What Makes a good Affilliate Program
 

Hi All

I am not looking for an affiliate program. but I am looking to write affiliate software. probably only for my own use.

I wondered in your opinion what makes a good adult affiliate program?

Skipping right past the silly answers. to the more serious answers if you were considering an affiliate program what is it you would like to see included?

Perhaps examples of programs that have everything you want?
or perhaps a combination of the best bits out of other programs.

One thing I would like to see is a "pay me now" feature, which if I wanted I could initiate payment myself for when I wanted it rather than having to wait till a specific date. This could only work if it was automated of course because the webmaster would soon get irritated if each affiliate kept requesting payments all the time.

What about the worst features. What turns you off an affiliate program?

Regards

Good affiliates !

accuracy and efficiency are 2 keys

This is AWESOME! I love the "pay me now" feature. Pay me now... and I'll send you SE traffic. See sig. :1orglaugh

ok here goes.

what really makes an affiliate for me is minimalism in design. i want something easy to navigate, loads fast. i don't need lots of graphics and pictures of naked girls and stacks of money once i log in to check my stats.

i don't mind it on the front page, but the stats area should be clean and intuitive.

campaigns are a must of course.

also i like to be able to examin my stats in as much detail as possible. i like how ccbill breaks down my traffic into patterns from early morning to night. but overall their backend is a little odd.

the "pay me now" feature is interesting. how do you think that would effect your fraud prevention though?

to be honest though, as long as the program converts, and the support (if neccesary) is good, i could care less what the backend is like.

hope that helps. shit, hope that makes sense, i am getting pretty drunk. :upsidedow

Thanks guys

Yes the fraud issue is a concern with "pay me now" I thought perhaps it may kick in after 6 months so that you have a known risk and then only payout the average of that 6 months.
If there is a sudden upsurge in hits/sales/whatever after pay me now kicks in it is automatically ignored.

Clean and simple. but deep. ie. you can drill down to what you need.

I must say a lot of affilliate stats I have seen leave me wondering.
They give you a total and thats it.

have a staff of outsourced people to post on the boards as the model, to flirt with webmasters for traffic :winkwink:

sugar, spice, and everything nice

in the end, what really matters its the conversion and retention
I could care less about the rest.

I got a 98 year old grandmother will that do ;)

But Darksoul. B4 you know about retentions and conversions what makes you decide to give a program a try? would the affiliate software have any bearing or not?

Hey Underthecovers.

The affiliate software is one of the most importent aspects for the program owners and affiliates. The stats must be clear, the affiliate must be clear and easy understandable. It's the best to give the program owners the abillity to customize every page in the affiliate area just like NATS and MPA3 are doing.

Hit me up on ICQ: 348847818 :thumbsup

friendly looking url's and campaign tracking is a must.

Good Affiliates and good communication is KEY..

NATS affiliate software works well, I have used MPA3.. and will stay with the NATS crew.. . like the tiger says "their ggrreeaatt"
also looked into cj.com <-- they have the best main stream affiliate system going.. ;-)

PlayerBucks.com is to adult what CJ.com is to main stream ;-) see sig..

A pay me now feature? You'd loose your ass on webmaster fraud.

Content that actually converts!

ok let me try to give my 0.02 eurocents on this one:

There are MANY MANY things involved in making a Affiliate program "GOOD", thats why you see so many failed programs around, you have to look into everything and so people just want to cut corners and start (tryinng at least) to make money.

For a good affiliate program you will need this (and much more...):

- a product/service that stands out from the rest
- a good reputation in this business
- a solid infrastructure able to face "problems"
- incentive to join (competition is hard nowadays ;) )
- a good support team on every field (hosting, affiliate, content, paysites,etc..)
- good paysites (not talking about cookie-cutter bullshit with lots of pre-checked crossales, plugins, the same content used in dozens of other sites)
- updates on everything (members area, promo tools)
- COMMUNICATION with the affiliates and help them in everything (within reason)
- a good tracking/stats system
- appealing sites
- not support illegal activitys (and many, more than you would imagine fail on this one)
- provide content for promotion
etc..etc...

I could keep going on and on but got work to do :winkwink: :thumbsup

Don't CJ promote other peoples affiliate programs. Playerbucks seems only to promote its own programs

which does not put it in the class of CJ's

Thanks Rui a comprehensive response :)

I am afraid NATS and MPA3 are somewhere outside of my league :( I have to run an inhouse system externally managed systems simply take too much of a very small pie.

Good stat breakdowns. Date range, pay period and all time
Referral stats and the ability to make campaigns
Referral stats that inclue payout and who signed up under you
easy access to adding content/hosted tools/ad tools, including the ability to add to multiple tours.

You don't think the six month delay and the averaging system mentioned above would cover this?

A webmaster would have to get away with fraud for six months before he could hurt the system. and I must say if hes that good he's probably beating many systems out there.

You would need to run your normal checks like average conversion rates etc. someon who converts too high would be immediately suspect