To the Death of Affiliate Marketing: If You Can’t Erase It, Re-write it

If you work with big names and known retailers in e-commerce, then you’re probably familiar with the business of affiliate marketing and how it works. Being in the affiliate marketing business ourselves with global ventures like Flipit, we’ve been tracking the progress of this line of work for a while now, trying to dig out the rebels from the righteous. Much to our disappointment however, affiliate marketing hasn’t been heading in an appreciated direction recently, causing a lot of folk to slowly lose trust in the benefits that you can reap if you were to practice affiliate marketing the right way.

We want to clear the air of the dirty reputation that the affiliate marketing name has been making for itself, but just how can one go about doing this? First it’s important for you to understand how this misconception has been forming over the years.

Affiliates and Advertisers: Enemies or Partners?

Part of an affiliate’s job is to ride the performance marketing wave, which means staying up to date with everything that fellow advertisers are pushing for on a daily basis. Performance summits are the perfect hubs for exchanging information and contacts that are valuable for affiliates and advertisers alike, so what’s with all the scepticism you ask? It’s simple. Rather than call us partners, many major merchants whom affiliates choose to work with (and vice versa) are under the impression that the affiliate’s only concern is to make big bucks by association and let’s face it: no one appreciates a money hoarder. All of a sudden, what was meant to start off as an honest, two way business exchange and partnership, ends up being portrayed as a devious plot where affiliates are viewed as comic strip worthy money-hungry villains plastered on a 130” HD screen…just for shits and giggles. True story.

Giggles aside though, the average passer buyer attending that particular performance summit – say a young hot shot advertiser who doesn’t know any better yet – may not register the display as comic relief, but may in fact interpret it as a warning sign.

Affiliate Marketing’s Ugly Face

Fraudulent or just confused marketing schemes? When you’re redirected to a site that promises you millions if you click on a link, purchase a self-help book, start an “effective money-making business” – here, “read hundreds of our customer reviews and you won’t be disappointed of the results!” – you’ve stumbled upon one of many forms of affiliate marketing. But this is exactly the face of affiliate marketing that has incepted users with a fear of being duped and unfortunately, it’s everywhere.

First come first served! Let’s spam the web with hundreds of disguised links for the gullible. Someone’s bound to click on at least one of those spammy links and it’s the association with those links that keeps getting affiliate marketing into trouble. But actually, how affiliate marketing really works is through a system called Last Cookie Counts that does not work the way I just described. Sure, every affiliate wants to get ahead of the game first in the battle of the links, but it’s actually the last quality link that gets clicked on and tracked by virtue of cookies that’ll pay off the affiliate concerned and while there is speculation that this method will soon be going out the window, ergo affiliate marketing too, it’s something that’ll be sticking around for a lot longer than rumours make it out to be.

Affiliate Marketing is here for now, so let’s make the best of it.

People are out for a change, but instead of fighting for a change, fight to make a difference in the existing system instead. What the affiliate marketing community needs to do is show that they mean business — proper business that doesn’t involve deception, fraudulent images and bad mouthing. Instead of giving room for advertisers to feed these misconceptions, work towards your advertisers needs and show them what you’re all about.

From Venting to Brainstorming Solutions

It’s a dark world wide web out there where the label “affiliate marketing” has been tarnished beyond repair, but that doesn’t have to be where the game ends. You can turn things around. First thing’s first: if you can’t erase it, re-write it in two steps.

Step 1: Affiliate marketing, also known as performance based marketing is how you should be treating your business from now on. Yes, you’re here to make money (what business isn’t?) and in our world, here to help others save money too (we love coupons), but in the name of all that is holy: you’re definitely giving off the wrong vibe with tacky slogans that scream “MAKE MORE MONEY WITH US!”.

We get it. We really do, but we love performance more so ditch the money-making Facebook ads addicted affiliate and get with a portal-rich publisher whose main concern is to foster long standing healthy relationships between advertisers, their brands and users. In other words, you have to speak the advertiser’s language: performance marketing.

Step 2: Even though serious publishers and portals are making the transition to performance marketing, we’re all still stuck in the world of the affiliate because that’s what corporations have known for so long now that we don’t want to throw them off with something as broad as the concept of performance marketing. It’s like I said though: if you can’t erase it, re-write it. Let’s add another chunk to that neat sentence to highlight this second step: re-write it with quality.

That is easier said than done. There are several hurdles we need to tackle first. One such challenge is getting networks to discern between serious brands from spammy affiliates looking to plaster the web with their annoying pop ups and banners. Affiliate networks are way too easy to join because most of the time subscribing is free of charge — no strings attached, just a bunch of terms and conditions that are overlooked more than read. If a world known affiliate network wants to become known as a quality network then they need to give their advertisers a reason to believe this too. This won’t happen so long as there aren’t any rules to stop affiliate misfits from making their way into the so-called best affiliate network ever.

We need quality affiliate networks to live up to their name so that advertisers can get the quality that they seek too. Publishers should have to earn their way into these top tier programs, not share a seat next to amateurs who woke up one day envisioning a flash and banner infested playground of money. Let’s hope that networks catch on to this fast.

Goodbye Affiliate Marketing, Hello Performance Marketing

We say goodbye to affiliate marketing’s bad name and welcome the birth of professional performance based marketing. This can’t be done in a day, but in a step-wise manner. Let’s sum things up. First, get rid of the term affiliate marketing and replace it with performance based marketing. Live up to that change. Don’t stick with the same old traditions that all got us here in the first place. Ditch the name and events that are too far gone from the business that actual quality networks offer. Second, if these quality networks follow, they’ll soon be moving up the performance based hub too and advertisers won’t find themselves worrying about the direction their partnership is going in.

Here’s to a new name and face for affiliate marketing.

Author | Joanna Jaoudie

Joanna Jaoudie graduated with an MSc in Applied Cognitive Psychology. After spending the majority of her academic years studying human behaviour, the mind and brain, she started to develop a knack for human-computer interaction and how users online interact with one another and the technology they use. She currently works as a content editor, blogger and country manager for Flipit.com, focusing on the Indian portion of this global venture: Flipit India.

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