How I Created The Worst Affiliate Program Ever

Back in 2001, I created a new website with a friend which is a Christian business directory. After a few months of running the website, I thought I would create an affiliate program for the directory and give commission for each new advertiser that joined the directory. In theory it made sense at the time as I didn’t know much about affiliate marketing, but in all actuality I was creating the worst affiliate program ever (Ok, so there are a few things I could have done worse and I am sure there are other programs that might even be worse).

I launched the program in May of 2002 with ShareASale and did just about everything wrong as an affiliate manager. Most of what went wrong came from neglect of the program and having the mentality of many poor affiliate managers that the program will basically run itself (I’ve since learned a lot more and wouldn’t have started the program in the first place if I knew what I was doing at the time).

Here are 11 things I did wrong that made it a poor program:

1. Leaks on the Website
   This is one of the worst things merchants can do. Being that the nature of my site is a business directory, there were hundreds of links on my site that took people off into the great abyss. On top of that, I have Google AdSense, which is great for me, but terrible for my affiliates. One thing that was somewhat ok was that there were no ads on any of the affiliate landing pages, however the rest of the site is plastered with them which is not acceptable for a great program.
2. Old Outdated Creatives
   Back in 2002 I created about 5 graphics for the program. Since then, I think I created 1 additional graphic around 2005. I didn’t have banners with sizes that people use on their sites these days, plus the images were outdated and look like they were created 7 years ago. A good program will give you some decent graphics to start with and continually update them to increase CTR (click through rate).
3. Very Little Affiliate Contact
   In the 7 years the program was running, I believe I sent out 2 affiliate newsletters. The first was in 2004, and the other was last week when I sent an email to my affiliates letting them know I was closing down the program. I remember when I sent the first newsletter I had a few affiliates email me back that they didn’t even know they joined my program as it had been so long. After sending my last newsletter, about half of the email addresses bounced as the list was so old. Affiliate managers need to be on their affiliates minds and send consistent newsletters to be successful.
4. Non Customized Welcome Email
   When affiliates joined the program, the email that was sent to them just said they had been accepted. It didn’t provide any details or tips on how to be successful with the program and didn’t include any link codes.
5. Overpriced Service
   I think this was one of my biggest mistakes. The program had terrible conversion and I think price had a lot to do with it. I was charging $75 for a 1 year listing in the directory, which is pretty high for a smaller directory. Yes, it meant a higher commission rate for affiliates, but it never converted as it wasn’t worth the price in the buyers eyes.
6. No Training
   One thing a lot of good programs do is offer some sort of training to its affiliates onto how to be successful with their program. I had no training at all to offer my affiliates, so most were lost as to what they were even getting commission for. I even saw some Google Ads an affiliate created promoting the store on the website which is just affiliate links to other programs. My affiliates were lost as to how to promote business directory sales.
7. No Recruiting
   I believe all that I did to recruit affiliates was add my program to a few affiliate program directories and add a link to the bottom of my website which led to an informational page on the program. I didn’t get quality affiliates because I didn’t have a recruiting process really in place, along with having a crappy program.
8. Poor Landing Pages
   I created the landing pages that my affiliate links to in 1 day and never did any tweaking after that. There was no split testing (or any testing) to improve conversions. Because of this, conversions were beyond terrible (I hate to say this but 0 conversions in the past year).
9. No Terms of Service
   I am not sure how much this mattered to new affiliates, but I never created a terms of service. People didn’t know what to expect from my program and there was a gray area of what might be acceptable or not. As an affiliate, I want to know what the terms are up front before I start promoting a program.
10. Not Connecting With Affiliates
    Throughout the years of the program, I didn’t connect at all with individual affiliates. I didn’t know them and they didn’t know me. Why would someone want to promote a program without having personal contact with the manager of the program who could help them out?
11. “Hiring” an Outsourced Manager on Commission Only
    For about a year when I was starting out, I found a guy that offered to manage the program for commission only. Thinking that it was a good deal to have an outsourced manager and only have to pay them commission I gladly accepted his help. The problem was he had a lot going on, and since he wasn’t making any money right away, let the program slip through the cracks and did very little. I believe when hiring an outsourced program manager, you must pay them a monthly fee along with commissions as they will be more willing to work harder on your program since they know you respect their time they are putting into the program.

So as you can see, I did a lot wrong and learned from my mistakes, most of which were tied to being hands off. There were a few things that could have made it an even worse program such as plastering a phone number on the landing pages, poor tracking (ShareASale is good with tracking), low commissions, etc…

Hopefully if you ever start an affiliate program or are already managing programs, you won’t make the mistakes I’ve made. What mistakes have you made running your programs?

Tagged as: affiliate management, shareasale