Was talking to a business associate recently and was saying how he wished to start an affiliate marketing campaign to primarily generate sales/leads. This let me to think about some of the reasons why affiliate campaigns typically don't attract affiliates. Would be good if others could add their thoughts to this thread for all to benefit. Merchants, product and site owners want to further their marketing reach, generate additional sales/leads, and make their brand as popular as possible, so one of the first questions they often ask affiliate networks is ‘how many affiliates will be promoting our website’? The answer of course, is that it very much depends on the merchant and the details of the campaign. Here are the some Reasons Why Your Affiliate Campaign Isn’t Attracting Affiliates: Low Commission: An obvious one this, and fundamentaly the most important. If you offer a lower level of commission than that of your competitors, who do you think the affiliates are more likely to promote? High Merchant Pricing (sales campaigns): This ties in with conversion rates. If a merchants pricing is higher than its competitors pricing, conversion rates will be low. Experienced affiliates know to compare prices and promote the merchant with the lowest pricing. Restrictive Terms: Affiliates use a wide range of traffic sources to drive sales/leads to merchants campaigns. Restricting promotional choice (e.g, no pay per click affiliates, no email affiliates) can severely reduce the amount of traffic being sent to a merchants website Leakage: Prominent telephone numbers with strong call to actions (e.g call us now!) will serve to divert a proportion of affiliate referrals towards calling the merchant in question, rather than completing the online checkout process. This will result in lost commissions for affiliates. Experienced affiliates know this and will avoid such merchants. Merchants Website Design/Usability: With affiliate marketing, conversion of traffic referrals is everything. The merchant’s website should be professional looking, and usable to maximise conversions. Poorly designed websites will see high bounce rates, and affiliate traffic will be wasted. Brand Reputation: Affiliates know that well known brands are often trusted by potential customers compared to lesser well known brands and so, all other things being equal, convert better. Lesser known brands have to offer ‘more’ in order to attract affiliates to them. Poor Localisation: Campaigns should be localised to the target market. For example, a UK landing page should show currencies in GBP, and address details should ask for Postal Codes (not ZIP codes). Don’t mention CNN or ABC News to UK visitors because they will see that it isn’t UK-specific which can drain trust. Lack Of Niche Marketing Materials: Many affiliates require specific marketing resources to enable promotion. These may include data feeds, voucher codes, content units, and anything else a merchant can think of to increase accessibility. [Source: http://bit.ly/A5KiDW]