I find that sometimes when blogging, the easiest thing to come up with for a post is a moan or a rant so I thought I'd come over all Pollyanna and try to be positive for a change and make a list of the things I like most about the affiliate networks I've signed up to.

TradeDoubler (sign up)

Detailed reports
Tradedoubler offers some cool reporting and allows me to quickly see from what site a sale has come, the time of the click and the time of the event/sale, and very often details of the actual purchase made i.e what products have been bought.

Easy to use "pools"
It's very easy with TradeDoubler to create a rotating advert pool. Once the pool has been defined, you can easily add new banners into it and adjust the weighting to determine frequency of impressions.

Affiliate Window (sign up)

Notifier Application
I love the little ker-ching when a sale comes through. I wish I heard it more often though, and it would be nice if it told me the merchant that was involved in the sale rather than just giving the figures.

Emails with affiliate links in
Others have already pointed out the usefulness of it - emails on behalf of AW merchants that contain details of current promotions and best sellers, with the affiliate link already built in so you can quickly copy and paste them.

Paid On Results (sign up)

Deep Link Generator
I love this. You add a javascript button to your favourites, then browse the merchant site - when you find a page you want to link to, just select the Deep Link Generator from your favourites and it will come up with a link for the page you were on. Magic.

Content Units
I've not really used these yet but I've seen the demos and POR's next generation content units look great.

Buy.at (sign up)
Hmm... I like Buy.at but am struggling to think of one outstanding feature but I'm sure there is one! I like the graphs in the new interface and the way you can quickly see how you're doing this month compared to last month. I guess I like the way if you contact support, you do get a confirmation email which contains a unique reference identifier in the message subject. I guess they're using some ticket system to manage them, which at least lets you know they've received the email.

Regnow (sign up)

Custom Coupons
I mentioned before how cool it is that I can create vouchers for specific products or for a merchant as a whole and determine how much they are worth by adjusting the value, which is taken out of my commission. With software sales, commissions are usually decent percentages which gives you quite a bit to play around with.

Emails when I get a sale
Like the Affiliate Window notifier, I want to know when a sale comes through. With Regnow, I get an email. It helps me keep track of how it's performing without me needing to log in frequently.

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network