I get asked this question from time to time and the answer can really vary depending on the circumstances. I ask the merchant a few questions to help make this decision:

What is your budget for start up?
What is your affiliate recruiting and management effort going to be like?
Are you looking for rapid growth? Or more gradual and controlled growth?
Is your offer a retail or lead offer?

For well funded merchants looking for rapid growth that have money to hire a full time affiliate manager, I still recommend one of the Big 3 Networks: Linkshare, CJ or Google (was Performics) They have the big affiliate counts, and the big affiliates themselves in the networks. They also tend to have bigger price tags for set up (from $1000) and monthly charges (from $500 + a percentage of sales or affiliate payout)

Here are some notes on each solution.

Linkshare - the most expensive solution in terms of set up and monthly cost, when last I checked, they were looking for $5k + on set up and $2k per month or 3% of sales (whichever is bigger) Linkshare is a great network if you are well branded, and if you have decided that you would only like to play with one network. They are really big on merchants being exclusive to their network and their Agreement reinforces this. Their integration is the most challenging technically involving a batch process that reports sales daily as well as a pixel if you want to have “return days” in place for your offers.

Commission Junction - CJ claims to have more of the “Top 500 Internet Retailers” than anyone on their network. They have a lot of affiliates, and a lot of good ones, especially on the high end with loyalty and shopping sites, as well as quite a few of the big paid search affiliates. Their cost runs $3000 ish on set up (+ a $3000 escrow account that goes to affiliate and CJ fee payments) and $500 per month or 30% of affiliate payout. Many affiliates, especially the ABestWeb crowd are not fans and don’t trust CJ much because of past issues with spyware/adware affiliates that CJ/ValueClick is currently in the process of settling. That said, CJ programs with good payouts and good name recognition and conversion can grow really quickly. Several programs we run have seen growth from 0 to 1000+ affiliate applications within a month or so.

My one drawback with CJ is that I love to have ability to contact affiliates directly and CJ doesn’t give it.

Google Affiliate Network- Until last month or so, this was known as Performics. When Google bought the parent company of Performics, they made a big change in strategy. Performics had been known since it’s inception as a bit of a “brand snob” company that really cherry picked the big names and signed them to big monthly deals in the $5k - $10k per month range that included full affiliate management and sometimes paid search management services. Google came in and changed things a lot, deciding to aggressively impact the market by offering the “Affiliate Direct” service that starts at $1000 for set up with a $1000 deposit. They charge $500 or 25% of affiliate payout monthly.

Their new pricing is pretty attractive and their merchant count has been growing rapidly since they did this. I like their tool set as well although their interface is a bit clunky. They have 2 things that I really like about their system. They provide affiliate contact information so you can email your affiliates using external mailing tools (as well as load into your own CRM) and they also have just opened up a “Recruit” function that allows you do some searching among affiliates who have “opted in” for inclusion. It has it’s limitations, but it’s good stuff and the other biggies don’t offer this in their base packages.

The program that I run in Google has seen a number of high quality affiliates come in in the last 2.5 months since launch so I have been impressed there.

Many in the industry have real concerns about Google being involved in the affiliate space, especially the major paid search affiliates (and merchants who aren’t on the Google network) with concerns on whether Google’s natural and paid search divisions will remain neutral in judging the value of affiliate links, and how they will value the rankings of the affiliates of non Google aligned programs since Google controls so much of the web’s traffic. We’ll see.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about some of the Tier 2 networks that are up and coming - and I consider in many cases to be a great value for Christian merchants launching affiliate programs. Included in the discussion will be Shareasale, AvantLink, Link Connector, BuyAt, and ShareResults.

The question today comes from Samantha at Fingerhut.com

What are your reasons for recommending AvantLink for catalog retailers?

Best,

Samantha

Samantha, nice to hear from you. There are a few reasons why I recommend that any catalog merchant that uses product feeds to promote their products should take a look at AvantLink.

Their datafeed tools for affiliates are absolutely top notch- and they don’t charge anything additional for set up on either the merchant or affiliate side to use them. They make it easy for affiliates to merchandise products, and have some awesome features as well like coupon feeds that you can use to traffic specials on affiliate sites and update on the fly.

They have also just recently ( at Summit) added on board support for video creative - which is ahead of the curve.

And my personal favorite - they make all affiliate contact info (email, name and phone) available by default.

Their roots are in working for a catalog retailer in Backcounty.com and they have built the tools that affiliate managers need (and affiliates need) to get the job done. They have really focused on working only with retail, feed-based merchants and developing a feature set that would be just what the doctor ordered for them.

They also do some cool innovative things like RSS based reporting for the affiliate manager.

Check them out

God Bless,

Wade