Something you see more and more these days is marketers giving away bonuses in return for buying a product through their affiliate link.

Is it worth it? Well of course it is, or it wouldn’t be done. However, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all.

During one particular product launch last year, I made $6,000 in 24 hours without offering a single bonus. I realise that’s not huge money (and who knows… I might have made more should I had actually offered an incentive) but the fact that it took me about 20 minutes to write 5 emails which pulled in that money meant I didn’t have to spend days crafting an offer and getting everything into place to make it work.

I sent out one email 10 days before launch, another 3 days before launch, another a few hours before launch, another at the launch and another about 12 hours into the launch.

The emails were short and to the point. Not hyped, and certainly not ’salesy’. They simply pointed out what the product was all about and stressed the benefits of it.

There were a lot of marketers promoting this launch (I’m careful with what I push) but I still got my slice of the pie. Why? Because of my relationship with the list I was promoting it to.

Amazingly, I pushed this product to just 600 people, and it’s my relationship with this list of people that made it work so well. In short, I’ve offered them tremendous value in the past and have helped them a great deal for free.

They trust me and I value them. If they need help they know I’m here and in return they know I will only recommend products I have seen, used and believe offer them great value, hence me having such great conversion rates with this small list.

Without a doubt bonuses are one of the best ways to get people to buy through your affiliate links, but you need to build a relationship with those customers and treat them like gold. After all, they are the ones who decide if you’ll make it or not.