@Toweraffiliates.com 211991 wrote:
Dom
Could you elaborate on doing research, on the affiliate program of choice?
I think payment reliability is #1
affiliate management contact is #2When you first started out – what mistakes did you learn from?
First of all, I didn’t do my due diligence and promoted some fly-by-night outfits. It wasn’t as easy then to research as it is now – now, search CAP for the name of the program, go to AGD and search there and go to Casinomeister and make sure the place is not on the rogue list there. I almost quit after the first 8 months or so because I realized some of the places I had on my site did not and would not pay me or my players. Lots of lessons learned there.
So payment reliability and research goes hand in hand. Although I have to say that nowadays I allow a lot more late payments than I tolerated initially after learning my lessons – because of the political climate and real issues that may exist from time to time in getting payments out.
Responsiveness of the program is key for a new affiliate who needs to learn and can use help getting ahead, and it’s key again for larger affiliates who are busy busy and don’t have the time to visit some 40 program sites a day to look for news. As a busy affiliate, I love new offers and the proper banner codes for them in the mail – places that send these always end up doing better with me because they are attended to promptly and don’t sit there waiting for me to get around to collecting new stuff from their site.
“Ready to go” offers in the mail may also wake up that dormant larger affiliate you have signed up and don’t even know about…
And you won’t believe the number of mails I get that do not have a link back to the program site… you see a link, you click it. You don’t see one, you think that you will go there after finishing your mail – and then other things happen and the thought gets lost in the shuffle.
There are a lot of simple things that add up to a program not getting the attention it may deserve…
You also won’t believe how often I simply do not get a reply to a query. This more often than not results in removal of the program – if I can’t login or can’t get specific info about a promo that may be running. I have little tolerance for places that simply don’t reply to mails.
A good aff manager needs to understand what affiliates do and how the web works in order to give newbie support. Often managers just have no idea and they simply can’t answer questions. As small affiliate I would ask myself: does s/he know what I am up against? Can s/he advise on why banners or links are not being clicked on my site? Is the only answer I ever get:”put us on the index page” or “give us more exposure and you will make more money”. That just simply won’t do, aff managers need to be prepared to actually go and look at the site and give some constructive criticism. Do you see how many requests for site evaluations there are here? Are you prepared to provide that sort of help?
Again, if you can help new affiliates grow, you are growing nice future profits, friendships and loyalty.