What makes a top holiday affiliate program offer? Okay, obviously it’s something people will buy, but there’s just a bit more to it. In this article I’m going to discuss one new program and why I think it’s spot on perfect for marketing this holiday season. You may end up thinking I’m nuts, but you may just end up thinking about holiday offers in a new light.

The merchant for this exercise is SteakBrands.com. Okay, you might be wondering just why branding irons for steaks makes sense for the holidays, so bear with me while I explain.

They’re New - This is a new program and one offering a product line that relatively untouched in the affiliate space. That means less competition on SEO, less competition on PPC and a merchant that’s eager to work with affiliates to build their program.

Let me repeat, less competition. If you’re one of only a small handful promoting, even an amateur SEO monkey could hit top 10 spots, maybe not by Christmas, but certainly in time for… Heck, read on and see what you might be in time for.

They’re Eager - Didn’t I just say that in the point above? Yes, but I wanted to be more specific. Newer merchants often go the extra mile to support and work with affiliates. In this case, I’ve been in touch with SteakBrands on a few points and they have been MORE than cooperative, even going so far as to remove the toll-free number from their header. How many other holiday offers do you have that are really making an effort to make their program better meet YOUR needs?

The Offer Covers Overlapping Seasons - A lot of holiday affiliate offers cover one season and fade away until the following year. That doesn’t excite me. What does excite me is an offer that keeps coming back season after season. You might not think of steak branding irons as the most perfect Christmas offer on the face of it, but you know ALL of your surfers know somebody who loves to grill, so there’s certainly a market at Christmas time. I have a golf nut on my list, and despite the cold wet

1. Sell like a banshee

Merchants, before you start recruiting understand your audience. Make a decision on who you’re looking to recruit and try to get into their heads before you send that recruiting letter. So often I see recruiting emails telling me about the amazing FREE income opportunity with program X. These offers try to convince me with silly stats like “…last month, top affiliates earned over $X!” or with pictures of some cheese-ball guy standing next to an implant victim and a Ferrari in front of a big, ugly house with stunted trees.

From the offer, it sounds like they’re suggesting I can build a healthy income with their program (sounds okay, doesn’t it), but also like they assume I’ve been sitting around the house at 3 AM, drinking cheap beer and bemoaning my lot in life, just waiting for a FREE money making opportunity to hit me in the head. While the cheap beer part comes close, I find these offers insulting.

While all this is fine IF you’re looking to recruit drunken layabouts to drive your affiliate channel, it rather misses the mark if you’re looking to recruit marketing professionals. Your offer just hit the bin.

If you want to reach me, for example, consider a few things. First, I am a professional and this is my business. Second, yours is not the only pitch I will see today. And third, I’m very very busy making money for programs other than yours. Respect me and get to the point. Joining and marketing your program is a business decision. If it’s the right one, show me why.

2. Convince me that you have other plans for MY traffic

While this seems like a no-brainer in the extreme, you might be shocked to know just how many merchants are surprised by this little tidbit. Here it is:

If I visit your site and see a toll-free number, a third party book or magazine offer, Google AdSense or anything else that looks like my traffic might get distracted from making me money, I’m not promoting your program - no matter how many times you call me to follow up.

See, the deal is, it’s my traffic. You haven’t paid for it until the “A” in “CPA” actually occurs, and have no right to do anything with it other than shepherd it to the commissionable action. Anything you do that distracts my traffic from my goal is undermining my business. Call me crazy, but like many affiliates, I won’t partner with a program that seeks to undermine my business and telling me that your phone conversion is pretty low isn’t changing my mind.

Get rid of the distractions or hide them from affiliate generated traffic, even traffic returning with an affiliate generated cookie, or don’t expect affiliates to promote your program.

3. Have no idea what you’re talking about and/or hire clueless recruiters

You can be sure to lose each and every potential recruit you speak to that asks a valid question about your program and doesn’t get an answer. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, call me back when you do, or better yet, don’t call me back.

Questions like “Do you have a second tier?”, “Can I link direct to individual products?” or “Do you offer a datafeed?” are pretty standard to the industry. If you don’t know what the questions mean, you don’t understand affiliate marketing. If you don’t understand affiliate marketing, perhaps you haven’t put proper thought into building your program, marketing tools, etc.

Perhaps you do get it, do understand affiliate marketing and actually have an offer worth hearing. Excellent! Don’t cock that up by hiring some sales schlep to pitch me on it without even giving them basic training on what the hell they’re talking about. An affiliate recruiter should know the industry and know your program backwards and forwards.

An ill-informed recruiter is representing your program in the poorest light. Not only are you not getting the affiliate, but you’re looking bad in the process.

4. Generate the wrong sort of buzz

Affiliates talk, some more than others, and your reputation precedes you. If you really want to sabotage your recruiting efforts, one of the most effective means at your disposal is to run a crappy program. Offer poor to no affiliate support, make late payments, let your cart go down for extended periods, fail to communicate when issues arise, etc.

This sort of behavior is bound to catch the attention of your current affiliates, and in turn get passed on to potential affiliates via the grape vine before you get a chance to speak with them.

Buzz is a big part of affiliate recruiting and the wrong sort will cripple your efforts before you begin. If you have no reputation, build a good one. If you have a bad reputation, clean it up publicly, before you put more energy into recruiting.

5. Fail to market

Is this where I break out the “Build it and they will come” cliche?

No.

It seems obvious. You put time and money into building your brand, building your site, marketing your products/services - you’ve even gone so far as to build an affiliate channel - you must be a marketer. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d hired an SEO along the way and even tried a little PPC.

Marketing is good. You get that.

Why then, do so many merchants fail to market their affiliate programs? What’s this? It can’t be true; I see merchants all the time asking about recruiting on the affiliate boards. Eathan, you are high.

Okay then, call it a shameless plug if you like, but if merchants are actively marketing their programs, why then is this flippin’ affiliate directory so flippin’ empty [Note: AffConnect used to be a crappy affiliate directory before it became a crappy web marketing blog]? Feel free to say “…but affConnect sorta’ sucks” all you like, but the fact remains, the site gets crawled, gets traffic and has decent PR. A permanent static link for a one-time $25 fee is a no-brainer for most online marketers. The same should be true when marketing your affiliate program.

I’m not suggesting you send me money. That’s not the point. I’m suggesting you treat your affiliate program like you would your brand, your website, your product, etc and market the hell out of it! Do SEO, do PPC, advertise on affiliate forums, get listed in affiliate directories, promote in ezines, issue press releases and so on. Unless your current customer base is your pool of potential affiliates, you need to be marketing your program.

And don’t be cheap… Don’t spam the affiliate boards and don’t expect freebie listings all over the planet. A single good affiliate is worth their weight in marketing dollars, so don’t pinch pennies in your recruiting efforts.

Just a quick update today.

For anyone who’s worked to get listed and ranked well in Google over the years, you’ve likely noticed that of all the engines, Google gives credence to the phrase “Knowledge is power.”

From the early days of pouring over “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” and other works from Larry and Sergey’s time at Stanford developing Backrub and eventually Google, to Reading Matt Cutts’ blog on a regular basis, SEOs have consistantly found that knowledge and understanding of Google’s systems can be a huge boon in attempting to rank well in Google.

Yesterday (the original post was from late 2006), SEO Egghead added another gem to the knowledgebase. Mattcuttsarama: 21 Great SEO Tips From Google’s Matt Cutts compiles 21 tips gleaned from Matt Cutts’ blog since 2005.

Are all 21 up to date and accurate? That’s your call as an SEO and affiliate marketer, but all offer insight into how Google works. Each tip links to the blog entry where it was found.

While 21 Tips won’t get you a top 3 spot for “widget wrestling” on the first go, it’s definitely worth a read.

Cheers!

This may be an odd beginning to a link building article, but I’m a strong believer in context, so bear with me.I recently had a client shut down by the US Government. As this was the second time in as many years, both times leaving me hanging for payment (no, the Feds don’t settle up accounts), I’m getting pretty annoyed, but I’m also dragging out my SEO hat (a crusty old white one if you must know) and rebuilding an income - one without ties to unnamed investors that may have known people that were related to an unrelated business with unrelated pending legal issues, because somehow, somebody, knowing someone, involved in something else entirely is enough reason for the Feds to put me out of work again!

I’ve spent the last four years working as a consultant in the affiliate marketing industry, sort of a program architect/manager, but before that I was in SEO for a bunch of years. Of course four years in affiliate marketing is about 3 1/2 years past the shelf life of my SEO knowledge - stuff goes all obsolete on ya.

So lately I’ve been working on a lot of sites and studying up. This morning I was reading over at SEO Black Hat. Yes, I know I said mine’s white, but he’s a sharp marketer with knowledge to share and I’m too rooted in my ways to cross over to the dark side, so shush! Anyway, he linked to a couple of good link building articles, one of which is 101 Ways to Build Links in 2006 by Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall.

What I like best about articles like this is they get my brain working. I may not be able to hire a publicist (see aforementioned money issues), but I can damn well get creative, and nothing inspires creativity better than studying a subject with a specific goal in mind.

Am I ever going to get to the point…?

Yes.

One of the sites I’m working on is a

You can keep your 401k. Being an affiliate, especially a successful one has its own set of benefits. Following is a list of ten benefits that we affiliates have that more than make up for the lack of a standard package. While the list is mainly for entertainment purposes, there are a few real gems tossed in.

1. Participation in affiliate forums, message boards and conferences means you’re never short of a friend with purchase advice.

2. Your well ranked, highly trafficked, PR 6 diaper review blog just might lead to loads of free diapers in the mail…

3. Your increasing waistline is a great excuse to buy new jeans, a new treadmill and new trainers - all from programs you’re associated with.

4. When solicitors call for Mr. or Mrs. #insert_name#, you can fend them off easily with “May I ask what this is regarding? I’m sorry, you are aware this is a business number…?”

5. Your hard work has lead to the distinction of “Super Affiliate.” You don’t actually get a cape, but the pay isn’t bad.

6. The fraudulent PPC traffic you pay for on your airline mileage credit card adds up to free airfare for two, anywhere in the world, six or seven times a year.

7. Commissions on your initial mileage card application will pay for a really nice bottle of wine… Just as soon as you earn $20 more to cross the $50 minimum payout threshold.

8. Constant stats checking has given rise to on-the-fly math calculations unseen since college.

9. Your previous attempts to foster an aura of mystery pale in comparison to just honestly trying to explain what the hell it is you do for a living.

10. Lame attempts to entertain you provided free of charge…

Okay, that was stupid. Sue me…

Cheers!