Review of Affiliate Marketing Networks for Small Biz

May 29, 2009 – 10:17 am

If you are an online retailer or ecommerce focused company you probably already have or are seriously considering launching an affiliate marketing program. Affiliate marketing is an affordable, low commitment and highly efficient way to increase website traffic and ultimately generate more sales from your website.

As a freelance marketing consultant here in Seattle, WA I am often asked by clients to recommend vendors and recently was asked about affiliate marketing networks who would be good for small businesses ensuring that they get good program support, help getting affiliates signed on without the heavy commitment of the more well known and larger affiliate marketing networks.

Here is my review of the three affiliate marketing companies that I took a close look in my recent comparison of the following three affiliate marketing networks:

ShareASale.com

PepperJam.com

AffiliateFuture.com

See complete details for each network in spreadsheet as below:

	ShareASale	PepperJam	Affiliate Future
Website	www.shareasale.com	www.pepperjam.com	www.affiliatefuture.com
# of Affiliates	250,000+	35,000 qualified Affiliates	25,000+
# of Active Affiliates	25,000 to 30,000	As above	25,000+
% Affiliates Search / Email	We don’t keep numbers on this. Our affiliates are constantly evolving and changing their marketing methods so it wouldn’t make much sense to categorize them in any sort of way, when their efforts are continually changing.	Mix of email, coupon and search affiliates	Exclusively search affiliates / content affiliates
# Merchants	2,500+	600 merchants	200+
Transparancy	Full Transparancy	Most transparant network out there (they provide name, email, promotion activities etc) See video:	We can see everyone running ads for us at any time (run affiliate report in interface) could reject any such affiliate if we choose
		http://www.screencast.com/users/pepperjam/folders/Default/media/634994f5-2077-44cb-a46f-e5e42e3792bd
Fraud Prevention	We have a two-layer screening process in our network. Before any affiliate is allowed into our network, they go through a rigorous screening process where customer support checks to make sure they have good content, nothing illegal, etc. We also provide you with detailed reporting so you can see what transactions are going through the affiliates, at what dates/times, etc. You are also able to void out any transactions anywhere from 20-50 days depending on what day of the month it goes through. We lock and pay out the affiliates on the following 20th of each month	Will assist us if we see anything that looks fraudlent and they can help reverse charges / commissions if we find an affiliate not working our program the way it should be.	Don’t see much by way of fraud — they would have to charge up to even get a profit — if any issue they would work with us to resolve
Tracking Process	We provide accurate tracking and reporting, consolidated on-time payments, and personalized customer support through our affiliate help desk	Very robust reporting, they can see all info (sale id # etc, which banner drove) Real-time reporting, SID tracking, API technology	We pay all affiliates for you on a monthly basis. Each time an affiliate makes a sale for you, the amount of the commission owed is credited to the affiliate and is deducted from your account in real-time. If there is a problem with an order you can cancel the payment from going to the affiliate within 5 days (120 hours) of the transaction happening, after this timeframe, the transaction is locked and cannot be canceled. You will see a running balance within your account and we ask that you keep your account funded with a minimum of $100 at all times to cover affiliate payments.
Services & Support	Included with Merchant account: Private login with access to a reporting interface, access to our network of affiliates, creative hosting, payment processing and check writing, affiliate management tools and features, affiliate help desk, etc.	Will send out announcement email to affiliates promoting program. $1,000 set up fee inclues complete marketing	You will have 24/7 access to real-time reporting from your AffiliateFuture account. The main reports that you would use are the affiliate report and your sales report. The affiliate report shows every affiliate promoting your program during a specific date range that you can choose. This report shows the affiliate’s name, their site and the number of clicks they are generating for you. You can choose not to work with an affiliate for any reason and can remove them from your program at any time. The sales report shows all sales being generated from your program. This report can be run for a specific date range of your choosing (up to 5 years historical) and shows the affiliate who brought you the sale, the date the transaction came in, the order number (from your order management system) and the amount.
Allow for software or downloads?	No Software Affiliates Zero tolerance for downloadable “software” Affiliates, also known as Adware, Spyware, Junkware, etc. Applications can then redirect or steal commissions away from Affiliates that deserve credit for their referrals	No	No Software affiliates
Set up	$500 set up fee	$1,000 set up fee ($2,500 includes graphics) includes announcement and email to all affiliates to get them signed on to our account	$500 setup fee (waived)
Monthly Minimum	Prior to activation and first 10 days of program no charge. 60 to 120 days in program $10 min per month and 120 days going forward $25 minimum monthly fee.	$100 monthly minimum	$100 monthly fee (waived)
Transaction Fee	20% of Affiliate Commision	30% override on commissions (For example if you are paying 10% commissions and a $100 affiliate referred sale comes in, $10 would go to the affiliate and $3 would be our fee for a total of $13 for this transaction.)	30% override on commissions (For example if you are paying 10% commissions and a $100 affiliate referred sale comes in, $10 would go to the affiliate and $3 would be our fee for a total of $13 for this transaction.)
Creative & Technical Requirements	http://www.shareasale.com/media/medkit-2008-nv.pdf	(see word document attached)	http://www.affiliatefuture.com/banner-guidelines/
Affiliate Feeds		http://www.pepperjamnetwork.com/doc/product_feed.html
Example of Affiliate Feed program		www.halloween-headquarters.com
Affiliate Promotions	Once you go live in the network we place you in a new programs added in the last 20 days category as well as send out a new program announcement through an RSS feed.	http://www.screencast.com/users/pepperjam/folders/Default/media/3714ad43-63f5-4574-afa9-58f954532654	Once your program goes live we will send new program announcements to our entire network (over 25,000 affiliates in the US) and will also promote your program to outside affiliates on forums like abestweb.com etc. Generally merchants see between 150-250 affiliates promoting their programs after about 3 months and the “80-20” rule definitely applies where roughly 20% of your affiliates drive 80% of the sales. (Abestaffiliate.com)
Example Merchants	See list (large Green Company list)	Skinstore.com, BeautyChoice.com, AciaBurn, Gilden Tree, Makari, Proactive Solutions, SmartWhite, Teavalize, Purity Products	Merchants: http://www.teacollection.com, http://positively-organic.com, http://www.littlemissmatched.com, http://www.childtrek.com, http://www.indigenousdesigns.com, http://www.oompa.com
Example Affiliates	We don’t publicize a list of affiliates in our network, which is one of the reasons affiliate prefer to work with us. We do provide you with a variety of tools inside the merchant interface that are designed to help you attract affiliates into your program such as a datafeed, sending out affiliate newsletters to your affiliates, a coupon and deals database where you can upload specials on your site, ability to setup automated bonus and promotional campaigns, featured program spots, etc.		http://greenmomfinds.com, http://www.greenandcleanmom.org, http://organic-coupon.com, http://www.grow-together.org, http://got2begreen.com, http://www.ecogoodies.com, http://www.magnifeco.com, http://www.ecorazzi.com, http://greenmommyguide.com , http://www.shopwiki.com/, http://www.alexscoupons.com/, http://www.thefind.com/, http://www.fatwallet.com/
Comments	Work with many brands and tend to work with smaller programs. Their pricing structure is lower than CJ and Link Share but we will be lower priced (in this case) than them. The cons are that their technology is not considered to be optimal and they tend to take a self serve approach where they give you the tools and let you go at it on your own. I know many people have good experiences with them but these are the main negatives I hear from people.	http://www.screencast.com/users/pepperjam/folders/Default/media/634994f5-2077-44cb-a46f-e5e42e3792bd	In a nutshell, because we are new to the market (2005), we can offer the best of what Link Share and CJ do while not only coming in much lower in price than those networks but also being flexible enough to beat Share A Sale’s pricing. We provide great service during the launch process and long after the launch. We will constantly be reaching out to include Eden Home in any of the promotional efforts we are doing to grow their program to its full potential and will try very hard to keep the Eden Home program in front of affiliates as much as possible. We also have a passion for emerging green/eco-friendly brands and children’s clothing and accessories brands. As a result we have recruited a solid affiliate base that performs very well with merchants in this category. We highlight our green merchants in various promotions throughout the year like Earth Day and also offer them a separate section in our merchant directory.