Selecting the Best Partners for your Affiliate Program

Not all affiliates are created equal. Having some sort of selection process will help control the quality of your product, sale, and brand. Visit their site and make sure that is meets your approval criteria. It's ok to say no.

Inappropriate Content:

Unless you are promoting adults products, it is best not to associate your brand with sites that have adult content, hate, or other inappropriate content.

Audience:

Who is your audience? Who is their audience? If there is zero synergy between who they target and who you're trying to target, they're probably not the best match for your program. For example, you are looking to have affiliates help sell your high quality expensive cookware line. Chances are you will not have success with affiliates that have sites that attract children or young teenagers.

Region Target:

Are they attracting people from your market area? Are you serving only US based clients? Are their visitors mainly from Australia? The closer their market is to your market, the more traffic they will send to your sites.

Content Quality:

Sites that are mainly filled with banner ads are probably not the best match for your program. You really want to go after sites that have content that would encourage the visitor to stay on their site and see your advertisements. If a site is of very poor content quality, chances of it generating high quality sales or leads for you company is slim to none. Look for sites that rank well organically in the search engines for keywords related to your product or topic. These will be the best quality partners in your program.

Foreign:

Many programs will work with affiliates who live outside their company. Other merchants choose to only work with affiliates who live within the company in which the company resides. If you do choose to work with affiliates that live outside your country, be prepared to have limited communication and delayed payment to them unless you use paypal. If you require consistent communication with your affiliates, it's probably best to work with those that are located within your country.

Marketing Methods:

Be prepared that many affiliates, especially those that are able to generate a high volume of traffic, are not likely to share with you the intimate details of their marketing plans. However, it is in your best interest to have a general understanding of how they are marketing your brands and your websites. Whether you're paying affiliates to generate clicks, sales, or leads, there are a multitude of ways in which they can sell you their "product". What are ways that would generate a low quality "product"? These will vary from merchant to merchant so understanding what marketing methods make a good product will lead you to understand what marketing methods make a bad product. For example, if you are a lead generator, you might choose not to work with affiliates that offer a free gift for completing a lead form because it would generate a low quality lead. Some merchants make the mistake of accepting all affiliates and finding out later that they are committing fraud or generating a very low quality product. If you can have some understanding of how they will be marketing your product, changes are you'll have a higher quality affiliate base and in turn higher quality "products".

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