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Want to know how to get more affiliates to grow your affiliate program?
Getting into affiliate marketing is easy, but finding quality affiliates to help you achieve your goals is more difficult. But not impossible!
This expert guide will show you how to find affiliates and get them into your program. These proven techniques are used by many of our 30,000+ affiliate program managers to attract the top affiliates in their industries and grow revenues quickly.
Here’s how you can get more affiliates.
Understanding how to get new affiliates is a vital element of running your affiliate program. However, it’s extremely important that there’s also a focus on quality.
It’s easy to be persuaded to join an affiliate network with the promise of access to thousands of affiliates, but it’s not easy.
Only a small percentage of those affiliates can make a difference to your business, and it’s your responsibility to find them and make them an offer they can’t refuse.
The difficulty is, it’s very difficult to stand out on the affiliate networks. There’s limited customizability, and you’re competing with tens of thousands of other offers.
So, we’re going to show you the best way to get affiliates.
These tips will help you stand out from your competitors and make sure you’re attracting affiliates who are going to put effort into promoting your products.
Here’s your guide on how to get affiliates who’ll move the needle for your affiliate program.
Every affiliate manager wants to know how to get affiliates – it’s essential to running an affiliate program.
The important thing is that you don’t wait for affiliates to come to you. You’ve got to be proactive, and these 13+ tips will help you do that.
Here are the strategies we’re going to look at:
Let’s find out how you can get affiliates to your program.
AffiliateWP is the best affiliate management plugin for WordPress.
It’s going to help you set up your own WordPress affiliate program in under 10 minutes, and most importantly, it’s a huge draw for affiliates.
One of AffiliateWP’s strongest selling points is its customizability. Although it’s incredibly easy to set up, it gives you customization options that other affiliate software can’t compete with.
When you build a new affiliate program with AffiliateWP, you’re not just another affiliate offer on a marketplace of thousands of products – everything is targeted toward selling your products.
The easy setup wizard will walk you through every process step, and you can have your program up and running in under 10 minutes. You’ll have your customizable signup page, and you can create your registration forms using WordPress blocks or our WPForms, Ninja Forms, or Formidable Forms integrations.
You’ll also have access to proven affiliate marketing tools that boost conversions to attract top affiliates – making sure you have lots of affiliate success stories to showcase on your signup page.
If you want to know how to get more affiliates, this is the place to start.
Treat getting affiliates like any other conversion event on your website. Getting people to take action is difficult, so everything on your signup page has to be optimized for maximum success.
You need to take all the tactics you use to sell products online (or generate leads) and use them to sign up new affiliates. For example, your affiliate signup page needs to:
When you run your affiliate program through software like AffiliateWP, you have a big advantage because you’re in control. You can utilize your marketing skills to get more affiliates, but you’ve got to use the customization options.
It’s amazing what a difference a good form can make, which is why AffiliateWP gives you lots of different ways to customize your affiliate registration forms.
Getting your affiliate registration forms right can be tricky because you’ve got to strike a balance. On the one hand, you need to collect important information about the potential affiliate, but on the other hand, you want to make it easy for them to register.
This is where features like WPForms’ conversational forms and lead forms make a massive difference. They guide people through the forms in a way that maximizes conversions.
80% of your revenue will likely come from 20% of your affiliates, which means missing out on a great affiliate because you don’t have the right form of technology can be a killer.
If you’re going to get more affiliates, then you’ve got to have a good affiliate form, and there’s no better way to do this than with WPForms and AffiliateWP.
One of the first things affiliates will look for when they land on your affiliate program page is the commission. Naturally, bigger commissions are going to be more appealing to top affiliates, but there’s more to it than that.
Think beyond the basic commission to find ways to incentivize and reward affiliates.
For instance, you can create tiered commission rates so that the more an affiliate sells, the more they earn. Or, if you sell subscription products, you can offer a Recurring Referral so that affiliates get paid every time the customer renews.
Top affiliates love these little extras because they reward performance, and they allow you to offer a greater incentive without breaking the bank.
People want to know that other affiliates have joined your program and had success.
Make sure you’re using your affiliate success stories as social proof to show what it’s possible to achieve. If you’ve got some high-performing affiliates, then they’ll be more than happy to give you a testimonial if you ask.
If you’re starting a new affiliate program, you can still use social proof!
Affiliates need to know that your products sell and that your customers love them, so customer reviews and testimonials are also useful.
If you’re looking for an amazing tool to showcase social proof, look at TrustPulse. It gives live sales notifications and can even be set up to show a notification when someone joins your affiliate program.
When potential affiliates see that other people are signing up for your program, they’ll also have a greater incentive to join.
Affiliates are relying on you to make sales. They can do the greatest marketing in the world, but if your website doesn’t convert, they won’t get paid.
A high-quality affiliate will take a hard look at your website and ask themselves how likely it is to convert. If it doesn’t seem likely to convert, then even a huge commission isn’t seem worthwhile.
If your sales funnel performs well and your affiliates are getting great conversion rates, then go ahead and highlight it on your signup page.
It’s not that easy to make affiliate sales. You’ve got to have access to the right audience and be a great marketer.
These people are out there but are not necessarily searching for your affiliate program. They might not even be doing affiliate marketing.
But you can still find them!
You understand your industry as well as anyone, so with a bit of manual email outreach, you will find some promising leads.
A personal message to a potential affiliate is your most powerful tool. It’s about creating connections, and that’s where you find the best affiliates.
Open the conversation and then make a great case as to why an affiliate relationship can benefit both of you.
It’s easy to overcomplicate things when thinking about getting affiliates, but sometimes the simplest methods are the best.
One group that often gets forgotten when discussing how to find affiliates is your customers.
Your biggest fans can often be your best salespeople.
Why?
Because they understand your brand, they understand your products, and they love them. Enthusiasm sells, and personal recommendations are one of the most persuasive selling tools.
With software like AffiliateWP, you can automatically enroll your users as affiliates, making this extremely easy. You’ve already got a relationship with these people so it’s just a case of making them aware that they can earn money (or store credit) when they recommend your products.
Affiliate marketers can be a close-knit bunch.
There are lots of places where they go to share tips and discuss their profession. When you join these communities, you’ll learn much more about what affiliates are looking for and how they find new affiliate programs.
Not only is this an opportunity to create new connections, but it can also inform how you run your program.
You don’t just want people to sign up for your program; you want them to stick with you and bring in consistent sales. If you’re going to do this, you’ve got to understand how to set up a program that works for its affiliates.
Don’t just focus on the conversion; ensure you generate leads. People might not sign up for your program on their first visit, but you can continue your recruitment if you have their email.
Treat it like cart abandonment and put potential affiliates into a targeted email series. Not only will this boost your conversion rate, but it will also show that you take your affiliate program seriously, something any affiliate wants to see.
Something you’ll often hear about in digital marketing is reaching people where they hang out.
In today’s world, that means social media for over four billion of us. That is a lot of people, and there will be a lot of affiliate marketers on there.
If you have an active social media presence, this is a great platform to highlight your affiliate program. It’s one of those things where if people don’t know, they won’t sign up.
These people have taken the time to follow your business, so there’s a good chance your affiliate program might interest them.
It’s easy to look at the influence of social media in society and think that networking (the physical kind) is dead.
When talking about how to get affiliates, though, who you know is important.
As good as digital connections are, there are few things as powerful as a human connection, and it’s certainly true when looking at how to get more affiliates.
Those people you meet at tradeshows, conferences, and other events are great connections. Generally, these people already have a presence in your industry, so they might be ideal affiliates. You don’t know until you ask, so make sure you build your network and get to know people in your niche.
If growing your affiliate program is your top priority, then you’ll want to make the most of every marketing opportunity you get.
Another option is to use your email signature to make people aware of your affiliate program.
Think about how many emails you send out each day! Some people might see a link to your affiliate program in your email signature and think, “wow, that’s exactly what I’ve been looking for!”
Nobody wants to be chasing up payments or waiting months to receive the commission they’re due.
Plenty of sub-standard affiliate programs are out there, so clearly identify what makes yours different. Detail how you ensure affiliates get regular, prompt payment and follow through with your promises.
When you use AffiliateWP, you benefit from our integrated payouts service, which helps automate your affiliate payouts. This allows you to make regular payments without the hassle.
You want affiliates who are going to invest time and energy into marketing your products, and it’s only right they receive prompt payment for their referrals.
The easier you can make this, the more it will help you get affiliates to sign up.
Knowing how to get affiliates into your program is one thing; keeping them there is another! Affiliate marketing is a competitive world and it’s easy for your affiliates to disengage with your offers.
The easiest way to stop this is by making consistent sales, keeping up communication, and showing you’re always working to improve your program.
To do this, you’ll need affiliate software with:
If your website runs on WordPress,, the best way to do this is with AffiliateWP.
Check out AffiliateWP’s pricing!
To start with affiliates, you must get them to sign up for your program. The first steps are to optimize your affiliate signup page and create a high-converting affiliate registration form.
Anybody can do affiliate marketing. Your customers can become some of your best affiliates, and they might have no prior experience. Beginners can easily get set up in your affiliate marketing program and start promoting your products without the need for any technical knowledge.
Affiliates get paid through your affiliate software. The software tracks referrals so affiliates know how much commission they have earned. You can then facilitate affiliate payouts whenever possible to ensure affiliates get paid on time.
Now you’ve got some great tips on how to get more affiliates; the only thing left to do is put them into practice.
Once you’ve got your processes set up and become consistent, you will get a steady stream of new affiliates.
And when you do, we’ve got even more great resources to help you.
It’s time to take the first step to get more affiliates.
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.