What Would YOU Want to See in an Affiliate Program?

[HarryK]

As an affiliate that is? (Yeah you could say if it were my program I'd run it so-and-so way ... and that's fine ... we can do that.)

But as an affiliate, what would you want to see this paragon of an affiliate program ... do, have, payout, handle things, etc etc?

[HarryK]

Yeah, like no one has any opinions on this board! Come on, already!

[SykkBoy]

if it's a physical product, I don't expect massive commissions, but don't want to be insulted with 5-10% either
I prefer LOTS of promo materials, including product specific materials so I can promote an individual product (only if there is more than one product of course ;-))
I want to be able to deeplink to a specific product (again, multi-product sites only)
I would like to be allowed to use a little creativity in promoting the sponsors...with cj.com, I'm so afraid of getting creative and sending them more sales and them determining it was against TOS.

here's an example of frustration, I'll leave the name out because I do actually make a little chunk of change with them even as restricted as I am (hopefully as they see my sales, I'll be able to urge them into being more flexible):
I have a great cell phone sponsor, but they won't let me deeplink to a specific product. They have a ton of products and example, I may want to focus on only hands-free headsets...I don't want to send my customer to the front of their page and have to search to find what I'm sending them there for in the first place. I would love to do mini product "reviews" or small table ads focusing on one or two headsets and sending the customer to buy those specifically.

This would probably more than double my sales to these guys and even with their terrible commission rate, I could still make some money with them...


is that too much to ask for?
deeplinking ability
flexibility in advertising (and no, not so flexible I'm lying or mis-repping the product or company)
some decent ad materials to work with

bonus: paying more than once per month, but that's not the highest priority

I'm amazed at how hard it is to find mainstream sponsors to accomodate these little things

even more bonus points if my site doesn't have to "have real content on it" I want to make product review and product spotlight type pages that are essentially ads for their products and some sponsors even go nuts at this....

I could tear my hear out...

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