Describe The Perfect Affiliate Programme

I've been doing a little bit of affiliate stuff, as a publisher, myself. I'm now launching an affiliate campaign as a merchant.

I was hoping to hear from you guys and girls what you think would be the perfect affiliate programme, from your perspective. 100% commission is the obvious answer but I'm looking for feedback on:

- product feeds (CSV, XML, RSS?) and what sort of content you need (full description, 2 sentences)
- what sets a merchant apart from a competitor offering the same % on the same products
- how often do you want to be contacted about updates etc. and when does it get annoying?
- what level of support / product training do you expect
- any other wishes, like getting lists of recommended search phrases etc.?
- what sort of advertorial do you want in terms of banners (static, animated, flash), text ads, copy, product finder/search tools etc.

I'd also be interested to hear how you pick new programmes from a network, how you test the waters etc.

Any feedback would be fantastic, thanks!

 

A few things I'd find useful:
- Knowing what products actually sold (though this could be a privacy issue)
- Multi tiered commissions are good
- Product feeds with different length descriptions and images, also sorted into categories
- Lists of search phrases would be good
- Accurate stats on which banners convert best
- If possible some sort of callback mechanism so that we could automatically update our database when products are sold (not sure if anybody does that yet).

 

also is important to have payment ot ATM card and wire payments and of course weekly or bi-monthly!

 

Thanks dct, that's the sort of thing I was hoping to hear. Sunchy, that would be more for the network to do since I'm not going to organise the whole deal myself, just utilizing an existing network.

The callback stuff might be a bit of a technical investment so early, not knowing yet how many would actually use it and how useful it is. To achieve the same, but not real time, I could always share trends and forecasts on certain products and ranges.

How often do affiliates update their pages in terms of processing the product feed? It will only be a cron job setting for me but would still be interesting to know.

 

Because I heard product feeds in your post, I am assuming this will be a product based affiliate program w/ 100+ products.

What I like to see:
- coupon codes, offers and promotions that last more than 3 or 4 days. Not too many of these either, because some merchants are riduclous on this one. Example: $1 off Lexmark printer A, $1 off Lexmark printer B, $1 off Lexmark printer C, etc.
- datafeed with categories 2 or 3 levels deep, RSSis my choice
- Content: up 300 words is find for descriptions, images preferably.
- Often contacted: Bi-weekly is fine. If I'm making $$$ with the program, you can call me everyday if you like!
- Adverterials & creatives: standard banner sizes, nix on flash or pop-ups
- Commissions: performance bonuses, sub-affiliate program (2-tier)
- reliable network or in-house program which includes solid tracking & monthly payments. PayPal direct is my choice.

Hope this helps a bit. Interested to see what network you plan to work with, because yes, when it comes to df, some can be funny as well.

Cheers!

 

Thanks Antonio some great feedback in there. The network is AffiliateFuture - I mainly deal with UK customers. It's already live but I'm currently tweaking it before promoting it heavily. Let me know if you have UK traffic though.

Coupon codes I'm working on, great suggestion. The example you mention, is that an example of what you want or an example of the ridiculous ones? Just checking...

I'm going to have unique content written for each product. I don't want to share my own description in fear of dupe content and loosing business long term. So I will at least have one SEOed 4 or 5 sentence sales pitch / summary paragraph (no specifics/features, just benefits) of each product. Would that be useful you think?

'nix' on flash or pop-ups meaning... Not needed?

2nd tier is in the pipeline as well. When it comes to bonusses, do you guys prefer iPods, LCD screen, merchant's actual products/vouchers or cold hard $$$?

 

I always like to see:

- Paypal for payment.
- Detailed stats to help track peformance of program.
- Good marketing materials
- Good communications from merchant

 

Most affiliates are hungry of high payment , so if you are going to pay double than average industry rate you are going to get huge number of affiliates . So high payment is very important for any affiliate campaign .....
Remember its not just money that you are going to make from affiliates sales As a merchant you are going to have following advantage .
1. Brand building
2. You may get resales
3.Mouth publicity by traffic driven from affiliate site may bring good number of sales .
4.you can also make money in future by email lists or selling something else to someone who already bought from your site ...
so you need to design a campaign that gives maximum profit to affiliate without bankcurrpting you .

 

Thanks dcristo. Could you specify which stats are most important to you? AffiliateFuture don't seem to calculate EPC - would affiliates be interested if I did that for them, and email them broken down by product range every month for instance?

And thank you t.a.p. - those are indeed very valid points and I'm definitely trying to make sure it's going to be a lucrative deal for affiliates too, not just for us. It's quite a competitive market so any tips to make us stand out from the merchant crowd are welcome.

 

high CPA or rev share, good conversation, good niche - rest is marginal.
If you want serious affiliates to promote your program be ready to offer exclusive deals for high traffic as well.


No support or training, but a large set of banners, creatives, text lines, feeds etc. in different sizes - both static and animated.

That's just my opinion though, so it may be different


To stand out - offer better deals, bonuses are very good for RP (not the google pr ) since people will blog about that and mention it, like you see shoe blogging about azoogle sending him some presents from time to time

 

If you want to be really nice to affiliates how about rewarding them for repeat sales, so if I refer a repeat customer to you we'll both continue earning.

Another thing you could do is follow Googles example and give out Christmas packs to your top earners, that way they'll talk about how cool you are in affiliate related forums.

 

TOPS, can you tell what niche is it in? you can pm if you don't want to post it here

 

I'm not sure how the repeat sale suggestion could be implemented in an automated fashion. I'd have to enter the refering affiliate into our DB connected to the customer and then somehow (manually) reward them next time.

We're definitely going to reward those that perform well, and those that are a pleasure to work with in general.

MG: It's general online retail. Ranging from aquatics stuff to bedding, sport & fitness and health stuff. 1400 different products, should be something for any affliate.

 

To me this is ridiculous:

There was one merchant a while back that on a daily basis had new codes and offers, though the effort was great, it was a bit much.

I agree with M_Goldman's thoughts as well:

We were working with an affiliate who was bringing in, let's call it, super excellent sales. Because of his consistency in sales, we were able to offer him exclusive deals and a better commission rate as well.

He's happy, we're happy!

Cheers!