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Published by Peggy Champlin, Success with Ease is devoted to helping professionals and small businesses build their businesses, particularly in the area of passive income.

Message from Peggy
How To Find Affiliates And Help Them Make Sales
Resources - Camtasia Studio
Final Note
Contact Information

Hello <$firstname$>!

Well, you may (or may not!) have noticed that I didn't get an issue out last week. I guess after publishing one a week ago Sunday, I just couldn't muster up the energy to get another one out in the same week. So I decided to punt and get back on schedule this week. I trust you survived without me!

Speaking of surviving, boy, winter here has been brutal in the last few weeks. I haven't had to do standard workouts, instead shoveling the driveway for 45-60 minutes nearly every day of the last two weeks. The snow on the lawn - not the big piles! - is about 15 inches deep and it was so cold here last week that school was canceled on Thursday and Friday. Having grown up here, let me tell you that school being canceled was regrettably quite rare despite the winter weather we get. With the holiday on Monday this week, the kids had a 5-day weekend and speaking for my daughter, the kids were pleased. The parents, on the other hand...

The article this week gets us back to our affiliate program series. If you missed them, here are the first and second articles in the series.

I worked with a neat new software tool last week. You can find the details in the Resources section.

For those of you who like to print these ezine issues and may miss the printer-friendly version I used to produce, I'd like to point out that this standard version of my ezine should print pretty well. It is intentionally formatted to fit the width of the paper and is not too graphics-rich. Give it a try!

Enjoy the rest of this issue and make it a good week!

Peggy

In December, we talked about how affiliate programs work. (See first and second articles.)

Now, let's look at attracting affiliates and encouraging them to refer customers.

How do I find affiliates?

One of the best sources for affiliates is your own customer or client list! Who better to recommend your products and services than people who've already experienced them and found them valuable.

Another group to introduce your affiliate program to is your ezine subscriber list. They clearly value what you have to offer or they wouldn't remain subscribers, so they may be willing to recommend you to their networks.

If you know others whose target market is the same as yours, but who are not competitive with you, these are ideal affiliates. You might approach such a person offering to cross promote your products and services. To the extent that their lists are large - 4 or 5 figures - so much the better. With any luck, they'll have affiliate programs, too!

There are also affiliate directories on the Internet that people looking for promising affiliate programs check out. You can find them by searching "affiliate directory", "affiliate directories", "affiliate program", and "associate program" at your favorite search engine. You can submit information about your affiliate program to these directories so that those looking for affiliate programs to support can learn about yours.

One way to shortcut the affiliate directory process is to use a service called Affiliate Announce. For a small fee, they will manually submit your program to approximately 40 leading affiliate directories, forward a report on each directory submitted to, and provide all username/passwords supplied to update your listings. I wrote about this service in a past issue.

How many affiliates should I have?

While more certainly seems better, it isn't always so. It's better to have a small number of active, productive affiliates than to have a large number of affiliates who don't do anything. Many experienced affiliate program managers will tell you that 80% of their affiliate sales come from just 20% of their affiliates.

So focus your energy on attracting those you believe are truly interested in promoting your products and don't waste a lot of energy on building just a big list of affiliates.

How do I encourage my affiliates to sell more of my products and services?

There are three primary ways to encourage affiliates to sell more:

• Have an attractive commission structure. Ways to make it attractive include, of course, a high percentage commission; but also lifetime commissions (once someone clicks on the referral link, that affiliate will be credited for a sale whenever that referral buys in the future); residual commissions (if your product includes repeating transactions like monthly fees, your affiliate earns a commission every time); and a two (or more) tiered program so affiliates earn commissions not only on their own referrals, but those of other affiliates they brought into the program.
• Provide tools to help your affiliates promote you. These can include banners, text links, classified ads for print or ezines, articles, email text, product samples, etc.
• Stay in touch with your affiliates. Periodically give them new tools and advice about how to promote you. You may even want to have an occasional contest to reward top-selling affiliates.

How do I help affiliates effectively pre-sell?

What is pre-selling? Presumably, you have copy on your website to sell your products and services. You don't want your affiliates to do all the same selling, only to have visitors read it all over at your site when they click through. So, you don't want your affiliates to sell, you want them to pre-sell. You want them to warm up your prospects and convince them to check you out. How can they do this? They can talk about their own experience with you and your products, about how valuable your information has been to them, and how they think your site is worth a look.

Next week, we get to the mechanics of your own affiliate program when we discuss tools to help you manage your affiliate program.

Last week, I used a new software program that I love and I think you might, too! It's called Camtasia Studio and is a complete solution for recording, editing and publishing rich screen video presentations. You can easily create software tutorials and demonstrations in Flash and streaming video formats accessible from your website or burned to a CD.

I was able to create my first video in less than a day, including audio recorded along with the video and some audio narration added later. I edited out some data entry and put a nice transition between the two sections within the video. See what I created here. (The watermark in the bottom right of the screen is there because I created this using the trial version of the software.)

This may sound a little intimidating to you, but I was amazed at how easy it is to create great videos. The software itself is simple to use and they have lots of text and video tutorials at their site that show you how to record and produce your video. Not to mention a Getting Started Guide.

Besides capturing your screen, you can insert still shots and other video clips. It supports a variety of video formats with which you can produce your video. Camtasia Studio seems quite versatile.

There are many applications this tool can be used for. See the Top 50 Uses listed at the Camtasia Studio site.

There's a 30-day free trial, so if you're intrigued and think it might be useful for you, download it and give it a try. (This isn't even an affiliate link - I just like it this much!) You'll see how easy it is to create professional and sophisticated screen video presentations!

Note: To create videos with this software, a PC running Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP or later version is required.

Some Things To Think About

Many people will walk in and out of your life,
But only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

To handle yourself, use your head;
To handle others, use your heart.

Anger is only one letter short of danger.

If someone betrays you once, it is your fault;
If he betrays you twice, it is your fault.

Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people.

God gives every bird its food,
But He does not throw it into its nest.

He who loses money, loses much;
He who loses faith, loses all.

Beautiful young people are acts of nature,
But beautiful old people are works of art.

Learn from the mistakes of others;
You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.

The tongue weighs practically nothing;
But so few people can hold it.

This ezine is published by Peggy Champlin, a small business coach who specializes in helping you convert 'what you know' into passive income.

To send me email, mailto:Peggy@SuccessWithEase.com.

To learn more about my coaching and program offerings, go to http://www.SuccessWithEase.com.

You are free to use the material from my articles in whole or in part on your web site or ezine (email newsletter) as long as you include the attribution below and also let me know where the article will appear.

"This article is by Peggy Champlin of Success with Ease. Peggy's web site is a comprehensive resource devoted to helping professionals and small businesses build their businesses, particularly in the area of passive income. For free marketing resources and valuable marketing tools visit http://www.SuccessWithEase.com."

Copyright Peggy Champlin, 2004. All rights reserved.