Merchant question: more than 1 network

**deadgoodundies** · 02-08-05

Question goes out to other merchants.
Do many of you sign up to more than one network for your affiliate programs?
Currently we are running a program with Affiliate Future (and generally been very impresssed with them and the sales we have taken because of the affiliates) BUT now we are considering going with Trade Doubler as well mainly because they seem to have a bigger amount of available affiliates (and the fact that a lot of our competition use them as well)

Obviously my concern is that there is a HUUUUGGEEE difference in costs between Trade Doubler and Affiliate Future in both set up fees and monthly payments to TD (TD being the more expensive).

So my question is , do you seem to have more sales when using more than one network OR do most affiliates sign up to lots of networks anyway so it doesn't really matter who you go with?

**Inspired** · 03-08-05

Without getting into the relative pros and cons of specific networks, perhaps the main consideration is the volume of incremental business you can realistically generate from a 2nd or subsequent programme.

If you already have a good base of (UK?) affiliates on Affiliate Future, your programme is performing well, and is well known amongst your potential affiliate audience (e.g. on this forum), then you might expect 2nd+ networks to deliver a fairly marginal increase.

On the other hand, a 2nd network could potentially uncover that your 1st programme isn't actually performing as well as you thought it was.

Unfortunately there's no way of knowing until you actually take the plunge, which comes back to you other point about setup fees etc.....

If you work on the more pessimistic assumption that a 2nd network will generate less than your 1st one, it wouldn't make sense to go with one of the more expensive options because your overall return on investment will be shot to pieces. With this line of thought, OMG might be worth a look since they work entirely on an override without any setup/ongoing fixed fees.

The alternative view is that if you go with a 2nd network that's considerably larger than Affiliate Future, they should be able to deliver proportionally more and therefore justify the setup fees and so on. A key factor here is that if you can recruit professional affiliates from overseas (particularly north america in my experience) regardless of whether or not you're actually selling overseas, you could get a significant extra boost to volumes. Taking this view, other than TD, CJ would be worth a look.

Hope that's of some help.

**deadgoodundies** · 03-08-05

Excellent advice many thank.
Yes on of our main concerns as you rightly put is that of course we are aware that many affiliates are joined to many networks so there is inevitably an overlap between affiliate and the networks.
We do sell worldwide and actually before we started the AF program i would of said the split was 55% UK sales and 45% US and rest of the world - after the program kicked in it's gone more 75% UK , 25% US and rest of the world - so going for the US market in terms of affiliates would certainly be a good idea.
I've spoken to David at AW briefly regarding being taken on as the 2nd network and it does sound pretty good (he went over the positives and the negatives of having 2 x networks) and also having been recieving PM's from a few other merchants regarding this thread (thanks to those, very helpfull).

Im going to call a few other networks and try to compare what each of them are saying in terms of features, costs etc.

One thing that has really narked me though is that im yet to find any network that has their setup fees and costs displayed on their sites and you have to phone up to find them out what they are which opens you up to a sales spiel, I appreciate that networks want to do as much as they can to get you to join but as a busy person i just need to grab the info I want , take it on and then make the decision.

If anyone else has experiences on running with multi networks i'd certainly be glad to hear of any problems you might of had as well as the positives.

Regards,
Adam

**Inspired** · 03-08-05

You're welcome.

One more thing to consider when talking to other networks.....

Regardless of how large their overall base of affiliates may be, how much difference do they think they can make to your core of performing affiliates?

I'm guessing that out of all the affiliates you have signed up to your existing programme, something like 5% of them will be generating 80%+ of your sales (there or thereabouts). The critical thing to achieve is growing that 5% group.

**deadgoodundies** · 03-08-05

Yes you are exactly right regarding performing affiliates.
Out of about 250 that we have i would consider only 10 of those as constantly active, the rest of them (and no disrespect is intended) are just the casual affilaite who stick up a banner and hope that it's going to generate sales.

So as you say what can a new network offer those top performers that is different OR bettter than a current network.

The way I approach the whole affiliate marketting idea is that it is MY job to make sure i get what works best for my business and for the affiliates that are putting the time and effort into promoting us, so feedback from current affiliates is always important.

**Itchy** · 03-08-05

They answer is some do and some dont

but what makes me laugh is that those that do .... some of them try to differ in the amount they are offering

what do they think we are stupid

also what i can seem to work out is that some of them also provide csv files on one site but then on the other site they cant seem to manage it

and its not usally price releated.

**SillyJokes** · 03-08-05

They don't put their fees on the site because they listen to who you are and make a judgement as to how much they want you on board before setting a price.