What makes you join an affiliate program?

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DylanLoh.com

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other then the product and salespage itself, what makes you go 'yes i gotta promote this!' on the affiliate page itself?

Is it the various tools? Ability to contact owner 1-1? Conversion statistics & proof?

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Dylan
 


I think for most people it's the conversion rate of the offer, but also the "gut feeling" of how well you think this product/service can be marketed and sold to visitors.

What I would like to hear more about here on Wickedfire is what kind of networks people go to to promote special / niche products. CJ.com seems to have the best selection out there, but I have heard so much bad reputation on this board about CJ, from Jon, shoemoney, etc. that I am very reluctant to consider CJ.

More popular networks among WF members are of course Copeac, XY7, Maxbounty, AzoogleAds, etc. Those are great and I use some offers there already. However - they do have one thing in common (it seems) and that is; they all have very similar type of offers/products. The majority of offers are often about "make money" kits, diet products, the same ol' $x.x zip/email offers, etc. It gets old after a while browsing through the same list of products that you know seventy thousand people before you already have picked and are using. :)
(And yes, I do know they each have their own "exclusive offers" and that's fine. But not what I need when I wanna market something that has very little competition in a niche I have discovered).

Don't get me wrong folks, those offers are obviously very popular and I use some of them too. Nothing wrong with that. But what I'm saying is this:

You often hear advice to newbies like "Just start up a blog or site about a subject you're really interested in and know something about. Then, put up
some affiliate offers to products that relate to your subject..."

Well, that seems to me easier said then done.
Let's say I wanna start up a blog about 'Chrome Lowrider Wheels' for pimped out trucks. Ok.. so I set up my blog, write up some content around the subject. Then.. I want to put up some affiliate offers for chrome lowrider wheels. So where do I go? Certainly, Copeac/XY7/maxbounty/Azoogleads do NOT offer any such specific product programs.
I could then go to CJ.com and probably find exactly what I was looking for (because they DO have an amazing selection of manufacturers, vendors, merchants, etc. in almost any business). Finding a specific niche product there is easy. But then again CJ.com is discouraged.

And I hear your replies say; "Dude... stick with the offers that convert. Forget about niche stuff that no one buys and play safe". Well, that's not the spirit! Whenever I find a great niche with low competition and high demand, you bet I wanna milk that particular niche oddity product to the max.

So what do you guys do? Is there another great alternative to CJ.com that I don't know about? :)
 
ImagesAndWords said:
Well, that seems to me easier said then done.
Let's say I wanna start up a blog about 'Chrome Lowrider Wheels' for pimped out trucks. Ok.. so I set up my blog, write up some content around the subject. Then.. I want to put up some affiliate offers for chrome lowrider wheels. So where do I go? Certainly, Copeac/XY7/maxbounty/Azoogleads do NOT offer any such specific product programs.
I could then go to CJ.com and probably find exactly what I was looking for (because they DO have an amazing selection of manufacturers, vendors, merchants, etc. in almost any business). Finding a specific niche product there is easy. But then again CJ.com is discouraged.
Click to expand...

well, in this case you would have to setup your affiliate program yourself.

choose the producer, get in contact with him and start working something out.

doing affiliate marketing doesn't exclude following up on common business models :)
 
I think that the most important things in an affiliate system are:

- Pays (One-time)
- Good Interface (easy to navigate and work with)
- Good offer (such as webhosting service etc...)
- Methods of payment (Wire Transfer, PayPal, Check...)
- Good Creatives

The above are very important! -- What you think?!
 
It's really hard to judge from the page itself because all the goodies are behind the login. A list of relevant merchants is good if you're dealing in a broad market vertical, but when you get down to stuff like loan offers it's difficult to know without either word of mouth or by testing the offers yourself. In short, nothing the networks can say could possibly affect my decision because I don't trust marketers to tell me the truth unless I know them or I have some kind of evidence to support their answers to my questions. Do they pay on time? How do I know this unless someone I trust tells me or until the company gets get paid on time, regularly. Do they have good offers? How do I know this unless someone I trust tells me or until I test the offers myself? With the broad variation in what works for different people I think even word of mouth isn't a great indicator of what's a good offer. Just for instance, I don't personally know anyone who can make anything worthwhile from ringtones, but there's a world of people on forums like this that seem to make a killing. They could recommend ringtone offers, but it'd be a waste of time, heh.

There are a lot of small or medium sized operators out there, some of which are really good. I used to do a ton of work with Adteractive out in San Fran and they are still, bar none, the best affiliate group I have ever worked with in the entire industry.

The main differentiator in affiliate networks to me is what they offer. It seems like they all have speciality verticals - LinkShare and CJ have locked up most of the consumer stuff while AffiliateFuel, for instance, is heavy on education stuff. I know there are a lot of anecdotal horror stories out there about various affiliate networks, but I've seen roughly the same problems across the board manifested differently. One network upgrades their link structure ruining all the existing links while another upgrades their link structure changing the way reporting is handled completely. I've also been second hand ear on stories about merchants not paying out at this network or that, but I've not heard of anyone who is particularly awful, though CJ has the most high profile gaffes of anyone I have heard of with lots of reversals and lockouts (I still use them). I can say I've not been part of an effort that's been stiffed disproportionately by any of the majors (CPA, Azoogle, AF, CJ, LS, etc), so I try to get companies to work with anyone who has an offer that's up their alley.

For whatever reason, when you get into the hardcore online marketing world (as opposed to the webmaster monetization world) you find more and more people that flatly will not work with CJ or LS, but, whatever your chosen network, if you ask for horror stories someone will have at least one (my best horror story was CyberRebate going tits up about 5 years ago, heh, one of our web site members was actually in their top 10 creditors list when the bankruptcy papers came out, but I couldn't blame the network for that).
 
1. Payout
1. Conversion

Yeah that's right there's 2, 1's neither is more important then the other. What it comes down to CPC or Cost Per Click. Of course both those 2 things are what equals that formula.

How do you test conversion? Send 50-100 hits of traffic from the source of you choice. Yes, it is going to be a different conversion from different sources.


Based on your question I'm assuming you already have traffic for a niche. However if you don't have that either then I'd also look at price of traffic for PPC or competition for organic.

With the CPC figure you can easily calc your return. You know if you get a 1.10$ CPC, and you're paying 50 cents you're going to do decent. However if you're paying 3$ and your average is 1.10$, well you get the point.
 
I would have to say a program that has good payouts, plus their products convert at a good ratio. But now I am really starting to look for programs that offer a lot of support to their affiliates. Whether it be content, website design, seo help ect... these programs are the ones I want to be part of.:D
 
1. Payout
2. Gut

Conversion rate is obviously important but I don't always base my decision to run a campaign on it. Think about all the campaigns out there that haven't REALLY been tested. =)

My 2 cents ~ Always be looking out for the hidden gems in the list....
 
I think because of the things and points brought up in this thread we will be making some changes to the directory. Thanks for the honesty everyone!
 
all i have to say is, i quit promoting a certain affiliate program about a year ago. i left the old sites up, and just checked stats for first time in a year. still have nearly half my original sign ups rebilling every single month. muhahahahahahahhaha

guess i'll be starting re-promotion of that program.
 
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