Whats the best ever affiliate incentive?

July 6th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger Posted in Affiliate management, All articles, Other Stuff | No Comments »

I’ve been mulling over this partly out of curiosity and partly because some merchants I do affiliate management need this kind of information to make decisions on how to incentivise their affiliates, I touched on the fact that you need to budget for these here, and that affiliates like to be incentivised with ‘things money can’t buy’, I posed the question ‘whats the best ever affiliate incentive you either seen or won, ever, in all history?’ to affiliates  (here) and i got some fantastic responses.

The Barbados Trip by Affiliate Future came up quite a few times and no surprise really when you consider its an all expenses paid vacation in Barbados for a week along with all the trappings of a millionare lifestyle, a week of fun in the sun with drunken affiliates.

BuyaGifts trip to Las Vegas came up – again a big trip for affiliates, some even got a change to fly fighter Jets which was pretty cool to say the least, they also got to go to a gun range, drive indy cars and visit gentlemans clubs, not a bad present considering most affiliate would shell out an arm and a leg for this if they did it themselves.

One affiliate mentioned he got a Limited Edition Rolex Submariner as well as several other highly collectable watches. IWoot got a mention for their ‘Heli-boarding’ expereince, and Fontastic apprently offered up a car. BT despite all their misgivings gave away a holiday to Paris for two, Books direct gave away £17,000 in cash to two affiliates and Affiliate Window Christmas incentives got a mention as well. one of the most original came from a US network that rented out the playboy mansion, complete with bunnies for a weekend for affiliates.

so whilst the competition for the best ever affiliate incentive firmly rests on the Affiliate Future Barbados Trip, the question still remains, what makes a great affiliate incentive that will actually get affiliates motivated?

Some affiliate sites are earning in the region of £xx,xxx,xxx a year – to give you an example one of the key affiliates in the uk is made about £295.68 off one of the programs I manage, so if you multiply that by the 5000 campaigns in the uk you get £1,478,400 in commissions each MONTH! OK, lets be conservative and say that only half those merchants actually made a sale for them,  you’re still looking at £739,000 a month or £8,870,400 a year.

Because affiliate marketing is such big business and there are many affiliates who’ve become millionares as a result, incentives are going to need to be pretty darn tasty, I remember once talking to an affiliate about a football jersey he’d won and he mentioned ‘forget about the t-shirt, I can buy that myself’ and that pretty much sums it up.

At the end of the day affilaites are in the game to make money, incentives are a perk, an extra push. If you really want an incentive to make waves, its got to be something that money can’t buy, this is why the barbados trip, the playboy mansion and flying jet fighters made such a difference. Giving away free samples may be nice for affiliates but don’t expect sales to sky rocket as a result of a free sample pack, if you want to make a real difference, offer up a space flight or a dinner date with Alan Sugar.

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