The Marketer’s Contest

Quickie overview…

This is a little-known (almost exclusively unused!) technique for anyone who sells their own products. This is perfect for pumping up the action in your affiliate program, and motivating your promotional army to the max!

What you’ll need…

This Quickie assumes you already have an affiliate program. If you don’t, you can get one set up with your own script (that a programmer develops for you), or with a program like “Ultimate Affiliate” by Groundbreak, for around $200.

The third option is to have one remotely hosted, with a company like MyAffiliateProgram. It all depends how much you have to spend, and how many features you really require. As a general rule of thumb, programs and scripts are much cheaper, whereas remotely hosted stuff can be expensive.

Once you’ve got yours set-up and you have at least a few hundred active affiliates and you really want to light a promotional firecracker, you can use this Quickie to pump up the action!

Here’s what to do…

1. Unzip the files in the ZIP archive along with this Quickie. In them, you’ll find a template HTML file and its accompanying images. Study them. Get a feel for what the file does. Watch the video for more information on this.

2. Use the template file as a guide, and build your own “affiliate real-time contest page”.

3. Pick a prize, and write your own promotional email announcing the contest. Depending on the size of your affiliate base and relative to your product’s pricing, I would recommend a prize in the region of $500 - $1,000 in value.

It all depends. If you only have 20 affiliates selling a $5 product for instance, then $1k might be way too high. Likewise, if your product is $10,000 in price and you have 2,000 selling it, then $500 might be way too low. The aim is simply to make it worth their while, relative to their usual commissions.

4. Blast the email out. Then, once per week, write another email re-promoting the contest. I would recommend a contest length of about a month. The time will whiz by, but it will also mean people who miss it at the start will have the chance to catch up later on in the game, without too much of a big deal. Run 1st to the 31st of the month, if possible. It’s nice to stay within the same named month.

5. When the contest is over, pay your winner quickly. Announce them to your other affiliates, which will give them an idea on the number of sales they’ll need next time in order to potentially scoop the prize.

Watch the video for more info!