Batman Has an Army: The Basics of Building an Affiliate Sales Force

 

Even though Batman likes to work alone, he has an army behind him. At times this has been just Alfred, his butler, but as the years went on Batman took others into his ranks. Of course everyone knows about Robin (fun fact – there have been at least 6 different people who assumed the mantle of Robin at one time or another: 1. Dick Grayson, 2. Jason Todd, 3. Tim Drake, 4. Stephanie Brown, 5. Damien Wayne, and 6. Carrie Kelly), but there are others such as Nightwing, Batgirl, Huntress, Oracle, and even Catwoman when she is on the right side of the law. Just like Batman has his army you need yours.

Think of affiliate sales people like your Bat Army. They are the troops who can help you defend the night. In basic terms, an affiliate is someone willing to sell your product on their site. Using eJunkie you can even provide them with a unique link that will let you track their sales performance. Anyone who clicks their link and completes the purchase has their sale attributed to that affiliate.

You can set up a general program that people sign up for on your website. For something like this you offer anywhere between 25% and 50% of the purchase price for any sales generated through their websites. If you want to approach someone with mega traffic on their site, you might offer an individual deal where they get 60% to 100% of the price (if you are looking to increase your traffic then giving away all the sales to this individual may be worth it).

Building an effective affiliate army goes beyond the scope of this post, but here are some quick tips to help you get started.
Quick Tips for Affiliate Marketing

1. Know your product thoroughly
2. Have access to an audience who will buy it
3. Make sure the product is within your audience’s price range
4. Avoid subscriptions for affiliate deals; one time fee works better
5. Commission rate: make sure you are giving a good commission rate for the price
6. For affiliates, show them how to convince the reader by providing documentation they can use on their own site – it can include things like: (a) how to make customers feel like they have made an investment not a commitment; (b) how to show customers they need the product NOW; (c) how to make customers feel like they are missing out if they don’t buy; (d) how to prove to customers the product has worked for you or someone else (testimonial)
7. Encourage the affiliates to promote the affiliate product in (a) blog, (b) blog footer; (c) post footer; (d) sneeze page (a collection of post links on a topic), and (e) on social networks like Twitter, Google+, Facebook, etc.

The most important thing in running an affiliate army is managing it. Make sure your affiliates know what they are doing, have a reason to stay engaged and feel like they are part of something bigger. Everyone in the Bat Family has this and that’s why they are willing to risk life and limb for the Dark Knight.