Webmaster Bonuses / Incentives

Forget all that stuff. Convert. Make your program fair for your affiliates without any scammy tricks. When a webmaster does try you out make it count. If you don't perform that webmaster may very well write off all your sites for life. You might never get a second chance. The suckers who were swayed by contests with corvettes and vacation condos are disappearing and going out of business. The ones left tend to ignore that stuff and instead go by who consistently makes money. Don't treat your affiliates like a bunch of stupid suckers. Treat them as business partners like a real business should.

Good post. Keep them coming.

Exactly what I was about to say

my biggest guys dont ever ask for anything or ever want anything. They are happy that we convert and pay on time every time.

We used to have a rewards system in place it was hardly ever used - its all just a PR tactic to get views to your program

The big guys just want to be paid and paid what they are owed.

Thanks. I'm not saying to reverse shave (give the affiliate credit for joins when they sent none just to keep them happy) either. That can make it look as if you actually are shaving when you stop reverse shaving later on. Just do what you can to make sure your affiliates get a commission on all the leads they are sending. So many programs are using various tricks to do the opposite so if you do this you should come out ahead.

$100 Payouts.

That next trade show so I can sit at the round bar and drink. ;)

Give me more!!!

If an affiliate has clearly gone the extra mile and put a bit of creativity into how to promote you, it would be nice to get some kind of bonus payment.

1. multiple tours (aimed at different target groups, not just using different color schemes). Also, if you add a new tour to a site, make sure your affiliate still have an option to link to the old tour if they want (in case it works better with their traffic).

2. No Twitter or other social media links on your tour pages (or at least not on the tour pages your affiliates send traffic to). 'Follow us on twitter' on tour pages is nothing but a traffic leak and an attempt to screw affiliates.

3. Convert! Plain and simple... sites that convert get more traffic.

4. If you have FHG's, hire someone to write decent descriptions. Descriptions that match the content in the FHG. I list less than 4% of the FHG's in my db simply because most of them have no decent description.

5. Pay and Pay on time. If by the end of the year an affiliate has not reached your minimum payout limit, pay him.

6. Banners. Offer banners in different sizes. Offer banners that you would click. A lot of programs have banners that look like they were made back in 1997. Oh and, make it easy for affiliates to grab your banners... like list them all on 1 page or let them download them all in one huge zip. There's nothing more annoying than having to select a site, then select a banner size, click to confirm, grab 2 banners and then have to repeat the whole process for every other banner size and site in the program.

7. Respond to emails. Even if you can't help, take the time to reply and tell that to the affiliate.

8. Show your affiliates you respect them. Console free links are console free links so don't put any "are you sure you want to leave" javascript on them. If an affiliate contacts you about it, don't come up with some "oh, yeah we just moved to nats 4 six months ago and were still working out the kinks"...

9. No shady stuff, no traffic leaks. If surfers can order your product by phone, make sure affiliates IDs still get passed. SellHealth (used to be LeadingEdge) is one of the few companies that does this right. They show the affiliate ID as a kind of promo code on the site so surfers can mention it when they order by phone.

10. Understand your niche... seriously!

11. Cookies are so 2001. Programs that only track by cookie, don't credit all sales to the affiliate. Result: lower ratios for the affiliate. Result: less traffic for the program.

12. NO audio or autoplaying videos with sound on tours.

And if you still want to offer bonuses, offer higher revshare or pps for affiliates with proven track records, don't waste your time on meaningless promo's.

and one more thing: If you send checks or anything else by mail... don't put anything adult related on the envelope!

Great post

OP, The answer to your question however is hookers and cocaine. jk

plus i would like to add something.

remember not all affiliates are big whales, so make sure to set minimum payment to low.
and not like 200 bucks.

So true, personally I like 50 bucks, it's not that I won't send a lot of traffic eventually, but while I'm testing you out I want to make sure I'll still get paid if I decide you're not converting well enough

thats what my lovers tell me

what he said.

very good post!

Bingo. Just convert.

All I need is some content and a link to send traffic to. That and a good ratio and I'm happy.

and no shaving.
weekly email on which ads or banners converts best.
no prechecked xsales on rev share links.

Thanks dudes for the feedback! If you're not already working with our program hit me up. We can work out something to make us both good coin!

Cheers,