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The online business system of promoting external products and services as an affiliate to help monetize our blogs and sites has been around for a while… over a decade, actually. Considering the relative maturity of a business model where advertisers and companies pay third party publishers (us) for traffic, referrals and sales, should we still bother, then, to test the legitimacy of an affiliate program before devoting resources to promoting it on our blogs/sites?

You betcha.

We’re not talking about whether a product or service actually sells (more art than science and a separate issue) — what we’re concerned with here is that when we indeed produce a sale or perform a compensable action (such as a click) under the terms of the affiliate program, the program’s “tech” will actually track our involvement… and that we actually will get paid for it.

Although there’s really just no way to know for certain whether a program you’re thinking of joining will do right by you, in my experience over the years, there are a few quick and dirty “tests” we as affiliates can do to help us spot the duds and minimize our losses. Here are five:

Test #1: Make a Purchase

In many cases, I try to be an actual customer of the product/service or the company behind it before promoting it as an affiliate. The purchases are made through my affiliate-coded links. (NOTE: Some companies welcome, even invite, this; some don’t. Read the program’s fine print.)

This ends up serving a dual purpose:

• If I don’t already, I will know the product/service/company, making it very easy to write up, promote, not to mention unreservedly recommend to my audience.
  
• I can literally test the systems in place (technical and administrative) that track, credit and pay me for the affiliate transaction.

Be careful here since many programs, especially those involved in the sale and delivery of physical goods, implement systems that may take up to a day or two before showing up on your account (so don’t be too quick to freak!).

In the event of a problem and I don’t see my purchase appearing on my records, I contact the program’s administrators immediately. I tell them what I did in detail (date, time, product, price, transaction number, blah blah blah) and why I did it (test the affiliate program). I do not, however, go on attack mode… this is business. Instead, I do question the program’s ability to properly track affiliate sales, and seek a satisfactory resolution/explanation to convince me to indeed begin promoting the program.

Most “fix” the transaction and credit me properly (they’re still negatively marked in my book, although the way they dealt with me and my inquiry may affect my decision whether to continue on with the aff relationship or not).

Some, you may be surprised, do not. I’ve even dealt with a program admin brazen enough to directly assure me repeatedly that a commission will appear on my account, something that it should go without saying never happened. Easy to figure out what to do with those programs.

Also note that I’m not too nutty: I limit these “test purchases” to buying stuff I actually need or want. Who the heck wants to waste money?

NEXT: Part 2 of 5 - Who’s Running the Show?

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