InterNeXt 2005 - Affiliate Programs

What is an affiliate program?

This is going to be a rather simple explanation of what an affiliate program is and what it can do for you. I don't mean for this page to be insulting to those of you going "duh of course I know that". But to be honest as a new web designer I really didn't know the in's and out's of such programs so this was a learning experience for me and maybe others as well.

An affiliate program is a way for sites to pay for traffic that gets directed to their sites. A good example of this (if I used such a mechanism) would be in my profiles section. If I linked a list of their movies to an on line retailer and you then bought that movie through them I would get a percentage of the sale if I were signed up with that sites affiliate program. Now in theory this sounds like a good idea and can be for some people. Let's say I wanted to put a list of recommended books on my site both about the porn industry and photography. Both central themes here. It is not feasible for someone like me to buy books to sell someone but if I joined Amazon's affiliate program I could actually get a portion of the proceeds if someone bought a book I recommended. But it would not require me to have to sell anything




directly which is a tremendous pain in the rear for a small web site.

Now for those of you who are going well that sounds like a great idea why don't you do it...well that is because as with most things there are drawbacks to such programs.

1) They don't normally track a user once he leaves the first time. Let's go with the book example again...if you follow the link to Amazon but decide to not buy the book at that time and return directly to the site a few days later to get the book I would get nothing. Some programs are getting sophisticated enough to remember returning users but most are not.

2) They can limit you ability to make recommendations. If I teamed up with an on line adult retailer to recommend a specific models movies then I would only get paid if you bought it from that retailer and not another one. And who is to say the retailer I have is offering the best price and service. So in good conscience can I recommend only one retailer or do I need to recommend several? If you are not careful your site will now just be one giant pile of links to other sites instead of your own.

3) Most people, myself included, HATE having their on-line activities tracked and we have programs running specifically designed to prevent that. This can prevent the affiliate programs from running properly. Which can cost you money in the long run. But I am not about to recommend that people disable these programs as I think they are a very good idea.

So as with most things the decision to join an affiliate program should not be undertaken lightly. You should weigh carefully the benefits and drawbacks of each program and whether or not linking to these sites will actually provide a benefit to the visitors to your site.

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