Interesting post,

With regard to networks “bigging up” their merchants and not their affiliates, this might partly be down the the contractual agreement between the network and the merchant. These agreements may state that the network can advertise that they have that merchant as a client, and use logos and other branding, as well as these contracts sometimes being exclusive to that network.

Few affiliate-network relationships operate in the same way – normally affiliates simply agree to a set of fairly vanilla network “Terms and Conditions” (often without reading them), and even fewer operate on an exclusive basis with one network.

So I would say to affiliates, if you want your favourite network to make some noise about having you as a publisher, why not E-mail them with a testimonial and let them know they are free to use it along with your branding.

It might be down to niave ignorance or pure arrogance – but I’m always astounded when I’m made to realise that most of the networks/agencies etc think so little of their normal affiliates (I’m sure if you’re in the super duper elite squillions/year club, you’ll get a touch of affyluv)

by normal I mean those hard working affiliates who generate a fair amount of income, but maybe not megabucks.

From my perspective we’re far more important to networks and agencies then the merchant – without us they wouldn’t have a business – or am I missing something here – and it doesn’t matter to us wether it’s a blue chip company or one-man outfit – the commission is still the same.

It’s always the same – new companies starting out tend to ‘court’ affiliates but once they’re established it all goes pear shaped – yeah. so maybe we should shout out a little more

Marc, it’s a good point you make.

Every network must have big/medium/small affiliates that they’ve worked with for more than a few months so why not provide somewhere that recognises that and the pride you have in working with them?

Is there an unwritten rule that a network can’t publically make any reference to the affiliates they work with?

And surely everything doesn’t have to be about exclusivity, agreements, contracts etc?

Or does it?

As a affiliate who publishes over 100,000 words of unique content a month, I’d love to see more recognition for those who really do put hard work into AM and spend hours upon hours every day crafting content for thier sites, but on the other hand – Do content publishers really need recognition?

For a PPC affiliate, winning an award could mean that they can leverage their recognition in RFP processes when applying to BBGs.

For a merchant/network/agency winning an award, they can leverage their recognition to recruit new affiliates/merchants and motivate existing ones.

For a content affiliate, they’re probably already working with all the merchants they want, and really any awards they might win would only succeed in massaging their own ego, and highlighting their site as an “Industry leader” would potentially open them up to more copycat sites from lazy affiliates.

For the record however, if any network wants to feature one of my sites on their “We’re proud to work with these affiliates” page, then they all have my permission (ok, apart from Clash and Cleverat..)

I always looked on it as an issue of numbers, Merchants are going to be a few hundred Affiliates are going to be tens of thousands. Once you list one you are then “forced” to list every single Affiliate. You then get in to the game of Merchants going, great here is a list of every affiliate on x network lets contact them to join our program independent or on another network. And if you select a set few then you get the “they never listed us, I am not working with them” people giving you grief.

However I am all ears on a simply solution that won’t turn our site in to thousands of pages of links, and is done in a commercially viable way.

Just to add send us a nice testimonial and we will probably list you on our site, note we don’t list it with a link back because we want real reviews from real affiliates who actually can be bothered to write something and not a link bating job.

P.s. Loquax is listed on our testimonial page last time I checked (5 mins ago) and that’s linked from our home page and is on the same page as the Merchant testimonials.

Another concern that networks might have with listing affiliates that they work with is that potential merchants can use that resource to contact affiliates directly, and strike up relationships with them without signing up to the office.

Elaine makes the point that affiliates are one of the most valuable resources a network has, indeed, if merchants are their customers (buying traffic/sales) then affiliates are their suppliers. Publicising who your suppliers are to all your potential customers can be seen as a way of allowing them to bypass the network middlemen. After all high street stores don’t give all their potential customers a list of where they can buy the same things from their suppliers for less money do they?

So perhaps its not about the networks not recognising the importance of their affiliates, but quite the opposite.

That said, I believe that there is a lot to be gained by networks from letting merchants know which great affiliates they are working with

Interesting to hear the network povs – I guess it’s not a totally straightforward thing to do

I agree listing affiliate sites isn’t really a practical move, for all the reasons given above. I’d just like to see more of the content affiliates in the running for next years awards, whether it be in a dedicated category or not. It may not be as important business wise compared to the BB’ers, but it’s still nice to be recognised by your industry.

I’d be willing to wager that most networks while pitching to potential clients have some nice screenshots of a few content affiliate sites as part of the pitch process, offering up placement on these prime locations as part of the bait. I know of at least one network who had Holiday Watchdog in their standard pitch documentation even though we did very little with them.

As far as copycat sites go, most of the sites I mentioned in my original post are on the radar for anyone in affiliate marketing. While it is annoying/illegal there isn’t really a way to shortcut the amount of hard work involved in building and maintaining a good content site.

PS Jason, thanks for doubling my all time traffic in one day!

I agree that some more specific affiliate awards are needed, for those hard working ‘normal’ affiliates that make some money, but not uber-money. It seems somewhat unfair that merchant-come-affiliates with bags of cash, or ’super-affiliates’ take all the recognition.

I for one run a website which has been incredibly successful, has merchants interested in offering unique discounts (no, its not a discount code site!), gains 10,000 uniques each day and commands high rank for all the important keywords, some of which are incredibly popular. The site generates a number of blog posts per day, with thousands of signed up rss members…however, one thing I don’t do is share it with other affiliates, as many don’t, so know appreciation can never be given! Catch 22?