A Checklist for the Ideal Affiliate Program

As a merchant, you can help your affiliates be more successful by giving them what they really want. What do affiliate marketers look for when sizing up a program?

An excellent product or service that is also a good value for customers. It's self-defeating for affiliates to promote a product that's a dog. If necessary, fix the product first, then let your affiliates run with it.
A generous commission, with bonuses for exceptional performance. The bonus can be tied to a number of good leads, monthly sales revenues, etc. How does money affect affiliate performance?
A long "cookie" duration. (Cookies are harmless bits of computer code that most affiliate software uses to track visitor's activity). A long cookie duration means the affiliate will still get paid even if the buyer returns at a later date. Desirable durations vary with the industry and product, but consider at least 60 days and up to a year or longer.
Recurring or residual income. This simply means the affiliate is paid for ongoing business as the merchant gets paid, usually in conjunction with repeat orders, consumable goods, recurring services, subscriptions, etc. When you think about it, why would the affiliate accept a one-time referral fee, instead of a commission for each product purchased by the customer? Granted, sometimes there just isn't any choice; low-margin niches may not support residual commissions on a purely economic basis. On the other hand, some programs pay commissions for the life of the customer on each order or renewal. For example, online data storage services, dating services, vitamins, and autoresponder services—irresistible candy for affiliates.
An attractive merchant's site with a high "conversion" rate and painless shopping experience. This is a big deal to affiliates. Even if you have a great product, it may not matter if your site doesn't convert a reasonable number of visitors into customers. It's part art and part science—whole books have been written about it. As a merchant, you must know what percentage of your visitors convert into customers, and work to improve that number.
Support for affiliates in the form of sales materials, content, training materials, display ads, real-time sales reports, quick response to affiliates, etc.
A responsive affiliate manager focused on turning more visitors into buyers by improving the site design (conversion again!), responding to requests for product links, communication with the affiliates about hot products, etc.
Commissions paid for telephone orders. If you take telephone orders, this is an important consideration as it represents a substantial "leak" of commissions to affiliates, that are actually responsible for bringing the business to you. There are at least three ways to track telephone orders.

Few affiliate programs boast ALL of these desirable features, but the best ones, from an affiliate's perspective, do.

If you're starting an affiliate program, consider this a checklist; if you already have one, is there a way you can introduce these features to make it more attractive to your hard-working affiliates?

As a merchant, a good affiliate program will promote your brand, boost your web traffic, and build your profits for a relatively small expenditure of time, money, and effort.

Starting an affiliate program is easier than you may think. But the structure of the program must be designed to fit your business and affiliate's expectations.

At the end of the day, accomplished affiliates look for solid results compared to the amount of work involved. And of course, merchants look for the same thing.