Affiliate newsletter writers are always trying to stay ahead of different trends, and using dedicated RSS feeds is starting to become more popular. We are not yet at a stage that it would be feasible to put out an affiliate newsletter solely through RSS, but we are getting there and the technology is definitely worth implementing. If you are unfamiliar with RSS, it stands for Really Simply Syndication and over the last few years, it has changed the way information is published on the Internet.

These days, very little needs to be done to establish an RSS feed. All you need is a blog or CMS, RSS comes ready to roll with most of the major flavors of these programs. For an affiliate newsletter, simplicity is the order of the day, and it does not get much simpler than publishing in WordPress. The added bonus of publishing an affiliate newsletter this way is the fact that it creates an online repository for your affiliate newsletter archive. RSS allows your affiliates to receive your articles as they are published, without actually checking your website manually. This can be done through a standalone newsreader or in an email client.

I don’t think that the time is yet right to do away completely with email, but if you are going to go the RSS route, you can cut down on a lot of your email work. Rather than publish a full email newsletter, post snippets and a set of links to the online articles. You could include an explanation of how RSS works in each affiliate newsletter if you want to give your affiliates the hint.

Affiliate newsletters are something that many affiliate program managers would rather do without. They can be a lot of work, finding time to produce affiliate newsletters when you are already busy with a thousand and one other things can be trying at the best of times. What makes matters worse is that it is hard to know for certain whether affiliate newsletters have any tangible benefit at all. We believe that affiliate newsletters are an integral part of the affiliate marketing experience and we are prepared to tell you why.

• Affiliate newsletters build communities. An email in someone’s inbox is a far more personal thing than a post on a blog which they may or may not read. Affiliate newsletters help people to feel a part of a team.
• Affiliate newsletters can motivate. If a person is not having much success selling your products, they might start to think that it is not worth it. Sometimes getting that regular email is what it takes to keep them in the program.
• Affiliate newsletters educate. If you want to get better results from your affiliate network, you can do so by teaching marketing techniques through your affiliate newsletters.
• Affiliate newsletters are discreet. Let’s face it, there are things that you might wish to share with your affiliates that you don’t necessarily want posted on your website. We are not talking about company secrets here as we should always assume that everything that we send will be made public, but if you want to share some statistics or sales figures, you can do so.

There are plenty of reasons why affiliate newsletters make sense. Do you need one? All affiliate networks need affiliate newsletters.

There is a trap that many writers of affiliate newsletters are drawn into if they lack experience. Many writers that are new to newsletter writing have a tendency to overwrite and many others have a tendency to waffle, some do both which is really unpleasant. Simplicity should be embraced as a writer of affiliate newsletters. Don’t use affiliate newsletters as a forum to show off your writing technique. Your readers will be much more impressed if they can sit down with your affiliate newsletters without needing to interpret what you are saying or falling asleep. Tone it down, but don’t dumb it down; no one likes to be condescended to.

Keeping affiliate newsletters simple has another benefit. That is it encourages people that might not be very confident with their English ability to read your work. Affiliates come from all walks of life and from all different countries. If you keep it simple, they just might be able to follow what you have to say and get some benefit from the affiliate newsletters that you write each month.

The other thing that you do not want to do with affiliate newsletters is to overstate the point. If you can say something in a hundred words, say it in a hundred words. Don’t try to fill space, pictures and if you are so inclined, advertisements, can be used for that purpose. Don’t get too caught up in your word count. You want the articles in your affiliate newsletters to be just long enough to give them the punch that they need.

When writing your affiliate newsletter it can be quite tough to decide on topics. We have already discussed in detail the reasons behind catering to different levels of affiliates with an affiliate newsletter. Today, we are going to look some more at the issue of balancing an affiliate newsletter. The focus this time, however, is on the needs of the different affiliate newsletter readers that you are likely to encounter.

Are Advanced Affiliate Marketing Techniques a Waste of Time?
There are some people that argue that writing for your more advanced affiliates is really not necessary. The logic of their argument does make sense, but I tend to be of the opinion that we all have something to learn, no matter what our experience level. When it comes to high level affiliates, there may be things that they do not know. Your high ranking affiliates are a tricky lot, it is likely that they are marketing for a large number of sites and probably are not reading every affiliate newsletter that comes their way. You might be better off seeking their advice or even inviting them to submit an article from time to time. If you are writing for advanced affiliates, make sure that you know your subject matter well, keep it relevant and make it interesting. If they are marketing for a living, they will likely be very busy people. Your more advanced techniques are not really for the people at the top of the game, they are for the people that are in the middle.

Mid-Level Affiliates, Most Room for Growth?
Logic dictates that our low level affiliates have the most room for growth. In some cases, this is true but we do at some point need to face facts that most low level affiliates are not going to make a great deal of sales. A lot of low level affiliates really are lost causes when it comes to marketing your products. While your affiliate newsletter should encourage new marketers to develop better marketing skills, it is a disappointing reality that many of them will not make the transition. An affiliate newsletter should be aimed fairly squarely at the middle, where you tend to find aggressive but under-skilled marketers. Improve their performance with your affiliate newsletter and you will start to see some real benefits in your affiliate marketing network.

You have an affiliate newsletter due out tomorrow and you have nothing prepared for it, what do you do? A 24-hour deadline is not impossible to meet, here are a few ideas that can help you get your affiliate newsletter out in a timely fashion.

• Do a best of article. Scour your old articles for juicy tidbits of information. All you need to do is to cut and paste to produce a quality article. Copying your own work is not plagiarism, but you should still include any sources.
• Post some affiliate news. Your affiliate newsletter can actually contain news. What sort of news can you put in? Anything, a good start would be to congratulate some of your more active affiliates.
• Throw in a nice picture. Pictures take up page space and can save you from the writing that you would otherwise have to put in that space.
• Make some announcements. Announce some upcoming events, even if they are not planned properly. You might like to talk about an upcoming promotion or some new products that you are considering stocking.
• Check your RSS feeds, if you have your own blog that can be a great source. If you don’t have a blog, check out the blogosphere. There are hundreds of blogs on all types of content. Blogs can be a great source of ideas for your affiliate newsletter.

This list of ideas is by no means complete, but they are very easy to incorporate. If you have any comments or suggestions about affiliate newsletter writing, feel free to leave a comment below.

There is no easy answer to the question, “what is a suitable length for an affiliate newsletter?” An affiliate newsletter that is too short does not really accomplish much, while there is little chance that anyone will read all of the way through an affiliate newsletter that is too long. There are a few things that ought to be considered when you are planning your writing.

• How long have your newsletters been in the past? If you have been writing affiliate newsletters that are between 1,000 and 3,000 words in length, you are probably producing a document of appropriate size. If they have been well received, chances are you have found the right format.
• How much time do you have to put into writing? If you don’t have a lot of time, you might want to consider keeping your publications a little shorter.
• How effective is your affiliate sales force? The key purpose of an affiliate newsletter is to motivate your sales force. If they are already doing their job, you could go with a shorter publication.

Points to Consider
As a general rule it would be best to produce at least one A4 page of text. 500 Words fit onto an A4 page, which is not really a great deal of space to work with. It would be better to aim for a 1,000 to 2,000 words would tend to be a more comfortable length for an affiliate newspaper. That would be between two and four single spaced A4 pages.

While it is possible to vary your newsletter size each time you publish, it is much nicer to have a set format. You do not need to follow the exact same format every time, but if you stick to it as closely as possible, you will find that the planning process becomes much easier. If you know that you need to produce x number of articles every two weeks, you will be subconsciously preparing articles constantly. When you sit down to write it will be a lot easier.

There are no hard and fast rules about suitable lengths for affiliate newsletters. The goal of your affiliate newsletter is to reach as many people in your affiliate network as possible. Their are people there with different marketing skill levels. An affiliate newsletter should have something for everyone. To do that you are probably going to need to have at least three or four articles. If you add on an article for news or promotions, you will be sitting fairly close to the 1,000 word mark already. As long as the affiliate newsletter is long enough to cover everyone, it is long enough.

When it comes to affiliate newsletters, the vast majority of programs have a problem with their pitch. By pitch, I am referring to sales pitch, because whether someone is your affiliate or not, you are selling your products. The goal of your affiliate newsletter should be to motivate your sales force to set ambitious goals. You should be training your affiliates in effective sales technique. As a webmaster and business owner, you will have learned a trick or two already, why not use your affiliate newsletters to get some of your techniques on paper (or computer monitor at the very least).

Vary the focus of your affiliate newsletters
The fact is that your best performing affiliates probably don’t need to read your affiliate newsletter. They might even have a few tricks up their sleeves that you don’t know about. The people that you need to spend the most time with are those squarely in the middle. They are the middling performers that can be expired to greater heights of success.

Those at the bottom of the stack can benefit too, but you have to remember that they might lack the motivation to ever get started. You want to find the rough diamonds in there and get them performing, but not waste too much time about it.

Back up affiliate newsletters with an affiliate blog
Blogs are a great way to keep your affiliate newsletters accessible; they can also confer some SEO benefits on your web site. Blogs can also feed back to your newsletter from time to time. If you have an affiliate that stands out, you could ask them to contribute to the blog from time to time.

Don’t overwrite your affiliate newsletters
I may seem to harp on about this point a bit from time to time, but there are some people that really take it a step to far. You are writing an affiliate newsletter, it should be simple and to the point. The last thing you want is a contrived attempt at gonzo journalism. Keep your affiliate newsletters appropriate for their readers and you will be well appreciated for it.

Do you have an affiliate newsletter? If you want your affiliates to be successful in promoting your business for you then you should seriously consider publishing an affiliate newsletter. You want your affiliates to make you money, don’t you? You want them to make sales and send you customers, right? Well, then you have to keep them motivated and that takes time and communication. A newsletter can keep the communication lines open between you and your affiliates. But how often should you publish a newsletter?

Ideally, you should stay in contact with your affiliates daily. But let’s be practical. Daily might be pushing it. If you can’t publish a newsletter daily then perhaps you publish weekly. But don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Your newsletter doesn’t have to have an e-mail delivery. It doesn’t have to look like every newsletter out there. One way to deliver a newsletter is through a blog, and it doesn’t have to be a public blog either. You can make your blog readers (your affiliates) sign in to read your blog. It will then be shielded from public view so that you don’t reveal your marketing secrets.

However you distribute your affiliate newsletter, you should publish it often enough that your affiliates stay motivated and want to send you more business.

If you have been in a few affiliate networks over the years, chances are that you would have been exposed to affiliate newsletters of varying quality. There are a few things that people need to remember when they are writing affiliate newsletters, but by far the most important, is to keep the writing simple.

It is likely to surprise a few people that most newspapers are written to a junior high school literacy level. They are written to this level, not because the majority of readers are junior high school readers, but because the level is appropriate for the widest audience. There is another advantage in writing simply; it makes it easier to get your intentions across. Complicated language can lead to overcomplicated explanations which some of your affiliate newsletter readers may not follow or may misinterpret. The other thing that you need to remember is that for some affiliate marketers, English is a second language. Simpler writing is a good way to ensure that your affiliate newsletters have the broadest possible scope.

It goes without saying that one should avoid complicated idiomatic expressions at all costs. Idiomatic expressions are not always widely understood. There are some that are very colloquial and may not be understood outside of a particular region. Others may be next to impossible for international readers to decipher. There are a few idiomatic expressions that are universal. If you feel the need to use idioms to liven up your writing, be careful in your choice of words. You want people to be able to understand your affiliate newsletter articles.

Anyone that regularly publishes affiliate newsletters will know how stressful it can be to find the clock ticking, the days counting away and have no time for writing or no ideas to write about. Fortunately, there are a few tips and tricks that are employed by the pros that make life a little easier for everyone.