What makes a truly great affiliate program?
 

I know there are preferences common to the majority of webmasters (i.e frequent and reliable payouts) and that there are many good affiliate programs out there who bring their own benefits to their affiliates, but what is it that makes a truly good program? What is it about the programs that you have been promoting for a very long time that keeps you coming back?

IMHO, 2 things: SUPPORT and QUALITY PRODUCT/SERVICE

So which programs would you say offer the best support and product/service at the moment?

You might get some masters thesises in here with that one. Hard to pin it down but I think it all boils down to whether or not people are gonna sign up to the sites or not. So I guess most important is hot exclusive content shot well and updated frequently. As far as frequency and reliability of payouts goes, I personally don't even care if they're a day or 2 or 3 off with the checks if their shit is selling like hotcakes. Quality free hosting is a massive deal to alot of affiliates I think, especially small to medium range guys.

:2 cents:

MeatCash:pimp

Well, I can only comment definitively about the sponsor I used in the period of 2000 to 2003 when I was doing adult webmaster work fulltime. Recently, I'm almost 100% mainstream (the only remaining "adult" traffic work I do is adult dating but even then I don't use nude filter pages). From 2000 to 2003, my best sponsor was ARS. Laura and Matt and other people who used to work (maybe still work?) there helped me out a lot re payment issues, BYOT linking issues, as well as PEP TALKS re getting sales. Plus, their huge network packages helped out a lot. All this coaching, solid support, as well as a great (at the time) content network (now, the new standard is EXCLUSIVE CONTENT and super granular niche content at that) helped me hit nice payouts pretty much consistently from 2000 to summer of 2003. Then in 2003, my traffic source changed and so did my income but that's another story altogether...

Also the rewards program was great: I have 2 Dell Inspirons, 1 La z boy executive chair, 1 George foreman grill, 2 PS2s, and 1 17 inch LCD screen cuz of ARS Rewards. Marc De, back when I was doing adult promo, sure knew how to retain and reward his webmasters. I'm not saying the rewards are what kept me (it was the nice paydays!) but they are a nice touch that says the sponsor wants to give you that something EXTRA.

I started Webmasterlabor.com with those 2 Dell Inspirons (along with 1 other laptop) in 2003. I put them in one big backpack, went back to my homeland the Philippines and started my outsource biz. Now, I have a 40+ employee mainstream outsource/call support/sales support/commodities financing/online services company. So ... indirectly, I guess, I can thank ARS for webmasterlabor.com:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

$5 Submissions... please hit me up on ICQ if you've got a minute.

BobG 153 834 939

Done deal.:thumbsup

I concur fully. :thumbsup

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