Hello,
this got me thinking. Are we missing an opportunity here? I know there are affiliate directories to help merchants find affiliates, some involving a cost.
Why not take it one step further? Bear with me..
The long discussed UK Affiliate Assoc., allowing us to represent ourselves as one body, could possibly be funded like this.
Create a website directory of affiliate members, where you take the time to keep your sites/categories up to date, and charge merchants for access to search this database and make first contact with an affiliate(s) suitable to their program.
Also provide a "Merchants Code of Conduct" that merchants must keep to. I realise this is a difficult issue, as if a large earning merchant for you gets "black-balled" it's difficult to cut off this stream of income, but perhaps other punitive measures could be used?
The benefits to merchants is it makes the difficult job of tracking down relevant affiliates that much easier. For affiliates it could allow the possibility of finally having a UK Affiliate Assoc. as a self funding body, with elections for positions, but the administration and day to day running being carried out by dedicated employee(s).
Charges would need to be discussed, but as an idea, if every merchant who wanted to join was charged a flat rate fee of £100 a year, preventing any bigger companies trying to put a "squeeze" on.
OK, having read this back it still seems like a good idea, but no doubt the devil will be in the detail.
Continuing this post here...
http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/showthread...threadid=22629