 After looking through many new products on ClickBank it just boggles my mind how many sites have major leakage! What’s worse is I’ve seen it other places also, not just ClickBank. If you’re are a vendor and want any affiliates to promote your products you MUST understand what leakage is and why it’s critical for your success to eliminate it.
Basically, leakage is any link on your sales page that leads your visitors somewhere where the affiliate will not get paid. The most common form of leakage I see on sales pages is Adsense. Now ask yourself, why would an affiliate want to promote your site if the visitors they send your way are going to click on links that profit you but not them? The answer is they wouldn’t want to and they won’t! Top affiliates simply don’t promote web pages with leakage.
Anytime I see a product website with Adsense or banner ads it makes me cringe. If you are letting affiliates promote your product and you can’t make enough money without having adsense on it, redo your sales letter or quit selling it and sell something else!
Leakage is also not only a turn-off for your affiliates, it could be a turn-off for your sales as well. Every website that sells something should have one thing, it’s called ‘focus’. If you’re giving your visitors too many options they sure aren’t going to be focused are they?
It’s a common newbie mistake, but trust me, the money you make from Adsense or other leakage will never compensate for the affiliates and sales you will lose.
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Then again, we’re talking about Clickbank merchants here.
Yeah, agreed. However I have seen this same thing on CJ which suprised me.
Thank you for the good post. I guess, newbies are not aware of these causes. Web marketing is really tricky and there are people who take advantage of this. I guess proper information as this one will help change things.
Leaky Affiliate Programs
Pingback by AffiliateWarrior.com Blog » Eliminate “Leakage” and your affiliates will go to the wall for you. - July 31, 2006 @ 4:02 pmPro affiliates and merchants have already learned their lessons about leaky affiliate programs. However I’m amazed at the number of merchants that just don’t get it, so wanted to do a little piece to educate newer affiliates about leaks an…
[...] Is Your Website Leaking? “Basically, leakage is any link on your sales page that leads your visitors somewhere where the affiliate will not get paid. The most common form of leakage I see on sales pages is Adsense. Now ask yourself, why would an affiliate want to promote your site if the visitors they send your way are going to click on links that profit you but not them? The answer is they wouldn’t want to and they won’t! Top affiliates simply don’t promote web pages with leakage.” - Miles Baker [...]
And my favorite, the dreaded ‘affiliate sign-up’ link at the bottom of the page. What’s worse than providing the web space so some marketer can use you to get more affiliates.
Hey Rick, to me it really depends on the product and the placement of the affiliate link. If it’s small enough that only people that are looking for it can find it, that’s okay with me, if someone wants to be an affiliate they are going to figure it out anyway. However, I suppose there is a fine line somewhere where it gets to be too big or placed too prominently on websites where it could interfere with sales. With certain products and niches most visitors won’t even know what an affiliate program is. However, with niches such as Internet Marketing it needs to be small and unobtrusive I think. As a merchant I keep my affiliate sign up page as a small link at the bottom or on the FAQ page for those that are looking to become an affiliate. Only if affiliates purchase from themselves could it pose a threat to your commissions and depending on the merchant payment setup they have it could easily happen with no affiliate page at all.
Overall, I think it’s important for sales pages to have a clear-cut focus for driving sales at their highest conversion rate, I think that’s the bottom line.
Good thread.
As a marketer, it annoys the hell out of me if a product doesn’t have the “affiliate sign-up link” at the bottom and I have to search for it.
BTW: How do you guys word your affiliate sign-up links? Some sites use “Affiliates” others “Webmasters” as anchor text. I was told that webmasters would be better because it doesn’t distract potential customers.
Any opinions on this?
Joseph
Either one, ‘webmasters’ or ‘affiliates’ works for me. I think you’re right about “webmasters” being less distracting, however ‘affiliates’ seems a bit more to the point.