The 6 most common causes of affiliate program failures

Affiliate programs come and go all the time. In fact, affiliate programs are formed and belly up constantly. It will not be the same company.  But there is enough turnover in the industry to make you want to think twice about casually picking an affiliate program to promote. 

As an affiliate marketer, your fortunes are tied to the success of the affiliate program you will be promoting. They are the ones who come up with the offers and products that you will eventually promote. You suffer tremendously when the affiliate program behind the offer you’re promoting bellies up. 

You have to protect yourself from this possibility by understanding the six most common causes behind affiliate program failure. By understanding these, you will be able to recognize the warning signs and hopefully learn to avoid companies that exhibit these signs.

Lack of niche specificity

If you come across a program that has one offer in your niche, but has tons of other offers on a million other niches, be very suspicious. Don’t just jump in and promote that program. It seems that the company or the person behind that program is not quite sure on what to focus on. If this is the case, they might be losing money in so many different niches. It will only be a matter of time when the whole company bellies up. Alternatively, the company may be thinly spread among many different niches that they really can’t do a decent job servicing their niches equally.

Untested or failed sales pages

If it seems like that the affiliate program that you’re promoting has offered pages that look very similar to each other, you might want to hold off. Take a step back and look at these pages. Would you want to buy stuff from these sales pages? If the answer is no, look for another affiliate program to work with. If there is any indicator that their pages are brand new, untested or otherwise unproven, you might want to hold off.

No landing page ready

Another warning sign that you should be on the lookout for involves templates. If it seems that the affiliate program is just using a template to crank out one landing page after another, you might want to reach out to your affiliate manager. Ask them if they can come up with a unique landing page. If the answer is no or if they come up with all sorts of excuses, drop them and look for another program to promote.

Too strict on affiliate marketing materials

If the affiliate program you’re thinking of promoting grabs you by the neck and insists that you should only promote them using the few materials that they provide, be very doubtful. This is a serious problem. If they insist that you use only a small amount of materials to promote them, then all the other affiliates promoting that company would be using the exact same stuff! This is going to lead to saturation, and overexposure. Also, you might not get the conversion that you are looking for.

No incentives for top-producing affiliates

If the company doesn’t give a bonus for the top-producing affiliates, you might want to consider another company. Either this company is strictly small time or they don’t really care to inspire their affiliate base. Neither of this situation is good.  Look elsewhere.

The offer cannot be repositioned or spun

If the affiliate program has terms that dictate to you how you should position the offer or the product, you might want to look elsewhere.  They’re putting handcuffs on you. This is going to be hard if your niche is not a tight fit. Unfortunately, most of the time niches don’t exactly fit 100%. They have to be repositioned or adjusted.   A little bit of freedom goes a long way. 

Keep these six common reasons for affiliate program failure in mind. Don’t hitch your affiliate marketing business on a dying horse. Make sure to spot problematic programs. Otherwise, they are going to take you down with them.

