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PREVIOUSLY: How Many Other Affiliates are There?

Test #4: Where are They Going?

So, where’s your aff traffic ending up?

By this I mean the merchant’s destination page or site. Where does the traffic you send go? Does the landing site or page do a good job of selling whatever it is it’s selling?

If the merchant can’t sell, you’re not going to make any commissions.

Pretty obvious consideration. But not if the you get paid for clickthroughs instead of sales, then it’s the merchant’s problem and you get paid regardless. Lead generation is another scenario where your compensation comes from when any of your traffic is converted into leads (joins a mailing list, fills out an application form, etc.), so scrutinizing the destination’s ability to do that would be in order.

You’ll also want to look for gotchas that waste your efforts when sending traffic to an aff merchant.

With many items, for example, a sale is seldom made on a first visit. Many merchants implement browser cookie technology to recognize a prospect/customer as yours when s/he returns later to make a purchase, but merchants define how long to enable those cookies (normally in day counts) before all bets are off. The longer the better for you; if a merchant has a cookie that doesn’t last too long (or even none at all), you’ll want to check that the merchant’s landing page or site is good at converting first-time visitors.

Another frequent gotcha is the payment mechanism. This mainly deals with affiliate programs that are directly linked with the customer paying through the affiliate network’s payment system. An example of this is ClickBank; if memory serves, ClickBank got its start as being a credit card/online payment alternative for small online merchants who don’t have their own credit card merchant accounts. ClickBank makes money on each transaction. The aff program they implemented naturally requires payment through ClickBank for it to be able to track sales and compensate the affiliate (you).

The gotcha is when the merchant also implements additional payment mechanisms on their site such as PayPal or even their own CC merchant account. Good for them, but not for you, since if you send over a customer who buys but doesn’t pay through ClickBank, you’ve just done charity work.

NOTE: Be careful in your evaluation of any ClickBank merchants since ClickBank now lets customers pay via PayPal… but through ClickBank nonetheless. This is different from the merchant sending customers to PayPal directly. So, just seeing a PayPal logo on a merchant’s site doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get gotcha’d — you’ll just need to dig a bit deeper.

NEXT: Part 5 of 5

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