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This report Can Your

brought to
you by…
Affiliate Program
The Change the
Affiliate
Manager
1st Edition
Course of Your
How to Build
and Manage
Business?
an Unstoppable
Online Sales Force
An Affiliate Classroom Special Report

Written and Developed by the Staff and

Consulting Faculty of Affiliate Classroom, Inc.™

Copyright © 2006 by Affiliate Classroom, Inc.™

http://www.affiliateclassroom.com/
All Rights Reserved.

For pre-launch updates, visit our blog at

http://www.amclassroom.com/update/
 Straight Talk From Top Marketers
About Managing Your Affiliates
Affiliate Classroom has not only trained more than 3,000
affiliates and 120 affiliate managers, but our annual
revenues of more than $1 million are 70% affiliate-driven.
So we understand it’s not enough to simply start an affiliate
program. You need to know how to make it pay.

In the pages that follow you’ll learn several affiliate management concepts that can
take your online business to the next level - or even save your business if it’s in
trouble. Before we start, what do the people in charge of billion dollar affiliate
programs have to say to you about your affiliate program?

“You need to manage your program to turn it into an unstoppable sales machine.
The days of auto-pilot affiliate programs are long gone.”

“It’s easier to get more out of your existing affiliates, than to constantly recruit new
affiliates.”

“Affiliates are people, not human ATM machines. You need to motivate and
incentivize them ALL, not just top performers.”

“Super affiliates are valuable but risky. Recruiting and retaining super affiliates
means competing with thousands of other affiliate programs in EVERY niche (not
just your own).”

“Inactive affiliates can be an advantage if you’re smart enough to see how.”

“The biggest threat to affiliate marketing isn’t changes at search engines or click
fraud. It’s spyware, and if it hasn’t hit your program yet, it will.”

“There’s a right and a wrong way to motivate, train, and communicate with
affiliates. Most managers do them all wrong.”

“Affiliates want a strong compensation plan, not just high commissions.”

“Big one-time increases in sales may be the work of a few people. But long-term
increases come from building a remote affiliate sales force - a worldwide team.”

The Affiliate Manager, 1st Edition, our comprehensive course on using your
affiliate program to energize your business, teaches you how to imitate the billion
dollar managers. It’s not based on theory, but practical advice from people who
have mastered the art of developing affiliate programs that deliver big results.

This report is just a tiny sample of the ground-breaking methods in The Affiliate
Manager, 1st Edition. These concepts are overflowing with marketing possibilities
for those who want to get ahead of the trends - and be the first to cash in on them.

Next… An affiliate push that can double your business overnight!

2 Copyright 2006 © Affiliate Classroom, Inc.™ All rights reserved

 133% More Sales in 5 Days
What if you knew how to run an affiliate competition that
could increase your sales 133% in less than five days? And
what if that wasn’t just a one-time spike, but your sales
remained much higher, long after the prizes had been
awarded?

Here’s proof that competitions can activate and motivate affiliates, give your
business a shot of additional sales, and take your business to a whole new level.

When we held our first affiliate competition in November 2005, Affiliate Classroom
was less than one year old. But we were also an affiliate-driven company paying out
more than $30,000 in commissions monthly. The success of the competition far
exceeded our business goals. Here are the results:

A 133% increase in daily sales during the competition.

A sustained 15% increase in daily sales after the competition ended.
A 35% growth in the number of affiliates.
Six new super affiliate joint venture partnerships.
Increased brand recognition across all our markets.

How did we achieve this? By combining several tactics into a competition that
generated lots of buzz… and more than doubled our sales in just a few days Here
are some key factors that can contribute to the success of your competition, too:

Set business goals. These must fit you, your products, and your niche.
Do a pre-competition self assessment to make sure you’re really ready.
Planning, from prizes to legal issues. Plan well, and the contest runs itself.
Use “surprises” strategically, or you’ll lose sales momentum.
Develop a competition “formula” that includes a theme plus lots of motivators.
Make sure that even one-sale affiliates can win a valuable and attractive prize.
Find tricks to acquire minimal cost prizes that affiliates will really work hard for.
Convince JV partners to offer prizes in exchange for high profile publicity.
Have three promotional phases, each designed to create its own kind of “buzz.”

Finally, you may suddenly see the value in your inactive affiliates if you think about
this tactic we learned from a multi-million dollar affiliate manager:

If you want to get those inactive affiliates to get active, make it a requirement
that they can’t enter unless they’ve already made one sale. This works best for
really big competitions with plenty of prizes, all kinds of ways to win, and some
special prizes for “most improved” or “most sales by a newbie” awards.

Next… Do you know about the six types of affiliates?

3 Copyright 2006 © Affiliate Classroom, Inc.™ All rights reserved

 The Six Types of Affiliates
Today, most marketers break affiliates down into
three categories - super (top 2%); “active” but
under-productive; or inactive. Sounds simple
enough, but is it accurate? Not according to a select
group of marketers - the ones who are ahead of the
trends.

Why does it make a difference how you classify your

affiliates? Because the Web is changing, and affiliates
with it.

The vast majority of affiliates want to be trained and managed based on their
preferred marketing method - not their sales numbers. If you stop thinking in terms
of super, active, and inactive, you’ve just multiplied your options.

The Six Types of Affiliates

Super Affiliates - The top 2% of earners who aren’t easy to find or recruit.
Power Affiliates - The Web’s marketing masters who do it all, opt-in to JV.
Multi-Merchant Affiliates - Super-affiliate incomes, but from hundreds of sites.
Niche Affiliates - Strong niche presence through mini-nets; many are newbies.
Webmaster Affiliates - Their huge content sites dominate top search results.
“Scraper” Affiliates - Junk site builders or backlink machines? Opinions vary!

Let’s look at how understanding the six types of affiliates allows you to expand your
marketing.

Cashing in on Your Affiliates’ Marketing Preferences

If your offer isn’t a great fit for classic PPC-driven super affiliates - for example, you
sell a product bundled with consulting services - knowledge of the six types of
affiliates is vital. You can concentrate on locating - via various software tools - and
recruiting the types of affiliates who would be a good fit, such as webmaster or
niche affiliates.

Of course, you may also need to be creative in training, activating, and supporting
many of these affiliates, at least at first, since they’ll need it. Obviously you can’t
train and support dozens, even hundreds of inexperienced affiliates in the tiny details
of marketing online. (In The Affiliate Manager, 1st Edition, we advise you on how
to train your affiliates without “micro-training.”)

The reward of targeting affiliates based on their marketing preferences is it can

make you relatively competition-proof. Your loyal sales team will take your products
straight to your target market via content websites.

What if you’re in a competitive niche like infoproducts or business opportunities? It’s

even more important for you to work with your affiliates’ marketing choices. This
allows you to promote beyond the boundaries set by the top marketers in your

4 Copyright 2006 © Affiliate Classroom, Inc.™ All rights reserved

niche. Hundreds, even thousands of affiliates making just a few sales a month can
be much safer than relying on a few JV partners.

As you know, nothing stops your competitors from signing up for your program,
learning everything about your marketing, then stealing those methods. They could
also dominate your program by becoming your top affiliates! That’s a classic case of
the tail wagging the dog: your competitors have enough sales clout to tell you how
to run your business.

Finally, some top marketers feel that even “black hat” scraper affiliates have their
redeeming features. These affiliates are called “scrapers” because their sites are
stuffed with “scrapes” - copies of search engine results for their chosen keywords.
Their spammy sites can, however, be a free source of thousands, even millions, of
backlinks you can’t be penalized for under current search engine rules. True, the
individual links may not be worth much. But we have seen sites get an unexpected
search engine boost that can be traced back to millions of links on scraper pages.

Every Affiliate Matters

You can even benefit from so-called “inactive” or “underachiever” affiliates. For
example:

Even if they never make a sale, affiliates can spread awareness of your
products and your expertise, by reprinting your articles in their newsletters.

They may create viral materials that mention your products. This can give
you exposure through mass giveaways and reprint rights sites for years.

They may place links to your products on all their sites, some of which
probably do well in the search engines for obscure terms. Once again, these
are free backlinks that can ultimately help with your search engine presence.

Their PPC ads may actually help push your competitor’s ads into lower
positions - assuming you allow them to bid on popular or branded keywords.

Finally, remember that any affiliate who makes even a halfhearted attempt at
promoting your program benefits you. Why? Because affiliates take on the cost – in
both time and money – of marketing your products. You only pay affiliates for
results, making them a far less risky investment than other types of advertising.

If you compare the cost of a well-run affiliate program with mass purchases of
banner exposures, pay-per-click, and ezine ads, let alone offline advertising, an
affiliate program can return much more for your dollar. In fact, for many big online
retailers, affiliate marketing is their highest ROI (Return On Investment) marketing
method.

In business (as well as life), you have to change the way you think to change
results. If you want to get more sales out of your affiliates, stop thinking about your
affiliates the way old-fashioned marketers do.

Next… The three most important ways to communicate with your affiliates.

5 Copyright 2006 © Affiliate Classroom, Inc.™ All rights reserved

 The 3 Best Ways To Communicate
With Your Affiliates
Smart marketers do more than send newsletters.
They develop a six-to-twelve month communication
plan that reaches out to affiliates in multiple ways.
The plan doesn’t have to be complicated, but it needs
to tell affiliates what they really need to know to do a
better job of making sales. And according to the
world’s best marketers, you should:

Publish Monthly or Weekly Newsletters

Some managers say newsletters don’t work, but we disagree. They work if you do
them right. They can even generate a flurry of sales activity. How do you know your
newsletter is strengthening your bond with your sales force? Ask yourself if your
affiliates would actually save your newsletter to refer to later. If so, you’re on the
right track.

Start a Blog for Your Program

A blog is an important interactive communication tool for today’s affiliates - plus it
provides you with many of the benefits of a forum, but with more search engine
presence. Blogging also comes naturally to many newly active affiliates, who learned
about the Internet through relationship marketing and social networking. (We
discuss the motives, management, and business benefits of working with these Web
2.0 affiliates in detail in The Affiliate Manager, 1st Edition.)

Use the Telephone

Pick up the phone and call your affiliates. While you can’t call everyone, it’s essential
for super and power affiliates. Many top managers will make a point of calling two
top sellers and three moderate sellers every week, just to “take the temperature” of
their program. You’ll be surprised at how much more motivated your affiliates will
become after a talk on the telephone. Before, you were just a name at the bottom
of an email. After, you’re a person they like and trust.

Don’t forget to create an “open door” policy by giving affiliates all your contact
information, including instant messaging. Set aside specified hours for phone or
chat. Most affiliates are busy enough to respect your time - and this goes a long
way to showing you’re available if they need you.

Finally… Review and preview!

6 Copyright 2006 © Affiliate Classroom, Inc.™ All rights reserved

 Review And Preview
We hope this report got you thinking about:

Running competitions that do what YOU want

them to do for your business, cash flow,
affiliates, and JV partners.

How focusing on your affiliates’ marketing

preferences can pay off for your program.

The best ways to communicate with your

affiliates.

The information in this report is just a tiny sampling of what you’ll learn in The
Affiliate Manager, 1st Edition, which includes:

4-Hour Affiliate Manager Boot Camp on 2 DVDs. Taught by Anik Singal, CEO,
Affiliate Classroom, Inc., at the January 2006 Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, NV.

15 Hours of Audio Interviews with affiliate industry leaders.

200+ Page Workbook in its own full color binder.

8 Checklists and Cheat Sheets to keep you focused on key marketing issues.

Bonus Template Pack and References that include samples of newsletters, super
affiliate recruitment letters, recognition letters and certificates, and our “Where To
Find It In Affiliate Marketing” Guide.

Plus many other Limited Quantity and Time-Sensitive Bonuses

Affiliate marketing authorities who have participated in this course:

Yanik Silver Ben Edelman, spyware authority Chris Sanderson, AMWSO

Mike Filsaime Deborah Carney, CafePress.com Rachel Honoway, Kowabunga
Jeff Mulligan Linda Woods, PartnerCentric Revenue Magazine
Shawn Collins Asif Malik, GoldenCAN Jim Lillig, expert recruiter
Rosalind Gardner Brian Littleton (ShareASale) Clark Douglas Walton, attorney
PayDotCom ProjectBlackBook Lisa Riolo, Commission Junction
AffStat Report Revenews.com

Don’t Miss Out - Get Updates!

To be the first to know when the course is released, make sure you sign up for
updates at http://www.amclassroom.com/update/

Thanks for reading!

7 Copyright 2006 © Affiliate Classroom, Inc.™ All rights reserved