Someone asked me a few weeks ago what I look at when choosing an affiliate program. I have a little list that I go off of but by the time I get to the list I pretty much know what direction I am heading in. Lets take a quick look at some important factors when choosing to work with an affiliate program.

1) It has to fit one of my sites, It makes no sense to put window treatments up on a sports site, they will never sell even if they are Notre Dame window treatments. This is a usual newbie mistake, build it and they will come and shop doesn’t work and never will.

2) The merchants landing pages have to make me want to buy something. If I wouldn’t buy from the site neither will the people reading my website. I add something to the cart and see how many steps it takes to check out. If it is too much my shoppers won’t do it either.

3) Affiliate Tracking - If they are using an outdated rinky dink system for tracking I pass. It doesn’t matter if you have 100 sales there a day it still isn’t tracking right. I take a pass as it is hard enough to make money without it tracking.

4) Affiliate Management - This is a huge thing for me, I need to get them on the phone so we can discuss my percentage. There are many affiliate managers I wont work with regardless of the program they manage. If a program moves from an affiliate manager to another one I drop the program, especially if its an affiliate manager that likes to steal other affiliate managers programs. They are out there and I know who they are. If you can’t build up trust among other affiliate managers how in the world would I trust them. There are times when the program steps up to a better affiliate manager but thats rare. Google the merchants name with “affiliate program” and if you see they have had 2 or 3 affiliate managers recently you know the merchant isn’t paying the affiliate manager, what makes you think they are going to pay you.

5) Affiliate Network - I don’t use the so called big Affiliate Networks, with all the parasitic affiliates in these networks the only thing the big networks want is more money for the network by letting bad guys into these programs they are not looking out for me. I use Shareasale and Avantlink more then the average affiliate, it’s a trust thing. 

That is my quick list I am sure I could go on all day but I think you are getting the message.