[repost]

When someone starts out in the affiliate marketing industry it’s obvious that one of the first places they want to head is an affiliate network, and typically those networks are Commission Junction (CJ) and/or Linkshare (LS). It’s an understandable decision, CJ and LS are long-standing players in this industry and they carry the weight of a lot of major brand names — Travelocity, Yahoo, Home Depot, Walmart, Delta and more.

New affiliates want to head straight to where they think the big money is going to come from and they expect the big networks and big brand names to bring them that. But these affiliates often overlook the value of a smaller network and they may be missing out on many things they just won’t get out of the larger networks.

If I have a suggestion for, or a comment about, CJ or LS I really have no idea who to turn to. Yes I know who the top dogs are at those two networks but if I wanted to get in touch with them then I would have my work cut out for me. There are also nameless contact forms available if I so choose to use them, but that’s just so impersonal and I really have no idea who is reading it or what kind of reply I’m going to get back.

On the other hand, if I want to contact the top dogs at ShareASale (SAS) or Avantlink (AL) then I know exactly how to get in touch with them. Not only can I get in touch with them directly, I can often get a personal response out of them within hours. If it takes hours. See, Brian Littleton of SAS and Gary Marcoccia of AL are very active in the affiliate marketing community and are easily accessible by many means. Excluding phone, I can think of at least two or three ways I can contact either of them right now.

Now let’s move on to merchants. What you won’t find at SAS or AL are the big brands like I mentioned up above. What you will find, however, are many quality merchants willing to work with you to reach the same common goal, and that’s to make money. I’ve worked with big names in the past and honestly I didn’t earn very many commissions. I’ve had great success and not such great success promoting merchants both big and small, but the small ones seem to prove themselves despite being the smaller fish in the big pond. I know of one affiliate at SAS that made roughly $80,000 to $100,000 in one year. No big names, just good merchants (I pointed this person to SAS, that’s how I know).

Many new affiliates may or may not be aware that there are a large number of parasites that steal, or help to steal, affiliate commissions. Parasite you say? In it’s truest definition a parasite is “an organism that lives in or on the living tissue of a host organism at the expense of that host”. And that’s exactly what everyone in this industry deals with on a daily basis. There are companies out there that write software specifically for the intent of redirecting affiliate URLs and rewriting affiliate cookies for the sake of gaining a commission that they never earned. Who loses? The affiliate, the merchant, and the affiliate network, if one is involved. They feed and live off of others hard work.

And to the surprise of many, you may actually have these companies’ software on your computer, because they often install this software without a user’s consent. For more information on some of the really bad players out there you can visit Ben Edelman’s spyware articles as well as the rest of his extensive publications on adware, cookie stealing and more. Some of which include Zango, WhenU and Claria/Gator. Yes, that program on your computer that you think is really useful is actually a thief in disguise.

Ok, so why did I go off about spyware and adware? Well, that’s because those big networks that some affiliates love so much actually welcome these programs right into their network, allowing them to pillage and plunder as they see fit. See, as long as they’re making a buck they really do not care who they let in as an “affiliate”. So not only can they steal your commissions, they can often be your competitor as well.

This is another area where the smaller networks like ShareASale and Avantlink shine. See, while they like to make a dollar just like anyone else, they don’t jeopardize their principles and their partnerships by letting parasites into their networks. Sure these companies could make them money but they’d rather protect their affiliates and merchant partners from the likes of these deceptive programs. They’re looking out for you, not just themselves.

I could carry on about this for a while but since this post is quite lengthy, I’ll end it here. Just remember, bigger isn’t always better and remember who you’re working with may be the ones working against you.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Avantlink, ShareASale

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 9:52 pm CST and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.