Easy Way to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Squeeze Page
I had one of my marketing friends ask me a question about how to get affiliates to promote his free newsletter.
If he sent people to a squeeze page their affiliate link would be lost so there is little incentive to promote for him.
There are some complicated ways to handling this but a more generic and simple to use way was needed.
As we discussed it I had an idea, that turned out to be was easy to do, most people can use it and it worked great.
Using a simple HTML page and an autoresponder, both typical for a squeeze page, you can have your affiliates promote with an affiliate ID and that affiliate will be forever associated with that customer when you send out promotional e-mail; although you can choose which promotions affiliates participate in.
This can be a powerful tool to getting affiliate traffic, one of the best sources of traffic.
If you have any type of a landing page where you are selling directly but getting people to give you their e-mail address then just adding this code means you are ready to get lots of other people sending their subscribers to you.
Here is a step-by-step explanation, with pictures (click on any screen shot to open a larger view in a new window), of how to do this along with any files you’ll need so you can just copy and paste.Before I start, let me say that the example uses Aweber (or rather, Jeff Walker’s private label of Aweber named Profollow, it’s the same thing).
If you aren’t using Aweber then you’ll need to figure out the specifics on your own but you will have all the steps.
Creating the Web Form
Okay, log into Aweber, select the list your want to use and go to Web Forms.
Click the button titled “+ Create Web Form” and you see the first step in the process.
Fill in the “Form Name” and click “Next“; I used CaptureAffiliateID as the form name.
You’ll see the second step of the form creation process.
Now we’re going to add a custom field to store the affiliate I in, so click the “> Add New Field” link and you’ll see this:
Type in the “Field Name“; I used AffiliateID but you can use anything you want, just remember what you use because you’ll need it later.
Don’t check the “Subscriber Update” check box or uncheck it if it is checked. We don’t want people being able to remove or change an affiliate ID.
Click the Add button and you’ll see this:
Hover your mouse over the new field, named AffiliateID in this example, and you’ll see it boxed in with a plus sign (+) in a small green box appearing.
Click that plus sign (+) and you’ll see:
You now see the Affiliate ID appears on the form.
Don’t worry, we’ll make it invisible later but we need Aweber to put in on the form for us and for Aweber to expect to receive the affiliate ID and to store it along with the subscriber’s other information.
Click the “Save” button to go back to the list of Web Forms.
Getting the Web Form for the Squeeze Page
Now we need to get the HTML to put on the squeeze page. Click on the link that says “Get HTML” and you should see this:
Since we need to modify the source code to hide the affiliate link box on it we need the “Raw HTML Version”, so click that tab and you’ll see this:
Highlight the code by clicking inside the box, right clicking and selecting “Select All” then copy the code by right clicking and selecting “Copy”.
You should now have the Aweber form code in your Windows clipboard buffer. You might want to paste it in a Notepad to save it in case you accidentally copy something over the top of it. Worst case you can go back into Aweber and get the code again though so don’t worry too much about it.
Putting the Code Onto Your Squeeze Page
Now that we have the form we need to put it in a squeeze page.
For simplicity’s sake, I will be using a blank HTML page, with the Web form the only thing on the page. You’ll need to put it in the right place on your page.
Here is the HTML source code (you can download everything here) we’re starting out with:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN”>
<html><head><title></title></head><body></body></html>
As you can see, very bare bones. Now let’s add the Web form.
Open your squeeze page and find where the Web form should go then paste the Aweber code into the page. For example, here is what mine looks like:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN”>
<html><head><title></title></head><body><center><form method=”post” action=”http://clients.profollow.com/scripts/
addlead.pl”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_web_form_id” value=”827264637″>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_split_id” value=”">
<input type=”hidden” name=”unit” value=”1-affiliates”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”redirect” value=”http://clients.profollow.com/form/
thankyou_vo.html” id=”redirect_a32f09d716604ce17a14c204457d4194″>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_redirect_onlist” value=”">
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_adtracking” value=”">
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_message” value=”1″>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_required” value=”from”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_forward_vars” value=”0″>
<table>
<tr><td colspan=2><center></center></td></tr>
<tr><td>Name:</td><td><input type=”text” name=”name” value=”" size=”20″></td></tr>
<tr><td>Email:</td><td><input type=”text” name=”from” value=”" size=”20″></td></tr>
<tr><td>AffiliateID:</td><td><input type=”text” name=”custom AffiliateID” value=”" size=”20″></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan=2><center></center></td></tr>
<tr><td align=”center” colspan=”2″><input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”Submit”></td></tr>
</table>
</form><img src=”http://forms.profollow.com/form/
displays.htm?id=HExsnKzsbMzs” border=”0″ />
</center></body></html>
Now we need to make some modifications. We will hide the affiliate ID box and add some JavaScript code to do the work of automatically putting the affiliate ID into the Aweber affiliate ID form field.
First you need to find the line where the affiliate ID box is, this is what my line looks like:
<tr><td>AffiliateID:</td><td><input type=”text” name=”custom AffiliateID” value=”" size=”20″></td></tr>
Now let’s remove the label and hide the box, the code now should look like:
<tr><td></td><td><input type=”hidden” name=”custom AffiliateID” value=”" size=”20″></td></tr>
Note that I remove the label “AffiliateID:” (your will be different if you used a different name) and I change the type=”text” to say type=”hidden”; this effectively hides that line from view but it is still on the form and will get sent to Aweber.
Now we need to add the JavaScript code to take an affiliate ID off of a query string and put it in the Aweber affiliate ID form field.
At the bottom of the squeeze page HTML, add the JavaScript code, here is what to add:
</body><script type=”text/javascript” src=”dh-query-string-to-form-field.js”></script><script type=”text/javascript”>var dhFormFieldName = “[*Form Field Name*]“;var dhQueryStringName = “[*Query String Name*]“;var dhUrlToSearch = window.location.href;dhPutQueryStringValueInFormField(dhQueryStringName, dhUrlToSearch, dhFormFieldName);</script></html>
Okay, as you might be able to tell it set a few values (the lines starting with “var”) and puts the query string value into the Aweber form field (the lines that begins with dhPutQueryStringValueInFormField).
Now we need to set the 2 values “[*Form Field Name*]” and “[*Query String Name*]”.
The first one is set to the name Aweber gave the affiliate ID form field in the line above: <input type=”text” name=”custom AffiliateID” value=”" size=”20″>
We need to get the name, in this case it is “custom AffiliateID”, yours will be whatever you called your customer field in Aweber.
The second value to set is gotten from your affiliate link. For example, my affiliate link for Tellman’s List Pros course is http://www.Listbuilding.com/index.cfm?affID=DavidHusnian.
So I need to pull out the query string name for the affiliate ID which, in the List Pros example is “affID”.
For our purposes here I’m going to use the affiliate link http://8-8-8sale.com/PassingQueryStringToAweber.htm?aff_id=david so the query string name will be “aff_id”.
Here is the code modified to make those 2 changes:
</body><script type=”text/javascript” src=”dh-query-string-to-form-field.js”></script><script type=”text/javascript”>var dhFormFieldName = “custom AffiliateID”;var dhQueryStringName = “aff_id”;var dhUrlToSearch = window.location.href;dhPutQueryStringValueInFormField(dhQueryStringName, dhUrlToSearch, dhFormFieldName);</script></html>
The final squeeze page will look like:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN”>
<html><head><title></title></head><body><center><form method=”post” action=”http://clients.profollow.com/scripts/
addlead.pl”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_web_form_id” value=”826957637″>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_split_id” value=”">
<input type=”hidden” name=”unit” value=”1-affiliates”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”redirect” value=”http://clients.profollow.com/form/
thankyou_vo.html” id=”redirect_a32f09d716604ce17a14c404277d4194″>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_redirect_onlist” value=”">
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_adtracking” value=”">
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_message” value=”1″>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_required” value=”from”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”meta_forward_vars” value=”0″>
<table>
<tr><td colspan=2><center></center></td></tr>
<tr><td>Name:</td><td><input type=”text” name=”name” value=”" size=”20″></td></tr>
<tr><td>Email:</td><td><input type=”text” name=”from” value=”" size=”20″></td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td><input type=”hidden” name=”custom AffiliateID” value=”" size=”20″></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan=2><center></center></td></tr>
<tr><td align=”center” colspan=”2″><input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”Submit”></td></tr>
</table>
</form><img src=”http://forms.profollow.com/form/
displays.htm?id=HExsnKzsbMzs” border=”0″ />
</center></body><script type=”text/javascript” src=”dh-query-string-to-form-field.js”></script><script type=”text/javascript”>var dhFormFieldName = “custom AffiliateID”;var dhQueryStringName = “affIid”;var dhUrlToSearch = window.location.href;dhPutQueryStringValueInFormField(dhQueryStringName, dhUrlToSearch, dhFormFieldName);</script></html>
Trying it Out!
I’ve copied the above squeeze page up to www.8-8-8Sale.com and opened a Web browser to access it.
As you can see, I put “aff_id=david” as the affiliate ID in the query string.
When I hit submit it will put “david” in the Aweber record (at this point it is already in the Aweber hidden field because it does that as the page loads), let’s look…
Clicking “Submit” showed me this page:
Let me look in my e-mail and find the confirm link.
I found it and clicked the link and got this screen
Did It Work?
Let’s go into Aweber and look at the Subscribers
Click the “Display Segment” button to show all subscribers and we see:
Okay, we can see the subscriber I just added, let’s look at the subscriber’s information:
Let’s scroll down and look for the AffiliateID custom field, it should have “david” in it.
Yep, there it is, ready to be used.
Let’s try it out…
Let me go in and create and e-mail, here’s what that looks like (I’m skipping some steps to get here):
Notice I’ve created the e-mail with a link in it that has “aff_id=” at the end of the link. Positioning the cursor just after the equal sign I click the “Personalize” link and see the list of choices.
We find the one named “{custom affiliateid}” and click on it to get:
You’ll see now the link reads http://8-8-8Sale.com/GreatTrafficProduct.htm?aff_id={custom affiliateid}
Let send the mail and look what it looks like in the e-mail:
Awesome, now if a customer clicks the links to purchase it will credit the affiliate with the sale.
Now you can get affiliates to promote to your squeeze pages because you can promise them that any future sales will earn them checks!
Additional Comments
As I said, this was shown with Aweber but the technique work with any autosreponder that let’s you add custom fields or, even if it doesn’t, if there are some existing fields you don’t use you could use those.
This is meant for affiliate links that have the affiliate ID in the query string of the URL (like the addID in the example http://www.Listbuilding.com/index.cfm?affID=DavidHusnian), if another method is used then additional work would need to be done; it could be hard or easy depending upon the situation.
It must also be an affiliate link that has a name as well as a value so links like www.SomeWebSite.com/squeeze-page.html?david will not work with this code although it would be easy to modify it to make it work.
Also, this method is general enough that it will actually take any query string value and put it in any form field so it isn’t just restricted to getting an affiliate ID into Aweber.
Conclusion
It is harder to explain than do, that’s for sure but now you can get affiliates to promote your squeeze pages no matter what system you’re using.
This opens up lots of new channels where you can get prospects from; this could really make a difference your success.
So, by just adding one custom field to Aweber and hiding it on you’re the Web forms for your squeeze pages and adding a little JavaScript (which you can download from here) you can do this.
Remember this isn’t only for affiliate IDs and it isn’t only for squeeze pages so it can be creatively used in a variety of situations.
I find this so good that I’m going to start using it myself and I wonder why I never thought to do it before.
Thanks Brendan for the question!
Got any ideas for how to use this?
Do you have any questions about how to put this in practice?
Just leave me a comment.
Talk soon,
The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdwords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com
O.Y. Be sure to download the JavaScript code to insert into your squeeze pages
O.O.Y. I think you’d be worse than foolish not to get Tellman Knudson and Shawn Casey’s free $1,997 List Building Course they are giving away for free. Sign up for one of my lists and I’ll even pay the shipping and handling (just 12 slots out of 50 left) or pay the entire digital download fee for everyone buying through this link that is also on my list… Get it now at http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/ListPros
.
Hi David,
Great tutorial. I had a programmer set this up for me before but I didn’t know how he did it. I’ve had conversations with many marketers about this before because I know that you can’t rely on “cookies” now-a-days.
Normally, the standard answer is…”We’ll set a cookie on your visitors machine so if they come back and purchase…you still get credit”. It’s true but it’s also BS. Too many people keep their computers clean and wipe out their cookies as well as other things on a weekly basis. I know I do.
If you offer a “hard coded” affiliate link, you REALLY will be able to get more people to promote your “free report” or optin page because they will know that when you promote to that list that THEY helped you build…they will still get credit for the sale even if the cookie has been removed.
Every serious marketer should implement the “hard affiliate” link into their affiliate programs.
Jason,
Thanks.
You’re absolutely right about cookies they are so unreliable because people are always clearing them. In fact, my partner clears them every time she closes her Web browser.
The next step in this is doing the same thing to a customer database, but that is more complicated.
This solution really is something that anyone can do even if they don’t know anything about the technical stuff and it will help set you apart from all the others who can’t do this.
David
FANTASIC INSTRUCTIONS!!! This is exactly what I have been looking for for about the past 2 weeks now, so thank you sooooo much!
Alan
Alan,
Glad to be of help
Good luck with your ClickBank product.
David
one mroe thing, the “=” isn’t included with the cb products, right? Wouldn’t it just be”?hop” in lieu of the “aff_id”?
Because I did this and the affiliate didn’t show up in the test. The hoplink showed up so I guess I can still tell who sent them, but their CB ID doesn’t actually show up in the Affiliate field.
Also, if they put in “http://cbreaper.com/?hop=yourname” then it doesn’t give them credit for the sale, but if they put in “http://yourname.magliocca1.hop.clickbank.net/” then they get credit….wierd, and I don’t know if I can fix this, or just make sure that I tell them to send people to the http://yourname.magliocca1.hop.clickbank.net/ link istead of http://cbreaper.com/?hop=yourname
Anyway, any help is appreciated, and thanks again for the previous help….
Alan,
Yes, it should work with anything that uses the “name=value” like your example “hop=yourname” and, no, you don’t want to include the equal sign (=) just the name part (“hop” in your example).
It should pull off “yourname” and save it in Aweber (assuming all the steps were followed). If it is not then I need to look at what you’ve done specifically it because it always does for me. I’d need to see the code that looks like:
var dhFormFieldName = “custom AffiliateID”;
var dhQueryStringName = “aff_id”;
var dhUrlToSearch = window.location.href;
dhPutQueryStringValueInFormField(dhQueryStringName, dhUrlToSearch, dhFormFieldName);
As well as a specific example of a link that didn’t work.
As is, it will NOT work with any other format of affiliate link, so it won’t work if the link to the squeeze page is in the ClickBank format link like in your example “http://yourname.magliocca1.hop.clickbank.net/”.
But, if you have their ClickBank nickname in Aweber then you CAN create that style of ClickBank link in the Aweber e-mail. Just put “http://{custom affiliateid}.magliocca1.hop.clickbank.net/” in the e-mail (instead of something like my example “http://8-8-8Sale.com/GreatTrafficProduct.htm?aff_id={custom affiliateid}”).
Let me know, I’m happy to help you figure this out.
David
I think I know what I did… in the “hop” field I have “?hop” with the “?” included. This may solve my issue. Also, if put in the format, “http://yourname.magliocca1.hop.clickbank.net/” I think it will work because if you copy and paste it into your browser, it redirects the link to say http://cbreaper.com/?hop=yourname, which the hidden field would then pull from, adn the affiliate would automatically get cookied this way I thik, but I’ll have to test.
Alan,
Okay.
Sounds like you have it licked but let me know if you need some help.
David
Hey David,
I added you to Skype today! I was wondering if you could help create the form for me if I sent the file (definately willing to pay you for it). I’m pretty sure I have don ei tcorrectly but would rather someone who really knows what they are doing to do it for me
Please contact me via Skype at “alanmag9″ or shoot me an email. I can just send you the file of the original raw code and then you can send me the revised file if that’s ok!
Thanks David,
Alan Magliocca
Alan,
It is easy enough for anyone to do but I’ll help you.
I’ll e-mail you.
David
Hi David, works great all round.
Question:- How can we place a default value in the Custom Affiliate ID so I could promote the main site itself without the affiliate ID string? Shoot me an email mate.
Hi,
Thanks, glad you liked it.
I haven’t tried it but I think if you add this line:
dhUrlToSearch += “?” + dhQueryStringName + “=[*PutDefaultIDHere*]“;
Between the lines:
var dhUrlToSearch = window.location.href;
dhPutQueryStringValueInFormField(dhQueryStringName, dhUrlToSearch, dhFormFieldName);
For example, if you want the default affiliate ID to be DavidHusnian you’d have:
var dhUrlToSearch = window.location.href;
dhUrlToSearch += “?” + dhQueryStringName + “=DavidHusnian”;
dhPutQueryStringValueInFormField(dhQueryStringName, dhUrlToSearch, dhFormFieldName);
That’s works only if you don’t already have a question mark (?) on the Web address. If you do then replace the question mark in my example with an ampersands (&), so it would look like:
var dhUrlToSearch = window.location.href;
dhUrlToSearch += “&” + dhQueryStringName + “=DavidHusnian”;
dhPutQueryStringValueInFormField(dhQueryStringName, dhUrlToSearch, dhFormFieldName);
Try it and let me know if it works, if not I’ll actually sit down and make it work.
Thanks,
David
[...] Easy Way to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Squeeze Page, Part 2 Posted by David on Mar 24, 2010 in Tips & Techniques | Subscribe Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Last year I wrote a blog post about how to get affiliates to promote your squeeze pages, Easy Way to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Squeeze Page — see http://fromthedeskofdavid.com/blog/tips/affiliates-promote-squeeze-page. [...]
Hey David,
I could really do with your help with this.
I followed what you said but I can’t seem to get it working.
http://gsupremacy.com/free/blake.php?hop=aff123456
I tested the page but it came up with affiliate = none on the CB order page.
How can I contact you?
Craig
Craig,
Sorry for the delay… have been having some problems and got pulled into some other things.
It should work okay as is depending upon what you’re doing.
If you’re capturing someone’s e-mail address from an opt-in page and the Web address has a ClickBank affiliate ID with your opt-in page then just putting that ID on a ClickBank link that someone clicks from an e-mail should work okay, in the same way it works in the post.
If you could provide more specific information I’ll see what I can do.
Thanks,
David
Hi David,
I have a couple of quick questions about the email with the affiliate ID in it.
1. If someone buys the offer that you send out how does it credit the affiliate?
2. Do you get the affiliate code back to you and then you have to manually send them their cut of the sale at what ever time you agree on or does this happen automatically?
3. How do you get the affiliate ID attached to the sale if you are promoting and affiliate product or does that only work if you are selling your own product?
The reason I ask is because I want to pay out my affiliates on future sales that I make to their prospect on both my own products and affiliate products that I promote to their lead that buy through my affiliate link. (I use Aweber as well)
Thanks dude,
Mick
Hi Mick,
1. When I capture the affiliate ID and save it (in a custom field) within the record of the subscriber in Aweber, I just have Aweber automatically get the affiliate ID out of the custom field and add it to the product links in the subsequent e-mails I send.
Of course, this only works within an affiliate network (like ClickBank) or places where there is a consistent affiliate ID across products.
Then when they click the link in the e-mail and go to, say, ClickBank, and buy your product, since the link they clicked has the ClickBank affiliate ID of the person who originally sent you the lead, they (the person who sent the lead) will get credit for it even though it came from your e-mail.
2. No, the way I use it (as explained above) it all happens automatically via ClickBank or PayDotCom or whomever the affiliate network is so you don’t need to worry about paying your affiliates unless you aren’t using a network and manage the affiliate payments yourself.
3. I don’t see how this would work easily if the products you’re selling aren’t your own.
I guess you might be able to put together a system where each of your affiliate is assigned a tracking ID (which could just be the affiliate ID that is captured and put in Aweber) and then you manually pay them a percentage of the sales you get from affiliate products you sell; you’d need to give yourself a tracking ID as well to make sure you also received your fair share of the sales.
It would take a little thinking and I don’t know how broadly it would work but I think it is doable, however, but using just the method I’ve explained in the blog post, it’s meant only for your own products or rather products where you control the sales process so PLR, MRR, RR products would work as well as products you create yourself.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you need anything else or have additional questions.
Thanks,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for the quick response.
Your answers is exactly what I thought.
The project I am thinking about is mainly an affiliate product promotion site in the IM Niche and to motivate affiliates to promote to my squeeze page I was thinking of offering life time commissions on any sales that I make through that site (which is mainly affiliate products) To do this I need to tag the contact with the affiliates ID so that I can send them their commissions on future sales. Just trying to figure out the best and easiest way to do this.
I would really appreciate your insight on this if you have any thoughts.
Thanks again.
Mick
PS (you could email me directly if you don’t want to keep posting on your site)
Hi Mick,
If you’re building the site itself then you have more control over the whole process.
Off the top of my head, I think I’d have the affiliates sign up and put their various affiliate ID (ClickBank, Amazon, etc.) into their profile and then issue each affiliate an affiliate ID for my programs.
Then I’d have them use that when promoting my squeeze pages (and sales pages). I’d put that in affiliate ID in Aweber and on the links in Aweber.
Then, for everything I promoted I’d go through a simple redirect that that pulled the affiliate link from the Web address (URL) and redirected it to the product site with the proper affiliate link (for ClickBank, etc.) attached.
Of course, you wouldn’t get a cut that way but if you’re using a recurring membership model and collecting monthly payments then that might be okay.
If you did want to get a cut then you’d have to do something like I mentioned before and use the affiliate ID you assigned then as a tracking link (for places that allow it) and then pay them their cut after you collected your commission; you’d still probably want to go through the redirect process to be able to track how many people sent you how many leads (and other stuff); to get some analytic data.
It all sounds harder than it is, with the proper software architectural design, a decent programmer could do the whole thing in a day or two; depending upon how how you wanted to do and how flexible you wanted it to be for future enhancements.
You could probably even do it using WordPress and WishList Member (want my affiliate link
although if I’m doing heavy customizations I find using something like Butterfly Marketing to be a better long term solution because it’s easier to do exactly what you want than a more controlled environment like WordPress.
It’s actually an interesting idea, let me know if you find there’s a market and do it.
Let me know if I can help any more.
David
P.S. I generally like to keep things on the blog if at all possible so others may benefit too.
David, these explanations are absolutely fantastic. You just saved me a lot of time and helped me for my next launch (I’ll be using squeeze pages and affiliates during the launch). This is just great, thank you.
Dan,
Thanks for the kind words
David
Great, thanks for sharing this blog.Really thank you! Cool.