What Do You Think The Biggest Mistake An Affiliate Program Can Make Is?

Just wondered what you all thought about this question, we all know about programs that have launched strongly but, later down the line, have dwindled away in to nothingness.

That being said, what forces would you attribute to affiliate programs that fail?

Obviously not listening to their affiliates has to be high on the list but, what other mistakes do programs / program owners make that contribute to their failures?

We all know what makes a program succeed so i figured it would be interesting to make a list of things that have an adverse affect on a program.

Your thoughts?

Regards,

Lee

most of the affiliate programs i know of that failed failed due to either a lack of resources (not enough money or info) or else because the owners used trusted employees or contractors who didn't have enough knowledge.

while i've seen tons of programs fail, i see plenty of programs that are still up and running even though they don't answer icq's or emails, have lousy sites or sites with traffic leaks, or have terrible rebills.

You know, the more im looking in to things like hiring staff to run various aspects of Condom Cash the more im seeing that a lot of people really dont have any knowledge other than board whoring when it comes to marketing to webmasters and other programs.

The other day i asked a guy what marketing experience he had and his reply was (i shit you not)...

Quote:

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I have over 4000 posts on GFY

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Once he said that i had enough information not to continue the discussion.

The other thing that im always amazed at is how much emphasis companies put on only 1 or 2 key employees, a good example of this would be Ounique, Don, to my knowledge, pretty much did everything over there, he left and, well the rest is history.

IMHO Jeff would have been much better off hiring 2 or 3 people that acted like Don that way, when Don left, they would still be a viable option for many webmasters to purchase content from.

Regards,

Lee

The key to any successful marketing project, including those dear and near to us like affiliate programs, is RELATIONSHIP. Professional and private relationships with the people you work with on a daily basis is parmamount to keeping steady growth.

Once you bring a partner on board your job is only 50% complete. If you don't maintain and build that relationship you might as well kiss it goodbye. It's as good as dead.

My motto is... be reasonable, be fair, and be absolutely honest with your partners. You'll gain a reputation that is trustworthy. Get out to the industry events, put a face on the label and give you're business some warmth through human contact.

My two cents...:groovy:

Fooling around with tiered commission structures.

I've never participated in a program that didn't experience a snag. Not even Amazon.com gets the math right! So if they can't, why try?

I always suggest to companies to just not bother, as you are creating more things that can potentially get muddled, in an already complicated system of tracking sales and clickthroughs.

(That's not the biggest mistake, but a common enough one.)

Another: having a sketchy, uninformative terms of agreement that is impossible for affiliates to locate when they come back a month later trying to remember the details and payouts of the program they signed up for. Not an end of the world flaw, but just some easily correctible, constructive details.

Steve

In a word? Greed.

Shaving. Sub-standard % payouts...

They don't necessarily result in the DEATH of a program, but they certainly limit their success.

I think the biggest mistake is not treating the webmasters well. You want to cater to the webmasters and everything they may need. If they aren't happy they will just end up sending traffic elsewhere.

Mark