Everyone always talks about "super affiliates" like they are some alien species that were put on this planet to produce sales for advertisers. But where should one look for these elusive creatures? Where do they hang out and congregate to devise new and exiting ways to drive traffic to advertiser's websites? The answer is not simple. Super affiliates, a lot of the time, do not want to be harassed or bothered by over-zealous affiliate managers with good intentions. However, super affiliates do like attention if it is applied in the right way. Problem is, most times when a new affiliate manager is brought on board, their first task is to contact all of the program's current affiliates to try to "pump them up" and gain more production. This is a good idea in theory, but can back-fire if the affiliate manager does not go about the task properly. One thing super affiliate hate is when a novice affiliate manager calls them up and starts asking them probing questions about how they do what they do. This can be real turn off and a flat-out waste of time. The best thing to do is to email the affiliate and nicely ask them to explain how they plan to market your products and services, leaving the question open-ended. If they are interested in responding in such a way that the conversation evolves, then great! You have touched base with an affiliate and showed that you care about their success. If you are obnoxious and too inquisitive about how they operate, then you can expect little conversation and less production.

Rapport is the key! Building a great relationship with your affiliates and super-affiliates is essentials to gaining their cooperation in promoting your program. Making friends with your affiliates is always a good strategy if you want them to dedicate time to your project. Encourage your affiliates to call you to talk about your program and how best promote it. The more you interact with your affiliates the more likely they are to work for your program. Reward good performing affiliates with cash bonuses or small gifts from places like Omaha steaks and Harry and David. Affiliates really love the attention you are showering on them for their production.

Finding Super Affiliates can be a long and difficult process. Just having an affiliate program is not enough to attract affiliates. Hanging out in the affiliate forums is a great strategy you can use to meet and befriend affiliates. Join all the top affiliate and webmaster forums and start posting like a mad fiend in the various topics being discussed. Make sure you don't act too obnoxious shamelessly promote your program you will be run out of there. Make sure to set-up your "signature" so when you leave a post people will see your name and the program you are representing. This can be an invaluable way to recruit affiliates onto the team.

Another great place to find these super-affiliate is at webmaster conferences. Conferences are a must, especially ones focusing on search engine marketing of all kinds. There are several annual and semi-annual conference going on like: Webmaster World and Search Engine Strategies.