Written by: Steven Clayton, Guest Author

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I talked about why it’s a good idea to become an information product vendor, and how to get started in the process. In this final installment, I’ll answer one of the biggest questions new vendors have:

How do I attract affiliates to market my product for me?

The challenge is to find affiliates, to let them know about your product, and convince them to promote for you! The single biggest thing you can do, is to NOT “release” your product until the affiliate resource section is completed. The affiliate resource section contains all the tools you create (or have outsourcers create for you) that help your affiliates promote your product.  These include banners, graphics, email copy, Adwords ad text, keywords, and much more.

The best way to figure out what you should be doing here is to see examples. Sign up to be an affiliate for best selling ClickBank products and see what they provide their affiliates with. One place I can recommend is our affiliate resource site (www.blueprintaffiliates.com). Signing up there will show you several affiliate resource sites and examples of tools for many different products.

Not having a solid affiliate resource section is the single biggest mistake we see product creators make. They focus so much on building their product that they leave the affiliate resource section for last, or they launch their product without it thinking they will “get to it later.” You only have one chance to grab that affiliate’s attention, so make sure you put your best foot forward when you do get that chance. That means having everything set up and making their job as easy as you can right from the first time they see your product and consider promoting it.

Another great strategy for getting affiliates is to give them something that they can give away for free to their audience, such as a free mini report that they can edit and give away, which includes their own affiliate link to your product. Potential affiliates LOVE this kind of thing, as it gives them valuable content to give to their traffic sources. People are always on the lookout to provide value to their audience, and if you can help them with that, they will consider promoting your products.

Track down potential traffic sources and find out what they’re promoting and why. Go to the places where your traffic will be. For example, let’s stay with our organic gardening theme.

Do some searches and find the top organic gardening blogs or forums, etc. Look at what they’re promoting to monetize their sites. Contact all of these people, and keep in mind that you must be relentless here! Find cool ways to catch their attention.

Once you have their attention, pitch your product. Tell them why they should be promoting YOUR product instead or in addition to the ones they currently are. You must sell affiliates just like customers. Remember what I was saying in the beginning—it only takes a small number (sometimes 1!) of super affiliates to really make a lot of money, so this is time well spent.

Here’s a trick to catching people’s attention. EVERYONE Googles themselves at some point. If you’re trying to reach John Smith because he runs the top organic gardening blog and he can reach your target audience quickly, bid on his name in Adwords.

When he Googles himself, have the ad come up and say “John Smith, you should tell your readers about this!” or something like that and send it to a page you’ve created on your site that is an “invitation” for him to promote. Some kind of variation on this theme can be fun and WILL get someone’s attention. Please do not do this for my name

Often you can find “complimentary” marketing opportunities. Let’s use that home theater example. Reach out to the product creator of the best selling home theater information product and let them know about your new 3D product. As I described, this is a product that would be of interest to this person’s audience and is not a directly competing product, but is complimentary. There are often MANY of these kinds of opportunities to be found.

Finally, tell everyone on affiliate marketing forums and blogs that you’re launching your product. Put it in your signature. Just get it out there!  Do everything you can to get it in front of as many potential affiliates as you can.

One last tip: send an email to everyone that buys, asking them if they’d like to get the product they just bought for free. All they need to do is sign up to ClickBank as an affiliate and get two others to purchase the product, and they’ve paid for their copy! You can build a small army of low volume affiliates this way.

Hopefully these little pearls of wisdom will go a long way towards helping you on your journey from affiliate to vendor! Best of luck to you!

About the Author

Steven Clayton and his partner Tim Godfrey are the creators of a number of best selling information products in the Internet marketing niche, along with many other markets. Their Info Prodigy course (teaching how to create and market information products) is currently closed to new members, but you can get on the waiting list and get a free and very detailed 26 page report that gives away even more secrets right here. In addition, don’t forget to sign up at www.blueprintaffiliates.com to see excellent examples of affiliate resource pages.

About Beau Blackwell

Beau is the Client Knowledge Guru for ClickBank and covers the latest trends, tips and techniques for building profitable Internet marketing businesses.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. 5 Steps to Making Your First Sale as an Affiliate Marketer
2. Making the Profitable Move From Affiliate to Vendor: Part 1
3. Making the Profitable Move From Affiliate to Vendor: Part 2
4. Google Panda Effects on Affiliate Sites
5. Making it Happen in 2012

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