Aff. Referral vs. SE Referral Conversion Rates

Should I expect them to be the same?

[wingslevel]

OK, It's taken a while, but I am getting serious about setting up an aff program for four of my ecommerce sites.

I know that conversion rates can be all over the place, but should affiliate referred visitors to my sites convert at the same rate as search engine referred visitors?

I am building a spreadsheet to calculate my roi and I need to make some kind of an assumption (and did I mention I have zero aff experience).

Thanks

[dmorison]

I wouldn't expect anything, since there are so many factors involved.

SE's can produce hits on totally obscure terms that just happen to show up in your privacy policy or something like that.

Affiliates can be well managed or poorly managed by you.

Affiliates themselves can do a lot of selling up front before they refer to your site, or might be some idiot purchasing 20 billion happy-hits for $9.99.

I think you'll find the stats work out on an affiliate by affiliate basis. Some will no doubt out-perform SE traffic by a considerable margin, others probably won't.