Our First Affiliate Program
A week ago, I announced quietly to our EzineArticles Affiliate Alert list that we would be launching our first affiliate program.
This program would be used to promote training products related to article writing & marketing, as well as traffic creation basics, ezine publishing, etc.
Of the 1,600+ people on our affiliate alert list, 130 signed up and about 50 will be accepted today. This has been an incredibly challenging process because we had to make a long series of decisions that we never made before designed to protect the integrity of this project and attempt to find the best fit in terms of quality affiliates.
We were incredibly humbled that so many folks signed up :)… and
Some of the applications drove us bonkers:
o) They would only list a first name or no human name…as if we accepted affiliates without knowing the full name of the person we’re doing business with.
o) I said in the email that their email lists would have to be double/confirm opt-in to be considered. Less than half followed the directions and applied anyway.
I’m open to the possibility that an affiliate would want to promote us on their website or blog and not do permission-based email marketing, but we are in a leadership position when it comes to ezines and email marketing and can not associate with any bad practice affiliates when it comes to using email to market/promote.
o) Some said they would make a good affiliate just because they were an author on our site. While we appreciate them as an author on our site, this alone is not a selling point for why someone might make a good affiliate partner.
…anyway, we march on today with a handful of a couple dozen very carefully selected affiliates. What an interesting week of learning it has been!
What is the 1st training course product they are going to be able to sell & promote related to article writing & marketing? :-) I’ll be sharing that with you very soon as soon as the affiliate training is completed.
How could the new affiliate program benefit me?
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