An Introduction To Affiliate Recruiting

Affiliate programs are the way the internet is doing business. Affiliate networks are growing at an exponential rate as more website owners realize the potential for business growth and word of mouth publicity for their websites. Affiliates use their site"s traffic to increase their own revenue as well as increasing the sales for the site with whom they are affiliated. The affiliate"s website will have a link or ad that can be clicked through to the website offering the items or services. The affiliate is paid either per click through or by a percentage of the sales made by the people who clicked through. This win-win situation can be cultivated with the right affiliate recruiting methods. Recruiting is the process of finding quality affiliates who will bring traffic to your website and spread your company"s name.

To find affiliates who have traffic of their own and will drive the right kind of traffic to your website, the key is the recruiting process used to find the affiliates. Recruiting affiliates is not a simple matter of chance and it is not something that should be done in the simplest possible method to attract the maximum number of responses. Having a poor quality of affiliates can negatively affect your site"s reputation, as well as wasting your time and energy.

An effective affiliate program vastly increases the amount of publicity the website receives, increasing page views and building a name for the site and its goods or services. Affiliates will go on to recruit other affiliates, further spreading the word about the website and the items it sells. Affiliates who are recruited in a questionable manner may then recruit others in a questionable manner, rendering the publicity that the program generates a negative publicity. And, negative recruiting methods can cause problems that go beyond just a matter of the site"s reputation.

Affiliate recruitment is something that should be done legitimately, through legal means. This means avoiding spam, unlawful telemarketing, filling up irrelevant message boards with your information, etc. There are many legitimate ways to recruit affiliates that will not be seen as harassment or as an annoyance and will garner a better reputation for your site. A site with a good reputation is more likely to attract quality affiliates.

Email is currently one of the most popular methods of recruiting affiliates. But, this can be both positive and negative both for the website and for the site"s owner. If the email is sent out in a random fashion, it may not be compliant with the recent CAN-SPAM laws, making the site"s owner vulnerable to lawsuits and legal action. In addition, because many site owners rely on their network of affiliates to further recruit affiliates, those affiliates may recruit through email that is not CAN-SPAM complaint, further causing potential trouble for the site owner. The site owner is legally responsible for their affiliate network"s recruiting tactics and can be prosecuted by the FTC for any violations that their affiliates commit. There are many other ways of recruiting affiliates than sending mass emails or allowing the affiliate network to do so.

Email is a good way to recruit affiliates, but they must be used deliberately- targeting specific people with a legitimate offer to join the affiliate network. Contacting webmasters of websites that have a similar content to your site is a good first step to finding affiliates. The emails should contain all of the information that an affiliate needs to make the decision to visit the site and join the network. Sketchy details in an email will read like spam and not the legitimate opportunity with your network that it really is. When sending recruiting email, think about questions you would ask if you were learning about your network, and answer all of those questions. Include contact information to further separate yourself from the spammers.

Effective affiliate recruiting can also be done through targeted telephone calls. Directly calling those who may be interested in an affiliate relationship is likely to be just as effective as or even more so than mass emails, as they are not filtered out as spam and it is possible to speak directly to the potential affiliate. A strong business relationship can be made from speaking directly over the phone in a way that is more difficult to establish through email alone. A business relationship that begins with phone contact is more akin to a business relationship in the real world, rather than something only conducted through email. People do respond to a personal touch.

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