In this episode, we emphasize the importance of reframing the question from “How can I find more affiliates?” to “Where can I find the right affiliates?” This shift helps in targeting affiliates who genuinely understand and can effectively promote your product.
Next, we discuss the necessity of defining your ideal affiliate by considering your product’s use-cases and target verticals. This helps in identifying the right affiliates who can naturally integrate your product into their content.
Finally, we highlight the need to treat your affiliate program as a sales process. By positioning your product to attract your ideal affiliates and using keyword research and social media monitoring to find potential partners, you can tailor your program to serve specific affiliate types, ensuring a good fit and better results.
Overall, it advocates for a strategic and thoughtful approach to building an affiliate network that prioritizes quality and fit over quantity.
Key Points
- Reframe Your Question: Instead of asking “How can I find more affiliates?”, focus on “Where can I find the right affiliates?” This shift helps in targeting affiliates who genuinely understand and can effectively promote your product.
- Define Your Ideal Affiliate: Spend time defining what makes a good affiliate for your specific context. Consider your product’s use-cases and target verticals to identify the right affiliates who can naturally integrate your product into their content.
- Strategic Affiliate Program: Treat your affiliate program as a sales process. Position your product to attract your ideal affiliates, and use keyword research and social media monitoring to find potential partners. Tailor your program to serve specific affiliate types, ensuring a good fit and better results.
Transcript
One of the most-frequently asked questions I see when setting up an affiliate program is “how can I find more affiliates?”. It’s a valid question, and we’re going to talk about how to find affiliates for your network in this episode, but the very nature of the question is problematic.
Instead, I invite you to reframe the question “How can I find more affiliates”. Instead, you should be asking “Where can I find the right affiliates?”
And before we can even begin to be effective at finding the right affiliates, we need to be able to understand what makes a good affiliate in the first place.
I’ve looked at a lot of affiliate programs with companies that have hundreds or thousands of affiliates, and there’s a common thread – a small percentage of their affiliates actually generate sales. It’s a classic example of the 80/20 rule.
This is usually for a number of reasons. Maybe the affiliate doesn’t have much of an audience, and can’t promote the product well. Perhaps the affiliate is choosing to promote something else in-favor of your product. It could even be that the opportunity to promote your product hasn’t been discovered yet.
Regardless of the reason, the reality is simple – most affiliate programs only utilize about 20% of their network, and it’s almost always because the other 80% is not actually a great fit for their program.
In some extreme cases, that 80% can actually hurt your business instead of help. You’ve probably witnessed an affiliate program that’s loaded down with too many bad affiliates, and you’ve probably become less likely to use a product because of it.
You know what I’m talking about. Those brands that seem to suddenly get a recommendation from everyone overnight, but there’s something weird about the recommendation. Even though you can’t put your finger on it, you get the feeling that the person making the recommendation isn’t being completely honest.
One example comes to mind for me. For the longest time, there was a web hosting company called HostGator that you absolutely could not avoid seeing as a recommendation for hosting.
They were absolutely everywhere. Every blog post, and podcast that was published at the time would recommend this company above and beyond anyone else. In-fact, most of the time, they were the only recommendation. On the surface, this sounds absolutely awesome, and in many ways I’m sure it was for the business, but if you look closer, the cracks start to show.
While there’s always a lot of moving parts with these shared hosting companies, and the exact reasons why people mistrust them, I do think at least some of it was related to the overzealous affiliate program that it was running at the time.
It seems like the network grew so large, and wasn’t managed so well, and many people began to make claims about the host that were either inaccurate, or downright false. The blogs would all tout this hosting company as “the best WordPress hosting platform”, or “check out this host – they’re great!” without actually giving any real context on why they’re the best choice, or why that host recommends them, or why they’re not personally using that host.
Now, I’m not saying HostGator company is bad, they’re just very much an entry level offering when it comes to hosting. Priced very low, and those low prices inevitably have compromises. some sites will do okay on this platform, but most people were touting it as the “best platform”, or “a best host” without ever talking about the compromises transparently.
It seems that most of their affiliates either weren’t properly educated on the product they were promoting, or they simply didn’t care. Either way, the end result was people were actively over-promising what their offering was, and that had a negative impact in the trust in their brand.
But it wasn’t just that. It was also the method people were promoting the product. For a while, it seemed like literally every blog had a big picture of their mascot in the middle of their blog posts, pushing for people to use this host.
When it was surrounded by otherwise authentic content written by the blogger, the sudden stark contrast made it feel inauthentic, almost like they were trying to trick you into buying something. That entire experience reflected on the brand, too, since clearly they were in “cahoots” with the blogger to seemingly manipulate their audience into buying their product.
Making people feel like they’re being manipulated into buying your product is not the first impression you want, and if you become careless with who you bring into your affiliate network, it could have a negative impact on your business instead of a positive one.
Another example of this can be seen in the video game YouTube niche. There is a mobile game called Raid: Shadow Legends, which several YouTubers reported being approached by the company to create tutorials and reviews of their game very aggressively, offering high payouts for good tutorials, and review. Naturally, some YouTubers took them up on the offer, promoting the product regardless of if they actually liked the game or not.
The inauthentic nature of the relationship was quickly sussed out. To most gamers, Raid is everything there is to hate about pay-to-win mobile game. This made it pretty obvious that these YouTubers, who were suddenly talking about this game in such high regard, were just doing this because they were paid to do it, not because they actually cared about the game.
This ultimately had the opposite effect for Raid. Their product, and their company practices were already seen as sleazy, and manipulative, and this just confirmed everyone’s assumptions further. If they had any trust in the gaming community, it had been washed away with every paid “review” that was so clearly forced.
It was promoted so heavily by popular video game YouTubers for a while, that it literally became a meme within that circle. Still to this day I occasionally stumble on a YouTube video jokingly starting an ad about Raid Shadow Legends.
When you hear people attacking affiliate marketing, it’s because of things exactly like these examples. Affiliate managers managing affiliate programs that are so focused on getting as many affiliates as possible that they completely ignore the fact that the affiliates they’re bringing in are not just ineffective, but also damaging.
These stories paint a picture of the pitfalls of bad affiliate marketing, and they inform us on the things we need to avoid doing when we search for our affiliates. It helps us understand the standards we should hold our affiliates to, and with that clarity, it also helps us recognize a good affiliate marketer when we encounter one.
I’m spending a lot of time driving this point home, because I feel it’s important that you understand that the number of affiliates you have isn’t what matters.
What matters is that you have affiliates who are actually a good fit for your brand. Affiliates who fundamentally understand your product, and can bring their own spin to your your product to their audience. These affiliates can also apply what you’re offering to an audience that you otherwise cannot access.
Above all else, however, they should be people who are able to promote your product naturally. Recommendations should feel like they’re naturally a part of the conversation, not a forced aside. The best affiliate marketers are recommending great products that they actually like, and weave those affiliate links inside their content seamlessly, and authentically.
Like it or not, building a robust affiliate network is a sales process. You’re going to be filling a sales pipeline, vetting leads, nurturing those leads, converting them into affiliates. In-fact, I treat my affiliate program like a product I sell because if you think about it, I am selling something.
And like any sales process, a great place to start is by defining your avatar. In other words, what makes a good affiliate for your program? Obviously we talked a lot about what makes a good affiliate generally speaking, but you also need to spend some time thinking about what makes a good affiliate specifically in your context.
Sometimes, it’s stupidly obvious what kind of affiliate is a great fit for your company. I always get so frustrated when I read books and resources and they skip over this, because their examples are always some idyllic scenario like “headphones specifically for cyclists”. On the surface, these people seem lucky – because the people who can promote your brand is very obvious. Go find the mountain bikers on social media, ask them to try your product, and determine if they’re a good fit from there.
I’m having a little fun with that, but, at least in my life, it’s never quite that easy. This usually leads to really generic terms in my marketing when I’m starting out that frankly, nobody is talking about in that context. Not a lot of people’s hooks start with the phrase “collaboration platform for WordPress”, after all. If only…
Although I guess the same could be said about the generic term “headphones”, right? Almost everyone has headphones, but there’s different contexts for them. I have a pair of open-back Sennheiser’s on my desk right now. They’re perfect for working in a quiet space because I can still hear my kids in the other room if they need me. Conversely, I have a pair of noise-cancelling headphones which were my go-to headphones when we were traveling in a camper. My wife wears earbuds when she’s working in the garden, and a different pair that’s more comfortable when she’s sleeping.
So, I guess the “headphones specifically for cyclists” isn’t lucky after all – it’s just good positioning. In this example, the company making the headphones probably has 5-10 different use-cases for their specific headphone design, but marketing it specifically to cyclists gives them an avatar to target, plus an indicator on the type of affiliate with which they can partner.
So, if you can’t find someone to promote your product, maybe you need to position your product so someone can promote it. Spend some time thinking about the verticals your product serves. think about its use-cases, and who would use those in those different cases. Are any of those types of people creating content on social media? If not, is there someone serving those types of people?
I’ll give you another example. I ran a web agency for a while, and I was really struggling with the branding. I felt that I was niched down far enough, specializing in WordPress, but honestly all that did was attract other people who were using WordPress. In other words, it was too far down the funnel for me to be able to get leads from business that weren’t already in WordPress. This lead me to being just another person blogging about a blogging platform. At the time, breweries in the united states were in the midst of a renaissance.
The craft beer boom was in full-swing, and at least 1 brewery was opening up every day in the US. I saw this as an opportunity, and created a funnel serving breweries. I started talking about the same things I was already talking about, but added a small twist that made it beer-flavored. I found the funnel almost built itself, from the domain name, to the calls to action, the marketing language, everything. Once I had that very clear avatar everything else clicked. Not long after that, I was finding affiliates and content creators to partner with.
My point is, if you are having trouble finding affiliates, it’s probably because you’re having trouble finding customers, and an affiliate program won’t fix that for you. You need to spend the time to identify your avatar, and build a funnel around that first. From there, an affiliate can multiply your efforts by amplifying your message, but in absence of that funnel, you won’t find any affiliates, and if you do, they’re probably going to struggle with converting as much as you are. Remember, affiliates are multipliers, not generators.
Once you have an avatar, search for keywords that you wish you were ranked for, and see if there’s any content that’s ranking that isn’t from a competitor. If you’re using vertical-specific language, you’ll probably find at least a few blogs that are ran by a potential affiliate. You can do the same thing on social platforms with hashtag scanning, as well. Search for different types of content and see if you notice non-competitors who keep showing up in the results. Again, these are potential affiliates.
Another place to find affiliates for your affiliate program is to look at your market, and look for companies that are parallel to your own. Are there any brands that serve the same markets as you? Can your product work with their product somehow? I see this in software a lot, and it’s a big part of my affiliate discovery process for Siren, because one of Siren’s primary focuses is in its integrations with other WordPress plugins.
Siren handles creating as many partnership programs as you want, but it doesn’t actually handle the transactions. Instead, it integrates with other plugins to do that. In this context, those other plugins are more than just an integration – they’re an opportunity to partner up.
Once you do that, you can start setting up things like a listening station, where you use tools to monitor the web for people talking about things relevant to your avatars. You can search social media based on hashtags your avatars are using to find affiliates, and you can do SEO research, looking for high traffic keywords that bloggers who fit your avatar have published. This alone might be enough to find the right affiliates for your business, but you can take this further.
I see a lot of generic “affiliate program” pages. These are fine, but if you spend a little time looking at your archetypes, you might find that you can tailor a program to them more-specifically, and offer them benefits other than your commission rate. A shining example of this is Flywheel, another web hosting company. One of their key marketing channels is to promote an outstanding partner program specifically for web agencies who use and recommend Flywheel as their WordPress host.
In this program, they treat marketing agencies as VIPs, giving them a dedicated account manager, priority support, and a listing on Flywheel’s partner directory, and of course a nice commission any time the agency signs up their customers to use their hosting services.
But the stark contrast of Flywheel’s approach versus the other host I was talking about earlier, is that they focused on finding the right kind of affiliate. They targeted professional agencies, who actually understand why they would choose a managed host like Flywheel, and treated them like VIPs.
They threw everything they could at them to make an attractive offer for agencies to not only choose Flywheel, but they also backed their product well-enough that these agencies would have probably recommended them anyway.
You can see just how much more clarity Flywheel gained by picking a specific type of affiliate, and creating a program that serves them. There’s a lot of things they’re offering in this program that simply wouldn’t make sense if it were offered to any other type of affiliate. A marketing blogger probably doesn’t care about being featured on a partnership directory, for example.
This archetype not only gave them the clarity to help them find their affiliates, but it also allowed them to attract the right kind of affiliate who understands their product, and wouldn’t tarnish their brand. It’s no surprise that they have several hundred people in their partner directory as a result.
The cherry on-top is that Flywheel already had access to these people since many of them were already their customers. They designed a program that served their customers, and allowed them to take those existing relationships and take them even further.
This means that this partnership program not only makes their product seem more attractive to these agencies, but it also serves as a way to refer more business to their platform from existing customers who are already big fans of their product. I know I’m borderline gushing here, but seriously – this program checks so many boxes. It’s no surprise that they have several hundred people in their partner directory as a result.
Flywheel’s program transforms their question from “how can I find more affiliates” to “how can I find more agencies”, which is a lot more action-able, and much easier to answer, and also allowed them to find better affiliates who could integrate their product into their marketing funnel naturally.
Raid: Shadow Legends seemed to have created a robust partnership program by targeting the right partners, but they went about it all wrong. Instead of tailoring their product to their partners, and making it easy for them to promote it naturally, they simply threw money at them. This caused their partners to need to do some gymnastics to fit their product into their discussion, and as a result it all felt forced. It was clear to the audience that the motivations were not sincere, and as a result, it further hurt the company’s brand.
I hope when you walk away from this episode you find yourself inspired to think about your affiliate program a little more deeply. If you’re asking “How can I find more affiliates?”, it’s probably because you need to understand, and perhaps even design, your program to serve someone more-specific.
You might even need to take a look at your product’s positioning, and adapt it to be something that the right person can sell more-naturally. Change your mindset to “Where can I find the right affiliates” instead of “how can I find more affiliates”, and I think you will start to come up with ideas and approaches that you had never considered before.
