[Linda Buquet]

"What type of affiliate are most successful in referral programs?
What are some key indicators for whether an affiliate will deilver unique leads that wouldn't find us otherwise?"

So to answer that one direct question... it's really hard to tell. Affiliate marketing is a numbers game and on average only around 5% of affiliates will produce for each merchant.

But the KEY is you don't know when an inactive affililiate could start becoming active. They could join, be busy and never promote your program and then 3 months later they build a whole new site devoted to promoting your products.

Obviously affiliates targeted to your market are best. But an affiliate could join your program with a blue widget site and you would not necessarily know they own 50 other sites and 3 of those are a perfect match for your products, they just need time to get around to adding your links.