Here's what's wrong with Affiliate Marketing for the small guy

[Harold Mansfield]

Over the years I've seen, signed up for or worked quite a few affiliate marketing programs with varying results.
Amazon, Ebay, Diet Pills, Health Products, Music, Travel and so on and so on.

Affiliate marketing on the surface for the average publisher is flawed in so many ways that it's almost like it's a front for free banner advertising.
Most affiliate programs are not set up for small publishers to actually make any money, and here's how you can tell:



The Tools Suck
Most affiliate programs pretty much consist of banners and that's it. A new affiliate will never make any money with these tools and the programs have to know this. In all my years of doing this it is amazing that anyone who is serious about having affiliates direct sales to them hasn't created better tools for them to do so. It's as if they don't really want you to succeed.
The Rules Suck
Most programs frown on you creating your own tools without special permission. However a new publisher will never get special permission. Larger/Super affiliates get all the best tools, and permissions. The people who run programs know they are treating smaller publishers this way, but they don't care.
Communication is almost non existent.
I've had a few affiliate managers reach out to me, but for the most part communications to affiliate managers go unanswered. Even though they send you the latest promotions frequently, good luck getting a question answered about promoting it. Most times as an affiliate you are on your own to read the rules and implement your own creativity on promotion as long as you don't break the rules on keyword bidding, spamming, trademark violations and so on. Trust me, they'll start talking to you when you start driving sales.
The payouts are horrible.
It goes without saying that affiliate payouts aren't what they used to be. You have to read the fine print to truly understand what you get paid on and how much. While some are straight forward, others fluctuate payouts and many times special promotions aren't included in payouts at all. It's just free advertising for them if you put those banners on your site.


So why do I ( and others) keep doing it? Because if you know your way around the rules, and have a good marketing plan in place you can still make money at it. Once you've proven yourself as a sales driver, you can renegotiate a better deal..and THAT should be the goal of every affiliate marketer. Not the deal that everyone gets, your own deal based on what you deliver. But you have to take the crap payments for a while before you can get there.

[billbenson]

Harold, kind of sounds like a line from an 80 y/o knife fighting instructor I have. Rules:

1. There are no rules
2. Cheat.
3. Remember rules 1 and 2.

BTW, that 80 y/o guy hit me harder than I have ever been hit. Can't trust those old farts :)

[Harold Mansfield]

Harold, kind of sounds like a line from an 80 y/o knife fighting instructor I have. Rules:

1. There are no rules
2. Cheat.
3. Remember rules 1 and 2.


It's pretty accurate. Back in the day affiliate programs used to be helpful. You could tell they wanted the program to be successful for all publishers. Today it's obvious that the programs are set up for large publishers and super affiliates only. I'm OK with that now. But I don't see how others can make it just starting out.

Add to that most of the companies that have affiliate programs out there, do not need them. They are nothing more than low paying banner farms.

[Harold Mansfield]

Here's an example of exactly what I'm talking about. I joined an affiliate network just to promote one product. I realized that the tools sucked and asked a few questions about my own and deep linking. During that time I also changed the name of my website and asked that the change be approved in my account. And I waited. That was over 2 months ago. I sent and resent the request at least 3 times and never heard from anyone.

Last week I got fed up and asked them to just close my account, that I was no longer interested in being part of their program.

Within 2 hours they sent ME a stock email which included language that said that I was breaking the terms of the agreement by the way I was improperly displaying or promoting their ads on my site. Never mind that fact that I didn't have ANY banners on my site and wasn't promoting anything from them while I was waiting to hear for over 2 months.

This is why people hate affiliate marketing and why so many programs are unsuccessful and run like crap.

When you find good programs, stick with them. Otherwise, move on and close your accounts with programs that can't even answer a simple email because you aren't important to them.

[Beat15]

Well, this is an issue that the small guy as you mentioned has to deal with. Affiliate marketing is not an easy task either because you need to have a great website that's getting decent amount of traffic which is another big issue since traffic does not come quickly unless you have budget that you can spend on advertising. But, I strongly believe that if you have a well established website that's getting lot of good traffic you should be able to do quite well. Concerning the lack of communication that you refer, the affiliate network that I associate with always answer me whenever I contact them.

[nealrm]

Affiliate market basically sucks. I tried it for 9 months, sent hundreds of clicks to the there site and received a grand total of $0.19. I switched over to Google and found that program to be much more rewarding.

[shrinkme]

I made $100 from Google. Took me 5 years. Oh well.