What do affiliates really want?

[EricLocken]

Hi

I am putting the finishing touches to my affiliate programme and am trying to figure out what affiliates really want.

Hopefully I can make my affiliate programme stand out from others. Please feel free to add your suggestions.

I think they base their choice on a number of factors, besides basing it on the commission they can get per sale.

I think the crutial things are:

They want to ensure or reduce the chance of the customer going direct without going through there link.

They want a fairly unique / exclusive product so it is not available from every website they visit.

Some of them would like the option to drop ship the product so they "own" the customer and the product is just shipped on their behalf.

They would like multiply layers so they can earn more.

Let me know if any of you can think of others.

Eric Locken

www.InterviewBooks.com

[StephanieCordray]

I'd be the wrong person to ask about this... I signed up for two programs, google adsense and amazon not to make any real money but as a convenience to visitors to the site... My business is for making money, lol. The one I'm talking about is a project site that isn't costing me anything other than paying for the domain name and time put into it.

[ian]

At the end of the day it all comes down to conversions, and how much money a webmaster can generate from their traffic. Lower percentages etc can yield higher returns if the site generates more sales. But yes things like long life tracking cookies, high percentage of sales, co-branding, and no affiliate holes which can result in loss of commissions are some of the major ones as you mentioned.
I particularly like affiliate programs which earn me recurring commissions for the lifetime that that person remains a customer. Two tier commissions where you earn commissions on affiliate sales is also quite good.

[bighits]

Just make sure that when a customer is sent to the buying site that it is a site that will "sell" the customer. Your job is to warm them up and tease them a little bit so they are in the buy mode when they go to that site. Some products are good but the site itself may do a poor job of selling it. You just presell (warm them up). The product site should do the selling. People do not want 2 sales pitches in a row. You make a recommendation. No hard sell on your part.

[trishamcfarlane]

My pet hate is when affiliate programs don't have affiliate resources; i.e.

To join my affiliate program just put this link on your site (....hop.clickbank...)

There should be plenty of ads to choose from as well as some good marketing techniques.

Trish.

[john238]

Good payouts, good support, many ways of contacting the affiliate program, quick payouts, many options of payouts, a 2 tier program, residual incomes, many options to link to the affiliate programs site and even their products with the use of datafeeds, etc.

[Ar3d]

Just always affiliate program is not selling a products or services, its a preselling.