Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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I gave a presentation on affiliate recruiting techniques at eComXpo today, and during my session, I asked some polling questions to get a feel for the audience.

As has been the trend since the early days of affiliate marketing, the affiliate managers are mostly relying on their networks to recruit for them, as well as making solicitations by email (I wonder how many are CAN-SPAM compliant?).

Virtually nobody is picking up the phone, and even less are using direct mail.

I was a little surprised that search engine affiliates remain as the strongest channel, according to the affiliate managers polled. Either the Google AdWords policy didn’t hit as hard as some speculated it would, or these affiliate managers haven’t checked their stats since then.

The majority of affiliate managers are paying more to super affiliates these days, and I agree entirely with the idea that it makes sense to reward volume.

Of course, there are still 25% that don’t agree, and choose to go the one size fits all route. I suppose they are in the Jeff Molander camp that it’s wasteful to pay on merit, and that it’s possible to make it happen cheaper if only you try harder.

My prediction - in the coming year, direct mail will emerge as the recruiting tool of choice for proactive affiliate manager.

Polls courtesy eComXpo, Polls Copyright 2005 eComXpo, LLC

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