One of the biggest (lucrative) things I have learned so far in affiliate marketing is to be very selective about which merchants to promote. It can make a massive difference to the end results. The main thing is to match the site content and domain / search ranking, apart from that the biggest single factor is of course conversion. In addition I like to go for brands that I can be enthusiastic about as “the sell” is so much easier that way.
In no particular order then, below are my most wanted features. If you are an affiliate, a merchant or work at a network / agency what would you add to the list ?
- No Cashback Sites Policy - Not that they don’t have a policy but they have a policy and it doesn’t allow incentivised traffic. What’s the point of me going to great lengths to promote a merchant if I lose the cookie at the last minute to a cashback site?
- No Discount Codes in Checkout Page - Why a merchant would like to distract a booker at this critical point is beyond me. Having the discount code box is almost encouraging them to go back to a search engine to look for a discount code which will either reduce your margin or lead your customer to be cross – sold to a competitor. There are other ways to implement voucher codes.
- High Conversion Rate – Honestly I don’t really care too much about the commission level, what I want is something that converts. Great prices, trustworthy website, call to action (“sale ends soon” / “only 2 seats left”) all helps.
- Leakage Points Blocked – Connected to High Conversion Rate but kind of different. No phone numbers, brochure requests or similar that will encourage an offline sale which leads me to…
- Online Booking Discount - If you have to have a phone number, please don’t make it a free phone number and please offer an online only booking discount to reward your customers for keeping your sales costs down.
- Merchant Doesn’t go bankrupt! – This can be a real pain as it can mean losing out on commissions for sales that were made before the insolvency.
- Available through an affiliate network – I’m in two minds about including this… The reason I like this is it makes reporting easier (all in one place) and don’t have to worry about reaching a payment threshold, but then again there are some excellent non-network schemes around with I guess higher margins because there is no middle man.
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Concisely and efficiently put, thanks Rob.
I tend to look at EPC more than conversion rate. It’s can be surprising (and indicative) how EPCs can vary enormously, even up to 100%, 200%, for merchants selling comparable product at comparable prices and receiving equivalent traffic.
If as an affiliate you see this, don’t assume the problem is you, it could be ‘them’. And you probably can’t fix it, so cease investing in that loser and move on to what the data tells you has a chance to work.