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For some merchants, picking the right affiliate
marketing partners can mean the difference between profit and
bankruptcy. Are you choosing the wrong affiliates? Do they suck up most
of your time, money and resources, leaving you with an empty bank
account and a bloated marketing budget? How can you choose the right
affiliate partners?
Since a miniscule portion of affiliates will prove
to be your top producers, (the 80/20 rule has actually shifted to
resemble more of a 98/2 rule where affiliate marketing is concerned),
it is crucial to choose your affiliates wisely, which can be
accomplished by following a few fundamental rules.
Using some simple tools (many of which are free),
and validation steps, you can determine if a potential affiliate has
enough site traffic, with the right types of visitors, and the
technical capability to be a profitable affiliate partner.
Affiliate qualification is the validation of the
characteristics of a person or company to determine if the
prerequisites for participation in a co-marketing (affiliate) program
are met. Do not simply rely on an auto-approve process which
automatically guarantees affiliate status upon completion of the
application. Utilize an affiliate application process for your program
to partner only with affiliates that meet your standards.
Each potential partner should be screened to see
just how they can contribute to the success of your affiliate program.
Some features to look at may include types of products or services
offered, customer profiles, time in business, web site performance and
quality, and other factors.
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Affiliate Site Traffic Verification
A primary and crucial step in the process is
affiliate site traffic verification, which is the validation of the
amount of web site traffic that an affiliate partner receives. Only
take on partners that have the traffic flow. Quite simply, if the
visitors are not there, they cannot click on the ads no matter how
effective or persuasive they may be. A free tool for traffic
verification is the web site www.alexa.com,
which allows you to search for web site rankings according to category,
language or country.
It can be difficult to get an accurate assessment
of web site traffic so another great way to validate traffic is to
provide a potential partner with a unique link, have them place it on
their site and track the results using link tracking services and
software. This will ensure the traffic on their site is in fact there.
Link tracking services, such as
www.linktrack.info, can be available at little or no cost
online. A good benchmark to remember is a web site with 1,000 qualified
visitors per day with 1% conversion rates will typically generate
$10-20 per day in advertising money. This case would be dramatically
1,000 unqualified visitors per day, in which case the ad revenue would
be $1-2 per day, which gets us to the next step in the process;
qualifying site visitors.
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Affiliate Site Visitor Profile Identification
Affiliate site visitor profile
identification is validation of the types of users a web site regularly
has. This process is necessary to ensure that the affiliate partner is
a good fit for the product or service being offered. Ask potential
affiliates for some visitor demographics, such as visitor and customer
profiles. A visitor profile is a set of characteristics associated with
a person that visits a location or interacts with a service. These
characteristics may include referral sources, link preferences, click
trails, viewing times, and various personal characteristics, such as
gender, age and geographic location. A customer profile is a set of
characteristics associated with a user or account, including preferred
services, feature sets, rate plans, payment patterns and service
limits.
Take a look at web site bounce rates as well,
as high bounce rates indicate that the visitor traffic might be there,
but the visitors aren't sticking around to click. Find out if they
are utilizing an analytics program, such as Google Analytics, which
would mean that they have their hand on the pulse of their web site
and their numbers are likely to be an accurate reflection of their
web site. Most profiling today is done manually so applicants should
not be hesitant to answer any of your inquiries. Finally, take a look
at the web site content to get an idea of the types of visitors the
site is likely to receive. |
Content
Content is the information (products or
services) contained within a message, call, media program or web site
display. Content value is a measure of how the contents of a document
or web page relate to a category of interest of a content user. Search
engines value content that changes dynamically, is keyword friendly and
relevant. Web sites that have desired content will likely be ranked
higher and displayed to more users in search results. In terms of
qualifying affiliate partners, some of the ways to assign value to
content include assessing the amount of content within their site and
the structure and relationship of key words within the content.
A great way to ensure the content quality of
potential affiliates is to perform content analysis, which is the
selection and review of content (data or media) to determine how
visitors (content consumers) and systems (spam filters) are likely to
perceive and/or react to the content. Content analysis may include
readability, key word density, spam filter keyword detection and other
factors. Some useful resources for content analysis can be found at
http://www.avivadirectory.com/free-online-tests/ or
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/. |
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Products or Services Offered
It is essential to appropriately match your
products and services to affiliate partners in your industry or one
that is closely related. If you're marketing cell phones, it would
be a gross waste of your budget to partner with a pet supply web site,
whose target audience is not necessarily in the market for a cellular
phone, but is likely to be searching for deals on puppy chow. It would
be lucrative to choose a web site that offers free ringtones, since
the majority of visitors to that type of site are highly qualified
and more likely to click.
Additionally, it is necessary to ensure that
the types of products or services that the publisher currently sells or
offers are not considered to be competing products, illegal or adult
content as these could all pose a significant threat to your sales.
Geographic Focus
Geographic focus is the selection of
information or services that appeal to people or companies in
geographic areas. An example of geographic focus is a web site that
provides food delivery services within a city area. Geographic focus
comes into play in terms of local search. Local businesses, such as
pizzerias, should partner with affiliate programs that cater to their
geographic region. More often than not, affiliate partners can be taken
on at the global level as products and services can be sold and shipped
with a fair amount of ease.
Web Site Performance and Quality
Web site performance and quality are of the
utmost importance when choosing affiliate partners, as the web site is
where the magic happens. Poorly operating sites and those that are
visually unappealing will not likely generate clicks. Some elements to
consider include site status, site load time and top level domain. |
Site Status
Site status is the operational condition of
a web site. Site status indicators may include the ability to display
the content of the web site on different web browsers (not all browsers
work the same), link operation (no broken links or undisplayed images),
site load time, and the verification of the operation of site features
(such as site search boxes).
Site Load Time
Site load time is the amount of time it
takes for a file or media segment to transfer from its source to a
receiving device. An example of load time is the amount of time it
takes from the initial connection to a web site URL to the time a web
page begins to display on the viewing device.
Top Level Domain (TLD)
A top level domain is the uppermost group of
items in a hierarchical system. For file systems it is the root
directory. For the Internet, it is the rightmost part of the web
address (.COM, .EDU, .NET).
A great way to qualify a partner based on
their web site is to perform a web site review.
Web Site Review
A web site review is an inspection of the
web pages on a web site to determine if their content, format and
operation meet standard industry requirements. Web site review
requirements may include content decency, consistent format, ease of
navigation and maximum page load times. Periodic web site reviews are
reoccurring evaluations of the availability, format and functions of
web sites to ensure that they continue to meet the required criteria of
co-marketing or other programs. As a general rule, web sites should be
periodically reviewed to verify that their quality is maintained. |
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Business classification is a label or code
that is assigned to companies that share a set of attributes (such as
types of products and services). Governments have created
classification systems, such as standard industry codes (SIC), to help
them process items or statistics related company or product types.
Business classification codes can be helpful in terms of eliminating
affiliate partners that fall within categories that are in no way
related to your products or services.
Financial Condition
The financial condition of the company can
also be indicative of the type of affiliate partner you can expect. For
obvious reasons, it is essential to ensure that ample funds are
available to maintain an affiliate program. Some of the costs involved
include web site maintenance, cost of advertising and commission
payments, to name a few. For larger, publicly traded companies,
financial statements can be found on most company web sites and prove
quite useful. When qualifying smaller companies, take a look at the
quality of their web sites, staff size and whether or not they have
multiple locations.
The length of time the company has been in
business should be considered when qualifying an affiliate partner.
Start-up companies are generally not as reliable as those that are well
established. |
Site maturity is the length of time that a
web site has been operational or registered to an owner and may be
characterized by domain origination and expiration dates.
Domain aging is the amount of time a domain
name has been active. A domain origination date is the day that a web
site name registration is completed by its original owner.
A domain expiration date is the day that a
web site name registration is scheduled to end. If a domain name has an
expiration date within one year of its origination date, it may
indicate that the site owner does not have long term interests for the
domain name, which increases the potential for search engine SPAM.
Typically, this would not constitute a good choice for an affiliate
marketing partner. Perform a search for each potential affiliate online
to determine just how long their site has been up and running. A great
resource for this step is
www.whois.net, which is available at no cost online.
In an industry where virtually anyone
can be a player, merchants should manually perform a detailed applicant
screening process. It is essential to make partnerships with companies
that meet all of your desired criteria, as it would do little good
to partner with a company that lacks the web site functionality, qualified
traffic and relevant content to get those highly sought after clicks!
Define that valuable criteria for your company and you're halfway there.
Screen each and every potential partner to avoid wasting valuable time;
yours and theirs! An affiliate program is only as weak as its least
qualified partner.
Always remember, validate then affiliate!
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