to sell successfully.


Most affiliate programs simply give a couple banners when they sign up a new affiliate.


That’s why I created something called my “Affiliate Tool Box” to provide my affiliates
with all the tools they needed to promote the program and do really well.

Here’s what they get:

· They get a whole list of text links. These are headlines that they can use on their
site.

· I give them endorsement letters/emails they can send to their lists

· I give them “proven” ads that they can run in Ezines.

· I give them graphics… I give them pretty much anything and everything they
need!

· I give them viral ebooks and additional content they can use as their own with
their affiliate links.

I give them free reign of my material. They can take my content, like articles or ebooks
I’ve written, and insert their affiliate link in the resource box.

They can’t claim themselves as the author, but they can stick their affiliate link in the
resource box.


In fact, I try to give them everything I possibly can to help them succeed.

Actually, we give so much stuff that I have one of my top affiliates running a free web
site (like a Geocities type site) and he makes $500-$700.00 in affiliate commissions every
month… just using material from our toolbox!

So that’s exactly what you need to create for people!


Try to provide as many tools as you possibly can. Take you newly tested ezine ads and
put them in there. Take your new article and put it there. How about using your top
headlines as text links for them? Etc.


And once you post the new material, make sure you alert your affiliates you’ve placed
additional tools on the web for them to use.

Check out www.getfitwhileyousit.com/affiliate.html for an example of an affiliate tool
box we created for a brand new product.


Or sign up for my main affiliate program so you can see how I train affiliates and also
what tools I provide.

Today’s Assignment:


1. Create your own affiliate “tool box” which includes any and all the promotional
material you can provide so far.

2. If you have any existing affiliates let them know about the new “tool box”.

3. Sign up for a few of the major affiliate/associate programs. That’s how I learned
what I liked and what I didn’t like in an affiliate program. See what kind of
promotional material they give you.



Today’s Resources:

www.ViralEbookCreator.com – This is a new project the two of us will be launching so
publishers can let their affiliates ‘brand’ ebooks-on-the-fly. Check out this cool
technology.

Associate Programs - Sign up for a few of the major affiliate programs so you can see
how they are administered.