Affiliates Are Leeches

With the help of my friend Adam, my company has been starting a lot of new marketing initiatives. I won’t go into details, but a lot of it involves affiliate marketing. The whole ordeal has given me a grim understanding of how the affiliate mind works and why the field has such a bad reputation.

Here is my epiphany: Affiliates are leeches. In any affiliate relationship, you should always assume that the other party is trying to cheat you, period. This is the only way to be safe and keep your costs from inflating.

What do I mean by “leeches”? Quite simply, affiliates will try everything to draw more money out of you than you should actually be paying them. If they get paid for impressions, they’ll inflate their numbers with bots. If they get paid for clicks, they’ll send fraudulent traffic. If they get paid for actions, they’ll submit spam. In any instance, they’ll try to deliver valueless marketing to increase your payout.

Like leeches, of course, you’ll never notice they’re doing it unless you’re vigilant. The only way to avoid the problem is to double- and triple-check what they’re doing. I often find myself saying, “90% of marketing is tracking,” and it’s especially true of affiliate marketing. Trust nothing an affiliate sends you until its value is confirmed. If given the choice, only pay out for marketing that produces results. Any affiliate that seems too good to be true probably is, so trust no one.

Granted, there are legitimate affiliates out there. Heck, I’m one of them. I look forward to a long and profitable relationship with Google AdSense and Text Link Ads because I don’t try to cheat them. Bear in mind, though, that I’m in the minority; I wouldn’t advise anyone to count on more than 5% of their affiliates being honest.

The advice bears repeating. If you’re using affiliate marketing to promote your website, be it through paid search like Google AdWords, third party affiliates like Commission Junction, in-house affiliate contracts, or whatever, beware. You’re swimming with leeches, and if you don’t check what they’re doing, they’ll suck you dry.

I think you are at least half way there. There are a lot of affiliates out their who are pure junk. They are only out to make a quick buck. That being said, there are also a lot who are of the utmost quality and fairness.

Then there are the ones in the middle, and here is where you find a large part of the problem. These are the ones who can do a great job for a while and build solid and honest value based relationships for you that generate good traffic and conversions.

Then the day comes that you tell them that you are willing to accept more leads and pay them more money. But just because you are willing to pay, doesn’t mean they have the traffic to meet your request. This is the point where the good ones go bad.

If they can’t meet your request, you bet your butt that they want to find someone who can. Eventually, there just wont be any market left that will be cost effective for an affiliate to reach. What do they do? They invent leads and see what they can get away with. Nobody likes to leave money on the table. This is the point where good affiliates go bad.