Jun 19th, 2007
Online Affiliate Program Networks Q&A
Picking an affiliate publisher network to manage your affiliate program can be tricky depending on what your main objectives are and the budget that you are willing to spend to build up your program.
Here are some of the benefits of using affiliate networks:
- They send out montly checks to your affiliates to save you from additional accounting work.
- They have sophisticated tracking and reporting systems that will tie into your internal reports.
- They have large reach to affiliate marketers that have a tendency to only promote vendors that are part of one of these networks.
Running your own internal affiliate program is another option that many top vendors take on as well. Here are some of the benefits of having your affiliate program in house.
- Lots of flexibility in your promotions.
- You have ownership of your affiliates contact information and have the ability to communicate with them at no cost.
- You can custom tailor reports to your business instead of having to adopt the affiliate reporting interfaces to your business.
- You get the benefit of 1,000’s of inbound links to your site if your tracking system is done correctly.
- You don’t have to pay the monthly management fees and a percentage of sale that most networks require.
- Running with a 3rd party network can cost you around $2,500 - $3,500 alone in service fees as well as the payroll of your affiliate manager.
Here is a list of the top tier affiliate program networks:
OneNetworkDirect.com - Run by Todd Crawford, Former VP of Commission Junction (CJ), they have more then 40,000 clients.
Buy.at - headquartered in London, England with offices also in the US
Commission Junction - (otherwise known as CJ) - Headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA with offices in France, Germany and the UK
Linkshare - located in New York City, NY with offices in Japan and the UK
Performics - Owned by DoubleClick, powered by ConnectCommerce and located in Chicago, IL.
ShareaSale - Currently host over 2,000 affiliate publishers and are located in Chicago, IL
TradeDoubler - Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden with offices all over Europe and Russia.
Zanox - They are the European market leader in performance-based multichannel commerce with a central office in Berlin, Germany and offices in Holland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, UK and the US.
CPAEmpire.com - CPA Empire is more of a performance affiliate network that will run your exclusive offers to their partner sites.
Q: Should we hire an someone to manage the affiliate program?
A: Yes. Yes. Yes. In a perfect world, your affiliate program should be your least inexpensive means of acquisition in your business and should account for anywhere from 20-40% of your overall revenue. This varies depending on your vertical of course but I have seen well run affiliate programs bringing in more revenue and orders then paid search campaigns.
Q: Are there businesses out there that manage affiliate program relationships for you?
A: Yes. Some full service interactive agencies have internal resources to manage affiliate programs. You will usually at least benefit using an agency during your contract negotiations with the affiliate publishers as they are quite familar with payouts and monthly service agreements and know where to push back.
Q: What are some things we should look for in hiring an affiliate manager?
A: Ultimately, the candidate that you select to manage your affiliate program should have worked with one of the two large vendors like CJ or Linkshare before and be very comfortable making calls and working the phones. This person should have the capacity to write newsletters and be organized enough to manage a promotional calendar to keep their affiliates engaged in your program.
Q: What are the downsides to running with the large vendors like CJ or Linkshare?
A: You have to be 100% committed to your relationship with these top tier vendors as their monthly service fees aren’t cheap and you need to be selling enough product/subscriptions a month to cover the fee and still have margin on your business.
Q: What are the upsides to running with the large vendors versus smaller niche shops?
A: Being an affiliate marketer ourselves we are always looking for new vendors to promote in certain verticals and the
large vendors tend to have the bigger higher converting brands.
Q: What are the upsides to running with the smaller niche affiliate publisher?
A: You will get more one on one service as well as a dedicated account manager that will help you grow your affiliate
network.
In the end, I have seen people become very successful with their affiliate programs when managed in house with a good tracking and reporting solution or using 3rd party networks like CJ and Linkshare. I will do a couple follow up blog posts on some tips and tricks to affiliate programs.