While there are a couple of sessions that I’ll be writing up detailed notes on, I wanted to write about my overall experience at Affiliate Summit East 2013 in Philadelphia, PA. Saturday…
If you were at the last Affiliate Summit, or follow me on Twitter, you probably know I’m in a Mastermind Group with Todd Farmer and Tricia Meyer. In fact, we spoke about the topic at Affiliate Summit West this past January.
Tricia Meyer and Kristen Grace (of buycostumes.com) presented a session at Affiliate Summit East 2011, moderated by Todd Farmer, on Taking Advantage of Seasonality in Affiliate Marketing
. I originally didn’t have this session marked as one for me to attend, because I didn’t think most of my sites were seasonal. However, I’m glad I went.
For some reason, in one of the niche’s I’m in, over half of the merchants that have affiliate programs decided to use (or create) an in-house system, avoiding networks. While there may be some benefits to using an in-house system (such as avoiding network fees & overhead), I think in the long run, merchants will have greater success with their affiliate program if they use a network.
Networks not only handle the tracking and payments for an affiliate program, but they also act as the policemen, making sure affiliates are not defrauding merchants, and that merchants are not cheating affiliates out of their commissions.
But when an in-house program is used, affiliates must assume that what is reported in the tracking reports is accurate, and hope they get paid on time.
Lately, that hasn’t been the case for one particular merchant I’m promoting. Tracking is way off and completely inaccurate (for example, they tried to tell me I sold -40 subscriptions last month (that’s negative forty. When I questioned this, they sent over a new report with new numbers, but insisted the payment was not affected)). In addition, payment was late this month.
Even if you understand all the technical aspects of starting an affiliate website, and understand how to get traffic to the site, something many affiliates struggle with is choosing an offer. There are thousands of merchants waiting for you to partner with them and to have you start promoting their products or services. I asked a handful of successful affiliates how they choose an offer to promote: