While going crazy trying to reach that elusive number one spot for the best keywords in my market I tried a different approach.

I contacted a small number of sites that were well positioned for the keywords I wanted to rank for (and had a compatible site) and offered them a good deal to become my affiliate partners. A few of them joined and are doing great for themselves and for us.

Has anyone tried this approach? It seems pretty straight forward and applicable to many markets. Instead of having thousands of affiliates you basically can hand pick them by searching for them with your keywords. Almost everyone is willing to make some money just by adding a link. Especially if they are told they already are getting the visits.

I've found it pretty difficult to convince others to add an affiliate link to their site - even when offering a generous kick back. Usually when you are trying to pull well for the same keywords, there is a conflict of interest. For example, if you are trying to pull for "cheap blue widgets" and the person who is #1 is also selling blue widgets, they probably aren't going to join your affiliate program.

My best affiliates are the ones that already had a niche audience or client base that needed our service/product - and they did their homework to find us.

I'm not saying that handpicking affiliates doesn't work. It's just that I have found it more difficult to persuade the top dogs to sell your product when you are in competition for the same keywords.

yes, you are right but it does depend on the market. You still get results that relate to the theme you are looking for but actually don't sell anything or don't compete directly with your site.

Hi Jorge,

You are using a proven recruiting strategy that many affiliate managers use and FYI there are several special software programs that can help you do it more easily.

I personally never do email recruiting because many top affiliates in the SERPS get bombarded with recruiting emails and consider it SPAM. But a certain percentage will read, be interested and join.

Just be sure to really personalize the email with their site name and enough relevant info that they feel you really looked at their site and hand selected them. Sounds like you must be doing that already, since you seem to be having some pretty good results.

Best of Luck!

A personalized email, a "real" letter, or a phone call have worked out for me in the past.