-
Reputability
- company should have a privacy policy and some sort of
certification especially concerning credit card acceptance
- company should already have a sizeable pool of pre-existing
affiliates
- check to see how long the affiliate program has been in
operation - avoid companies which have just started an
affiliate program unless it is administered by a
third party network
- if you are not sure about the integrity of the company and
would like to know if you are going to get paid and have your
sales tracked then check to see if that company is associated
with a third party network such as
Linkshare or
BeFree. These companies
handle both commission tracking and payment and can be trusted
by both the affiliate and the merchant
- if the company is not tracked by a trusted third party and
you want to know if they are reputable you can ask other
existing affiliates. Go to Infoseek or AltaVista and see which
web sites link to the company by typing link:company url
in the search engine. Most of the resulting search results
will be affiliate web sites and will have banners of the
company displayed on their sites.
-
Site that sells
- company should offer a great product/service
- it should have a good looking web site which offers great
information and is easy to navigate
-
Payment and tracking
- company should offer high profit margins
- the commission offered should be a percentage of the product
price and not net profits
- there should be a higher commission structure for profitable
affiliates
- a two-tier commission structure should be offered in case
you have the potential to generate new affiliate applications
- affiliates should be able to earn commissions on all
products in the site and not just the ones that they link to
directly
- affiliate should be able to earn commissions if the visitor
they send to the merchant site leaves and returns and
purchases at a later date - aim for a period of at least a
month since visitors will usually not buy until the third or
fourth visit
- even though the program should use cookies to track return
visitors it should also use some other method to track first
time visitors since only 80% of browsers accept cookies or
have cookies turned on
- companies which really care about whether their afffiliates
are compensated for return visitors use databases. When
visitors are referred and purchase for the first time the
affiliates id is stored along with other information in the
customer profile. Hence whenever a subsequent sale is made by
the same customer it is simply credited to the affiliate. Most
affiliate companies have the capacity to do this with their
existing customer databases but don't
- checks should be issued monthly and minimum balances
shouldn't exceed $25
- if the company charges its customers monthly or quarterly or
yearly then the affiliate should be able to receive residual
income based on these periodic charges - web hosting companies
and telephone service companies usually bill their customers
this way
- there should be mechanisms in place to track sales by fax,
snail mail, and 1-800 numbers
-
Reporting
- affiliates should have access to online sales and
commissions reports
- at a bare minimum they should be able to view the traffic
they send and the sales they generate
- advanced features include the ability to see which products
they are sellling the most and which banners or other forms of
promotion are more successful than others
- affiliates should be able to see click through's and
commissions in real time
- any residual commissions should be shown in the stats
- commissions reports should be emailed and an email sent
after each and every sale is made
- two-tier commissions should be shown and affiliates should
have the ability to view the list of all the sub affiliates
under them
-
Linking
- affiliates should be given a wide variety of linking options
including banner links and text links
- affiliates should be able to link to different products and
different subject areas in the site where applicable
- affiliates should have the ability to co-brand the store on
the merchant site and there should be a link back to their web
site
-
Support
- affiliates should be able to edit/update their personal
information online
- the affiliate manager should help affiliates by giving them
marketing materials and proven techniques to increase sales
- there should be some kind of communication including a
newsletter and a place where affiliates can exchange their
views with each other
- there should be a full time affiliate program staff ready to
answer technical and marketing questions and also a detailed
FAQ sheet
-
Restrictions
- there should be no cost to join the program
- affiliates should be able to buy from their own links
whenever they choose and receive commissions
- circumstances where the agreement between the affiliate and
the merchant can be terminated should be clearly outlined in
the contract
-affiliates should avoid programs with exclusivity clauses
