Don’t get me wrong, high commission payouts are important but things like accurate accounting, useful promotional tools, high converting sales pages and paying affiliates on time are just as important.
From my own personal experience as an affiliate marketer for the past eight years, these are a few things I’ve learned when looking for and finding the best affiliate marketing programs.
Get to Know the Affiliate Manager
Get as familiar as you can with the people who are responsible for paying you, that’s typically the affiliate manager. In fact you can find out a lot about an affiliate program just by getting to know the person that runs it.
For example, after you apply to an affiliate program you should receive an affiliate welcome email. Within the welcome email there should be a name and working email address of the affiliate manager. Once you get your welcome email, respond by introducing yourself. Also include in that email a few questions that you might have.
You will be doing this for two reasons. One is to see how fast they respond to you and if they answered your questions satisfactorily. Short, curt, non-informational replies or no reply at all speaks volumes about an affiliate program and who is running it.
You will be promoting their products so helping you promote should be high on their priority list. If it’s not, you should be investigating other programs.
Verify Your Affiliate Control Panel Works Correctly
I once had a brand new website that was live for only about 2 weeks. When I began promoting the affiliate program I signed up with they told me I was getting 2500 clicks a day to their site from my affiliate link. Whooooaaaa! Was that right? That really seemed like a lot.
Come to find out it wasn’t right. Their affiliate program had a glitch. In fact their program showed that I made 8 sales from those 1500 clicks, but those sales were in error.
Talk about a let down. But I couldn’t help but think, if they were making mistakes now, what was going to happen later on. My trust vanished and I moved on to looking for a new program.
In order to make sure the affiliate program is calculating links correctly, test it out. Click on your affiliate link and make sure that their control program is showing those clicks accurately.
Also make sure that the number of clicks you see in the control program matches clicks you see within your own website’s log. If things don’t match or look off, check with your affiliate manager.
Just as an affiliate application can make a mistake in sending you links it can also make mistakes by not calculating links at all, so always check it out.
More On Finding the Best Affiliate Marketing Programs
Rosalind Gardner covers several more strategies for how to find the best affiliate marketing programs in her Super Affiliate Handbook. Rosalind has 20 excellent questions you should also ask before joining any affiliate program. Each of these questions combined with a close relationship with your affiliate manager are the very things that can make or break your success as an affiliate marketer.
Not all affiliate programs are created equal, so consider each affiliate program carefully. High payouts are great but they won’t mean much if the affiliate program isn’t trustworthy, has a few glitches or you miss something in the fine print.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: stephensheather
August 12, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Hi Liz!
Thanks for the information. I’ve only been an affiliate of a few of the products I’ve personally used and gotten great results from, so I’m not super experienced with it. I can see, though, how building a relationship with the Affiliate Manger would be helpful though. Relationships trump everything, don’t they?!
Heather
Twitter: prfuller
August 12, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Great advice on Affiliate Programs Liz.
I find that using a tracking url to compare against back office clicks works well,
Hi Heather, that’s also another important affiliate strategy, using the products you endorse
Twitter: tommydipietro
August 16, 2010 at 7:15 am
Liz,
Thanks for the information. This is something I have done without even realizing it. I am a big fan of the Cashflow Marketer and happen to be good friends with the authors of it, which is a bonus. I have even gotten to know some of the big names of network marketing personally communicating with them through Better Networker and Facebook.
Network marketers like Mike Dillard, Jim Yaghi and Brian Fanale, just to name a few are people I have communicated with and it feels good with they respond.
Enjoyed your post.
Tommy D.
Hi,
I have checked my affiliate links work well and that they reflect, but even if this is the case one is never sure which of those clicks actually convert to sales. This is where trust comes in. I battle with this issue.
Hi Liz I am looking for someone to teach my wife and me how to do affiliate marketing and help us build a web site, We did join one company and they offered a free web site and some other stuff as well ,and on hands training, but after 4 days they had not followed through for us and only sent us generic emails. We bought web hosting with gator and they were nice. We canceled the program and they sent us our money back. I know we can make money doing this but how do we get started with a trust worthy co. or persons.we also have a registered web name , so when I find the right co. we are one step ahead. Thanks Carl
Hey Carl,
Have you read the Super Affiliate Handbook? Before you hire someone, I’d highly recommend reading this guide. You can do this on your own by following the principles in this guide. It’s what I used. It will give you a good foundation and detail of what you need to do to have a successful affiliate business.
I’ve had no luck with hiring individuals and unfortunately can’t in all good conscience recommend anyone. However on Aug 18th, I’ll be attending the NAMS (Niche affiliate marketing system) conference in Atlanta, if you can wait until August 22, I’ll have some possibilities lined up for you. This will give me a chance to evaluate some of the trainers there and I should have some trusted candidates and possible costs for you then