Performance Marketing News

Recently I had a discussion with my fellow panelists on our Pubcon panel and this issue was brought up. One thing we all agreed on, and I want to stress here is that our top producing affiliates, overwhelmingly, are those that we have long standing relationships with. Those that we know their phone numbers, their emails, their IM's. This is from a group of individuals that I would say have experience managing over 100 programs (total guess, I know I've managed over 35 myself).

That got me thinking about all the modifications the networks could make to the affiliate application process and approval queue. At the end of the day, the better and more efficient this process, the more likely the networks are to generate increased revenue. I'm sure they are missing out on commission just in Scott's case as I know he is top performer.

Along with the known affiliates applying to your program, there are hundreds and thousands of applications that come through that are either suspect, fraudulent or simply incomplete. If you are an affiliate manager reading this, you'll probably be nodding your head and maybe even have a chuckle. If you are an affiliate that seems to receive more denials than approvals when you apply to programs, this article is just for you. I'd like to highlight some of the things that managers see every day that you may be doing and need to avoid in order to get your applications approved.

that if affiliate links came from valuable, relevant, trust-worthy sources - bloggers endorsing a product, affiliates of high quality, etc. - they would be counted in link algorithms. Aaron from Google and Nathan from Microsoft both agreed that good affiliate links would be counted by their engines and that it was not necessary to mark these with a nofollow or other method of blocking link value.

Is your affiliate program as effective and efficient as possible? Is it as successful as you hoped it would be? Most programs are not and in most cases, an audit of your program, your promotions, your communications and your competitors allows you to see opportunities to increase the performance of your program. Our Affiliate Program […]

Affiliate Summit will be hosting a Social Media Conference in NYC on October 5th, 2008. See you there!