I’ll start by sharing today’s example (quoting directly from the merchant’s description of its affiliate program):

“…. Payments are made once the affiliate [publisher] has earned more than $100. If an affiliate fails to earn more than $100, they are never paid. Subsequently, payments of the balance are made roughly every 45 days as long as the balance is over $100. Payments are made only via PayPal. …”

This merchant sells a “web service” priced from $24 to $199 per month, and promises to share 50% of the first month’s payment plus 5% for each additional month, for the life of the account.  For the $24 monthly package, the publisher (affiliate) would earn $12 the first month plus $1.20 for each additional month.

To meet the $100 payment threshold quickly, the merchant’s advertising on the publisher’s web site would need to drive at least eight new customers.  (Even assuming a 100% renewal rate, the $100 payment threshold would be met after five months from six new customers, or after 12 months from four new customers, or after 19 months from three new customers.)

Why this is a Bad Idea:

First, most experienced web publishers (affiliates) have experienced payment defaults from one or more merchants (they’ve been “burned”).  Most publishers have also seen merchants shut down before the payment threshold could be met.  These publishers are reluctant to carry any new performance-based advertising, especially for merchants with “in-house” affiliate programs.

An absurdly high payment threshold is a big “warning sign” for these skeptical publishers.  Some publishers will even view this as a sign of hostility or distrust by the merchant, or as a sign that the merchant doesn’t consider the affiliate program to be important.  It can also be perceived as a signal that the merchant isn’t confident about its own ability to convert or retain new customers.

Most “in-house” affiliate programs set a payment threshold of $50 or less (often $25).  Even those amounts can be perceived as unreasonable, if a publisher isn’t sure how successfully the merchant can convert traffic drawn from performance-based advertising. That’s a huge reason why most publishers prefer to work with “affiliate networks,” which usually combine advertising fees from multiple advertisers to meet their payment threshold.

Many affiliate networks and affiliate managers rave about their “super affiliates,” who are generally defined as the “best-performing affiliates.” Some affiliate networks’ sales reps will assure merchants that if they sign up with that affiliate network, they’ll immediately have access to a group of “super affiliates” who can quickly and easily drive sales.

Unfortunately, many “super affiliates” are actually poachers and leeches who don’t drive new business to merchants, but instead find ways to “capture” credit for transactions they didn’t influence at all. Included among these are “toolbar” affiliates whose software intercepts traffic which the toolbar-owner never influenced, and inserts an affiliate tracking code.

Many other “super affiliates” specialize in “re-capturing” customers whom the merchant either encouraged or allowed to exit the merchant’s web site before a transaction was completed. These include some coupon sites and PPC trademark bidders.  These affiliates “add value” by helping the merchant to recapture a customer who might otherwise be lost, but often at the cost of proper attribution to earlier influencers (including other affiliates and PPC advertising).  Merchants in this situation should focus on specific strategies to avoid “pushing away” customers (for example, by removing a “coupon prompt”), and on other strategies to recapture customers.

In some cases, “super affiliates” earn commissions even as their efforts actually reduce the merchants’ sales. Several years ago, I worked with a merchant who couldn’t understand why his sales had dropped shortly after he added an affiliate program. I discovered that his largest “affiliate” was a “fake coupon web site,” which aggressively solicited consumers with offers of coupons that weren’t valid. When consumers clicked on the affiliates’ links, they were redirected to the merchant web site with a promised discount that the merchant never authorized and wouldn’t honor. Most of these consumers angrily abandoned the merchant’s site, but a small group completed purchases for which the affiliate was paid — thus, the affiliate was being “rewarded” for driving away the merchant’s customers.

In my view, a web publisher who uses trickery and deceit to capture affiliate commissions is not a “super affiliate,”no matter how much the publisher is paid.

I also have strong views about “incentive and loyalty” affiliates, which promise rebates or payments to consumers (or to their schools or charities) if the consumers utilize the affiliate’s links.  In my experience, few of these affiliates add value, and most companies that work with these affiliates will lose far more traffic and sales due to the withdrawal of other types of affiliates whose “affiliate cookies” are overwritten by the incentive or loyalty affiliate.

While I don’t like to use the term “super affiliate” to describe any web publisher, I certainly recognize that there are hundreds of web publishers who can and do drive significant new traffic and sales to multiple merchants, and of course there are many thousands of web publishers who drive significant traffic to a single merchant.

Instead of looking for “super affiliates” (or “magic bullets”), a merchant’s affiliate manager should focus on identifying the types of web sites that are most likely to attract “the right visitors” who can be enticed to click to the merchant’s web site and complete a purchase. These will probably include some web publishers who are considered “super affiliates” by other merchants. However, in my experience, the most successful merchants find that most of their “top 10″ affiliates are not considered “super affiliates” by most other merchants, because these publishers deliver a unique audience or segment that is most optimal to drive traffic to just one or a small group of merchants.

With careful effort, any merchant can develop a unique pool of “super affiliates” who effectively promote the merchant and its products, driving new visitors and new sales.  Without careful effort, many other merchants attract a worthless pool of “super affiliates” who poach credit for transactions without adding any value, reducing the merchants’ profits.

Some related links:

• “Where to Find My Super Affiliates” (ABestWeb discussion thread)
• “Recruiting Super Affiliates Help” (ABestWeb discussion)
• “How to Approach Potential Super Affiliates (ABestWeb)
• “Can You Name Some Super Affiliates? (Nope)” (ABestWeb)
• “How Do Super Affiliates Achieve Their Status?” (ABestWeb)
• “Thinking About Super Affiliates” (ABestWeb)
• Search ABestWeb for posts about “super affiliates”

The articles originally appeared under my MarkWelch.com web site, but in May 2010 I moved them to my blog (MarkWelchBlog.com).  I’d recommend reading the articles in true chronological order.  (You’d see the articles in reverse chronological order if you select the “Advice for Merchants” category, or the archive for November 2007.)

Note that this series was adapted from earlier reports written for clients, and is thus written for an audience of merchants who already understand what an affiliate program is and how it might benefit their company.

1. Issues That Might Lead a Merchant to NOT Offer a Public Affiliate Program (Negatives)
2. Public vs. Private Affiliate Programs
3. What Factors Do Publishers (Affiliates) Consider When Selecting Advertisers (Merchants)?
4. Affiliate Technology & Network Choice
5. My Usual Recommendations (for Merchants planning an affiliate program)
6. Affiliate Recruitment Strategies and Practices
7. Captive and Stealth Affiliates
8. Affiliate Program Policies
9. Outsourced Program Management (OPM) for Affiliate Programs
10. Selling the Affiliate Program
11. Types of Affiliates (Web Publishers)

One reason I’m moving the articles into the blog is to enable others to post comments.  While I don’t intend to re-write the series, I do expect to use comments to clarify topics, and to link to relevant discussion threads elsewhere.

There are many other web-marketing checklists you might consider, including these four:

• “Evaluating Landing Page Quality“
• “240 Marketing Tips & Ideas Checklist” (ABestWeb)
• “The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period” (PDF)
• “eMarketing Sabotage: Top Ten Steps to Kill Your Search Engine Position” (ABestWeb)

____________________________

Here’s MY draft “web site checklist for merchants” (December 2007):

• Pet Peeves
  • Involuntary Audio – autoplay, virtual sales agent
    • Don’t play any audio message unless the user initiates it
  • Hyperlink tricks (style, functionality)
    • The default setting for links is “blue and underlined.” Consider very carefully why you’d want something different.
  • Unreadable fonts & font sizes
    • Avoid using “fixed size” fonts — let your visitors decide whether they want to view your text in a larger or smaller font (using Ctrl-Plus or Ctrl-Minus).
  • Typos (misspelling, grammar) – unprofessional = no sale
• Essential Links
  • Shipping Info – clearly explain, with no surprises
  • About Us – Identify the company’s name, street address, and more.
  • Contact Us – More options = more sales.
  • Privacy Policy
  • Security Policy (often combined with Privacy Policy but security issues must be addressed).
  • View Cart
  • Return Policy *
• Site Performance Issues
  • Site Load Times
  • Search Times
  • Image Load Times
  • Third-Party Server Issues
  • Monitoring Tools & Outage Notifications
• Site Design Issues
  • Consistent Navigation (header, left navbar, footer)
  • Changing & Disappearing Menus
  • Transition from Main Site to Shopping Cart – appearance
  • Transition from Main Site to Shopping Cart – URL/domain
  • Related Items (Upsell)
  • Search Functionality
  • Window Size Issues
  • Effect of User Choices
  • Excess White Space
  • Forced Viewing Options (font size, etc.)
  • Browser Variations
  • Javascript
  • Plug-Ins
  • Images, Alt-Tags, Text-Only Browser
• Disability Rights Issues
  • Visually Impaired Customers
  • Other Disabilities
  • Font size & style issues; relative font sizes
• Bookmarking and SEO Issues
  • Page Titles
  • Meta-Tags
  • Keyword-spamming
  • Over-Reaching
  • Jargon and Alternate Keywords (who is your customer? what do they know?)
• Branding and Marketing Issues
  • Consistent Branding
• Credibility Issues
  • Company’s address/location
  • Names of principals
  • Names (pictures) of key employees
  • Telephone number
  • Email address or contact form
  • Picture of office & staff
  • Return Policy
  • Endorsements/Testimonials
  • Typos (misspelling, grammar)
• Shopping Cart Process
  • Remove from Cart
  • Change quantity in cart
  • Compute shipping & sales tax – before requesting payment info
  • Number of steps/pages
  • Registration Requirement
  • Asking for unnecessary data
• Narrow Issues
  • Color Matching
  • Use of Color to Convey Info
  • Background Image & Colors
  • Consistent Use of Quotes, Italics, Underlining, Bold.

  Additional Issues for Affiliates:

  • Toll-free number
  • Call Now
  • Chat window
  • Chat pop-up
  • Call to order
  • Call for wholesale/volume pricing
  • External Advertising (AdSense, affiliate links)

1. “All-Joiners”: These affiliates generally seek to join all available affiliate programs (either generally, or within a specific product niche), in order to provide the most comprehensive information on their sites.
   • Price comparison sites: Dozens of “price comparison” sites are founded on affiliate links from merchants, while some use a “pay-per-click fee model.”
     • Most price comparison sites exclude merchants who don’t compensate affiliates in some way, but often accept very low commission rates rather than exclude well-known merchants. A few price-comparison sites, such as Froogle, are completely free (which may explain why Google has removed Froogle from public visibility).
     • Many price comparison sites usually participate only in a merchant’s affiliate program if the merchant provides a “datafeed” or other automated method to access information about the merchant’s products and pricing.
     • Because of the many variables and complexities of certain types of products and services, price-comparison sites are often misleading and unhelpful for these industries, but some may still draw meaningful traffic and could potentially drive sales.
   • Coupon and Deals sites: These sites generally join all available affiliate programs, in order to have information in a wide range of product categories and for the widest possible range of merchants.
     • Some “coupon and deals” sites seek to create a community of bargain-hunters, often emphasizing products and product categories. These affiliates can draw new customers to visit merchant sites; any differential treatment for coupon affiliates must include some special consideration for these sites.
     • Unfortunately, most coupon sites rely almost exclusively on obtaining favorable search-engine placement adjacent to consumer searches for merchant-specific keywords (such as “Amazon coupon”), and present a page with results for that merchant – often listing no genuine coupons at all. Some will even list “fake” coupons in order to persuade consumers to click on their affiliate links. Arguably, this group of coupon sites add little value, and some will have a negative impact by upsetting consumers with fake offers.
       • In reviewing one merchant’s log files, I determined that almost 50% of the sales attributed to affiliates were actually to consumers who had arrived at the merchant’s site from some other source, chose items, and began the checkout process – but then saw a “coupon prompt” and exited the site to search for a coupon code, returning through a coupon affiliate’s link. This merchant had no active coupon codes, so these sales were credited only to affiliates who had expired or fabricated coupon information. It is likely that many sales were actually lost after customers were disappointed that these coupons weren’t honored.
   • Incentive Sites: A number of internet companies promise consumers either “rebates” or “charitable donations” based on a share of affiliate commissions, if the consumer uses the “right” affiliate link before making a purchase at a merchant site.
     • Such affiliates generally do not bring new customers to a merchant, but instead “poach” a transaction that should properly be attributed to some other source (which increases the merchants’ costs, reduces the accuracy of other reporting methods, and alienates affiliates whose commissions are poached).
     • Some “incentive affiliates” are actually “fronts” for “parasites,” who use the “incentive” business model as a pretext for the lack of referring URLs in most of their affiliate links, and for their unusual (high or low) conversion rates.
     • On some affiliate networks, these sites are flagged or assigned separate categories so that merchants can allow or exclude them; some unethical incentive affiliates actively circumvent such methods.
     • I recommend that merchants exclude “incentive” sites from affiliate programs. Such an exclusion will add compliance costs.
2. “Many-Joiners”: Some sites join “many but not all” affiliate programs, for a variety of reasons.
   • Shopping Mall Sites: Some sites attempt to create a “mall” or “shopping resource” site, with links to several (or several dozen) merchants in each product category. Most of these sites carry little information other than an organized map of affiliate links, but some do provide meaningful information about products, shopping and gifting strategies, or other topics.
   • Banner Farms: Probably the most annoying affiliate applications come from individuals who simply create a single web page with dozens of merchant banners and buttons. These “banner farms” contain no original content, and as a result they draw almost no traffic whatsoever. Sometimes, these sites are created by individuals who are duped into “buying a web site” on eBay or through a promotional package, with assurances that vast wealth will result. While these sites are pathetic and have little value, they also have little or no impact on an affiliate program (since there is little traffic, there is no impact on EPC, for example). My recommendation is that if such affiliates apply, then unless there is something objectionable on their site, they can be accepted; there is always a remote possibility that one in 1,000 of these affiliates will later build a “real” web site that generates traffic and sales. However, these sites should generally be excluded from many special offers or follow-up communications that might waste affiliate-management time.
3. Content and Directory Sites: I use this term to web sites which provide some benefit to consumers, usually by providing relevant editorial content (articles, blogs, or discussion forums) or by maintaining a relevant directory of information and resources sought by consumers. These are the “affiliates” that first come to mind for most consumers and merchants, when the word “affiliate” is used.
4. Portals and Mega-Sites: Sites like Yahoo, MSN, and About.com provide vast amounts of information on a wide range of subjects, sometimes organized in a consistent way, and sometimes organized in a variety of different ways. While most of these companies claim that they do not participate in affiliate programs, most of them actually do so.
   • The Good News is that these sites draw vast amounts of traffic (many millions or even hundreds of millions of pageviews per month). If affiliate links are shown on relevant pages, they can sometimes draw good clickthrough rates and often strong conversion rates also.
   • The Bad News is that many of these sites run affiliate ads (especially banners) indiscriminately, on pages that are not relevant. One result is a very low clickthrough rate (which generally doesn’t affect the merchant unless there is a cost for serving banner ads). Unfortunately, the clicks that do occur often have a dreadful conversion rate, in part because when clickthrough rates are very low, a substantial number of the clicks received are “accidental” or are generated by automated tools. Low conversion rates will push down the merchant’s EPC (earnings per 100 clicks), which may make the merchant’s affiliate program seem less attractive to new prospective affiliates.
     • Some affiliate networks actually recommend “removal” of high-traffic, low-performance affiliates; I think this is ludicrous. Instead, the affiliate manager may need to spend some time working with the affiliate to optimize their affiliate campaigns.
5. Directory Sites: In some industries and product categories, consumers may rely extensively on “directory sites,” to help them identify and compare available resources. Over the past 12 years, I’ve frequently bought services that I’ve discovered through directories. (I’ve also created and sold two successful directory sites.)
   • Industry-Specific Directories: There may be hundreds (even thousands) of web sites that offer directories of companies in your industry. While a few of these are maintained with editorial independence, the vast majority include only pay-per-click or affiliate links. Offering an affiliate program should allow access to more of these directories.
   • Business Directories: There are also thousands of different “business directory” sites, each with a slightly different focus. Some will provide free listings, and others may seek monthly or per-click fees — but many dozens of these sites focus on merchants with affiliate programs.
6. Product Comparison sites: There are a number of “product comparison sites,” which seek to identify and compare the features, benefits and drawbacks of various products. There is some overlap with “price-comparison sites” and “directory sites,” and some sites can’t be assigned to just one category or the other. Like most price-comparison sites, many product comparison sites rely on the availability of a “datafeed” as the source of product information. Given the many “variables” in xyz-service and xyz-services, both “product comparison” and “price comparison” is quite difficult and often meaningless – but some sites should deliver traffic and sales.
7. Information, Advice, and Forum Sites: These are “primary content sites” which specifically focus on a narrow topic, drawing visitors who are extremely likely to be interested in the products and services being offered by MerchantName.com. Sites with article or advice formats (excluding forums) are highly likely to participate as affiliates. Forum sites usually prohibit posting of affiliate links in posts (messages), but forum owners sometimes promote merchants with affiliate programs; they may use advertising space, post affiliate URLs in messages, or sometimes even edit URLs in other posts to append affiliate tags. (Forum sites often produce extremely low clickthrough rates, since most forum users “tune out” standard advertising placements while viewing dozens of pages at a site each day.)
8. Complementary Content Sites: I use this category (which clearly overlaps with the prior category) to describe sites whose topic or focus is something “other than” your industry or products. These would be sites that attract the kind of visitors you want as customers.
9. Complementary Merchants (Non-Competing Competitors)

1. Issues That Might Lead a Merchant to NOT Offer a Public Affiliate Program (Negatives)
2. Public vs. Private Affiliate Programs
3. What Factors Do Publishers (Affiliates) Consider When Selecting Advertisers (Merchants)?
4. Affiliate Technology & Network Choice
5. My Usual Recommendations (for Merchants planning an affiliate program)
6. Affiliate Recruitment Strategies and Practices
7. Captive and Stealth Affiliates
8. Affiliate Program Policies
9. Outsourced Program Management (OPM) for Affiliate Programs
10. Selling the Affiliate Program
11. Types of Affiliates (Web Publishers)

• Why customers choose MerchantName.com
  1. Competitive Prices (including setup & shipping fees)
  2. Many Choices (low-cost to high-performance)
  3. Many included services (including support)
  4. Many Options
  5. Quick Delivery
  6. Experience, History, Reputation
  7. Company Size
  8. Facilities
  9. Reliability
  10. Endorsements
  11. Active participation in outside online forums
  12. What We Do (That Our Competitors Don’t Do)
  13. What We Don’t Do (That Our Competitors Do):
• Why affiliates should choose MerchantName.com
  1. High commission
  2. High conversion rate
  3. Low reversal rate
  4. High average transaction size
  5. Reputation, History, Experience of merchant
  6. Merchant’s Brand
  7. What We Don’t Do (That Our Competitors Do):
     • We don’t promise commissions on “all sales” but then exclude some transactions
     • We don’t set absurd “tiers” that promote commission rates that we never actually pay.

1. Issues That Might Lead a Merchant to NOT Offer a Public Affiliate Program (Negatives)
2. Public vs. Private Affiliate Programs
3. What Factors Do Publishers (Affiliates) Consider When Selecting Advertisers (Merchants)?
4. Affiliate Technology & Network Choice
5. My Usual Recommendations (for Merchants planning an affiliate program)
6. Affiliate Recruitment Strategies and Practices
7. Captive and Stealth Affiliates
8. Affiliate Program Policies
9. Outsourced Program Management (OPM) for Affiliate Programs
10. Selling the Affiliate Program
11. Types of Affiliates (Web Publishers)

Some Useful Links on this topic (Added May 2010)

• 10 Reasons to Hire an OPM Company (Ryan Wheaton, NetMedia/AffiliateCrew)
• Outsourced Program Managers discussion forums on ABestWeb.com

1. Issues That Might Lead a Merchant to NOT Offer a Public Affiliate Program (Negatives)
2. Public vs. Private Affiliate Programs
3. What Factors Do Publishers (Affiliates) Consider When Selecting Advertisers (Merchants)?
4. Affiliate Technology & Network Choice
5. My Usual Recommendations (for Merchants planning an affiliate program)
6. Affiliate Recruitment Strategies and Practices
7. Captive and Stealth Affiliates
8. Affiliate Program Policies
9. Outsourced Program Management (OPM) for Affiliate Programs
10. Selling the Affiliate Program
11. Types of Affiliates (Web Publishers)

1. PPC & Trademark Bidding: Many merchants restrict the ability of affiliates to use “Pay-Per-Click Search” on Google AdWords and elsewhere to promote the merchants’ products or services.
   • Direct-to-Merchant PPC: Some merchants prohibit affiliates from engaging in “direct-to-merchant PPC” bidding, in which the affiliate creates text ads that send traffic directly to the merchant site (using an affiliate link). Since the affiliate’s ad has the same destination domain as the merchant’s ads, it’s possible that the affiliate ads will be shown instead of the merchant’s own ads. Normally, I recommend that merchants allow direct-to-merchant PPC. However, if you pay an outside firm to manager your PPC bidding, you should carefully evaluate whether to allow or prohibit affiliate “direct-to-merchant PPC” bidding.
   • Trademark Bidding: Nearly all merchants identify specific “trademark” keywords and phrases which affiliates are prohibited from bidding on; this information can be specially posted on ShareASale.
     • I would recommend that in addition to identifying specific trademark terms that cannot be bid, you should also require that affiliates engaged in PPC bidding add the keywords as “negative keywords” for all applicable campaigns. (Otherwise, an affiliate may honor your request not to bid on “MerchantName.com” but if the affiliate bids on the word “widgets” then their ad may still appear in a search for “MerchantName.com widgets.”)
     • Some merchants choose not to prohibit affiliate trademark bidding, because otherwise the merchant’s competitors can more easily and cheaply bid on those terms. Most merchants would prefer to have an affiliate site appear, instead of a competitor’s site.
     • Some merchants allow affiliates to bid on trademark keywords when promoting their own site, but not in “direct-to-merchant” PPC. Other merchants may have the opposite policy (allowing “direct-to-merchant PPC” trademark bidding, but no trademark bidding if traffic is sent to the affiliate site).
2. Employees-As-Affiliates Policy: You should consider adding a specific policy regarding the enrollment of employees or contractors as affiliates. Your employees should not be allowed to “double-dip” by receiving compensation twice for generating transactions. In addition, your affiliates may be upset if they believe that your employees are unfairly competing or “poaching” affiliate commissions. Any policy (and possibly the affiliate agreement also) should specifically address the permissibility of an employees’ “friends or family” enrolling as an affiliate, as well as the use of “fake identities” to improperly accrue affiliate earnings.
3. Affiliates With No Web Sites: Some “direct-to-merchant PPC” affiliates don’t have any active web sites; other affiliates may seek to join your affiliate program before creating a web site. Your affiliate manager must decide whether to accept or reject prospective affiliates who have no active web sites, or those who have no “relevant” web sites. My normal practice has been to routinely reject applications from affiliates who have no working web site, unless they identify some specific reason.

1. Issues That Might Lead a Merchant to NOT Offer a Public Affiliate Program (Negatives)
2. Public vs. Private Affiliate Programs
3. What Factors Do Publishers (Affiliates) Consider When Selecting Advertisers (Merchants)?
4. Affiliate Technology & Network Choice
5. My Usual Recommendations (for Merchants planning an affiliate program)
6. Affiliate Recruitment Strategies and Practices
7. Captive and Stealth Affiliates
8. Affiliate Program Policies
9. Outsourced Program Management (OPM) for Affiliate Programs
10. Selling the Affiliate Program
11. Types of Affiliates (Web Publishers)

• Captive Affiliate: One option is to create and manage individual web sites “as a service of MerchantName.com,” where the site is clearly sponsored and/or owned by the company. (If you want your affiliates to link to these sites, you can’t include your own affiliate links within these sites; if you include your own affiliate links in the site, your affiliates won’t link to it.)
• Stealth Affiliate: The alternative is to create or manage certain sites as “apparently independent” affiliate sites, where the ownership by your company is not discernable on the web site or in the WHOIS data; such sites might even be separately hosted on shared servers. (I would never recommend the use of deceptive or misleading claims, nor “shill endorsements” or “reviews” by stealth affiliate sites. Any “subjective” content would be risky. However, the “stealth affiliate” strategy may be appropriate for “informational resources,” such as generic articles about products, SEO, affiliate programs – potentially including “objective” directories, price comparison sites, or product comparison sites.)
• Costs: Each “captive” or “stealth” affiliate adds to the overall costs associated with the merchant’s marketing efforts – including hosting costs, domain renewal fees, and staff time to create, manage, and update content. (Ideally, these expenses will be offset by “in-house affiliate earnings,” but frequently these costs are not allocated or analyzed carefully, creating some risk that the costs for such sites may grow beyond their value.) In general, most “stealth affiliate” sites are designed to be “timeless,” with no need for frequent updates; a public “captive affiliate” site, with the merchant’s brand more directly at risk, usually involve more attention to content quality and “freshness.”
• Transfer or Sale: Ironically, the same reasons that may make a “captive or stealth affiliate” valuable to a merchant might also create a perception of value for others. Over time, the merchant may elect to profitably sell certain domains or web sites (to non-competitors), or to sell or gift them to affiliates who have proven their ability to successfully exploit such sites.
• Reputation Risks: There are two “reputation risks” of operating either captive or stealth affiliates. For “stealth affiliates,” there is the obvious risk of “getting caught” and identified as the owner of a site which had not previously disclosed its ownership or control – with possible accusations of deceptive marketing tactics. For any “owned affiliate site,” there is always a risk that site may offend someone or infringe the rights of others. And for either type of site, there is a risk that independent affiliates will be upset at perceived “competition” from the merchant, so that the “playing field” is not level for regular affiliates.

1. Issues That Might Lead a Merchant to NOT Offer a Public Affiliate Program (Negatives)
2. Public vs. Private Affiliate Programs
3. What Factors Do Publishers (Affiliates) Consider When Selecting Advertisers (Merchants)?
4. Affiliate Technology & Network Choice
5. My Usual Recommendations (for Merchants planning an affiliate program)
6. Affiliate Recruitment Strategies and Practices
7. Captive and Stealth Affiliates
8. Affiliate Program Policies
9. Outsourced Program Management (OPM) for Affiliate Programs
10. Selling the Affiliate Program
11. Types of Affiliates (Web Publishers)