Consider why you should study your toddler to learn about what to look for and cultivate in affiliate partners. Affiliate partners are just that—partners and an integral force in advertising your wares and closing sales. Note what is admirable in toddlers and what you don’t want to lose in adult affiliate marketers. Namely risk-taking, energy and exploration, continual learning, creativity, a going straight for goals, playing to an audience, and trust and resulting loyalty to you—the company producing goods and services for sale.
Toddlers, it can be observed, take chances.
They are free of fear and walk easily through uncertainty and change. Children just gaining the ability to walk get right up again when they fall. They learn to walk the way new affiliate partners learn to find potential customers for you online and convert them to buyers via a site, blog, or newsletter. The progress to mastery of affiliate sales is by degrees. And so you want partners who can imitate “bigger” people—marketers who already know how to “walk” or how to succeed in the affiliate marketing field. For toddlers as for online sales entrepreneurs, failures are part of the learning curve. At the same time, you want innovators—not just copy artists.
Affiliate marketing is a venture for adventurous “toddler” type sales types.
It takes lots of energy and activity and a mind to explore options. Like toddlers, good affiliate partners navigate by focusing on what is right in front of them. They act first and then think through things later. By acting on hunches and intuition, connections result that translate into new markets and sales. One key exploration trait you want is partners who will invest time in exploring the physical marketplace out in their cities not just scan things via a computer screen. So the skills to read people not just tech skills are a must.
Toddlers like to play with others.
They are not solitary little people. And though they often need to be taught to share, they do engage with others. And in like manner, the joint venture or sales partnership model is what sustains a long term relationship with affiliate marketers. Together with your affiliates the focus must be ever absorbing and listening to the online world and the physical marketplace. Toddlers like new people and new situations and so do good sales people. Don’t hinder and criticize going after the new, but encourage and reward relationship building to and through your affiliate partners.
They are merely the unique children they were designed to be.
We are born with unique talents and gifts. So look for, and let your affiliates be problem solvers and inventive types. Seek ones who can see not yet realized possibilities for your products and thus find new markets. Creativity marks children, and creativity marks those who can successfully match up sellers with lots of buyers online. Partners who have a toddler’s imagination intact will be able to function with foresight online, where change is constant; they will not be bound by past practices. Seek a work is play mindset in affiliate partners as this will help them stay creative as they score sales.
A toddler likes an audience i.e. attention.
Likewise, an affiliate is a publisher to the marketplace. He or she asks, “what problems or needs does my producer’s goods or services solve?” and “who has those problems and needs?” KISS or keep it simple for your partners. Set up an agreement to allow them to reach straight for the prize: advertising hits and sales. Reward them with good commissions to keep them happy “children.”
Finally, toddlers have open hearts.
They desire to trust parents and parent figures over them. In this vein, affiliate marketing partners want attention, love, and care from their employer or producer-partners. Fair and generous behavior with your affiliates will win them to you and through them win you customers. Don’t deceive or mislead re: your products. Don’t use people. The idea is to reap repeat buyers and gain new buyers. Sow to becoming a reliable company in your marketing and you will thus reap these customers. We are here to help!