What factors entice you to join an affiliate program?

**David Rocci** · 09-13-2007 07:41 AM

As the title suggests, I'm interested to know the types of incentives or programs that influence your decision to become an affiliate... and not just an idle affiliate that throws up a banner but someone that truly promotes their affiliated product.

Is it money? quality of the product? belief in the product? how quickly the affiliate pays?

What are your top priorities when thinking about joining an affiliate program?

Thank you for your input.

-dr

**iceman504** · 09-13-2007 12:16 PM

the payout period, quality of the product, proof that there has been medium to high payouts, how well known the product or company is, and how much help is available on the net for the affiliate program i'm considering

**kpfingaz** · 10-01-2007 09:29 PM

1. How the product can help my target audience/quality
2. Reputation
3. Payout threshold
4. How much I'm getting (I usually want at least $15 per sale - the higher the better)
5. Marketing resources available
6. Flexibility of promotional methods (ie. whether I can do ppc, email marketing etc.)
7. Sales page quality
8. If I cant even contact the webmaster/affiliate manager of the site then thats a red light

Jay

**David Rocci** · 10-01-2007 09:55 PM

Thank you guys for the suggestions. We are at the very beginning stages of developing an affiliate program... in fact, we haven't even decided we definitely want to pursue it.

Will you take a second to check out our website and see if our product meets a few of your criteria? http://www.healthydiabetic.com

If we build the system we want to do it right. I appreciate the feedback.

-dr

**kpfingaz** · 10-01-2007 10:43 PM

On first look I think #7 - Sales page quality is lacking.

To me the blocks of text are to heavy too read and most people wouldn't read all that (I didn't). Ok I don't have diabetes so I don't actually know if they would read it but still break it up a little bit.

Not too important here but if your customers are gonna contact you you have to make it easy for them.

Unless you actually want them to NOT contact you then the contact page should have less fields and a clear privacy statement (to let them know that their information is safe).

I know you want to give away the white paper and other stuff. Let them fill out a separate form with all that stuff. They will only need to do one of either.

I know you're just starting out but I won't promote this as an affiliate. Diabatrol though...I'd be interested in promoting that. For sure. But the main problem I do have is with the sales page.

Jay

**David Rocci** · 10-01-2007 11:12 PM

We were told by our SEO guys that the main page text is required for optimization purposes. There isn't a whole lot we can do about that.

We have tried to make education a priority with our website. There are a MILLION supplements out there that make claims that are bogus and we want to separate ourselves from that pack of hoodlums. We offer a clinically tested, scientifically formulated and performance proven formulation that actually works.

What suggestions do you have for improving the sales page?

Affiliate may end up as a route we choose to ignore... One of our advisory board members is the former president of Kroger, Central Division. We have every intention of being on the retail store shelves. But, our margins are much higher when dealing direct on the internet so we are exploring the opportunity to maximize that. By offering an affiliate program, we can pay an affiliate as much as we would pay a distributor and everyone wins.

I really appreciate your suggestions about the contact forms. I'll take it to the team and get the contact form simplified. You'd be surprised how many people have requested the whitepapers and activity logs.

-dr

**kpfingaz** · 10-01-2007 11:39 PM

David, SEO guys are SEO guys and marketers are marketers. Are you selling Diabatrol to Google? Yahoo? MSN? Or to the market for Diabatrol - people with type 2 diabetes who may have blurred vision and can't seem to focus on reading all that text.

Sure the text may be required for optimization purposes but its laid out in a non user friendly manner.

If you are going to be using affiliates then you don't have to worry too much about SEO. Not saying to forget about SEO cause I'm sure you do want your site to rank well - everyone does. But if you have a good product and a good affiliate program then you will be getting huge amounts of free traffic from affiliates who will do PPC, article marketing (which will build links to your site).

Or you can go the SEO route and get a top listing (much harder to do in my opinion).

But...

If the sales page isn't good enough or turns off your visitors it doesn't matter how much SE traffic you get or how much affiliates are sending visitors to your website, your sales conversions are going to be low.

Don't think that there is nothing you can do about the SEO of your sales page. There is. Make it user friendly first then you can worry about SEO ie. put your market before worrying about Google. You can even use the same content.

Jay