What do you look for in a program?
 

What makes you want to join a sponsor and send traffic?
Is it their:

Board persona?
Branding of progam via ads?
Friends?
Sites?
Free Content/FHG's?
Contests?

Or something I've not listed here?

Personally, I usually go with the best sites that I can convert with.

Whether or not I think their tours are worth a damn is the most important thing to me these days. Program reputation means a lot too. If I have heard that they have screwed over another webmaster somehow, I won't touch them. Especially if it's any form of non-payment.

In response to the points you stated:
Board Persona - If they come off as an asshole, then I don't want to do business with them, otherwise I don't pay much attention to them on boards. I interact with webmasters, not sponsor reps.

Branding - Unnecessary.

Friends - I don't have any.

Sites - See my statement about tours.

Free content/FHGs - If they offer content it better be in series and at least 20-30 good uncompressed images per set. Otherwise it's shit to me. Most FHGs make me cringe, but I do list them. HFSs (preferably not built by graphic desingers) would make me much happier. This entire industry molds itself around TGP traffic while acknowledging that TGP traffic is shit. That's why most sponsors have FHGs but not HFSs and release content sets of only 12-16 pics. It's a constant contradiction. Everyone knows that link list/free site traffic converts much better than TGP, but sponsors ignore the needs of the free site builder.

Contests - Contests are only ever good for the big players. Us little guys don't have the traffic flow to win the contests that most sponsors start. So my answer is no. Contests won't make me join or aim my traffic at a sponsor.

Good tours.

Good promotional material.

Good admin that loads fast and is easy to use.

And especially a good reputation.

Exactly what I was going to say :) Great minds, well, you know the saying!

But I heard a sponsor on another board say that affiliates wanted FHGs, he built tons including movie FHG and then no one used them....so he was thinking he wasted alot of time and money doing this.

We prefer to use our own content on galleries that we build, just works out better for us that way, and no look alikes :)

I do add in HG and HS but that is not really a deciding factor when I'm deciding if I want to sign up with a sponsor. It just means that they are going to get listed many times in my lists. :)

First and foremost (at least, in a perfect world): are the sites good? Do I feel good about recommending them? Because that's what we do, whether we build a free site or gallery or put up a link - we're making a recommendation. As my link list grows, it becomes more important to me to list sites that I actually think are worth the money. That's largely subjective, and I try to take that under consideration - but ultimately, if I feel a program is offering crap sites, I won't promote them.

All else being equal, how easy does a program make it for me to promote their sites? I don't need nine billion hosted galleries or free sites; I'd rather have a few dozen with titles and descriptions.

A hundred 468x60 banners are as good as useless - and it doesn't matter how many banners you have or what size they are; if they all have "ENTER HERE" as text, I can't use them on free sites. (At least not on the index page - please, use "Click Here" or ANYTHING other than "ENTER". )

I could go on and on and on, and I would end up sounding like a lazy, whiny brat. Which I may be...

Anyway: with unique or very high quality sites, I'll expend extra effort toward promotion, and sponsor provided materials are secondary in importance. But if the site is one in a hundred - or a thousand, or more - fighting for the same traffic, the more and better promotional materials I get for free, the better.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: The single most important and valuable thing you can provide me with is a simple, concise, honest description of what exactly your pay site provides for members. This should be the first thing you put on paper before you launch your site, so it should be a no-brainer.

I prefer sponsors who offer access to their members area. First of all I can grab promotional content which the surfer will find if he signs up.

Another one is that I´m able to make descriptions of the members area myself for textlinks and descriptions. Those textlinks do work much better for me than fhg´s and so on. I just checked convertion rates for 2004 and got to know that fhg´s don´t convert very well.

Personally, if a sponsor has a niche site that I can get traffic for, then it's all good. :)

I agree with all that's been said so far, but would like to add STATS. Some of the biggest programs have the shittiest stats imaginable. I know that smaller programs don't have as much cash to spread around, but for God's sake give me something that shows me referring URLs.

If I decide to sign up and want to promote your sites on a bunch of my sites, I need to see which advertising/sites on my end are producing click throughs to your program. If I can see this information I will be able to fine tune my advertising to send you more traffic. This seems obvious to me but apparently not to everyone.

So true. Even big programs don´t show referring url. And I´m not interested in stats which I can´t use, because I don´t know where the clicks coming from.

that they convert and pay on time.
thats what matters to me

If the sponsor has a cookie cutter site I won't join them. The site must look sophisticated and be state of the art. Bigger & better! After I join, I better see sales decent sales after 30 days of promotion. Otherwise I bail. Don't shave me the first 30 days!

ModF, what's up, man. |waves|

One of the most important features to me is the payment options. Checks are fine, but my favorite sponsor is a little slow about getting the checks out, unfortunately.

Good content and good tours. Then when I give them a chance, they need to perform. In the end its just how big the check is that makes the decision for me :)

Kind of suprised that you didn't list money like payout per signups...etc on your options and that (I don't believe) no one else mentioned it either.

Personally I think it shows how smart of a board we all have here. I mean I might would have listed the money thing as an option just because there's alot of people that do go by that. I know that's not always the best option which is why I said we have a smart board here :)

As for me it's hard to say exactly what I look for since I've been out of this business for a while. With out being up to date on everything I try to go with a trusted program and than work my way around as I go along, hopefully finding some good sponsors with a good signup ratio (among other things) as I go along.

I don't use sponsors who have pictures of fast cars on their sponsor program web site. It drives me nuts.

Before I join any sponsor I usually send their support/contact an e-mail. I will ask them a question of some sort. If I don't get an answer back in good time or at all I will not use them. Webmasters need information quick. If the sponsor can't provide that it gets really frustrating.

Sorry I've not returned to this thread until tonight, it has been on of those "can't get onto the computer for more than 15 minutes a day" weekends. Well I'm glad to see that my line of thinking is pretty much on par with most of the group here. I started this thread to do two things, first and foremost is to see what everyone wants. The second was to see if I'm losing my mind yet. :) I'm happy to report that I think this thread has helped in both.

Personally, like many here, I look at the site first, the reputation of the program, and their content offered. As far as content is concerned, I'm usually pretty happy with either a couple of content zips or access to the member area. Most sites won't list the FHG after they are played out. I know I'm not a designer, so I end up having to give it to someone anyhow.

cobrasnake: To be honest, that didn't even pop into my head when I was starting this post. Call it leaving the office in a few minutes haste on a Friday perhaps? Typically I take the revshare over that of the PPS, if a site is good than I'll take a few months any day. Our catfight site still has a few members rebilling since 2002. (I just don't get it sometimes. :))

ADK: Sadly, I'm guilty of the "bling bling" vehicle in the header of my webmaster program. The designer put it there, and I thought it filled the spot well. :)

MadMax/Frank: I agree with you, that's one of the reasons why I decided to switch to NATS. IMHO Stats are the one area in which adult has fallen behind mainstream.

I'm thinking of working out some contest, not sure how that's going to play out yet though. I want to make it fair for everyone, from the guy with 1 sale a month to the guy sending 15.

Alas, it's time for bed so I can get back into work mode tomorrow. :)

Night

Maybe they are not all that bad then |thumb

Note to self... add a slow car pic to new Wm site design... :D :D

I like it when my sponsors have a program where you get paid more for all sales over last month. This gets me motivate to really push that sponsor that month. Say I made 5 sales @ $30 / sale last month and you are paying $50 / sale for all sales over last month. If I send 15 sales this month then I would get $30 * 5 and $50 * 10. The numbers are just examples but it really gets me to push that sponsor.

Hee - "Join our program and you'll be paying off your '85 Toyota before you can say 'bling' twice!"

To stay on topic - I didn't even consider payouts when making my post. I'd rather have a 50% partnership with a program that sells and converts than get inflated payouts with a program that doesn't. Sometimes fast cash is nice (hell, fast cash is always nice) but a well-retaining site is worth its weight in gold. Okay, bad analogy when we're talking about pixels, but ya'll get my meaning...

But if the sponsor will give its largest affiliates with an access to the members' zone for them to take the content they need for advertising, then the subscriber has no exclusive at all.

Maybe it's better to use the sponsor that gives non-exclusive content to every advert in order not to have the content repeating?

sites: like nastydollars (nd)
stats: nd plus maybe campaign support (campaignID with numbers and not my campaign names as i dont want others to see &campaign=YahooOptimized ;) )
promo material: nd
payout: nd
downtime handling: nd
webmaster support: quicker than nd

what i HATE:
programs changing linkcodes and site urls (like when they think nats is sexier than whatever). i hate to have 100s of sites with outdated sponsor links.

Yeah both you probably have a point about the partnership program over a paid per signups one.

I wasn't really picking one over the other, that was more or less just a quick example when I said like payout per signups...etc but for now I'm going with a PPS program over a partnership one.

I guess for the reason you said, the fast cash :) Since I've just now started back making sites the money is pretty important for me. So for that reason I've went with the faster cash as you put it.

But at this point I'll probably still be making alot of changes with my sponsors...etc

I don't get that personally, w/ NATS it's very easy to setup on a second tour. So they are both running at the same time. Sure, it kinda stinks that people will get a check from us and/or CCBIll but they are still getting paid.