Truth About Affiliates

Here’s the politically incorrect truth about affiliates…

First, they can make you a lot of money.

Second, they are lazy, and like everyone, more interested in themselves than in you.

That means you have to work hard to get them to do anything – even after they’ve promised to help you.

Recently, we found this out the hard way…

In a recent launch with one of my Publishing Partners, Dan Long, we had over 20 affiliates promise to mail.

But by day 2 of the 4-day launch, only a few of them had done anything. It was almost time to hit the panic button. But first…

…it was better to hit the Affiliate Contest button. (You’ll find that right beside the Panic button. It’s just a little smaller.)

An affiliate Contest will motivate your affiliate partners to take action because it is based on the Four Pillars of Success:

1) Accountability – Now you’re recording & publicizing their performance
2) Social Support – They get motivated by the performance of others
3) Incentives – You’ll give out extra cash prizes
4) The Deadline – Everyone is motivated by a HARD deadline. It lights a fire under their but.

In addition to running an Affiliate Contest that gives out cash prizes to top performers, here are other ways to help your affiliates make more sales.

1. Encourage your affiliates to offer their own bonus

2. Create Done-for-You email copy for affiliates

3. Keep on working on tweaking and improving your copy (do a copy logic
session and make sure to have great copywriters review your copy)

4. Hammer home the deadline (to prospects and affiliates)…I can never
emphasize this enough

5. Keep on pushing to the very end

Here’s our data from Dan Long’s Suspension Revolution launch last month.
Thanks to the contest, you’ll see that the final day (Friday) was TRIPLE the
sales of Day 1 and Day 2.

But I almost screwed this up…I almost completely dropped the ball on running
an affiliate contest.

We didn’t announce our contest until Day 2!

But my stupidity just proves you can always adjust on the fly and improve what
you are doing.

In the end, thanks to the affiliate contest, we had the $7000 day on Friday, and a great $1500 “Gravy Day” on Saturday.

So never give up, and keep on pushing.

More launch blueprints coming soon,
Craig Ballantyne

Fail forward fast.