A case study of setting up an affiliate programme

Let your affiliates build your opt-in lists!

Guest article from My Affiliate Program

Starting your own e-zine is a great way to build credibility and increase revenue. Visitors, prospects and contacts will admire your ability to reach audiences with your message on a regular basis. Advertisers will also admire your ability to reach an audience - and may be willing to pay you to reach your audience with their promotional messages.

Many online businesses are trying to capitalize on the credibility and revenue that an e-zine adds. It seems that every site you visit asks you to "Sign up for our Newsletter", or "Join our E-zine List for Weekly Updates".

Though they are all jumping into the e-zine game headfirst - all don't succeed. So, what's the trick? What makes some e-zines succeed and some e-zines fail?

There are two main factors in the success - or failure - of an e-zine: Content and Subscribers.

Content

Content is the base of your e-zine. Your content needs to be well-written, expansive and worth writing about. If you write well - write. If you write "good" - hire someone to write for you! Even the best topics, issues and angles can get lost in a mess of misspelled words, incomplete thoughts and run-on sentences. Be sure that your content is clear, concise, grammatically correct and accurately spelled.

Pick a topic that is expansive enough to continually write about. Pick an industry - not a product; an issue - not a current event; a hobby - not a project. Plan a schedule for regular mailings - daily, weekly, monthly - and review your topic to be sure that you'll have no problem coming up with new content to meet the schedule.

Remember, though a topic may be interesting to you - it may not be worthy of an entire e-zine. Choose a topic that is worth writing about for you and worth reading to your potential subscribers. For example: If your company manufactures construction paper, an e-zine about the paper may not be interesting enough to read. However, a well-written article on the many uses for construction paper in an e-zine about crafts is more interesting and worth reading.

Subscribers

Subscribers are very important as well - if not more important. If you have the most well-written articles, eye-catching ads and appealing layout but nobody to read it, your e-zine is a flop!

The more subscribers you have, the better. You've probably seen sites that boast subscriber levels in the thousands - but you probably haven't run across any sites that boast "14 subscribers!". People are impressed with big numbers. Hearing that thousands of people read your messages makes you and your message sound important, interesting and useful. Thousands of subscribers will also help you get top dollar from advertisers who want to reach your readers.

So, where do you find these valuable subscribers?

You can place a guestbook on your site to sign up visitors - but that means signing up only a fraction of your unique daily visitors. You can place ads in other e-zines, list your e-zine in a directory of electronic newsletters, post classified ads about your e-zine and so on.

Or ...

You could use your Affiliates to build your subscriber base. You already rely on your Affiliates to draw traffic to your site - why not ask them to help you find subscribers?

If you have an Affiliate Program your Affiliates are already sending you visitors - nameless, faceless visitors. Visitors that remain unidentified until they purchase something or contact you.

Imagine how your Affiliates will react if you told them that you could place a name, an email address and more on the visitor. What would they say if you told them that instead of possibly selling to a visitor when they visit your site - that you'll actively follow up with Bob at bob@domain.com and Ellen at ellen@domain.com on their behalf? Do you think that they'd like knowing that you are sending personalized messages to each prospect they send you - complete with their unique Affiliate link?

Of course they will love it! All they have to do is send you the contact name and email address. You do all of the work following up with the prospect and selling them your product - and the Affiliate makes a commission.

You'll love it too! Instead of being nameless and unreachable, your visitors will become real prospects with names, email addresses and instant subscribers to your e-zine.

You're probably thinking, "This sounds great in theory, but I'm sure it's a lot harder than it sounds". Well, it's really not - as long as you have the right tools for the job! The tools are My Affiliate Program, the Affiliate Tracking and Management Solution and Opt-In Pro Email Marketing Software. The two programs have been combined to form a system that will help you start an e-zine, continually build your subscriber base, identify your visitors and follow up with prospects.

In addition to giving your Affiliates banners, text links, articles and advertisements - this system allows you to give your Affiliates specially encoded guestbooks. The guestbooks can include fields like email address, name, address, phone number and any other information you'd like. They will also contain a hidden field that holds the Affiliate's ID number.

The Affiliates place the guestbooks on their site advertising your e-zine, free report or other email offer. When a visitor signs up for the offer - their email address and other information will be added to your Opt-In Pro email list. The referring Affiliate's ID number will also be added to the list.

Using Opt-In Pro's email follow up campaigns, you can automatically thank the visitor for subscribing to your list. You can also follow up with them by sending regularly scheduled mailings "x" days after they sign up. Sending your e-zine is as easy as typing it up and pressing "send" - even to thousands of subscribers!

Every message you send can be personalized to include the subscriber's name. Each link in your message can be automatically configured with the referring Affiliate's ID Number - ensuring that they'll get credit for the referral each time the visitor returns to your site and purchases your products. In no time - you'll build a substantial subscriber base, without searching far and wide!

As you can see, combining your winning content with the power of Affiliate Marketing and Email Marketing is a sure-fire way to make your e-zine succeed.

For more information about My Affiliate Program and Opt-In Pro, read our case study, or visit My Affiliate Program