Affiliate Marketing Auditor

There are 10's of thousands of affiliate program providers out there dieing to get your traffic and they make great promises of paying their affiliates when they get a payment from an affiliate link, but we have found that more than 95% don't pay. So, there are a few things you should look for in an affiliate program, and this does not include testimonials or payment percentages from affiliates.

1. Does the affiliate provider provide statistics on how many "click-throughs" that have come from your site? This is very important and easy for the affiliate provider to demonstrate. If you find an affiliate provider that doesn't have this feature, RUN AWAY! We found it astonishing that more than 85% of the 500+ affiliate programs we reviewed do not provide this most fundamental of services.

2. If the affiliate provider has the above statistic, do they show a conversion rate of leads you sent versus purchases made and leads sent versus affiliate fees earned? This is important because you need to evaluate your return on investment (ROI), and yes, if you are taking your hard-earned traffic and sending it to someone else's site, you want to know immediately what each click has earned you.

3. What percentage of purchases made on the affiliate provider's site is paid to affiliates? This is a little hard to understand, so let's use this example: if an affiliate provider makes 100 sales in a given month, it would be good to know how many were made through affiliate links. If they paid 1 or 2 affiliates on these 100 sales, they have a very weak affiliate program, but if they paid 100 affiliates on the 100 sales, they are very serious about their program.

Let's face it, if you were an affiliate provider, would you rather receive 100% of your own marketing efforts, or 80% (example for a 20% affiliate fee) of 1,000's of other peoples marketing efforts? This is the key reason to start an affiliate program in the first place, and we have found that most affiliate providers just like to say they will pay, but actually don't. If they don't provide this type of statistic, it is probably because they are not proud of their numbers. Also, they don't have to provide sales statistic (how many sales) to show this percentage, so there is no excuse for not showing it.

4. Has the affiliate provider had a 3rd party review their program so that you as the affiliate can know what to expect? We have never seen this, which is why we are offering this service to affiliate providers. Most are just promising to pay and not paying - this is great for the affiliate provider, but bad for the affiliate. This would have the added benefit for the provider of letting their affiliates know they are serious about paying affiliates. It will set their programs over and above every other program out there.

5. Does the affiliate provider have a third party managing the referral process? We have found several of these out there, but most fail to provide items 2, 3 and 4 and all fail to provide 3 and 4. Ideally the third party affiliate monitoring service would provide an opt-in form that captures information about the lead (person interested in buying) and pass it on to the affiliate provider and keep the information in available for the affiliate so that there is an audit trail.

We have coined this last item as "Certified Affiliate Marketing" - it provides affiliates and affiliate providers an audit trail and allows both to provide additional data to leads generated through a system like this to close the sale. We also have a system that provides this, so don't be left in the dust as others provide this unparalleled level of service!

Imagine sending a 100 leads to an affiliate provider and receiving no affiliate earnings - with this program, affiliates can follow up and try to close the sale for the provider, and this provides an audit trail in case the lead actually did buy and the affiliate provider hasn't acknowledged and paid the affiliate fee.

For the affiliate provider, if 100 leads are sent and there are no buys, the provider can also follow up and try to close the sale because the lead information was captured.

If you are an affiliate provider, or thinking about becoming one, we have a program that allows you to have your program reviewed and can make recommendations on setting your program apart from so many others out there, making it the most attractive affiliate program on the net.

For a free initial consultation on how to bring your affiliate program to the next level of service, contact us today!

Teo Graca
Net-Teams Inc - President
GLI Business Manager and CTO
Information Architect, Speaker
Phone: 1-866-267-2494 x3