General Marketing - Affiliate Marketing

Deciding what type of affiliate site to build is half the job. Finding suitable affiliate merchants is the other half.

There are two types of merchant - those that work WITH affiliates and do everything in their power to ensure that the affiliate gets all of the credit that their hard work deserves. And those that don't.

In general most affiliate programs offer 30 day cookies. Which means that if the surfer you are sending through your links decides to delay purchase, and shows up 31 days later when he or she gets paid - you don't get any recognition for this.

All your hard work has been in vain.

This is why I prefer to work within the gambling industry. Because in general the gambling industry recognises the value of each player being signed up. Over a lifetime a casino player could potentially earn both the affiliate and the casino thousands of pounds in revenue, whereas there are only so many times they are going to upgrade a flat screen TV.

In the case of flat screen TV's, by the time you have earnt your first 5% commission you have no chance of any repeat buisness several years down the line because any cookies will have expired.

Once a casino, bingo or poker player get's registered to you then most gambling merchants assign the player to you for life - and many sportsbooks will track the player whatever they decide to spend their money on. So for example you may sign up a player who wants to play poker but then enjoys playing the blackjack sidegames. In this case you'll still accumulate revenue for this player no matter what they spend their money on.

It's very important that you look at the terms being offered by the merchant for the affiliate program that you want to promote. Some of the merchants on affiliate window for example are offering 1 day cookies. If you don't check it out you'll be wondering why you can't make any money.

There is absolutely no reason why a merchant should want to try and get away with paying the affiliate as little as possible from customer aquisition costs. By the time affiliates start to get good at what they are doing they get wise to this and start dropping the programs that don't fully support them, swapping them for programs that offer longer affiliate cookies and more revenue sharing opportunities.

Being an affiliate means that if you are going to go after mainstream products like white goods; electricals; insurance or DVD's then you are not building a business with any firm foundations. Sure you may do well during the festive season and may it long continue, but you are not acquiring any customers for yourself. You are not generating repeat business or repeat sales for your own business.

When it comes to looking at which affiliate programs you are going to promote look carefully at what cookie durations are being offered and what affiliate support is being given. Many merchants pay lip service to affiliate marketing and you will do well to steer well clear of them.