Recruiting Affiliates

The task of contacting affiliates is one which always has mixed results - and different results across market sectors. This article offers a wider view on affiliate recruitment and looks at your network, 

There are lots of online guides written on recruiting from leading writers in the industry. One of the best of these, a writer, trainer and keynote speaker at events around the world is Geno Prussakov. We share some of his advice from one of his blog posts below, with specific application to our platform.

As Geno identifies "Recruitment is also one of the most time-consuming and labor-intensive tasks that affiliate managers have to tackle. Between identification of the right prospects, outreach to them, and follow-ups, it isn’t unusual for an affiliate manager to spend as much as 80% of their time on recruitment-related activities." 

10 Techniques

Geno suggests 10 techniques that work in recruiting affiliates.

1 - Competitive Intelligence - Publisher Discovery and other analysis tools to identify gaps in your affiliate program - and reach out to recruit
2 - Invite your Customers - used by retailers from Amazon down to reward their fans
3 - Influencers & Opinion Leaders - there is significant crossover between affiliate and influencer and be open to look at combining  
4 - Platform/Network Opportunities - if you're using an affiliate network, there may well be opportunities to invite affiliates from within your network. Our own Recommender with Affiliate Future is one of the more advanced; there are in-network tools in Shareasale, CJ Affiliate, Partnerize and several others.
5 - Cross Program Recruitment - This is a growing area, partnering with brands and inventories complementary to your own; such as with KLM's partnership with Avis for car hire.
6 - Second Tier Affiliates - incentivising your affiliates to recruit other new affiliates
7 - Affiliate Program Directories - around 20% of affiliates use program directories such as Affstat or Affiliateawesome to find new programs to join.
8 - Replication - Look at your most successful affiliates - and find more of the same!
9 - Related Verticals - look outside your immediate vertical sector to related niches.
10 - Paid Adverts - some programs use paid advertising in LinkedIn, or social media - or even Google to attract publishers to their program.

You can read the full article on the AM Navigator blog. Geno Prussakov also runs a popular 'Affiliate Marketing 101' course