9-40% of all online merchants sale is now through Affiliate programs, and is set to increase as the Internet matures. Affiliates route customers to the merchant site, through their marketing skills, so they want to know if the merchant site is capable of building on this and lead it to a sale. This includes ensuring the product or service provided through the affiliates is trustworthy and presentable to the customer. Trust is the basic issue in affiliate programming, good affiliate's research on the company before joining an affiliate program. Since they will be providing extensive coverage for the company site the merchant company and it does not want to damage his credibility with his visitors. An affiliate seeks for an honest and credible affiliate program from a merchant, if there is any shortcoming for the product via the affiliate; the affiliate is the first to suffer. Reliability is another concern of affiliates. The affiliate programs that have a reputation for late or non-payment of commissions to web site owners will not succeed. A merchant should explain clearly the payment process and when affiliates should expect their checks. Affiliates also need to know whether there is a minimum check that the merchant will cut. If there is a minimum payment, they should be told whether any processing fees will be applied.

The next thing that worries the affiliates is the term of the relationship between them and the program, affiliate programs commission is not what the ball game is about on a whole, but on how long can it last as well. After spending hours of efforts they would like to continue to build a network with the product or service provided. A binding agreement would draw them to the programs, because these programs are not short term advertising gimmicks. In all they are looking for a true relationship and not just route hard earned traffic to the merchant site for short term revenues. The other aspect for affiliates and publishers is that the services they promoting should not be offered on an zillion other sites, this leads to a drop in their revenues.

Residual Income is another criterion that attracts and is now wanted by most affiliates; this helps them in getting a constant source of revenue. The benefit of this want of affiliates is that during lean times residual commissions serve the purpose of survival. It is best when the relationship between the affiliate and the program is a long lasting one. Affiliates also look at products that are related to their site and what they are trying to market themselves. So if there is a site trying to sell plant saplings would rather try and sell products like gardening equipment, manure etc. Besides this they are looking at a growing variety of products offered by affiliate programs which will keep evolving as the market size increases. Internet merchants who understand this need of affiliates and publisher will plenty of top notch affiliates wanting to join their programs.

The other consideration for affiliates is the manner in which the merchants try to market themselves and if they are not using any unlawful ways of marketing their products once the lead has been generated. For example, if they are spamming, sending out emails to everyone that has an email id. This not only damages the reputation of the Internet merchant but of the affiliate as well. Though all of the above is what publishers and affiliates are looking for, communication also plays a role for them. This means that the affiliates would like to hear from the Internet merchants as regularly as possible and let them know of the possible upgrades in their products. And a few tips in how to market themselves better, and be upfront about how their program works and also a brief view of performance. Publishers really need an interface where they can monitor their progress 24/7.

At the end of the list, what affiliates would also like is compensation since a merchant's affiliate program sometimes requires an affiliate to divert traffic away from his or her site and towards the merchant's. Charting out a plan to minimize this loss that the affiliates are bearing would help in attracting more affiliates.

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