Article Marketing 101 For Affiliate Program Managers

This article is for Affiliate Program Managers: Interested in increasing the amount of revenue that each of your affiliates creates for your business? Read on to learn about how to use your existing articles to grow your affiliate program strength.

From an affiliate perspective, there are only a few 'deal breaker' type things that I insist any affiliate program that I join must provide me:



Real-time reporting statistics

Real-time email alerts upon each sale

Payment on a consistent monthly basis

High price-point products

Package of articles that I can reprint on my websites and ezines

One strategy that many newbie affiliate program designers fail to offer is a package of articles that can be reprinted on my website along with my unique affiliate link. Of the tens of thousands of dollars I'll do this year as an affiliate, you would be shocked at how much of the revenue comes directly from reprinting articles of the affiliate programs I am involved in. This strategy works for me and it can work for you!

Here's what to do:



Designate 10, 25, 50, 75 or 100 articles that will be made available to your affiliates as a dump (meaning all at once and immediately).



Provide them with 3-10 articles per month thereafter that they can reprint along with their affiliate link.



Be certain to spell out the reprint rights of this type of affiliate article marketing so that your articles don't show up on bad websites you wouldn't want to associate with.

Here's what NOT to do:



Allow your articles to be private labeled. This is a poor strategy and will dilute your credibility. They should carry your name or the name of your primary author brand.



Don't give out all of your articles for your affiliates to use. Best to designate a specific "lot" of them that can be used by your affiliates and the rest are yours to keep exclusively for your direct sales audience.

Why this type of article marketing is important for affiliate program managers and affiliates:

Articles are like "sales agents" in that they keep selling for you, day after day, year after year. They also help expand your reach as each article gets indexed by the major search engines. Lastly, they give you another reason to send an email to your list members about the articles available.

This is a credibility builder for the affiliate program manager and it's a "Give" before the "Take" which begins the reciprocation cycle in a positive direction.

Note For Affiliates Who Use Articles To Promote Their Affiliate Programs:

Some sites (like ours at http://EzineArticles.com/ ) don't accept articles that promote affiliate programs, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go find other sites that do accept articles that promote affiliate program links. I really meant this article to speak directly to affiliate program managers and not the needs of affiliate marketers.

To save you the trouble of sending me an email to ask why EzineArticles.com doesn't accept articles that promote affiliate programs, there are three reasons:

1) Because we don't accept articles that are available on a non-exclusive basis (meaning we only want to see original or exclusive licensed content) and...

2) Because affiliate marketers are not our ideal author profile type and...

3) Because most ezine publishers don't want to reprint articles that pitch an affiliate link. One of the primary purposes of our site is to be a resource for ezine publishers to find supplemental content for their next email newsletter.

With that said, there are plenty of competitor article sites that will allow you to submit your affiliate-link-laced articles, not to mention listing them on your own website.

Bottom line: If you offer an affiliate program to promote your products and services, consider immediately offering a package of articles that your affiliates can add to their website or send to their email newsletter lists to further promote your business.


By Christopher M. Knight