Let’s face the fact – people fail in affiliate marketing; and it is only fair to admit that this does happen. It is equally important, however, to understand why affiliate marketing campaigns fail, and what could be done to prevent the failure.

So, let me take a stab at outlining the typical reasons that can predict trouble: four for merchants, and three for affiliates.

Merchants/Advertisers

1. Having unrealistic expectations – From expectations of quick super-affiliate recruitment (and a consequent boom in sales) to anticipations that investments into starting a program on a larger network will immediately yield result to a myriad of other misconceptions in between, advertisers are often being mislead by unrealistic, and frequently ungrounded, expectations.

2. Managing affiliates – Leave your “managerial” approach elsewhere. The key to success is in managing the program, not these born-to-be-free marketers who have chosen to invest their time, effort and money into promoting you on performance basis.

3. Expecting something for nothing – Yes, affiliate marketing is performance marketing; meaning that you pay only for the actions you’ve agreed to pay for. But this does not mean that it doesn’t require any investment. As any marketing campaign, it does.

4. Engaging “cruise control” – Regardless of what you may have read on- or offline, it is impossible to develop a successful affiliate program if you’re cruising without an all-encompassing assistance from a human being (something also known as an “autopiloted approach”). Another illustration to consider comes from gardening. As a good gardener, you shouldn’t focus on planting only, but must continually fertilize, water, weed. Unless you’re actively engaged in these beyond-the-planting activities, you’ll neither see the bloom, nor the crops.

With merchants the overall problem can often be summarized in two words: mismanaged programs.

Now, let’s get to affiliates:

Affiliates/Publishers

1. Not playing without the ball – Failure to devote time to thorough due diligence and education (prior to investing effort and especially money!) is frequently the determinant of whether the campaign will be a success and a failure. Doing homework is fundamental to growth and success.

2. Faking it – Tony Robbins is known for saying that “passion is the genesis of genius.” Einstein quantified the latter for us in his: “genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work.” There is no way to fake neither passion, nor hard work. If you don’t have aptitude for either of these, invest your time elsewhere.

3. Not diversifying – Never put all your eggs in one basket. When it drops, you lose everything.

The problem with affiliates often lays in the misalignment of hopes, goals, expectations and realities of what really works.

Finally, regardless of whether you are involved in affiliate marketing as a merchant, or as an affiliate, it is good to keep William Foster’s words in mind. He once pointed out that “quality is never an accident” but “is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution.”

Things are exactly the same way with quality results-oriented affiliate marketing.

Geno Prussakov is an international speaker, book author, blogger, affiliate marketing consultant and program manager.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 17 here – http://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs/feedfront-17

FeedFront issue 17 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2012/2

As with any marketing endeavor, your affiliate marketing program requires a budget.

While it is true that in comparison with the majority of other types of online advertising, affiliate marketing generally requires a significantly smaller budget, it does require one.

So what investment is required to get an affiliate program rolling?

Below you will find a basic breakdown of expenditure points that you want to be aware of right from the outset. Whether you decide to tackle these tasks in-house, or not, there is an outsourced option for each.

Platform

At the outset, you will have to pay for the platform on which your affiliate program will be run. There will essentially be two options: going with an affiliate network, or with affiliate program tracking/management software. On the budgeting level, you need to know that you will either be charged some setup fees, or have a choice of one-time, monthly or other periodical fees, depending on what platform you go with.

Creative Inventory

You will want to put together a creative inventory for your program. These will be your banners, text links, and possibly Flash and video creatives. Out of all of these options, the creation of text links is simplest. As far as graphics and video go, you may have to hire someone to do this for you. If so, this will be an additional investment.

Product Data Feed

If you are an online retailer, you will want to supply your affiliates with a detailed product feed. If, on the other hand, you will be using your affiliate program to generate leads, you’ll want to experiment with different landing pages. Depending on your in-house capabilities, this may tack on additional costs for programming, or web-design and possible conversion optimization fees.

Management

Most importantly, you will have to have someone manage your affiliate program, from its announcement and recruitment of first affiliates on through the ongoing policing of affiliate compliance with your program’s rules, activation of stagnant affiliates, keeping the program fresh and attractive, and other responsibilities that we will look at in further chapters.

Non-management is not an option. You may either have one of your in-house staff handle this, or hire an outsourced affiliate program manager to work on your program.

The sum total of all of the above four expenditure points can vary anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. In the past I have launched programs with as little as a $300 investment to as much as $9,000 on others. As mentioned above, much will depend on your or your company’s own involvement in the affiliate program’s setup, launch and management.

Geno Prussakov is an international speaker, book author, blogger, affiliate marketing consultant and program manager.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 16 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/69193074/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-16

FeedFront issue 16 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2011/10

Online fraud is a reality. The only way to fully avoid it is to not be doing any business online. To be effective in dealing with affiliate fraud, you must learn how to effectively detect and prevent it at the early stages. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools and methods that can help affiliate program managers with this task.

However, before we dive into the tools and techniques to employ, let’s define terms. “Fraud” is generally defined as “criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain”. Obviously, most of the things we’ll be looking out for while monitoring unwanted affiliate activity won’t be “criminal”.

In fact, some argue that a better word for such activity is “abuse”, or unethical behavior. Whatever you call it, we all know we’re talking about the same thing – unethical affiliate activity intended to result in financial gain.

Now, to be “unethical”, it has to violate something, or go against some rules. So, to begin with, you want make sure you have an affiliate program agreement in place. Not to be confused with the affiliate network agreement, it is basically the contract between you and your affiliates.

You can review a sample affiliate program agreement at amnavigator.com/TOS.html.

Just having that affiliate program agreement in place doesn’t safeguard you. It gives you grounds to enforce the rules. I’d like to offer you seven ways that can help you detect and prevent affiliate fraud. These are:

1. Whatever anyone may tell you, don’t buy into auto-approval of affiliate applications. Review every application manually.

2. Always conduct research on a new affiliate (or a marketing method they use) before approving them into the program. (Do they have an active website? What marketing methods are they employing? Are these methods a good match to what you are doing?)

3. Watch out for sudden traffic surges, as well as quick increases in affiliate-referred transactions (sales, leads, or whatever else you may be paying them for)

4. Keep an eye on fraudulent transactions (stolen credit card numbers, fake leads, cancellations of self-referred transactions when commission has already locked, etc) — two such transactions from the same affiliate should raise a red flag, any three should result in a ban from the program.

5. Employ tools. To catch any cyber- or typo-squatters check out CitizenHawk. And for violations of your paid search policies, consider using PoachMark, TheSearchMonitor, or AdGooroo.

6. Monitor your brand reputation online to see what customers are saying about it and to catch any spamming affiliates.

7. Educate yourself on parasitic and cookie-stuffing affiliates (to keep them out of your program). When in doubt, ask in affiliate forums or consult with AffiliateFairPlay.com.

There will never be a way to make policing and enforcement look sexy. However, it is an integral component of affiliate program management. If you’re not doing it, you’re losing money.

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 15 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/61379014/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-15

FeedFront issue 15 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2011/09

Publishers that regularly produce quality content, whether it be blogging, article publishing, podcasting, video-producing, microblogging, or any other form of content production, have some of the most loyal followers.

However, I believe that there are several different routes that you can take, as far as producing quality content. Being an active blogger and blog reader myself, upon two years of observations, analysis and conclusions, I’ve come up with my own classification of publishers.

I believe that the vast majority of successful content producers (affiliate marketers included) fall into one of three types. These are:

(i) Reporters
(ii) Theoreticians
(iii) Coaches

Each of these three types is in high demand, and the popularity of their sites makes it essential for us to understand what exactly drives people to them.

Reporters are generally about breakthrough ideas and technologies, new studies, and fresh statistical data. They love to announce, analyze, and draw conclusion or provide commentary of their own.

Theoreticians are about connecting the dots between scientific researches/studies and our day-to-day reality.

Finally, coaches are essentially teachers that share their generally experience-based “how-to” knowledge with readers who want to master in this or that subject.

Of course, there are plenty of borderline synergies, and any of the above-quoted three types can now and again act as another type. However, most frequently a content publisher leans to one of the above styles.

So, whether you are just starting with content publishing, or have already been doing it for some time, it is good to understand what type of publisher you really are. Such comprehension will help you to stay more focused and play in unison with the style and approach that you are inherently predisposed for.

Now, to succeed in online content publishing, I believe one is to remember 3 Cs and a P. I know, CCCP may not bring up good memories in most minds, but today I’d like to give the old abbreviation a new meaning — one that comes from my personal experience of writing over 700 blog posts within under 2 years, and understanding of what makes a good blog post, and a good blogger.

There are 4 adjectives to remember:

C for Consistent – A-post-a-day keeps your readers (and search engines!) awake
C for Concise – Most consumers of online content truly appreciate eloquence
C for Clear – The vast majority of content consumers do not want rocket science
P for Practical – Of course, remember to be as pragmatic as possible

Most of my personal blog posts that have become popular reflected either all, or at least three of the above four points. If you add a verb “Be” before each, and turn each adjective into an objective, it’ll undoubtedly help you create more engaging and popular content.

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 13 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/45332687/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-13
FeedFront issue 13 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2010/12a>

With the multitude of options out there, the question of how to choose an affiliate network frequently becomes the first one for a merchant to answer.

 First of all, let’s clarify what we are really selecting. When looking for an affiliate network, you are looking for a vendor who will handle all of your affiliate program’s tracking, reporting, and affiliate payments.

 At the very outset, every merchant must understand that while selecting an affiliate network they are not selecting an agency that will run the affiliate program by recruiting affiliates, and driving in sales/leads. While some affiliate networks do offer management as add-on service, none do this by default.

 It appears that some merchants are merely extending the definition of advertising networks to include affiliate networks. While just as ad networks, affiliate networks do connect advertisers with publishers; they do not ensure that the advertiser actually gets advertised.

 In most scenarios, it is the advertiser’s own responsibility to manage the affiliate program and recruit affiliates. Unlike ad networks, affiliate networks do not get paid on a CPM basis.

 Affiliate networks make their money on transaction fees, which are normally calculated as a percentage of each affiliate payment subtracted from your account. You can think of it as of a credit card processing fee.

 Just as credit card processing companies charge 2-4% of the transaction amount to process it, so do affiliate networks charge you a fee on every transaction, with the only difference being that the fee is not tied to the order, but to the transaction amount that happens between you and the referring affiliate.

 So, whichever affiliate network you decide to go with, make sure you are clear on the expectations, and do have someone to manage the program.

 Speaking of the decisive factors for choosing an affiliate network, let’s look at five:

1. Ethics – There is nothing more important that partnering with an ethical affiliate network which takes a clear stand against adware, spyware, and rogue affiliate techniques.
2. Financial – There will be setup/integration fees, minimum monthly fees, and other charges. Get this data from different networks, analyze, and you will see the difference.
3. Technical – It is extremely important to find out what additional capabilities, tools and technologies are made available. To name but a few, it’s worth mentioning phone order tracking, video creatives, data feed import tools, dynamic product and/or coupon feeds, etc.
4. Popularity – You want to partner with a network that is loved and respected by affiliates.
5. Support – It is no secret that many affiliate networks provide poor merchant and affiliate support. Do your due diligence to pick a network that cares.

 Lastly, a word of warning about free-to-join affiliate networks: do your homework in researching the network prior to joining it. There could be good ones among them, but as the famous Italian couturier Aldo Gucci used to say, “The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory.”

 Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator, and author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes.”

Download the entire FeedFront issue 9 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/24376105/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-9
FeedFront issue 9 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article002334

Today it seems everyone has a website. You’re not everyone though; your site is your business. Your website should be professional and encourage your visitors to buy.

Shoppers today are cynical and have more choices than ever.

I’ve found that many affiliates are missing or misusing these five critical pieces on their websites. Are you?

1. Informational Content
Conventional wisdom tells us to get to the point and eliminate clutter on our site, but you need informational content to help convert the skeptics and less knowledgeable visitors.

Informational content serves two purposes. First, it’s a great service that customers won’t forget, converting confused customers into ready-to-buy machines. Second, a good article is chock-full of keyword-rich content that can vault you to the top of search engines and drive substantial traffic from links from other sites.

2. “Contact Us” Page
Often, the hardest obstacle to overcome is consumer trust. These people are about to give some serious information. You must do everything possible to earn their trust.

In Geno Prussakov’s book, “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes,” 83% of web users say a physical address gives them more confidence than a P.O. Box. Almost all say that no address is a major deterrent. Geno also notes that by a 4-to-1 margin, users prefer an actual email to a “contact form.”
Give them every way possible to contact you, it clearly pays off.

3. Privacy Policy
Is my information protected? What data are you collecting? Will I get spammed?

These are all questions that visitors ask themselves. Not having a clearly written privacy policy that answers important questions can cost you their business. In their eyes, you’re hiding something and must be a scam.
A good privacy policy lets customers know about things like cookies, your anti-spam policy, form encryption, etc. Every page on your website should like to your Privacy Policy page.

4. Customer Testimonials
You may not get emails often thanking you for your service, but when you do get a thank you, do you make use of it?

The first thing you should do is to thank your customers and show genuine happiness that you helped them. Then ask permission to use their testimonial. About 50% of people will let you. Testimonials are priceless trust builders, so make sure you take advantage of them. Place them throughout your site and create a prominent “Testimonials Page.” If you don’t have any testimonials, ask your affiliate manager if you can use the merchant’s.

5. FAQ Page
Most people will never view this page, but the ones who do want answers; and they want them fast! Anytime someone asks something, add it to the FAQ. Ask your friends to look at your site and think of FAQs. It will lead to more sales, guaranteed.

Any one of these missing components can cost you conversions and ultimately money. Check your site and make sure that you have all of these important pieces. If you have them, make sure they are thorough and up-to-date.

Matt McWilliams of Legacy Learning Systems is the 2010 Pinnacle Awards Affiliate Manager of the Year – www.learnandmaster.com/affiliates.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 7 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/17376069/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-7
FeedFront issue 7 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/08

Have you ever wondered what makes an excellent affiliate program manager? What characteristics should one strive to possess to succeed in this capacity?

In the course of over twenty-five years two luminaries of the organizational leadership, James Kouzes and Berry Posner, have been studying the characteristics of admired leaders. One of the methods they used was a survey with an open-ended question: “What values, personal traits, or characteristics do you look for and admire in a leader?”

Several hundred different traits and characteristics were gathered, analyzed, and documented. The striking part was that in the course of decades some of the same characteristics were consistently brought up regardless of the countries and continents where the survey participants lived. These top four characteristics were: (i) honest, (ii) forward-looking, (iii) inspiring, and (iv) competent. As obvious from the table below, these four scored significantly higher than the other ones mentioned:

Top 15 Characteristics of Admired Leaders

Source: Kouzes, J.M. & Posner, B.Z (2007). The Leadership Challenge (4th Ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, pp. 28-31

What can we learn from the above data?

I believe the top four characteristics to also be the cornerstones of successful affiliate program management. Forward-looking implies a “well-defined orientation toward the future” and vision; inspiring is about enthusiasm, drive and motivation; competent reflects a well of knowledge that never goes dry; but it is honesty that is the greatest and the most valued characteristic.

No matter whether it is a military leader, a president of a country, a CEO of a corporation, or an affiliate program manager, people want to be confident in their leaders; and confidence is always dependent on the leader’s integrity. Most frequently integrity gets challenged when an affiliate program manager commits a mistake. We need to remember that it is okay to commit mistakes. It is how we deal with them that shows who we really are.

One of my favorite quotes about mistakes comes from Dr. Dale E. Turner who said that “the highest form of self-respect” is “to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character.”

Admitting mistakes only builds up one’s integrity, and shows an individual as one possessing a strong and solid character.

Another element that is extremely important to remember is that one’s honesty is always tied to values and ethics. Know your principles and stand up for them. This is especially important in an industry as vulnerable to unethical behavior as affiliate marketing.

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator, and author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes.”

Download the entire FeedFront issue 7 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/17376069/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-7
FeedFront issue 7 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/08

It’s been said that the majority of problems in the affiliate marketing industry stem from the lack of merchant training and education. During a recent interview I conducted with an outsourced program manager, a super affiliate and an affiliate network’s director regarding issues in the affiliate marketing industry, the first interviewee pointed to the “merchant’s lack of knowledge”; the third one stated that merchants are predominantly “uneducated”; while the second interviewee mentioned that there is “only one main problem; a lack of ethics on the part of a few players.”

The topic of ethics is an underpinning theme of the larger industry’s problem, and every one of my interviewees has pointed to it. However, prior to addressing the ethical problems it is imperative to underscore the importance of merchant education.

One way to define education is to call it a “process that provides knowledge, skills, moral values, and understanding required in the normal course of life.” (Amos, Ristow, et al, 2009, Human Resource Management, p. 324). I especially appreciate the incorporation of “moral values” in this definition.

Without the “knowledge” and “understanding” of the proper ways for the affiliate marketing channel to function, merchants cannot discern the improper ways. Therefore, dealing with all other industry’s problems should start with tackling the problem of the lack of knowledge.

Effective affiliate marketing education entails: (i) establishing and maintaining a solid theoretical basis, (ii) modifying theory to fit the context that the affiliate marketer works in, (iii) staying on top of the most current industry’s developments, and (iv) teaching others.

i) Theory. This is an area most frequently overlooked by affiliate marketers. The fact that our industry is young does not mean that it has a right to exist in a de-theorized mode. Reading at least two books a month is a must for every affiliate marketer. Among the directly applicable subjects, I personally enjoy works on leadership, motivation, consumer psychology, website usability and analytics, to mention but a few.

ii) Contextual Adjustments. Allow your context to shape the theory into a strategy – a thorough and methodical one.

iii) Continuous Education. Commit to a systematic self-education through affiliate marketing blogs, forums, and related news portals. Between changes in legislation, new unethical affiliate practices, and other rising threats, merchants have much to keep track of. Subscribing to RSS feeds of the above-quoted resources will help you to stay on top of the industry’s news, trends and tendencies.

iv) Teaching Others. Seneca, an ancient Roman Stoic philosopher is known for saying that “People learn while they teach.” Learning is always mutual, and while sharing the knowledge with others, the instructor deepens his/her own knowledge as well. Some twenty centuries after Seneca, the famous American novelist, Richard Bach, wrote: “You teach best what you most need to learn.” Start a blog where you would continuously share your knowledge with others. It will help you more than you know.

Self-education will take time. But it is time well-invested. So start today!

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator, and author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes.”

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
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Webster’s Dictionary defines autopilot as “a device for automatically steering ships, aircraft, and spacecraft.” Such systems of directing vehicles without assistance from human beings are excellent when used in the contexts that they were created for. Affiliate marketing is not one of them.

However, numerous merchants run their affiliate programs the “autopilot way,” and many are not even aware that they do.

I’ve found this problem to be more common with programs run on affiliate networks. When a merchant starts a program on a network, they often mistake the affiliate network for a self-adaptive autopilot.

Aerospace avionics expert George Siouris defines this type of affiliate program as one that “measures its own performance, compares it to a standard, and adjusts … parameters until its performance meets the standard.”

Similarly, some merchants believe that once an affiliate program is started on an affiliate network, the network will both measure its performance, and ensure that the program keeps developing according to a “standard”.

However, the job of the affiliate network is to provide the merchant with tracking, reporting and payment solutions. The rest is affiliate program management, and most affiliate networks do not have it on the list of services provided by default.

An affiliate program is a marketing campaign. Launching it on a reliable platform (affiliate network, for example) is only half the job. The second half entails active affiliate program management.

The key management elements are (a) recruiting new affiliates, (b) educating and motivating current ones, and (c) policing all affiliates for compliance with your Terms of Service. Yes, you want to make sure your program has a detailed TOS agreement, in which you specify what affiliate behavior is unacceptable, and what consequences such behavior will bring about.

Examples of the most frequently banned affiliate behaviors include trademark bidding, forcing clicks, cookie overwriting, cookie stuffing, and use of downloadable software.

Besides recruiting and policing, the affiliate program manager is also responsible for reviewing new applications, and maintaining a healthy communication channel with the affiliates.

In February 2009, Econsultancy.com published the UK and the US Affiliate Censuses. Among the top reasons for not promoting a merchant, US affiliates pointed to “slow acceptance to program” (17%), and “bad follow-up communication” (10%). Poor communication has also been mentioned by 12% as the reason for dropping affiliate programs.

UK affiliates have also stated that “merchants do not communicate a variety of issues to them,” and whatever communication does exist, “ranges from bad or impersonal contact” to “failure to convey important information.”

US affiliates echoed this observation by underscoring that “merchants do not communicate enough with them,” and when they do, it is performed in a generic, mass-mailing style.

All dangers of the “autopilot approach” are too many to outline here. If you are serious about your online presence, treat your affiliate program as a serious marketing campaign. Otherwise, gaining genuine trust and loyalty of affiliates will be an impossible task.

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator, and author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes.”

Download the entire FeedFront issue 5 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue5.pdf
FeedFront issue 5 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00category/issue-5