Accepting affiliates

[peterp]

Hi,
I'm fairly new to affiliate marketing. I've been using affiliatefuture and have added shareasale to see which will perform better. Or I might just use both, I'm waiting to see what happens.

I've never really gone through and edited affiliates that sign up on either, but I have looked through them and a fair amount seem to just be link farms or not even related to what I'm selling (baby clothes). Either that or they might have a different website than the one showing that they would put our banner on.

Is it ok just to let these sites sign up and have extra links out there or should I be weeding these out so I don't have a bunch of non-relevant links around. I realize that search engines might have a problem with too many links in non-related websites.

Any advice on this would be appreciated.

P

[Jack]

Somewhat depends. I can tell you I will never sign up to an affiliate program and give out the actual site I plan to promote a program on. The site I give out though is either my company site or a fairly clean and professional looking site. Generally, successful affiliates are very secretive of their exact promotion methods. Personally, I cloak every click to strip the referrer information and will not give away my specific traffic sources. The reason is if the advertiser knows the keywords I use to promote their offer or where I'm buying traffic, then they can just cut me out and advertise where I'm advertising.

Of course, like 95% of affiliates have no clue what they are doing and will just put you on a crappy page of links. But, it can be hard to determine a super affiliate from a super fail affiliate (I know, I've seen tons of sites from big affiliates that look terrible and many of mine do too). Fraud shouldn't be a huge problem since it sounds like you are Cost Per Sale which severely limits that (but still can happen). So, I'd just let everyone through.

Is it ok just to let these sites sign up and have extra links out there or should I be weeding these out so I don't have a bunch of non-relevant links around. I realize that search engines might have a problem with too many links in non-related websites.

This definitely won't matter. Your affiliate links won't give you link juice and you won't be penalized for this.

[peterp]

thanks for the info Jack. I guess that's what's confusing me, affiliates are signing up with websites that I go to and they have no real content or look to them. I'm selling baby clothes and I saw my ad on a company that sells pest control! I could have just left it but I just don't see the point in having my banner there....

[hboss]

I would like to see more affiliate programs leaving it to the affiliates to use Adwords etc. Let the affiliate program manager manage the affiliates and let the affiliates manage the marketing. As an affiliate program you will get some creditability by not blatantly competing with your affiliates and driving the prices up for everyone.

[binhosting]

Do think is it better to use an affiliate program like Google Affiliate Network or create your own affiliate program? I use WHMCS which has a built in affiliate program.

[thomasusa80]

I guess that's what's confusing me, affiliates are signing up with websites that I go to and they have no real content or look to them. I'm selling baby clothes and I saw my ad on a company that sells pest control! I could have just left it but I just don't see the point in having my banner there....


_______Edwordstephen_______

[menupages112]

And we are now excited to share some new great news with you. Since today our store allows for affiliates to sign up and spread their unique link.