Assume your affiliates are busy, and do their first step for them
After this lesson you can
Treat the two weeks after approval as the window that decides whether an affiliate ever publishes, and make the first ask so small and so prepared that saying yes is easier than ignoring it.
Assume your affiliates are busy, and do their first step for them
Here is what happens after you approve an affiliate. They get a notification. They look at your site again, a little harder this time. They think about what they would write, or where they would mention you, and they weigh that against everything else on their list. Most of them never get past that thought, and not because they changed their mind about you. The first step was simply larger than the moment they had for it.
The window
The two weeks after approval are when an affiliate is most likely to act, because you are still fresh and they have just said yes to something. After that you are one of the programs in their dashboard. So the work of this lesson happens in that window, and it happens for every affiliate, in the same week they are approved.
Make the first step tiny, and do most of it
Decide the one thing you want every new affiliate to do first. Not "promote us". One thing: add us to the comparison article you already rank with, mention us in your next newsletter, publish a short review. Then prepare it so thoroughly that saying yes is easier than ignoring you.
- For bloggers, the angle and the outline: the comparison your readers are already making, the three benefits in the words your customers use, the screenshots, the link.
- For newsletters, the blurb itself, at the length their slot takes, plus one image.
- For agencies and consultants, product knowledge and client positioning: a free account so they use the product themselves, the one-page pitch they can forward, the discount code for their clients.
At the beginning this feels like doing their job. It is. You are breaking the ice as fast as you can, and you will learn from the affiliates who move which asks work, so that in a few months you can send the same material to fifty affiliates at once instead of one.
Send it, then follow up once
Send the ask with the material attached to every affiliate approved in the last 30 days, this week. One follow-up a week later, short. After that, the automated emails in the next lesson and a campaign in the one after take over, so you are not chasing thirty people by hand.
What you are watching for is the first publish. Not the first click, the first thing an affiliate actually put somewhere. That is the moment an approved affiliate becomes an active one, and it is the number this whole track is measured on.
Key takeaways
- The two weeks after approval decide whether an affiliate ever publishes. Work that window, every time.
- Pick one first action per affiliate type and prepare it so completely that yes is easier than ignoring you.
- The rule: every ask should get the affiliate closer to their first commission, not only you closer to a mention.
- Send the ask with the material in the approval week, follow up once, then let the emails and a campaign take over.
- The number this track is measured on is the first publish, not the first click.
The detail lives in the help centre
This lesson tells you the order and the judgement. The clicks are in the articles below. Open one, do the step, and you will find a way back to this lesson at the top of the article.
Step-by-step: do this now
The exact clicks live in the help centre. Open the article, do the step, come back.
Reference: read if you need the detail
Background you can skip on a first pass.
Do this before the next lesson
Each step says how much counts as done. Doing a third of it and moving on is how programs stall.
Questions we hear at this point
Is this not a lot of manual work?
At the start, yes, and it is the work. You are learning which asks and which material get affiliates to publish, the same way you learned what got your first customers to activate. Once you know, the onboarding emails and campaigns carry the same asks to every new affiliate without you. Skip the manual phase and you automate guesses.
What do we actually give affiliates?
Whatever makes the first piece of content easy: the comparison angle against the tools their readers already use, the benefits in your customers' words, screenshots, a newsletter blurb at the right length, and for agencies a free account and a client discount code. The help article on assets lists them in priority order.
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