Choosing the Right Affiliates

When you’ve received an application from a Web site, visit it. Look it over and see what it offers and what audience it’s directed at. Look at its content. Are the site owners trying to reach anyone and everyone who visits their site? For example, is the potential affiliate offering visitors search engine placement AND credit card applications AND phone cards AND long distance service AND pre-paid legal services, and so on, and so on? Get the picture? Declan Dunn calls this the “flea market” approach. If the site sounds like this, then your products or service will be offered to everyone—and selling to everyone means selling to no one.

When you evaluate a potential affiliate site, keep these points in mind:

• See what type of visitors the site is trying to attract. Do they make an attempt to reach a targeted audience?

• Does the Web site’s content synergize well with your offer?

• How is the site design? Is it professional? Would you want your offer to appear on their site?

• How about traffic? How much does it attract? Little traffic may bring few sales or referrals.

• Do you ship internationally? If not, don’t accept international affiliate sites.

Let’s look at each point in detail.

Think of yourself as a visitor to the site. Does the content satisfy the need of a person who has chosen to come there? Does the Web site’s content synergize well with your offer? You must select affiliates that complement the products or services you are selling and would be of interest and relevance to their site visitors. This helps ensure that site visitors are pre-qualified, which will result in a higher conversion rate than would normally be the case. A site with targeted traffic provides a targeted customer prospect.

This is a necessary prerequisite for contextual merchandising. Contextual merchandising is simply placing targeted products near relevant content (see Figure 7.6). Can you place your offer next to content that is relevant to your product or service?

For example, if you’re selling videos, does the potential affiliate offer movie reviews, a fan club, or articles on the cinema industry? If so, they can link directly from a movie review to the exact video that you sell. For example, Linkshare’s Outpost program allows someone to create a link based on SKU number. The same goes for books, music, computers, or just about any other commodity item sold on the Net.

Another reason to seriously look at content sites is because that’s where the majority of Internet users go when they go on the Net. And because content is the prime reason people go online, good content sites make the best type of affiliate partners. Because content sites generate a significant amount of traffic, contextual merchandising can provide both you and your affiliate a good revenue opportunity.

vstore capitalizes on contextual merchandising with their affiliate program. Affiliates can choose from a list of products the kind of store they want to have on their site. With the large amount of products available, any affiliate site should be able to match their content with products to sell.

Look at the site design itself—in particular, the graphics. If a site has lots of large graphics that slow down the loading of the site, visitors will not stick around—and, consequently, not wait to see your offer. Another thing to look for are plug-ins. Does the site require a visitor to download a plug-in to view some cute message or see some kind of flashy presentation? If so, chalk up another lost visitor and a missed opportunity for a sale.

Also consider the site’s image. How professional looking is the site? If it seems too amateurish or doesn’t reflect the image of your company and the products you sell, don’t approve it. Remember, it is representing your company. Its image can be construed to be your image.

The next thing to consider is traffic. Suppose you have a site application from a good-looking site, but it says it has little traffic. Little traffic will bring fewer sales or referrals. You should still consider it as an affiliate. As you will see later, one of your responsibilities to your affiliates is to help them market your product or service by showing them how to promote their site on the Net. If you will not accept a site with a certain amount of traffic, then say so on your affiliate information page before they sign-up.

What’s enough traffic? Some affiliate consultants say a Web site needs at least 500 unique visitors a day to earn a decent revenue from an affiliate program. If they have a very targeted audience, this number should suffice. But numbers alone aren’t enough; a Web site needs to build trust and credibility with its site visitors. That’s done with community. You should certainly target sites with this sort of traffic volume, but also strive to bring your affiliates with less traffic up to this level.

Has the site made an attempt to build a community of users that would be useful for building up a prospect list of potential buyers? Has the site built up an e-mail opt-in list offering a newsletter to its visitors? Research has shown that Web sites that build opt-in e-mail lists and communicate with their subscribers are pretty aggressive marketers and will do better than other affiliates in generating revenue and leads. The more of these elements a site has, the better the chance you have of making sales or referrals from it.

Also consider whether or not you will ship internationally. There is no reason to have affiliate sites that target visitors from other countries if you do not plan to ship internationally. Again, you should state whether you would accept international sites on your affiliate information page.

Finally, when evaluating a potential affiliate’s application, don’t limit yourself. For example, if you sell travel packages, don’t accept just travel-related sites. There are many Web sites that are enamored with a city or geographical area but are not, in themselves, travel sites. These sites would make good affiliates because visitors would like to know how to buy travel packages to those destinations or even travel merchandise to use when they go. If you sell women’s jewelry, look for Web sites devoted to women or women’s fashion. Think creatively about potential affiliates, even if at first glance they don’t seem to fit your perceived network (see Table 7.2).

Table 7.2. Possible Affiliate Partner/Offer Partnerships

Children or Parent Sites	Arts and Crafts
Retirement Sites	Beauty and Health
Liquor Sites	Cigars
Internet Service Providers	Computer Products
Personal Calendar Sites	Flowers, Gifts, and Greeting Cards
Society and Culture Sites	Museum Stores
Leisure Sites	Show and Sports Tickets
Accounting and Legal Sites	Office Supplies
Special Event Sites	Party Supplies
Support Group Site	Health and Pharmacies
Travel Destinations	Accident and Disability Insurance

The 80:20 Rule

Vilfredo Pareto, born in 1848, was an Italian economist and sociologist known for his application of mathematics to economic analysis. He was the person who came up with the 80/20 Principle, also known as the Pareto Principle. His 80:20 Rule has often been applied to affiliate programs, basically stating that 80% of affiliate activity is generated by 20% of the affiliates. The reality is that 95% of affiliate activity is generated by 5% of the affiliates. That is to say, the largest part of a business’ success relies on a small fraction of its clients. It is well known that 10% to 20% of affiliate members will place a banner or link on their site and wait for click-throughs. They may get many people to see the banner or link—or click on it—but deliver no sales. On the other hand, 5% of affiliate members will actively promote their affiliation with a company through articles, Web pages, and newsletters devoted to their product. And though their number of impressions may be low, their click-throughs bring a higher percentage of sales.

If 5% of your affiliates will generate 95% of your activity, only 1% of your affiliates will be your best affiliates. The 5% are made up of your up-and-comers, and the 1% consists of your super affiliates. Onesie affiliates account for the remainder of the activity. If you use all the strategies outlined in Chapter 6, you will generate thousands and thousands of affiliate candidates. But which is better? To have thousands of affiliates in your program, or to shoot for hundreds that will generate the best results for your program?

Which would you rather have? Quantity or quality? I strongly suggest the latter.