Affiliate Do's and Don'ts from a Vendor's Perspective

During my time a ClickBank vendor, I've had a chance to observe both great affiliates and underperforming affiliates in action. I've also spent a lot of time driving traffic to my own site, acting as my own affiliate in a sense.

Since I know that a lot of you are working on the affiliate side of things, I'd like to tell you what seems to work well for affiliates from my perspective (and, in some cases, what turns me off personally as a vendor).

Do's

1. Do sell your visitors the product before they ever click on your affiliate link. When visitors are marketed to by both you and the vendor, they are more likely to make a purchase than they would be if you just hit them with a link and left all of the promotion to the vendor.

2. Do get in touch with the vendor and ask if they are able to provide you with some unique sales materials. I love the chance to decide what goes on my affiliates' pre-sale pages, and I know what works when it comes to marketing my product, so I have no problem with providing my affiliates unique content when they take the initiative to ask for it.

3. Do experiment constantly with new sources of traffic, with a continuing focus on the ones that seem to produce results for you.

4. Do seek out communities of people who are likely to be interested in the product you're selling. Earn their trust over time instead of bludgeoning them to death with your marketing agenda.

5. Do keep your affiliate marketing honest. Pretending to have used products you haven't really used, hiring people to make phony video testimonials, and making promises which the products can't keep are not necessary in order to be successful as an affiliate. Operating that way is pointlessly risky and shortsighted.

Don'ts

1. Don't blast the vendor's website with untargeted traffic. It won't make you money, and the vendor's conversion rate will go down. Nobody will be happy.

2. Don't spam affiliate offers, by email or otherwise. The idea here is to build a real business that you can take pride in, that won't get you into any trouble, and that will last. Plus, ClickBank explicity forbids you from engaging in any kind of spamming, and they can close your affiliate account at their discretion.

3. Don't try to fool people into thinking they can get the vendor's product for free by uploading your affiliate link in a text file to the free file download sites. It will often appear on the same page as the vendor's website in the search results, and they WON'T be happy about that. Remember, vendors can ask ClickBank support to block you from promoting their products.

4. Don't spend all of your time, or even most of your time, on chasing short-term income. Slow and steady increases over time add up to a stable career, producing an income you can count on month after month. I'm not suggesting that you should ignore your immediate financial needs, but the sooner you start thinking long term, the better.

5. Don't buy PPC ads containing the vendor's product name unless you clear this with them first. Most vendors do not want you to put a sponsored ad next to their #1 result for their own product name. It simply siphons off sales, almost all of which the vendor is already getting without you since the visitors are searching specifically for their product. You'll cause them to lose money on the commission they're paying you. In other words, you'll make yourself a financial leech instead of an asset, and vendors want you to be the latter in exchange for your commission percentage. I've had to contact ClickBank support and have them block certain affiliates from promoting my product because of this.

I'd love to hear any additional thoughts from members who have experience on this subject. Questions are also welcome.

Jon