Explaining the “What’s In It For Me”

The WIIFM Factor for affiliates is critical. People love money, but the rewards must extend beyond cash to inspire enthusiasm, activity, and loyalty among your affiliates.

You must ensure that . . .

• You deliver everything you promise . . . and more! Your affiliates must know that when they refer your services and products they are doing a favor for their own subscribers and readers. Trust between you and your affiliates – and between your affiliates and their client base is imperative. Delivering high value every time – all the time –  is critical.
• You pay what you promise – faithfully and regularly.
• Your site(s), products and resources make it easy and enjoyable for your affiliates to promote you.

An Affiliate Program Manager

If you are going to build a strong affiliate base, someone must be in charge of the program. There must be someone who pays attention and is responsible for supporting and nurturing your affiliates. A good affiliate manager – whether it is you, a system, or someone you hire – can attract and retain enthusiastic, strong affiliates.

A good affiliate program is a positive experience for both you and each of your affiliates. The best part is that your affiliates can be busy beavers out there earning money for you while you are actively working on other things. You want to ensure that they continue to “work” on your behalf over the long-haul.

Paying Your Affiliates

There are choices in this area. For example, it is actually possible to set up a payment system without cash ever leaving your pocket. If you decide to pay affiliates for leads to new subscribers with a 100% commission, you can set it up so the affiliate receives the payment directly – while you collect the sign-ups through your download page or follow up emails.

You can pay them through any of the following:

1. PayPal[1]
2. Check
3. Affiliate Marketplaces such as Pepperjam, Commission Junction or Clickbank, if you have placed your products there.

You will need to do some homework and find a system that really works for you.

Making the Payments

Once you have determined the parameters you prefer for the mechanics of payment, you can use a professional script to automatically handle payments. One that I recommend is Post Affiliate Pro, which operates on a monthly subscription.

You can choose the option that works for you best:

Their Live Help is exceptionally good, too.

If your web host does not allow scripts or you are nervous about your lack of experience, you can use a third party service to take care of payments altogether.

There are advantages of using a third party service:

• If you are not an experienced Webmaster, you don’t have to worry about accidentally messing up something on your site. Scripts do that occasionally – even the best ones.  This is particularly true if you are not sure what you are doing.

It may very well be worth adjusting your budget to hire a VA who specializes in affiliate management to take care of the following:

• Set up your system
• Handle support and refunds
• Stay in touch with affiliates (and team with you in doing this)
• Seek out more resources for your affiliates to use
• Set up reward program

As an entrepreneur, you must decide which types of affiliate management tools, scripts, resources and services are best for you. There is an solution for every problem, you simply have to find it.

Related posts:

Becoming an Affiliate Building an Online Business – Action Steps Business Models and Systems – Section III Build Your Affiliate Program