Running a great affiliate program requires you to provide awesome tools for your affiliates. There are some really fabulous ways to create and develop affiliate tools for your program. You’ll need tools like an affiliate platform, landing pages, creatives and more. You will be successful if you follow these tips.

1) Chose a Great Affiliate Platform – There are many platforms to choose from, but the better platform you choose, the easier it will be for you to provide the right tools to your affiliates to use to market your products and/or services.

2) Ask Affiliates – If you already have in mind a few people who would probably want to be affiliates for your products or services, ask them to help you evaluate the types of tools they would need to become a success. Do they need great art work, brandable content, or other tools to use during marketing?

3) Consider Your Audience – Who do you plan for your affiliates to market to? Who is the audience that will buy your products and/or service? Knowing these answers will help you create better tools that are focused toward the buyer for your affiliates to use.

4) Think about Your Niche – The sort of tools you provide your affiliates with depends a lot on what your niche is. The niche, combined with audience knowledge and awareness, will help you know what tools your affiliates need to market your product and/or service.

5) Give More Receive More – The fact is, most affiliates aren’t going to bother with programs that don’t offer them lifetime cookies, creatives like banners and buttons, well-written content, videos, landing pages and more.

6) Hire Experts – Whether you like it or not, you can’t do everything. You are likely going to have to hire an expert, whether they are graphic designers, coders, or other professionals to help you create tools that work for your affiliates.

7) Provide Training – When you create a tool, don’t assume your affiliates will understand exactly how to use it. Create training for your affiliates on how to use the various tools that you make for them. You can do this in PDF reports with pictures, or with video, or both.

8) Consider Your Budget – Creating affiliate tools can be an expensive endeavor. You need to determine if it will pay off and what the benefits are to doing so. Run a cost benefit analysis. You’ll need to know how much you will need your affiliates to sell to cover the cost of creating the tools.

Using affiliates to help you market your products and services is a great way to bring in a larger audience, increase sales, and create an empire. But you can’t do it without providing great tools for your affiliates to use, and the training to ensure that they understand the right way to use them.