Using Affiliate Marketing To Recruit New Students To College

If you’re not familiar with affiliate marketing, let me just give you a short introduction before I try to answer the question.

Affiliate marketing is a cost per action (CPA) system where you refer people to a product or a service, and if they do a certain action, usually buy something, affiliates earn money.

For instance, you can write a review on a blog about a software you really enjoy, and if a person buys it from your link, you’ll earn commission, usually between 25% to 75% of the price of the product.

Affiliate marketing is a very interesting sales technique.

When it comes to colleges and universities in Norway, close to all of them are very old fashioned when it comes to marketing. Recruting new studends are usually done by attending college fairs, ads in newspapers (there are some online advertising as well), and visiting high schools.

Think about this for a few minutes.

This is just an example, and I don’t know anything about the economy, so just think of it as an example.

Every new student attending a university is apx $50.000 to the university. Why don’t they pay affiliates $1000 for each new student they help recruit? Wouldn’t be a lot easier to recruit new students this way?

I know about similar techniques in order for students to recruit new students; instead of earning money, they are receiving iPods, laptops and airfares.

Many universites are paying students in order to help them recruit new students. The problem is that they’re not paying them for each student they recruit, so there’s no real incentive. They get paid by the hour or get paid to attend college fairs.

Do you know about universities or colleges that are using affiliate marketing, and paying people (not only current students) for each new student that they’re recruiting (paying them money and not giving away iPods and laptops)?