Affiliate Money Maker

It’s the holiday season and everybody is making their wishes for Christmas and the New Year - and I thought I’d make my own little list of the things I’d like to see next year as an affiliate marketer. This is just my personal view of things that would make life easier for affiliates but I’m pretty sure many affiliates would like to see the same. If you have any other additions to this wishlist feel free to add them in this post’s comments.

Affiliate managers - many of these wishes can come true if you make a little effort within your affiliate programs. The more affiliate programs and networks take part in fulfilling these wishes the more enjoyable affiliate marketing will be come in the new 2009 year - and the more we will both win from it in the long run.

1. Affiliate programs should provide descriptions of their offers to facilitate the affiliate’s activities - and by description I do not mean just the ad blurb that is not so easy to decipher or just the commissions percentage that the affiliates get. I mean if you have a product that is only targeted to a certain location and the traffic from any other IP is even forwarded to some other site - an me happening to be just outside of that location - how am I as an affiliate supposed to know what your offer is all about and how am I supposed to promote it?

2. Payment methods - have some flexibility! We live in the world where your affiliates are no longer just in the US - so while checks or PayPal may be nice for the US-based affiliates they may not be so well suited for others located elsewhere. There is a wealth of payment methods available out there these days - from prepaid cards (such as epassporte or payoneer that I mentioned a number of times already in this blog) to direct deposit which SHOULD be available for those outside of US. Just think how many affiliates your program or network may be losing due to an inconvenient payment method being a showstopper! I am talking not only of small proprietory affiliate programs - I also mean large networks such as ShareASale (yes guys, you are guilty of this too!) With an abundance of affiliate programs and networks in nearly every market niche, this too is a deciding factor for many affiliates whether to join your programs and promote your offers - or go to a rival.

3. If you are spamming me with your monthly newsletters is it so difficult to have a live person answer my question once a year? AffiliateBot, I am talking of you here! I emailed you with a question God knows how long ago - all I got from you in reply was a bunch of monthly newsletters. Is there anyone alive over there? I see there is a bunch of offers I could really use for my sites in your listings - but I’d rather go somewhere else since I never get any personal communication from you. It does not make me feel appreciated and does not promote a sense of reliability. There is a bunch of others guilty of the same. If you run your affiliate program through a large network do not assume it frees you from the necessity of talking to your affiliates. If I bump into your site on the web and ask you a question before joining your program through a large network chances are I will be more willing to work with you if you reply my email. And no, “Call us if you have any questions” does not exactly cut it - I may be outside of the US and calling internationally is not exactly what I’d be willing to do for the sake of an unknown quantity that you are to me at this point.

4. Nice and detailed stats - if I put my efforts into promoting your offers I just HAVE to know where my traffic comes from and goes to, what my conversion rates are for any given period of time, where the sales come from and what exactly is performing well or not so well. I’d like to be able to set up my own custom tracking codes and be able to see the info related to them. In the long run, again, it will benefit both sides - if I see some things are working better than others I will tweak my campaigns so that they work better, bring more sales and more money for both of us.

5. Landing pages - you should have them! The better your landing page is, the better it will convert and the more affiliates will want to send their traffic to it. I love affiliate managers who keep testing and tweaking and improving their landing pages and hope to see more of them in the new year.

6. International offers - this is a wake up call! It’s not about the US only any more! If you ship internationally do put some effort into nice, professional translation of your site and creatives into the languages of the countries that bring or could potentially bring you the most conversions. So far, even the afifliate programs/networks who do understand the importance of international markets are often guilty of lacking international content (MoreNiche, I am talking of you guys now! Not you alone of course - but you too!)

With all that said, I’d like to thank all the nice, hard working, helpful affiliate managers I met over the year 2008 for the pleasure I’ve had working with them. I hope that the next year will bring us more sales and create new opportunities, regardless of the recession.