Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of five quick affi­liate tips by guest blog­ger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also pos­ted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

The best favor you can do for your­self and your busi­ness is to always focus on one task at a time, and always finish what you start.

How the heck do you do that on the inter­net, when there are dis­trac­tions everywhere you look, and in affi­liate mar­ke­ting… when there are new offers every day ripe for you to promote?

The ans­wer is: if you’re going to pro­mote a new affi­liate offer, write all your emails and blog posts in one sit­ting, before you get bored or dis­trac­ted with another offer.

Sounds inti­mi­da­ting? It doesn’t have to be.

Remem­ber that when you pro­mote someone else’s offer, they tend to give you at least one cut-​​and-​​paste email. Sche­dule it as a future broad­cast and paste it in as-​​is, because time is limited!

If the email they pro­vide is more than a page long, I’ll split it up into two parts and sche­dule the second email to go out a week later.

Once you have those first cou­ple of emails, look at the sales let­ter and see if there are any huge chunks of sales copy you can paste into an email to further pro­mote the offer.

Any decent sales let­ter usually has an inte­res­ting story, a bene­fit list and a fea­ture list… so there’s three more emails right there.

After chec­king out the sales let­ter, I’ll tend to think of one or two things the sales let­ter hadn’t thought of, and I’ll write two quick emails explai­ning each one. Emails don’t have to be long, just a cou­ple of para­graphs will do, with a call-​​to-​​action at the end to get peo­ple to click on your affi­liate link.

And finally, I’ll type up a cou­ple of remin­der emails for peo­ple who might have mis­sed the offer and need to see it again.

Now you have 7 or 8 emails to pro­mote the affi­liate pro­duct. Don’t save them in a text file for later… sche­dule them in your auto­res­pon­der right now to send out a month apart.

Using this tech­ni­que, you can sche­dule over six months of email pro­mo­tion for just one pro­duct, in 10 to 30 minutes.

If you were really moti­va­ted, you could find the hot­test con­ver­ting pro­ducts in your niche (I pre­fer to look at the Click­bank mar­ket­place since those sort by the best pulling offers first) and in one day, fill up your auto­res­pon­der with affi­liate email promotions.

Or simply make it a point to add one new offer to your auto­res­pon­der every Mon­day mor­ning, before you do anything else.

If you have a blog of your own, you only need to write posts and sche­dule them on the same dates the emails get sent out… don’t overthink it.

That’s the key to finishing what you start: work in sprints so you can sche­dule it on a timer and not have to work on that promo, or even think about that promo ever again!

I hope you enjo­yed this series on affi­liate mar­ke­ting. Please leave your com­ments below so I know peo­ple like it and I can write more of these. If you want back-​​issues, here they are!

1. Add Your Own Unique Slant to the Offer.
2. Interview the Originator or Add Your Own Bonuses.
3. Bring Something to the Table: List and Traffic.
4. Invest in Your Business: Don't Ask for Review Copies.
5. Write Affiliate email and Blog Posts in One Sitting.

I know your time is valua­ble so I’ll get right to the point.

Pro­duct owners and affi­lia­tes for the last cou­ple years have lived a happy co-​​dependent exis­tence. In the begin­ning, affi­lia­tes had limi­ted choi­ces. Today, it’s an ocean of opportunity.

The rea­son I’m wri­ting you today is because I feel the industry needs a wake up call.

Here are the problems…

1. Affi­liate mar­ke­ters are beco­ming less depen­dent on pro­duct owners
2. Affi­lia­tes have more choi­ces then ever before
3. Affi­lia­tes have evol­ved with the times but pro­duct owners have not
4. Pro­duct owners are rel­ying too hea­vily on affiliates

Affi­lia­tes Don’t Need You Anymore

In the old days, an affi­liate could simply link to a pro­duct owner and that was enough.

Then over time, more and more affi­liate mar­ke­ters were crea­ted by the pro­duct owners — so many new affi­lia­tes that, in order to start making sales, you had to offer some sort of bonus or incen­tive that no one else was offering.

Now in 2009, you need to go even further than just bonu­ses, because almost everyone’s doing bonu­ses at this point.

To com­pete with the mas­sive amounts of affi­lia­tes, you now have to cap­ture leads from your traf­fic, offer a bonus, and then point the pros­pect to the pro­duct owner.

Don’t for­get that more and more peo­ple every­day are lear­ning that they can sign up as an affi­liate them­sel­ves and buy through their own links.

Affi­lia­tes are now gene­ra­ting their own leads, crea­ting their own offers, and then sen­ding the cus­to­mer to someone else. How long before the affi­liate thinks: “If I’m gene­ra­ting the lead and crea­ting the offer, then why am I sen­ding the cus­to­mer to someone else?”

Basi­cally, to com­pete in today’s world of affi­liate mar­ke­ting, an affi­liate has to do all the same things a pro­duct owner nor­mally does.

Most affi­lia­tes become affi­lia­tes to avoid the res­pon­si­bi­li­ties of a pro­duct owner. You must alle­viate some of the work your affi­lia­tes are having to do or risk losing them or worse gai­ning them as a competitor!

There’s a Net­work On Every Corner

Back in the day, Ama­zon, Click­bank, Linkshare, and a hand­ful of others were the only affi­liate net­works on the scene. Now you’ve got over 32 “major” affi­liate net­works, not to men­tion all the small or start-​​up networks.

It gets worse, too, because new net­works are cons­tantly sprin­ging up and these net­works are offe­ring much more then the typi­cal pro­duct owner.

Inside any one of the 10+ affi­liate net­works that I’m a part of, I’ve got all kinds of affi­liate tools and a dedi­ca­ted affi­liate manager.

The ave­rage pro­duct launcher just scra­pes by with a basic affi­liate pro­mo­tion kit. Ban­ners, emails, key­words, and some links are not enough anymore.

Today, affi­lia­tes need bran­da­ble videos, lan­ding pages, reports, e-​​courses, inter­views, and artic­les… The Inter­net in 2009 is a con­tent beast — your affi­lia­tes need content!

If your eyes are ope­ning and you’re seeing the pro­blems, then you should check out what the adult industry is doing for their affiliates.

The adult industry offers their affi­lia­tes free hos­ting, dedi­ca­ted mana­gers, a plethora of bran­da­ble lan­ding pages, even whole mem­bership sites that the affi­liate can pro­mote the pro­duct owner with.

Inde­pen­dents can beat the big net­works by offe­ring more cus­to­mi­za­tion, uni­que tools, and per­so­nal touch. If they don’t, then they’ll lose their affi­lia­tes. Which actually leads me into the third pro­blem I see happening…

Affi­lia­tes evol­ved and opti­mi­zed their methods for their product-​​owning part­ners. Howe­ver, the pro­duct owners are still offe­ring the same resour­ces they offe­red 4, 5, and 6 years ago. Not only that, but it seems pro­duct owners have got­ten gree­dier and lazier.

Pro­duct Owners Should Be Res­pon­si­ble For Conversions

In this last part, I’m going to speak for myself, and if anyone is fee­ling the same thing they can let me know in the comments.

The other parts I’ve already spo­ken with many other affi­lia­tes so I was com­for­ta­ble spea­king for the majo­rity. This next part could pos­sibly just be a weird fluke I expe­rien­ced and could be totally alone in it.

But I doubt it!

Here goes…

Lately, I have been making some sho­wings in the top 10s of dif­fe­rent joint-​​venture lea­der­boards, which sounds great. Howe­ver, for most of them my con­ver­sions have been almost totally depen­dent on my offe­ring a bonus.

“Wait,” you’re saying, “you make more sales by offe­ring a bonus to your subsc­ri­bers who buy through you?” No!

What I’m saying is, if I don’t offer a bonus, then I don’t make sales. I know because I tried it on the last JV lea­der­board I got on. I was in the top 10 for leads, and then when it came time for sales, I never offe­red a bonus.

Sure enough, I got an egg in my sales column as my reward for that test.

In the pro­duct launch right before that, I offe­red a great bonus and came in top five in sales, making seve­ral thou­sand in com­mis­sions plus win­ning a 52″ flat screen TV.

Here’s my pro­blem though…

I could have just emai­led my list, char­ged for my bonus, made the seve­ral grand myself, and not sha­red my cus­to­mers with the pro­duct owner.

If the pro­duct owner’s sales fun­nel requi­res that the affi­liate offers a bonus in order to make sales…

… Then what does the affi­liate need the pro­duct owner for?

(Read that again.)

I unders­tand there is a “game” to be pla­yed, but this is not the ideal situa­tion for affi­lia­tes. And as a pro­duct owner you want to take care of your affi­lia­tes as best you can. For exam­ple, I’ll never pro­mote for that guy again.

In my eyes, he char­ged too much money for his pro­duct and the price see­med lar­gely based on kno­wing his affi­lia­tes would offer a much big­ger bonus to com­pen­sate for it.

Meanwhile, the affi­liate is only get­ting 50% of reve­nue. Yet the affi­liate is moti­va­ting the crowd, gene­ra­ting the leads, crea­ting the hot offer, and gene­ra­ting the sale…

… While the pro­duct own just crea­ted the product!

Crea­ting the pro­duct is a big piece of the pie, but what I’m saying over and over again, here, is that, if I have to offer such a great bonus in order for your pro­duct to make sales, I might as well just sell my bonus!

More and more of the top affi­lia­tes are get­ting fed up with this.

Lazy launch days are num­be­red because affi­lia­tes are get­ting sick and tired of the pro­duct owners not evol­ving their methods to keep the affi­lia­tes hard work secure.

Here’s a quick solu­tions list so you can easily iden­tify what you need to be doing to make sure your affi­lia­tes are happy.

What You Must Do To Keep Affi­lia­tes Happy

1. You must offer something uni­que to your affi­lia­tes or risk losing them to the networks.
2. You must pro­vide every resource an affi­liate would need to make the sale, inc­lu­ding a variety of dif­fe­rent bonuses.
3. The more you update your affi­lia­tes tools (e.g., emails, videos, reports, lan­ding pages, etc), then the more they will go out and pro­mote those new tools.
4. As your affi­lia­tes’ job requi­re­ments evolve, so should yours as the pro­duct owner to make sure the affi­liate has what’s nee­ded and is doing what’s required.
5. Pro­tect your affi­lia­tes’ com­mis­sions during launches, and make their job as easy as you can — you are the CREATOR, they are the PROMOTER.
6. Never steal from your affi­lia­tes by den­ying com­mis­sions on bac­kend sales, espe­cially during the launch.

I’m not saying I’m the per­fect pro­duct owner, either, since I’m mis­sing a few of these ele­ments in my affi­liate pro­gram myself. Although, you can bet I won’t be let­ting much time go by before I start making sure I have them all.

Thanks for lis­te­ning to my rant. And please post your com­ments and tell me what you think of this situa­tion. I’d love to hear them!

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of five quick affi­liate tips by guest blog­ger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also pos­ted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

No pro­duct ven­dor likes poten­tial affi­lia­tes to ask for free “review copies.” It reeks of inex­pe­rience and penny-​​pinching. If you want to pro­mote a pro­duct and need to see what it looks like on the inside, just bite the bullet and pay for it like ever­yone else.

As an affi­liate, you have two rela­tionships to work: with your buyers, and with the pro­duct ori­gi­na­tor. When you try to go the cheap route, you burn too many brid­ges early on.

Let’s also remem­ber that whe­ne­ver you pay for something, you’re more likely to take action with it. Just ima­gine you’ve work and saved your entire life for your dream car. Once you buy it, you’re going to actually use it and take extra care of it, right?

Then ima­gine some­body gives you the car outright. You didn’t earn it, you didn’t work for it, and didn’t pay anything for it. You still might che­rish the car but you aren’t going to enjoy it the same way.

The same is true for get­ting “affi­liate review copies” of pro­ducts. If you actually buy the pro­duct, you’ll have more of a drive to pro­mote and make your money back.

There is also no excuse for trying to save money buying from your­self as the affi­liate to get your review copy. Peo­ple have tried to jus­tify them­sel­ves doing this for years, but there’s simply no way to explain it without soun­ding cheap.

Can you really see Michel For­tin, John Reese, or Frank Kern asking for review copies from each other? No way… $20 or even $100 is a drop-​​in-​​the-​​bucket invest­ment for their busi­ness. You want to model those people.

Did you know that Rus­sell Brun­son and Matt Bacak attend each other’s $20,000 workshops, and pay each other for hourly coaching? There is no “kee­ping score” to see who makes more money off the other’s coaching.

If one of them needs an extra boost in their busi­ness, they pay for the tools and it pays off.

Usually I will pay full price for even my clo­sest busi­ness part­ners’ pro­ducts, even though I “could” get it for free — I’d pre­fer to have the tax wri­teoff, stron­ger rela­tionship, and extra moti­va­tion that comes with paying full price.

I don’t always buy the pro­ducts I pro­mote as an affi­liate… but if you want a review copy, pay for it ins­tead of calling in favors. You owe it to your­self, your pro­duct ori­gi­na­tor, and your cus­to­mers to actually invest in your business.