Affiliate Marketers Say Payout Amount Is Most Important Factor In Choosing Affiliate Programs

By Anna Johnson on July 6th, 2010

The most important factor for affiliates in choosing a merchant is the payout amount (cited by 30.7 percent of affiliates), followed by consumer awareness of the merchant’s brand(s) (25.6 percent) and the earnings per 100 clicks or EPC (18.1 percent).

Surprisingly, only 0.5 percent of affiliates regard the provision of optimized promotional materials or ‘creatives’ (banner ads, text ads, emails, etc) and landing pages as important.

These are the findings of AffStat’s 2010 survey of 1,150 affiliate marketers, which reveals the following preferences among affiliates when it comes to the most important factors for choosing an affiliate program:

Payout amount: 30.7 percent of affiliates
Brand awareness: 25.6 percent
Earnings per 100 clicks (EPC): 18.1 percent
Affiliate management: 16.1 percent
Product or Service Quality or Uniqueness: 8.0 percent
Allows incentivized traffic: 0.5 percent
Optimized Creatives and Landing Pages: 0.5 percent
Search Marketing Competition: 0.5 percent

Interestingly, 59 percent of affiliates say commission payment policies affect their decision to promote an affiliate offer. What’s more, 38.1 percent say they have successfully requested an increase in commission from an affiliate manager.

When it comes to the minimum acceptable EPC (earnings per 100 clicks) for affiliates to promote an affiliate program, again, affiliate marketers seem to vary in their views. The percentages of affiliate marketers requiring a certain minimum EPC are as follows:

Less than $5.00: 15.0 percent of affiliates
$5.01 – $10.00: 30.8 percent
$10.01 – $15.00: 5.0 percent
$15.00 – $20.00: 10.8 percent
$20.01 – $25.00: 9.2 percent
$25.01 – $30.00: 5.0 percent
More than $30.00: 24.2 percent

There is general consensus among affiliates when it comes to how they want to be paid. 62.1 percent of affiliate marketers want commissions to be directly deposited into their bank accounts, while 17 percent prefer PayPal and another 17 percent want to be paid via check.

Here’s the list of affiliates’ preferred methods of commission payment:

Direct deposit: 62.1 percent
Check: 17 percent
PayPal: 17 percent
Wire: 3.4 percent
ePassporte: 0.5 percent

Affiliate marketers’ preferred payment thresholds are:

$0: 15.2 percent
$25: 24.5 percent
$50: 29.4 percent
$100: 28.9 percent
Over $100: 2 percent

Source: Missy Ward and Shawn Collins, “2010 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report,” AffStat

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Kikabink Lab, Market Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Affiliate Marketers Say Payout Amount Is Most Important Factor In Choosing Affiliate Programs”

Pittsburgh SEO Company Says:
July 7th, 2010 at 9:55 am
Good article. However, I think affiliates should place greater emphasis on landing pages. After all, the LP can have a huge impact on conversion rates & EPCs.
Anna Johnson Says:
July 7th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
I TOTALLY agree with you. The landing page can absolutely make or break the sale. It’s a real pain when you put so much effort into pre-selling someone and they end up on a landing page that just doesn’t convert.