Geno on September 2nd, 2010

Reversals happen. They happen to merchants, and by extension, they hit affiliates too. Of course, affiliates love programs with “no reversals” policies, but if you, as a merchant, aren’t ready to offer one, I strongly encourage you to at least stick to the following 3 best practices:
1) Locking Periods — Set the locking period in [...]

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Geno on August 30th, 2010

Almost immediately after posting my 9 affiliate fraud prevention tips on Econsultancy I have received the following question from a merchant:
If we do detect a fraudulent affiliate, do you think it’s standard/best practice to remove him or her from the program without paying out the commissions they’ve “earned”?
“Earned”? I believe “stolen” would be a much [...]

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Geno on August 29th, 2010

A friend and fellow affiliate marketer, Mark Welch, writes that “the single most important source of successful affiliates is a direct invitation from the program manager to the site owner or advertising manager” (source: Affiliate Recruitment Strategies and Practices post). I fully concur with Mark here.
Interestingly enough, out of all available methods of direct contact, [...]

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A merchant, who is launching an affiliate program, has emailed me the following question:
How effective would very well produced videos be as creatives? We were thinking of possibly having some videos made and wanted to know how well these tend to pull in traffic and sales vs banners and text links.
Great question, especially with the [...]

Continue reading about Effectiveness of Online Video: CTR, Conversion & Other Data

In the beginning of this year, while replying to a completely different question, I wrote:
The responsibility for conversion of affiliate-referred traffic is always a shared one: (i) affiliates should work on making it a targeted traffic, while (ii) merchants should ensure that their own websites actually convert. I have seen affiliate programs with zero conversion [...]

Continue reading about How Conversion Optimization Increased Performance by Over 50%

Geno on August 24th, 2010

Having analyzed how affiliates see links on 5 affiliate networks — Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareASale, Google Affiliate Network, and AvantLink — I have noticed that 2 of these 5 (CJ and AvantLink) offer data on link performance.
Commission Junction shows link’s 3-months and 7-days EPC:

AvantLink, in their turn, displays link’s Conversion Rate “calculated from click-throughs and [...]

Continue reading about Affiliate Link Performance Metrics are Misleading

About a month ago, I made a blog post on the 3 signs that tell you to decline an affiliate application. It was an international (i.e. non-US) affiliate, and an Ireland-based search and affiliate marketer, Dave Davis quickly commented:
Wow, awesome seeing the “other side” of the applications. This example is an absolute shocker.
Would love to [...]

Continue reading about Good Affiliate Application or What Affiliate Managers Want to See

A merchant which already has a pay-per-sale affiliate program in place, and is considering tapping into pay-per-call advertising, has emailed me the following question:
Do you think affiliates are commonly motivated to build affiliate marketing campaigns for the promise of lead-based commissions on phone sales?
We’re slightly dubious of this idea. Why would they choose a pay [...]

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Geno on August 17th, 2010

Based on various polls and surveys, we can confidently state that around one-fifth of affiliates are using affiliate program directories to find programs to join [more in my Are Affiliate Program Directories Dying? and Effective Affiliate Recruitment Through Affiliates' Eyes posts].
The only logical question to follow this data is:
What are the top affiliate program directories [...]

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Geno on August 9th, 2010

A merchant has emailed me the following text:
I would like to know what is the range of percentage paid out in the affiliate program? Someone told me it is between 3% to 25%. Is that right? What is the lowest rate you have seen so far? the median? and the highest?
Actually, the range is much [...]

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