A tough subject to tackle, but are affiliate loyal to any merchant? Well ill start using myself as an example, the first website I made was based around one merchant – ASOS.com. As affiliate marketing became more mainstream more and more fashion merchants came on board, many with much better offerings as ASOS.com however I always featured them as a priority, new pages, new categories always featured ASOS.com why? Partly because I knew it worked, I had a good relationship with the affiliate manager Jess Luthi and I liked the merchant as a whole.
Now moving this forward to affiliate loyalty as a whole and one big question – can it be achieved?
My personal view on this is yes, it can but ill have a look at the other side of the argument first.
A lot of people would argue any affiliate is out to make as much money as possible, if another merchant comes along offering the same product at the same price with a better commission offering the affiliate would simply jump ship and promote them. Now im sure there are affiliates like this, but I also know there are a lot more merchants who are in this industry for a lot more than an extra 1% on their standard commission.
It’s the working relationship that I think can hold affiliates and merchants together. Many affiliates want to be able to talk to someone merchant side at the click of a button, within an hour of sending an email or direct on the phone, and with too many merchants this isn’t possible. So you might be getting the extra commission but the chances are you would just be ‘an affiliate’, and if the affiliate channel isn’t working, you’d be dropped.
Affiliates that have been around for a while and do live in the pockets of the merchants they work with, and likewise the merchants live in the pockets of their affiliates all round have a better relationship. And should anything ever happen to jeopardise the affiliate programme these are the partners that would be able to continue working with the merchant. I think affiliate marketing is about so much more than just, “well add a few links and send you some sales” its about knowing why your doing that, who your doing it for and what you want out of it.
Some affiliates are in this for the long term, some are in it for as much money as they can make as quickly as they can make it. And I think this affects the loyalty, those in it for the long term, those building a business will be more loyal and have a much stronger working relationship with the merchant. Those in affiliate marketing to make money fast will jump from merchant to merchant netting themselves some nice commission on the way but have no real connection to a merchant.
There are quite often new merchants that launch with far superior commission offerings that what are available in the market, heavily backed merchants going for an all out big launch push. Will the commission stay this high? If it does, are the new merchants product prices a lot higher? If not the chances are the commission will come back down, and by switching merchants you could have soiled the relationship with your previous merchant.
I guess the answer to the question, as with most questions is not a definite one. How loyal an affiliate is depends on what they want to get out of the relationship. Those affiliates that are loyal are likely to work a lot harder, but with much fewer merchants and these, again in my opinion are partners that any site would want to work with.
