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How Not to Encourage Affiliates to Promote your product – Affiliate Networks

Posted on June 2, 2009 in Affiliate Networks, Affiliate Tips  

The title says it all i will be discussing Affiliate Networks and How Not to Encourage Affiliates to Promote your product. Many time i get emails from affiliate networks, companies directly that just make no sense and don’t encourage the affiliate to promote your product. So here are some tips to those people / Affiliate Networks of what not to do.

1. Don’t email your affiliates every other day with same offers or same useless information. Provide some good insight, provide a highlight of a good offer. An email stating here is top performing offers doesn’t cut it (when those same 10 offers are there week in week out).

2. Don’t Pester your affiliates asking why they aren’t running offers with you. While i agree with the email asking me hey i noticed you dropped revenue or hey i see you have promoted anything with us in a while and open dialogue. But don’t blast me email as say hey Acai is rocking right now you should be promoting it… DUH even my Grandma knows this… try to pull me back in with usefull information. Offer me a top payout or access to exclusive offer to get me going…

3. You Network only rehashes other offers. Meaning you don’t have any exclusives and i can find all your offers at better payouts elsewhere. This one kills me as i get pestered by new networks all the time… Signup we have best payout only to get there offers and they are half what i get now.

4. Ignore your affiliates. In affiliate marketing we move at 100 miles per hour daily… take the time to reach out to us, ask us how things are going and if there is anything you can do to help get some revenue going. IF i say no i am busy leave it at that… don’t contact me again the next day wait a week or two.

5. Do not send an email stating you haven’t been active lately with our program so we are going to cancel you unless you drive some revenue. While i understand cleaning house and getting read of dead weight affiliates. But maybe i am ramping up promotions and right before i blast it out i get dropped… this is poor in my opinion. Instead they should send out an email we are cleaning house and notice you haven’t done and revenue, do you plan to do any revenue with us soon? Is there anything we can do to help get revenue going? Not drive revenue or we will drop you. Give them reason to communicate back with you. As keeping my name and email on file can’t be bogging them down.

6. Don’t Work with your affiliates. So many networks just don’t wheel and deal and this business is all about wheeling and dealing. If i ask for a bump you better come back with SOMETHING even if its a nickel don’t tell me there is no room whatsoever.. to me that says you aren’t looking to build a relationship and aren’t willing to cut into your margins, I would rather you promote with a company that is willing to work.

7. Don’t Pay on time…. Yes this is sad but it happens all the time companies saying they are NEt 30 and i get paid net 60 etc.. while this doesn’t happen anymore as i don’t use them but pay when you say you are going to pay and if for some reason you are behind notify your affiliates and try to make it up to them fedex the check etc.. luckily most networks do Direct deposit now… but even then make sure those transfers are on time whether weekly. bi-weekly or monthly.

8. Don’t encourage affiliates. If you have an affiliate driving serious revenue don’t leave it up to just your rewards program or referal program.. Send them Tshirt, Macbook, flip video… something to show them they are improtant to the network. Some companies get this and some don’t. While affiliates work for the paper they bonuses or extra things are nice and VERY much appreciated.

How Not to Encourage Affiliates to Promote your product – Affiliate Networks. Hopefully companies and Networks will learn from this and in the end we all win!



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Comments

9 Responses to “How Not to Encourage Affiliates to Promote your product – Affiliate Networks”

  1. MusLopil on June 2nd, 2009 9:03 pm

    What interesting article never thought about it in that way.

  2. jack on June 3rd, 2009 9:42 am

    some good tips that affiliate networks/managers should follow.

  3. Lee on June 3rd, 2009 9:51 am

    If only more and more networks would pay attention to posts like this one…

  4. Juniper on June 3rd, 2009 9:54 am

    There are a lot of affiliate programs guilty of this. There is one (who shall remain nameless) who sends an email on the first of every month at midnight with a very accusatory tone stating they are “concerned” with your lack of activity.

    Maybe if they were concerned, they’d actually make a non automated effort to reach out and find out what sort of offers and rates I’m looking for to run them.

    LOL @ Acai offers. So true.

    I’d be happy with even a quarterly phone call from my affiliate managers. But there are some networks I signed up for years ago and couldn’t even tell you what the names of them were as they never even bothered to follow up.

    Good post!

  5. Matt McWilliams on June 3rd, 2009 11:36 am

    Amen! Great tips. Too frequent emails sent just because it is “time for another email” are ridiculous. You better have something to say! It’s ok to ask if you can help them get back to their previous level, but don’t threaten them or discourage them. When their sales drop, that is NOT the time to drop commissions.

  6. Mark on June 3rd, 2009 2:27 pm

    Thank you – I appreciate the honesty here and will do what I can as an aff. manager to follow what you have requested.

  7. seobro on June 4th, 2009 10:11 am

    The favorite tricks are when you sign up it is $20 min and 20% commission. However, as you get close to the twenty, new rules due to economic recession.

    OK, now it is 5% commission and $1000 minimum for them to cut a check. Of course they declare bankruptcy before you get near your $1000.

  8. JaneRadriges on June 13th, 2009 6:40 pm

    The article is usefull for me. I’ll be coming back to your blog.

  9. GarykPatton on June 16th, 2009 2:31 am

    Hi. I like the way you write. Will you post some more articles?

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