What Matters When Choosing Affiliate Programs?

Currently, there are numerous affiliate programs out there. Common types of them include CPC, CPM, CPS, CPA and other creative derivatives. On the one hand, such a massive existence of affiliate programs creates great convenience for webmasters to monetize their websites. On the other hand, it makes some webmasters quite confused in face of so many affiliate programs and other webmasters eagerly to choose those affiliate programs that they assume will bring a largest return within a shortest timeframe.

Then, how about the actual performance of those affiliate programs with a presumably largest return in a shortest timeframe? Not quite satisfactory I have to say. The majority of webmasters actually haven't received any payment from their chosen affiliate programs at all. In order for us to achieve a better performance in affiliate advertising, I think it's quite crucial we discuss what matters when we choose affiliate programs. In my opinion, there are at least the following critical factors that we have to keep in mind before we publish affiliate ads in our websites. Although some of them may sound quite basic to you, I insist to list them out since it's right the basics that many of us forget with regard to affiliate programs choosing.

1. The traffic of the affiliate program's official website. By "traffic", I mean not only the amount of traffic, but also the source of traffic and the quality of traffic. I believe you all know the importance of traffic amount quite well. But for the source of traffic and quality of traffic, we usually forget to commit our due diligence. If the majority traffic of the affiliate program comes from only one source, we may have enough reason to question the stability of its traffic. If most traffic of the affiliate program comes from traffic exchange programs, the traffic has barely any value and the affiliate program's reputation is in serious doubt.
2. The reputation of the affiliate program. Some affiliate programs have a relatively long history and accumulated a fairly large traffic base. However, a large part of their history is notorious. You may find my users complain about various issues, for example, payment delay, service unavailable, ads untargeted and so on. It this is the case, you'd better not participate in it at the very beginning, no matter how large the commission rate is.
3. Ad unit design of the affiliate program. Some affiliate programs have very poor design in their ads. Even a beginner in web design may not feel comfortable when trying to appreciate their ads layout. Remember, if we don't feel good for the ad unit, the visitors of our websites won't, either. Thus, poor ad unit design may severely impact the Click-Through-Rate (CTR). It's important that we don't comprise on this just because of their attractive commission rate or other strengths such as short payment schedule. 
4. The diversity of ad units is also very important. In this regard, Google Adsense is the most outstanding example. It has provided webmasters nearly all choices of ad units that one could think of, so that webmasters have a great flexibility to seamlessly incorporate Google Adsense into their websites. In fact, it's quite common that webmasters use Google Adsense to better their websites' outlook.
5. Anti-cheating technique of the affiliate program. If the anti-cheating is not done quite well for an affiliate program, some "intelligent" guys could take advantage of any possible backdoors the affiliate programs to generate fake ad clicks without being caught. So those cheaters will receive payment although they didn't generate any income for the affiliate company's clients - those advertisers who let the affiliate company publish their ads for them. In the affiliate marketing field, the interests of advertisers, affiliate programs, and individual website publishers are closely tied together. If the interest of the advertisers is damaged, all stakeholders in the value chain, including you, will suffer in the end.
6. Chemistry between the affiliate program and your website. By "chemistry", I mean whether the ads fit your overall content and style of your website. For example, if the website talks about article writing, you may not want to publish ads about commercial electronics. If your websites requires the user to fill in a long registration form, you certainly don't want to pop-up ads to disturb your users.
7. Commission rate of the affiliate program. Don't get me wrong when I mentioned "commission rate". Here I mean you should think twice before lured away by extremely high commission rate. Where does your affiliate income come from? Although it's the affiliate program that pays you, it's the advertisers that offer any amount of advertising budget, out of which the affiliate program distributes a share to you. You know, no rational advertiser is willing to pay one penny more than the advertising price determined by the market. If an affiliate program offers an extremely high commission rate, chances are, either it's another case of business fraudulence, or the affiliate program is giving away money like an angel.

Of course, there are many other important factors impacting your decision with regard to which affiliate program to choose that I fail to cover here. However, it's always more important to know how than to know what. As long as you know that you need to think more carefully than before when choosing a suitable affiliate program for your website, the probability of your success in affiliate marketing is much higher.

Dance with the Affiliate Market Leader

You probably all heard about "Dance with the wind". That is exactly how I came of the title of this article. By "leader", I mean those leading affiliate programs, like Google Adsense in (Cost-Per-Click) CPC programs, Amazon in CPS (Cost-Per-Sales) programs and so on.

Nowadays, many website owners complain about strict rules of Google Adsense and low referrer rate of Amazon. In their mind, Google Adsense is dead. Amazon is lead. As a result, they tend to switch to other alternatives that have relatively looser requirements or have a much higher commission rate, which they managed to find in such places as clickbank and other advertisement proxies. Nevertheless, the best news I've heard about is that some of these alternative programs have a mediocre performance, but far from outstanding. On the other hand, however those webmasters who stick to traditional giants such as Google Adsense and Amazon continue to share with us their successful stories. Personally, I strongly suggest that we dance with the leader. The major reasons are as follows.

First of all, the leading affiliate programs are far more advanced in advertising technology. We could always hear exciting news about technique innovation or new advertising tools from them. Take Google as an example, there are hardly any competitors in the advertising world that even come close to its technique. Recently, it just acquired AdMod to strengthen its influence in mobile advertising market, which brings new ad publishing choices for webmasters. It also collaborates with Amazon to allow bloggers to easily plug in Amazon ads in blogs.

Second, the leading affiliate programs know the most appropriate rate. Based on their rich experience in advertising industry, they have a good command of knowledge to charge a most appropriate price for advertisers and distribute a fair share of ad revenue to website publishers, no more no less. On the contrary, some unknown affiliate programs set a ridiculously high commission rate to attract webmasters. Word of advice, don't be fooled by their high rate. Think about where your ad revenue comes from. If you always bear in mind that any ad revenue you may have comes from advertisers, you'll be more rational when choosing which affiliate program to participate in, since the advertisers are not fools, either. Besides, the high commission rate often means that the choice of ad type is quite limited and quality of ad is rather poor.

Last but not least, the leading affiliate programs are more likely to have a very low probability of default. A significant part of assets of leading companies are composed by intangible assets, which is closely related to their reputation. If you look at Google's balance sheet it reports to shareholders every quarter, you could get a better idea of that. That's why those leading companies are always quite aware of their reputation. Therefore, it's quite unlikely that they default on affiliating commissions payable to webmasters at the expense of their public image. However, those affiliate programs sitting in the corner are different. They probably don't care about reputation whatsoever. Instead, short-term profits are most vital to them. When something unfavorable, such as cash crisis, happens, it's not a bad idea for them to disappear completely without paying out a penny.

In summary, I strongly believe those leading affiliate programs, such as Google Adsense, Amazon and so on, are more worthy of your effort, in terms of sharing the benefit of their technology advantage, securing a fair market return and protecting your ad income.