Fantasy Affiliate Program Management
August 16, 2013Guest Post By, Rachel Honoway, Founder of Honoway Interactive and Spin-Niche.com
After spending the last 13 years in the affiliate marketing space (yeah, it’s been around that long… and yeah, I’m getting old!) I’ve developed some pretty strong beliefs about this industry:
1 – Affiliate marketing works – period. Don’t argue with me on this point… you could be seriously harmed in the process.
2 – It’s all about relationships. Whether you’re an affiliate, an advertiser, a program manager, an outsourced manager, a network rep or someone servicing these people… you will not maximize your potential unless you start making real connections.
3 – It’s all about the niches. Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” theory is often associated with entertainment (songs, movies, books) and with search marketing practices – but, there is really no greater example of its power than in the armies of affiliates attracting and influencing buyers across thousands of niches and sub-niches day after day.
It’s this third belief that I’ve been struggling with for some time. Affiliates really are a powerful, positive driving force – once they get going. But, it’s the “getting going” part that stops many of the would-be successes from even starting.
So, I’ve been asking myself: How do we empower niche affiliates from the beginning? How do we elevate their voices? How do we expose their knowledge? How do we help them build momentum to get going?
Spin-Niche.com is a new service that my team and I are working on to answer these questions. It’s designed to create and distribute niche content while creating relationships between website owners and niche-related experts (aka, affiliates).
We started the project by building up a few websites using the powerful voices of niche experts (some affiliates included). In order to build a platform for affiliates to stand on – we first had to convince the website owners that partnering with niche experts was valuable to them.
A case study we released earlier this month held the proof. This strategy drove over 4,000 visits to our client’s brand new website in just a few months.
They’re currently seeing over 2,000 visits per month – because of the content contributions from hundreds of niche experts.
Yep – hundreds.
While building this case study, we credited 305 niche experts. We linked back to their sites, we mentioned them in our tweets, we connected our client with them on Facbeook and we set the foundation for real relationships with them.
They love us (well, they love the strategy, – but we can feel the love!). We gave them a voice. We shared their expertise with thousands of visitors. We made sure that Google saw their name, their URL and their social channel. And we didn’t charge them a dime.
We want to do the same for you… for free. We want to give you a voice, expose your expertise and link back to your site.
Join us as a Contributor at Spin-Niche.com. Our list of sites is small – but growing – and here on the ground floor, your voice has the best chance of being heard loud and clear!
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