Affiliate Managers: Your Top Five Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes

Affiliate Managers: Your Top Five Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes

In this article I will show affiliate managers the mistakes they should avoid if they want to build a successful affiliate program. I felt compelled to write this article after seeing the same mistakes made by most of the hundreds of affiliate programs I have joined since I started promoting them in 1997. I have made a nice living from affiliate programs over the years, so I know a thing or two about them. I would dearly love to make more money with affiliate programs, but affiliate managers don't make it easy for us affiliates. So hopefully this article will do a bit for the cause.

Discuss the article in this thread. You can read the article here .

Well this article seems to be written from an affiliates point of view that thinks that companies should only rely on affiliate traffic. I dont think a company would last very long just focusing on their affiliates and their affiliate programs. The reason companies dont support their affiliates is because they dont have to. I'm sure the backlinks from an affiliates site is worth more to them than any affiliate commission. Thats why most companies setup affiliate programs. Cheaper than a PPC campaign and you receive countless backlinks. Look at travelocity.com they have over 303,844 backlinks on alltheweb. Have they payed comission to even a quarter of those affiliates?? I doubt it. But the backlinks count ;)

Most companies continue to promote themselves because they HAVE to. I would let my profit margin depend on my affiliates because seriously 80% add the link and never promote it. How can a company keep tabs on their affiliates and at the same time keep their business running? They cant. Let the affiliates that want to work and make money do so the rest just fade away after awhile. The ones that are left that truely work aren't worth the resources or investment to improve the program.



LOL I think I hear another company closing it's doors for the last time.

How can a company survive without advertisment??? It's cant. It's like telling a company "Yes you can sell to the public but no one can know about you". Focusing 100% on an affiliate program is foolish and a waste of money. I believe in setting them up but ONLY for the backlinks.

my 3 cents

-PK

Why 3 cents?

And I doubt the author really meant to focus on affiliate marketing 100%. As you said, this article is about affiliate marketing. But it is just one peice of Web marketing (SEM, SEO, Affiliate, Email, Banners and much much more).

Yes i understand that, but comments like:



Made is sway towards just using affiliate programs. I think this article would have been more helpful if it explained how affiliate programs coexist with other campaigns. How you need all of these to be successful and not just one.

The article is well written but abit biased towards a certain campaign aka affiliate programs while dismissing others.

3 cents because he gained a commission

-PK

obviously this guy that wrote the article isn't an affiliate with DarkBlue.com..

if he was then he would have nothing to complain about..

This looks like an Amazon affiliate. Amazon gives us all five of the mistakes.

::1. Competing With Your Affiliates.

Look at the Google listings. Amazon's #1 in everything.

::2. Not Providing Your Affiliates With Useful, Real-Time Statistics.

Saturday, reports were late, like over a day late.

:::3. Not Compensating Your Affiliates Fairly For Their Hard Work.

Amazon does nothing to fight scumware, basically giving them some of our earnings instead. There's a lot of programs that pay more. We just use them because every one has hurd about them.

::4. Not Providing Enough Fresh Promotional Creatives.

Looks like a kid made Amazon's logos.

::5. Not Providing Fast, Quality Support For Your Affiliates.

Amazon says they will be in contact with us when the reports are day. they didn't post a single announcement. They look like it never happend.

I agree. The problem with Amazon is that they try to do everything and end up doing everything wrong.

Oh EBAY has auctions, so do we.

Oh Yahoo has stores, so do we.

Oh Best Buy sells electronics, so do we.

I remember when AMAZON used to be an online bookstore
that had every little book title...

Now they do not carry many of my favorite books
and suck at everything else.

So anything from AMAZON has to be poor quality.

A "jack or all trades" is a master of none!

Most likely doesn't exist anymore. This thread is about 6 months old