Do your affiliates trust you? Do they have faith in you? I’m not talking about merely expecting their checks be sent each pay period but true faith in that they trust you to do what’s right. If you’re unsure, then the answer is likely “no”. A good affiliate manager is always looking for that win-win where the company and its affiliates are both successful. After all, if your affiliates are successful then your program is successful. A successful, long term, partnership should be built on trust. When affiliates brand you as trustworthy and dependable, your reputation can become well known which yields even more affiliates. They will often work harder for you than other affiliate managers.

Get to know your affiliates, you should communicate with them on a regular basis. A program with no communication gives the impression that it’s been abandoned or isn’t a serious venture for the company. Ask for feedback, good, bad or otherwise. But, asking for feedback isn’t enough if you’re not prepared to act on it. You may get feedback regarding improvements to your program or issues with sales tracking. If it’s broke, fix it now and don’t wait. Serious affiliates are in this to make money and if sales aren’t tracked properly, they aren’t getting paid for their efforts. Put yourself in their shoes to understand how they feel. If you only received a partial paycheck, contacted the person responsible and never got a reply or the problem was never fixed, how long would you stay at your job? Affiliates have an advantage here, they don’t need to look for another career, they just need to replace links to you with your competitor’s links.

Information about building trust wouldn’t be complete without covering the kind of affiliates to avoid. These include those who are engaged in cookie stuffing, forced clicks and parasites. For detailed information on them, see the link at the end of this article. Allowing these types of affiliates into your program can do a great amount of damage to your reputation. For example, if affiliates find out you have parasites in your program, and they will find out, the top producers will often leave your program and sign with your competitor. Parasites often take, or divert, traffic and sales from other affiliate sites and the merchant’s own site as well. The first affiliate worked hard for that traffic, and may even spend money on pay-per-click advertising, only to have a parasite divert the visitor and take the sale. Again, put yourself in their shoes: Would you work with a merchant who not only accepted parasites into their affiliate program but also paid those affiliates a commission when they diverted traffic and sales from you?

Remember, do the right thing and do it consistently.

For more information on cookie stuffing, parasites and forced clicks, take a look at Ben Edelman’s site. He’s a great resource and has plenty of evidence to support his claims.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 10th, 2005 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.