The following is what Nishank Khanna had to say in response the the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved?
The biggest thing holding back merchants from achieving record success and small affiliates from becoming super affiliates is… a lack of communication.
I’ve been on both sides of the fence — as a merchant and a super affiliate. By communicating one-on-one with smaller, budding affiliates, merchants are setting themselves up for long term success.
Real life example: For an affiliate program I managed, the majority of sales came from top 5 of our affiliates (1075 total in the program).
We pampered them with everything you can possibly imagine — increased commission, bonuses, RSS feeds for links so they can keep their content up to date without any effort.
But we didn’t spend much time on the “small fry” affiliates making a few hundred dollars in sales each month. When 3 of our top 5 affiliates found a better opportunity, we lost a significant percentage of our affiliate sales.
For another program, we did something not many merchants do — we treated ALL affiliates equally. Regardless of whether they’re making $1 million in sales or $10, we treated ALL like super stars. The result? 18 of the “small fry” affiliates turned out to be our biggest earners in a matter of months.
Moral of story: treat all affiliates like super stars, and the hard work will pay off in due time.