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 to submit my program information to?

Here’s a list I’m suggesting:

1. AffiliatesDirectory.com
2. AffiliateFirst.com
3. AffiliatePrograms.com
4. AffiliateRanker.com
5. AffiliateScout.com
6. AffiliateSeeking.com
7. AllAffiliatePrograms.com
8. AssociatePrograms.com
9. JamAffiliates.com
10. Top-Affiliate.com

Disclaimer: The above list is a merely alphabetical one, and should not be considered as a ranking or an endorsement of any kind.

If I have missed your favorite quality affiliate program directory, feel free to post about it in the “Comments” area below.

Yesterday I have written about the key affiliate expectations as presented by the new AffStat Report. Today I’d like to mention one more graph that caught my eye in this report. It addresses the question of avenues that affiliates use to find out about affiliate programs “and then join”. The report reveals that the top 3 ways of finding affiliate programs to join are:

1. Affiliate directories (18.3%)
2. Search engines (18%), which when combined with the “personal research” piece of the pie, make up close to 24%. Add affiliate program blogs (which are loved by SEs) to these, and we’ll almost hit a 30% mark.
3. Direct contact by affiliate manager (16.2%)

Conferences (11.3%) follow the above-quoted three, whereas, interestingly enough, the least frequently used methods are (1) affiliate forums* (1.3%), (2) word of mouth (1.3%) and (3) Twitter (3.9%).

Lessons affiliate program managers can learn from this:

1. By all means, do have a dedicated affiliate program page on your website [see this post of mine too]. Additionally, do maintain an affiliate program blog and participate in other activity that will help you improve the organic rankings of webpages that talk about your affiliate program
2. Submit your affiliate program to directories [see also this poll]
3. Use direct approach channels (email, snail mail, personal contact, etc) to reach prospective affiliates

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* It is interesting to me that 1.3% voted for “affiliate forums” but 6.4% for “message boards”. I always thought they are one and the same.

A few days ago Shawn Collins wrote a good post on recruiting targeted affiliates, in the comments to which I suggested several more me methods of affiliate recruitment. Among these methods I have mentioned affiliate program directories as one of the ways to get a word about an affiliate program out. I personally have never measured the success of recruiting affiliates through program directories. However, every time I do a comparative affiliate marketing analysis for a new client, I see affiliate program directories ranking extremely well in nearly every niche. Here’s an example:

Take “credit card affiliate program”  and variations of this key phrase, and you’ll see that  there is a total of over 5,000 people searching for these every month on Google:

When I search for this key phrase just now, here is what I see on the first page of matches (affiliate program directories are highlighted):

…and the same can be seen with nearly every [niche]+[affiliate program] key phase typed in (anywhere between 3 and 5 of the top 10 results belong to affiliate program directories).

Additionally, I see affiliate program directories having fairly good (and improving) Alexa rankings.

Back to Shawn Collins’ post. Commenting on my suggestions, a fellow-OPM, Debbie Carney challenged the idea that affiliate program directories carry much value in affiliate recruitment. She wrote that “even if affiliate directories show up in searches, I don’t think an affiliate has ever joined a program I run because of being listed in one.” Since I have never measured this myself, I have decided to put together a poll to find out what affiliates really think/do.

Here are the results of that poll as they look at the time of this post:

The above data made me conclude that affiliates are, after all, using them, but definitely not the majority of affiliates are.

Then last night when I got a hold of the new AffStat Report, another important piece of the puzzle was found. Here’s one of the pie charts from AffStat:

So, 18% of affiliates still do find out about affiliate programs to join from “affiliate directories”.

So, are affiliate program directories dying? Probably not.

If you haven’t yet voted on my above-quoted poll, I’d certainly love to have you cast your vote as well. Many thanks in advance.