The secret to maintaining successful affiliates is in helping them succeed, and keeping them happy.

Tips to Help Affiliates Succeed

Follow up with your top affiliates at least once a month. Send them emails with new marketing ideas and tips and tricks on how they might be able to promote you better.

Ask them what is working for them and what is not working for them and work together to continuously improve your affiliate program.

Equip them with tools to succeed. The more linking options you give them the better! Give your affiliates banners, articles, customer testimonials, and help them write reviews about your products and services.

Also, give your affiliates multiple landing pages to choose from. As you learned from our advanced PPC tactic and the tactic on building landing pages, having keyword specific landing pages can make a huge difference. So, inform your affiliates of your different landing pages and let them know which landing pages are best for their site and for their visitors.

Continue to optimize and tweak your own website. The better your site converts, the more money your affiliates will earn. Affiliate marketing is very competitive and your affiliates have to make a decision on whether to promote your product or your competitors' product.

Use your high conversion rates to attract new affiliates. Having a payout that is within the top 25% in your field is good enough if your site converts better; it is not a must to offer a higher payout than your competitors.

Tips to Keep Affiliates Happy

Pay your affiliates on time every month. We personally recommend you pay your affiliates monthly, as long as they have earned over a minimum threshold of about $50 or $100. Nobody likes to get paid late!

Reward your best affiliates. Here is one technique that can work wonders in affiliate marketing. Once you have a great affiliate that owns a newsletter with subscribers that are looking for your product or service, offer that affiliate a special incentive.

For example, if you regularly sell your product for $97, then tell this affiliate that for one time only they can promote your product at a 10% or 20% discount. You will get increased exposure in their newsletters, which may result in more money for you and your affiliate. However, don't use this too often.

Nurture the relationships. Respond to their inquiries sincerely and politely. And remind them that you are there to resolve any issues they have, and find ways to help them sell more. Be their friend. Your affiliates are human too!

Invest the time into building a win-win relationship with the few affiliates who matter the most, and the money keeps pooring in!