Need Help Recruiting/Activating Affiliates

[HydrosBottle]

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Hi everyone,

I'm new around here, and I'm pretty new to affiliate marketing. I was hoping someone might be able to give me some advice.

We just launched a new affiliate program a couple weeks ago on ShareASale, and I'm having trouble recruiting and activating affiliates. So far, we've:
-Set up an auto-reply email when affiliates join the program to keep communication open
-Uploaded a datafeed, widgets, text links, and about 20 creatives
-Signed up for several affiliate directories
-Emailed ~120 websites in our niche about affiliate opportunities with almost no responses

So far, 50 affiliates have joined, but none of them have truly activated. Also, our budget's tight right now, so we don't have much money for ads on affiliate forums and such.

Any recommendations on how we can recruit and activate more affiliates?

Thanks, and please don't be too harsh!

[AWH-Gemma]

A large percentage of affiliates just don't reply to emails, its a fact. I would suggest putting Skype/IM details on the sign up form

[forexaffreviews]

When the money's tight, you got to roll up your sleeves. Forums are the best place to start with. Besides creating threads with catchy titles such as 'Make $XX per sale' and so on, actively participate in the forums until you can get your sig links and make use of that as well.

Another aspect would be to search for your keywords and make a list of blogs/websites and contact the webmasters directly.

[sarrtori]

Another aspect would be to search for your keywords and make a list of blogs/websites and contact the webmasters directly.

I would suggest to create campaigns for those that you can contact via email, that way you could assess what copy or keywords are getting responses. Use email marketing suites to help you.