The following is what Hokuto Kasai of the JAPAN.AffiliateSogo.com had to say in response the the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved?
My answer is that there are so many people who do NOT care about what is wrong, or what is right with affiliate marketing.
Win-Win relationship is considered as one of the most important attributes of affiliate program, but in this real world, how many of affiliates and EC merchants are trying to build real Win-Win relationship?
In Japan, most affiliates focus on how to maximize their income, and most EC merchants focus on how to maximize their profit.
Their thoughts are understandable, but how to maximize the number does not lead to the success of affiliate market.
If they focus only on their own benefit, market does not bloom. Merchants need to understand what affiliates want from them, and affiliates need to understand what merchants want.
They need to understand the reality.
Affiliates try to increase their commissions by taking many actions, but some of their actions bring troubles, not sales, to merchants.
Merchants take actions to grow their affiliates, but some actions are just waste of the time. Why this happens? It’s because many of affiliates and merchants give up learning the affiliate program.
They do what THEY think right. Although there are affiliate pioneers, who teach us a lot, many affiliates and merchants ignore their existence.
Learning from pioneers, listening from partners, studying the market, forecasting the future, all these actions take time, and, cannot be measured by ROI.
Web-marketing is based on numbers. Without the numbers, on-line business cannot reach its goal.
However, affiliate marketing is not based only on numbers. There are various foundations contributing the growth of the market.
This is the time people need to think about what is wrong and what is right about affiliate market, and discuss about how to improve it.
Thinking leads actions. Actions without thought lead chaos.
How would you answer the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved? There are no right or wrong answers – just opinions that can help improve the industry.
The author of any response that is published at affiliatetip.com or affiliatesummit.com will receive a limited edition “It’s an affiliate thing, you wouldn’t understand.” t-shirt.
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