I am the owner of an e-commerce site, we're thinking of launching an affiliate program that promotes products for sale on our site. I've read a number of threads about external sites adding the "nofollow" attribute, so page rank does not get passed to the merchant. We are just looking to diversify our network through our affiliate program. My question is, as the merchant, do I need to worry about giving out links to members who join my affiliate program? It's up to them what they do with the links, however they use the links does not impact me? I am a little concerned about our links showing up on spam-like sites, those sites could greatly impact our ranking with the way Panda or Penguin sees those links, correct? We do approve our members but we don't want to have to continually monitor all of the affiliates. We don't want to do anything that will impact our serps because we are ranking very well. Can somebody please give me some insight on this?
Affiliates don't take likely to merchants who just want increased exposure. They want merchants who convert so they make money - after all you are not paying them for links! I am afraid if you want a successful affiliate program you need to work at it so you will need to put some time into monitoring affiliates. Working with a network should help you reduce the possibility of working with dodgy sites. They can give you the data of affiliate URLS sending you the traffic.
The best way to do it is to get someone from amazon, click bank or commission junction to let them give you clues on how they have been handling their own. Someone that has not done such a thing can not explain it to you and be right. Not at all. Work hard at it by getting some experience people from these companies. Good luck