What would the ideal affiliate offer it's webmasters?
 

Let's just assume the content is exclusive and high quality. Let's also assume conversions are high and retention is excellent. What would it take for you to promote a program to the fullest? What kind of payouts would you like to see (recurring, PPS)? Are hosted galleries of big importance? What kind of promotional assistance would you need? How about prize incentives? Would the affiliate program home have a simple design or have all kinds of visual bells and whistles?

If you could design the perfect affiliate program, what would it have?

1. A simple design works great. Any sound and I'm gone before I even have a chance to look at the site.
2. We all love hosted galleries but I prefer affiliate programs that make it easy for me to load those galleries into my software.
3. You can offer a prize to the webmaster that gets the most sales but many webmasters will send thier traffic else where until the contest is over. I know I can't compete with some of the big boys. If you make every sale count the same then most webmasters will stick around.
4. You can offer to give me a TV, DVD Player or anything that has a cash value but The Tax Man will come to me and I'll have to pay him becasue you gave me a prize. Why not give me the cash instead?
5. Of course a date with Crissy M or GG in high heels would get a few webmasters interested :)

The perfect affiliate program?

What you already said - high quality exclusive content that will convert well and keep retentions high. And offer affiliates both PPS and 60/40 recuring plans.

If the retentions are high, I will definately go for the recuring plan. I am averaging a 6 month retention per SU with one of the programs I promote. Given some mebers cancel their trial membership right after they sign up, it is really great. It means if the surfer doesn't cancel his membership after the first month, he probably will stay till his CC is expired :)

So, I don't want promotions like free TV or DVD for x ammount of sales per month. What I want is good retention rate.

P.S. Just though of something else - may be some sort of a bonus to the webmasters - go from 60/40 to 65/35 for a webmaster with 0 chargebacks for the previous 2 months. How about that for a novelty idea?

Peace

Bells & whistles don't push me one way or the other - I base what I push on what's been performing well per click over the last few months.

I would do what only one of my 200+ sponsors offers. I would show the exact page that sent the referral so I would know how well or poorly that campaign was working.

"Let's just assume the content is exclusive and high quality. Let's also assume conversions are high and retention is excellent".

These 2 are enough to be getting on with - but I never assume anything!

"What kind of payouts would you like to see (recurring, PPS)?"

I like recurring - if you have a shit hot product - I like recurring even more.

"Are hosted galleries of big importance?"

I run a link list - Free sites would be better ;-)

"What kind of promotional assistance would you need?"

Aside from content - A full run down and honest appraisal of your product and services would be invaluable to any webmaster promoting your products.

"How about prize incentives?"

If it's green and crispy - yes. I can buy my own plasma and nail clippers thanks!


"Would the affiliate program home have a simple design or have all kinds of visual bells and whistles"?

Bells and whistles... Mmmmmm No - just make it easy to use for your affiliates.


Cheers.

Paul :-)

what has been said is pretty much on the nose, the only thing i would add would be to do some market research before you make your tours (and this goes for free sites and hosted galleries too) far too often i see really pretty tours and hosted content pages that absolutely have no idea what turns the surfers of that niche on. its like most sponsors seem to have an unpenatratrable wall between their graphix people and their marketing people

I have to agree with this one - to know where the click came from would be such valuble info. Why not more sponsors offer that is beonde me.
Also, I often use the rotating gallery link code that some sponsors offers - not sure why so many sponsors just offers static gallery links. And I would like to know where the click came from on galleries too ofcourse lol

Thank you all for your responses. They are all great, all have very valuable points and everybody seems to be pretty much in aggreance! I also agree with you guys. Recurring is great if the product is hot, the design just needs simplicity, and stats are very important. |shake|