Tips for Meeting Potential Affiliates at Offline Events

Byron Coke | October 26, 2009

While affiliate programs are not entirely new, their potential as serious money making ventures has just been realized by many. By becoming an affiliate, an individual can opt to sell products without ever creating them.

This is wonderfully attractive if you have great sales skills, but don’t know how to or do not want to create products. When it comes to looking for these affiliates to promote their products, they frequently do it through the most obvious medium the Internet.

The principle behind this is that anybody who wants online work will search for it online.

While the principle is a well founded one, suffice it to say, it is not necessarily the case that the Internet is the best place to contact affiliates.

Why? If other online affiliate companies and programs are doing it, you will soon get lost in the crowd, too. You will just crowd each other out. This being the case, you won’t get as many affiliates as much as you want.

One way of capturing potential affiliates is through offline events. Think outside the box. In simple terms, go beyond the square monitor of your computer and business card, and outside your office.

Looking for potential affiliates offline is a rarely used method in the Internet world. This is why you should all the more use it. It might seem awkward or difficult when you do it the first time, but really, it is not. Here are some tips to help you meet those potential affiliates and smoothly convince them to join your program:

Tip #1: Know Your Potential Affiliate

To have a fresh start, pick an event where you think there will be a large crowd. Do not just pick any event; choose one where people whom you are looking for as affiliates are more likely to go to. A very good example of this is an informal dinner party for people in your particular niche or for Internet marketers in general.

Tip #2: Get Their Numbers

Forget the usual business cards. This is the Twenty-first century. People are almost always busy doing something. If you hand out your business cards during the event, there’s always the big possibility that the people whom you handed it to will forget about it or lose it.

In order to make sure that you will really make the potential affiliate into an affiliate, get his home phone number. With this, you can write it in the little black book that you are carrying around or you can just store the entry in your cell phone.

If there is one stupid but important rule when it comes to getting numbers: never write it on your hand! A small piece of paper will only get lost, while writings on your hand will get wiped off, smeared, or will be absorbed.

There are a lot of tips that you can use when meeting up with potential affiliates at offline events. One way of finding these tips is to grab a free report at Managing Your Affiliates. Not only will you get additional tips on this topic, but you will also learn about affiliate management in general.