Participate in Affiliate Programs...

In your business, you may find that you often refer your clients to particular services as you advise them of the best way to do certain things. In doing this, you yourself can take advantage of the commissions that these companies will give out when you promote their products or services.

For example, if your client asks you what the best shopping cart is and you let them know about 1ShoppingCart, you can use your affiliate link and earn a commission from that. Same goes with any other service you might find yourself promoting often.

Here are some of the affiliate programs I participate in most often and what the commission is for each of the companies:

• Bluehost.com – they give $65 per sign-up if they use your link
• Audio Acrobat – I don’t know off-hand what this is but it’s a percentage every month
• 1ShoppingCart – 10% commission from each referral
• GotVMail (now Grasshopper) – $25 per registration

You can also promote other entrepreneurs who have products, services or events that would be of interest to your website visitors or your list. People do fairly generous affiliate programs and since they are already well-known, promoting their products and events can be easy.

The thing is, you want to get into the habit of looking for these opportunities where and when they exist. So, if you refer anything often, you want to ensure you are getting credit for that.

Cutting Down Face Time with Potential Clients...

If you’re primarily doing phone calls with new, potential clients, I want to encourage you to cut back on the time spent doing these. Now, you might be wondering why and you may think I am crazy for saying this but it’s the truth. Find a way to eliminate the hour long phone calls, which you aren’t paid for, and replace them with a more efficient way to get your information across.

This could be a manual or handbook that answers all of the potential client’s questions or you could do it as a short audio program. Or, if you aren’t camera shy, you could do a YouTube video. I’ve done one and to view it, you can go to www.howavaworks.com.

So, now that we’ve cut back on your potential client call time, what is the next step? It should be creating a place on your website that explains your ideal client. Describe who you are looking to work for, how you work, what you want out of a client partner and this will also help eliminate those who are not a right fit for you.

Whatever system you put in place for potential clients, make it consistent and weed out those who you are not meant to work with early so you can focus on those you really enjoy.

Implementing an Affiliate Program for Your VA Prac...

When I launched my affiliate program using 1ShoppingCart, I didn’t think it would do very much only because I didn’t see high pay-off activity in my client’s affiliate programs. Some of their programs worked really well and others didn’t but since I always try everything at least once, I set it up and launched it.

The affiliates came flying in to sign up and I began getting referrals like crazy. I realized right then that in order to truly skyrocket my incoming business to a point where I was overflowing with potential client interviews, I needed to continue this affiliate program.

I would encourage you to set one up too. The thing is, and you’ve probably experienced this yourself, people will take action in doing something when they know they’ll benefit somehow too. Sure, you will get referrals without having a benefit there and some may think that is a bit selfish but we’re all motivated in life by something and for really busy professionals, that something tends to be cold, hard cash.

In my own affiliate program, I offer 10% on all services for the life of a client and I offer 30% on all products. This is across the board for all of my companies. This then encourages people to promote my services and products – especially when they know that if they refer a client my way, they’ll get 10% of everything that client purchases… forever!

Before I had 1ShoppingCart, I set up a referral payment system where I would give my referrers $50 per person they referred. It worked okay but having this system setup through 1SC just seemed to get people’s attention better. They added my link to their website and blogroll to ensure they would get commissions if someone hired us and they purposely put us in their newsletters and solo blog entries.

It’s also allowed me to partner with different organizations to offer my products and services to their clients and customers.