5 Ways to KEEP Affiliates Happy & Motivated!

[affearner]

OK. I understand that sometimes there's a need to be considerate. But how long should you wait for dormant affiliates?

[Linda Buquet]

Well I don't think it's really a matter of being considerate. It's a matter of being fair and smart - realizing there may be valid reasons for the inactivity.

I think CJ culls affiliates with no sales after 6 months. I know good affiliates that got canned right after they started building a new site for CJ merchants, but before they were able to get a sale.

I'm curious. How much does it cost you per month to keep an inactive affiliate?
Is there any cost at all?

[affearner]

You see I was informed that some inactive affiliates are still using our campaigns and creatives. It's like they have their ways of stealing from us without giving us due credits. So now I'm confused whether or not I should trust even inactive affiliates that they really are way out of our league.

[Linda Buquet]

I don't understand. If you are the network you are at the top of the food chain.
How can an inactive affiliate steal from you?

[John Jupp]

An inactive affiliate cannot steal from you. Their links may or may not function and they don't get paid so what's the beef other than perhaps out of date creative. A polite request for them to remove links should suffice.

As for whether an affiliate should be removed from a program for inactivity well I am not going to comment much on that. Removing an inactive affiliate from an entire network does happen and some networks activity and zeal in doing this verges on paranoia.

I shall give you two examples of relevance which happened to me.

One merchant I joined a year ago. Two months ago finally built a niche website to promote them. Now featured high in the SERPS. Merchant is happy as I emailed them on joining to say I would take my time to list them and promote them properly so don't expect any results for a long time. I run loads of sites and there are only so many hours in the day.

The second example concerns a network. Signed up December 24th 2007. Their automated system threatened to ditch me from the network end of January 2008 if I was not performing. Wrote to them and they rescinded apologising that because I was registered in 2007 and they do an annual check of active affiliates, because I had not generated anything they were automatically ditching me.

Needless to say back on there and listed. Now both sites where I promote for that network and that merchant are on Page 1 of Google and have been since trawled and both sites have attracted the interest of dropshippers offering me dropship retail deals for both niches paying an average 12-25% per product and that includes the merchant who waited a year when his program offers 10% and now he's offering me a 25% dropship deal.

So do not be hasty to ditch affiliates. You may be making a huge mistake. Instead ask them kindly to submit a sample url where you are advertised and after reviewing the link, offer them ways to improve performance.

One final note:

There is on average 1 merchant to every 12 affiliates in the world and 98% of affiliates are slow performers. There are plenty of merchant programs out there for affiliates to promote and the affiliate manager or merchant who blithely assumes that affiliate marketing is the main stay of the business is a poor affiliate manager or merchant. Affiliate marketing should complement existing business models and not be the main source of revenue.

[Linda Buquet]

In thinking about this some more - I think affearner may have the type of network that is a sub affiliate. Maybe they broker offers and are the middleman. So they get affiliates who sign up with them, use their creatives - but don't sell anything for them and just go around them to the merchant or top level network directly. If that's the case, I don't have any experience that that type of sub network so don't know what to tell you.

[affearner]

Thanks for the information John. I guess you've said it all.

Linda, I'm sorry for the confusion. I re-checked emails from my boss and it was an affiliate from China and is now in our fraud alert.

[Linda Buquet]

For some reason there really is LOTS of affiliate fraud that comes from China.

Not sure if you heard my story but a big Chinese fraud ring stole my identity and applied to TONS of networks pretending to be Linda Buquet from 5 Star. Used my home address, phone number and everything. Then started making fraudulent sales and racked up a ton of money in my name. It was awful. Some merchants that didn't know me thought I was the fraudster. ME!

Long story short tried to get FBI involved since it was also a case of international mail fraud. They were collecting checks in a bunch of people's names at mail centers all over the US that would then forward all their checks to China. FBI would not do anything. It's a big long story and off-topic for this positive thread about how to keep affiliates happy.

[affearner]

Wow! I'm sorry to hear that Linda. But some time ago we received an email from an affiliate asking for their commission for a huge sale they made. Although I haven't had any updat about this incident but it almost cost me my job since I'm the one handling affiliate applications and other affiliate services.

Right now, every time I receive an application coming from China and India I immediately decline it. I pity those who are serious and honest but what can I do? If you were in my place, will you also do the same thing?