While I strongly disagree that the highest affiliate program “payout” is the best criteria for choosing an affiliate program (because the actual payout you’ll get will always be determined by a combination of the affiliate program’s commissions, conversion rate, and reversal rate), today I’d like to address a question that many and especially beginning affiliates [...]
Continue reading about How To Find Out Affiliate Program’s Highest Pay (Commissions)
Yesterday as I was adding new coupons for a ShareASale-based affiliate program I have noticed a little (but a very significant) addition to one of the fields you can fill out when adding a coupon/deal to the network. They now have a field for special commission to be applied on coupon/deal transactions. The fine print [...]
Continue reading about ShareASale — Affiliate Network That Cares About Affiliates
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 [...]
I’ve had a merchant approach me with a basic question, but since many other merchants who are also new to affiliate marketing may wonder about the same things, instead of just replying to him via email, I am posting my reply below. This particular merchant is considering starting his first-ever affiliate program on ShareASale, and [...]
Continue reading about How to Read Affiliate Program Statistics & Calculate Commission
Today I am starting a series of posts (I am not planning to publish them in a consecutive manner, but new ones will be added as I come across the issues to address), and a whole new category – Affiliate Marketing Fallacies. In this rubric I will be covering the popular fallacies and misconceptions about [...]
Continue reading about Misconception: Only High Commissions Attract Affiliates
So you have decided to start an affiliate program. One of the very first question that you will have to deal with is what to set the program’s commission rate at. There are various opinions on how to calculate it. My short advice is this: a) Calculate the maximum that you can afford to pay [...]
Continue reading about How To Calculate Affiliate Commission Rate
With common regularity both affiliates, and merchants wonder what is a commission locking period. Let’s take ShareASale (SaS) for one example. On this affiliate network for every transaction in their reports merchants see a “lock date” (see example below): Affiliates, on the other hand, see both the “lock date”, and the transaction status (example of [...]
Continue reading about Locking Periods and Lock Dates in Affiliate Marketing
A merchant, who has recently started an affiliate program emailed me the following question: Affiliates are currently being credited their commission at the moment of sale. What if an order gets canceled, or we sell something that is no longer in stock? First of all, make sure you it is not possible for the end [...]
Continue reading about Do Affiliates Get Commission on Canceled Orders?
Every once in a while affiliates post (in blog, forum, or other social media channel) about merchants lowering the commission rates in their affiliate programs. History also testifies that this happens not only with smaller brands, but larger online merchants were caught doing this as well. Some justify commission drops by inaccurate initial calculation of [...]
Continue reading about Lowering Affiliate Commission Rate = Big Mistake
One of the most effective types of affiliate incentives is commission increase. There are two basic ways merchants increase affiliate commissions: 1. Based on Performance Performance may be measured in the number of sales or the cumulative monetary value of affiliate-driven sales. Example A: The default commission is set at 10%, but affiliates that refer [...]
Continue reading about Ways to Increase Affiliate Commission
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