I sat down just now and tried to write a list of 10 reasons why affiliate contests suck.
(Affiliate contest = Person X is selling an offer during a time-limited launch. Persons Y, Z, and Q are promoting it as affiliates. Whoever sells the most gets bragging rights and additional prizes, beyond just the affiliate commissions.)
I feel internally that affiliate contests suck, and so I was sure that I could come up with 10 good reasons to back up my feeling.
So I started writing and… I realized that my arguments were not really arguments against affiliate contests, but about mass launches with a bunch of affiliates who promote the same offer.
Mass affiliate launches devalue the core offer… they force each affiliate to come up with a new and unique offer (bonuses or bundles or whatever) if they hope to sell anything, which to me defeats the main point of promoting affiliate offers… they cut into sales since people on your list are likely to be on 5 other lists that are promoting the same.
I realized affiliate contests are actually a way of getting around all these negatives of mass affiliate launches.
List owners (persons Y, Z, and Q above) know that promoting an offer at the same time as a dozen other people sucks… and offer owners (Person X above) try to draw them back by promising additional prizes for the best performers, above and beyond the affiliate commissions.
Does it work?
People do affiliate contests all the time, so I’m guessing it works, at least for somebody out there.
At the same time, I can speak from personal experience that I avoid affiliate contests like I avoid the metro at rush hour on an August afternoon, both because I don’t like being in a sweaty crowd, and because I don’t like directly competing against people for one of a few available seats.
I imagine there are others who are like me, who are in fact turned off by the competitive aspect of winner-takes-most contests.
I’m telling you all this because today I announced a new campaign inside my Daily Email House.
The goal of the campaign is to grow the community.
I’m asking existing members to help me do so. Beyond the altruistic reasons of helping me out or building a more thriving community, I’ve also announced prizes:
Prize #1: For anyone who refers anyone to the group, whether this referred person ends up getting inside or not (I’m picky, and I don’t let just anyone inside)
Prize #2: for anyone who refers 10 people who end up getting inside
Prize #3: For the entire group, once we reach the magic number of new members I’ve set as the target for this campaign
It’s a different kind of incentive scheme to overcome the problem of multiple people promoting. Rather than an “affiliate contest,” this is an “affiliate challenge.”
In the affiliate challenge, people are not competing with each other (or are competing directly to a much smaller extent). They are primarily competing with themselves.
They are not falling behind each other, and not giving up because they feel it’s hopeless to win, or even refusing to engage altogether.
They are encouraged to participate and to achieve a manageable goal.
And at the end of it, the group benefits, and is hopefully stronger, rather than divided or deflated.
Maybe an “affiliate challenge” is something you can consider as an alternative to an affiliate contest, when running an offer or a promo or a launch where you’re hoping to get a bunch of referrals or affiliate sales from different people.
“Yeah but does this work?” I hear you ask.
Fair enough. I have no idea. I’m just testing out this campaign, and it’s likely that there will be hiccups or missteps along the way.
If you’d like to find out how it does, or participate to get yourself one of the prizes I’m offering, or you simply want to join a community with the shared goal of using your email list to pay for a house, here’s where to go: