The pros know this already, but I thought this may be a good post for fairly new affiliates who may be reading up and trying to learn this game on a hot Sunday afternoon. (BTW Tomorrow when more of the merchants are online I have a great post about why retailers should not start an affiliate program on a new site until they’ve done conversion testing and optimization and tell them how to do it by becoming their own pseudo-affiliate. This makes the merchant the guinea pig instead of affiliates and is a really smart way to do it.)

So for newer affiliates - today there was a post over at Jonathan Volk’s blog by Dave Martinez, ” 7 Things to Consider in an Affiliate Program“. He makes some good general points about things to evaluate before joining affiliate programs.

1st go read the 7 points at Jonathan’s Blog. Then below are a couple points I added because I think Dave was a little more focused on CPA programs and some of the points below are more important for retail programs.
Some other things to consider:

8. One of the biggest things to consider is CONVERSION RATES

One program may pay 15% and have terrible conversions. Another only pays 12% but converts like crazy. So you could possibly generate more revenue overall with #2.

9. Cookie length

10. Reversal rate

11. If they show an 800# on the site, do they have phone tracking?

12. Are there any other leaks like Adsense, other affiliate banners or advertising?

So those are just a few things to evaluate before joining affiliate programs. There are obviously more advanced points I’d bring up with affiliates that were past the n00b stage, but I think some of it would be too overwhelming for beginners.