What are AM's interested in?

Are Affiliate Marketers interested in conversations?

[Brownbox]

Hi all, I'm launching an affiliate program for a company and I really don't want to provide affiliates with just a normal bare bones product.

So I am investigating what people want out of an affiliate program other than higher conversion rates and more incentives.

So far we have thought that it might be helpful to have a higher level of communication with the program managers, where feedback on how the banners/text links etc are made, what people prefer to use etc. Is this important to you as an AM?

Also, there was a thought of providing RSS feeds for products including the affiliate codes in that (per user). Maybe on a blog etc.

What is important to you as an Affiliate Marketer in this sense?

[ska_demon]

Nobody really cares what incentives may be offered because everyone offers the same really. Make a bazillion sales in a month and we'll give you $50 bonus doesn't encourage me to join a program.

For me the most important things are honest and true tracking coupled with regular (monthly minimum) payments on time, everytime. Sure, life is easier with a good supply of creatives and feeds but at the end of the day it is us that put in the work and therefore expect to get paid for it.

Money rules ;oP

SkA

[laertes]

Further to ska_demons's post, tell your potential affiliates what your sites conversion rate and average sale is. Makes it easy for us to calculate whether a PPC campaign can be profitable or not. Money talks.

[frup]

I couldn't agree with ska_demon more. Pay on time every time. And pay quickly. So if the pay period ends on the 15th, pay within a week, if not sooner.

Offer Paypal and/or direct deposit payments. Nothing makes a big affiliate feel happier than seeing payment made on-time, every time, directly into their bank account.

[activeco]

1) Honesty and fairness, also towards customers.

2) In the case of publisher selling your individual products: Some reliable system which could enable sales tracking, preferably real time. Thus, shopping cart on the publisher's site and seamless integration with merchant's payment system.
Obviously, not required for simple links to merchant's site.

3) Reasonable/cheap product prices, but good, quality products.

4) Disallowing stealware & parasiteware and possibly crediting real accounts in such cases.

5) Free datafeed with a lot of data.

6) Reasonable comissions.

7) Timely payments

[Brownbox]

Awesome thanks for the feedback. I'll probably post something up here if the program works!

[mike_l]

This actually helps a lot for other affiliate managers such as I. I keep asking my affiliates about what they want, and many affiliates just don't speak up at all or don't care, because they have soo many different advertisers to worry about.

[Brownbox]

What kind of program are you running? What do you generally offer above the norm?

I'd be interested in hearing from you.

[ccam96]

In addition to all of the great suggestions already stated, I would add regular communication via an email newsletter. One of my favorite programs , which I am in the top 25, has regular email newsletters. In this newsletter are total monthly results for the business, # leads/ sales, best practices , top affiliate payouts, etc.

It's always good to know how the merchant is doing as this positively reinforces loyalty from the affiliate.

Offering content ideas to publishers is also a good idea.

[ccam96]

Having advanced creatives also helps considerably. This would include "deep linking" to individual products/ services instead of just to the homepage. (This is very important and allows publishers to be more targeted with their "pre-sell") One of the best programs I've seen on CJ allows affiliates to link to any page on their site while passing along the cookie referral with their affiliate ID.

Integrated forms, if you're a pay per lead merchant, would also be beneficial.