Many marketers ask for tips on how to choose affiliate marketers. This is smart thinking. Marketers looking to expand into affiliate marketing need only hearken back to that old saying about chains only being as strong as their weakest link. Take any length of chain and try to snap it apart. If even one of those links is compromised, the length of one chain will quickly become two. Affiliate marketing works the same way. If even one of your affiliate marketers is weak or, worse, unscrupulous, it could cause your entire enterprise to fall apart. Learn how to choose affiliate marketers with a little scrutiny and you just might see how lucrative affiliate marketing can truly be.
The Willingness To Succeed
The first step when learning how to choose affiliate marketers is to learn how to test those who may be applying to be a member of your network. Don’t just cast a blanket over everyone who applies and accept everyone. All it takes is a short questionnaire asking if the affiliate marketer is serious about promoting your product or brand, and whether or not that person really wants to succeed. It’s also a good idea to ask about other affiliate marketing promotions they’ve been a part of, as well as their track record. And while you’re at it, you might as well ask for professional references. Who else has the affiliate marketer worked with and how did they perform? Most importantly, how much money did they make in all of their affiliate marketing ventures?
It may sound like you’re interrogating the affiliate marketer-to-be, but this part of the process is necessary if you want to have the strongest or most durable chain, metaphorically speaking. Sending out a quick questionnaire only takes a moment, but it’s worth it if you hope to build a solid affiliate marketing foundation that translates into a high-performing income stream that sustains you well into the future.
Protect Your Business
Another reason why you need to learn how to choose affiliate marketers carefully is that the wrong ones might steal your business plans or customers, or both. This reminds me of another old saying, “One bad apple spoils the bunch.”
There exist many people out there who want to make it in affiliate marketing no matter what. Actually, that’s not entirely true. These individuals just want to make it; they don’t care how they do it.
So they pretend to be ambitious affiliate marketers only to swoop in like a wolf in sheep’s clothing (another famous saying), and they take your business right out from under you. They may even steal all of your other ambitious affiliate marketers.
That’s why, when learning how to choose affiliate marketers, you should conduct an interview of sorts. The questionnaire is really just to weed out the slackers. You don’t want anyone who’s going to loaf when it comes to spreading your message. You only want go-getters; affiliate marketers who know what they want and aren’t afraid to go after it. These are the folks that are going to study the latest affiliate marketing techniques and they’re going to apply those techniques to sell your product or service and make themselves money, and ultimately they’re going to make you money.
After you’re satisfied with the questionnaire, it’s recommended that you interview the affiliate marketer personally. This can be conducted over email, Skype, over the phone or via any other process, as long as you’re comfortable with the end result. You’re looking for affiliate marketers who are willing to interview for the job and who are willing to provide you with affiliate marketing ideas that they plan to use to grow your business.
All this talk of chains, apples and sheep, you’d think we’d be talking about a farm, but I hope those old sayings are effective in showing you the importance of learning how to choose affiliate marketers properly. Just like a general choosing his troops for battle, you only want the best of the best on your front lines. You only want affiliate marketers who have the connections, the resources and the drive to strike at the heart of your target market. These are the marketers who are going to fight for you, and they might even encourage more affiliate marketers to take up the fight.
The point is, there are plenty of people out there who claim to be affiliate marketers, but only a select few have what it takes to work for you and your organization. Old sayings and metaphors aside, if you don’t learn how to choose your affiliate marketers properly, your business will fail. That’s not to scare you, it’s just a warning and a tip to only recruit those affiliate marketers who show a willingness to sell, sell, sell until the cows come home.
