Ever wonder what separates the best affiliate programs from the ones that flop? I studied over 8,000 of them, and one result shocked me. It wasn’t the niche, the commission rate, or even the size of the brand…it was something WAY simpler. And I promise you that it’s not what you think.
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
How to Beat the Dreaded Mid-Promo Slump in Affiliate Launches
How to Grow Your Affiliate Program (and Brand) with a Podcast
Marketing That Actually Works: Donald Miller on Storytelling, Sound Bites, and Selling More
Are Affiliates Just Lazy? How to Motivate and Get the Most from Your Affiliates
Why People Really Subscribe & Buy (It’s Not What You Think)
I Studied Over 8,000 Affiliate Programs and Found This One SHOCKING Result
Do you ever wonder what separates the best affiliate programs from the ones that flop? I studied over 8,000 affiliate programs and one result shocked me. It wasn’t the niche, it wasn’t the commission rate or even the size of the brand. It was something way simpler. And I promise you that it’s not what you think. Let’s get started. So I was not setting out to find this. I ended up studying over 8,000 affiliate programs, and I found only one thing that really stood out. Now, I don’t know. This may end up being like a super quick episode because I only found the one thing. One thing. Now why did I only find one thing? When we talk about what makes an affiliate program great, you think I could find.
I mean, I’ve done, you know, episodes where I listed 7 things, 10 things. Why only one thing? Here’s the reason. Because first of all, it had to be quantitative. It had to be black or white. It had to be yes or no. It had to be 0 or 1. Like, it couldn’t just be observations. It had to be something that I could measure. Like I said, I’ve shared what works for affiliate programs. I’ve shared best practices. I’ve shared a lot of mistakes I’ve made and others have made.
I’ve shared, you know, all the blunders and stuff. I’ve shared cool things that I’ve seen others do, but those are not quantitative. You know, I can say, here’s something that we did and it worked, but is that necessarily quantitative and that it definitely works for other programs? No, in the sense of, like, I can do that and it probably will work for you, but I can’t say that it is a clear differentiator between over 8,000 programs, between the top,000 and the bottom,000, between the top 2,000 and the bottom 2,000, between the top 3,000 and the bottom 3,000. They’re not quantitative. This is not an opinion. Like, they wrote better emails, they ran better contest.
I liked their style better. This is 100% quantitative. So that’s, that’s number one thing. Number two, it was the only thing that truly separated the great from the good and the good from the mediocre and the mediocre from the poor. It was the only factor that if I studied the top 25%, it was vastly different from the next 25%. In that 25% was different from the next 25% and so on. Even if you look at the top 10% versus the 80th to 90th percentile, it was different. If you compare 80 to 90 versus 70 to 80, it was different. And so on down the line. And the third thing was it was true across every niche.
It was true across every niche, every price point, every network, in house. Network doesn’t matter. All right? So those three things had to be true. So here’s how I did the research. And again, I wasn’t looking for anything specific. I didn’t know what I was going to find. I had no hypothesis. I didn’t want to have a hypothesis. So I signed up for this is going to blow your mind. That is a lot of affiliate programs. And so I had a VA helping and he signed up. I signed up for some, he signed up for others. I read every email that I could.
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I read their welcome emails, their follow up emails, everything. I looked at their creative, I looked at their websites, I looked at everything I could. My team helped, but I mean I personally did over somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 to 200 hours of research on this by myself with another 100 plus from the team. The niches were a variety of more than 40 broad niches, I would say. Right. So I tried not to skew too heavily toward any one niche and I felt like we did pretty well with that. So I tried not to make if roughly 10% of all affiliate programs are in the beauty industry.
I feel like we probably came in the, you know, within 2% of that 8 to 12% in beauty. I mean, just some of the niches that I can think of. Beauty, fashion, health and wellness, recreation, kitchen supplies, jewelry, food, education, technology, music, B2B. We made sure that I was represented. Marketing, travel, the furniture and what do you call it? Home decor, weddings, party planning, automobiles, skincare, sports, website hosting, toys, electronics, financial, photography, arts. So many more niches, right. Ultimately, once we did the research, we sorted them by two factors.
Number one, their rank on the network they were on, if they were on a network and if they weren’t on a network and there weren’t very many that weren’t on a network, we wanted a sample of those, but we needed it to be mostly on a network because that gave us the data points like rank. So I could objectively say this affiliate program is ranked 50th on the network and this is ranked 200th it is a better affiliate program. That’s an objective statement. It’s based on the actual data. And the other factor was their 30 day EPC. So EPC earnings per click, that is the 30 day ranking of how much an affiliate would earn if they sent 100 or a thousand clicks, basically. And so again, if program a has a $100 EPC and program B has a $20 EPC, the $100 EPC program is typically better run.
Now, again, on a micro level, on individual level, that might not be the case. The $20 program might be better run and there’s other factors. But on a macro level, when you take 100 programs whose average is $100 and 100 programs whose average is 20, I can promise you the hundred that are at a hundred are run better than the a hundred at the 20. Again, on a macro level. So again, we needed a metric and that those were the two that we chose and then we studied them and here’s what we found. The measurable standout key. Again, measurable and standout.
So it’s obvious it’s true. Again, no matter whether I look at the top 500 versus the next 500, the top thousand versus the next thousand, the top 50% versus the bottom 50%, it had to be a standout and it had to be measurable. It was not average order size. Okay? It was not the commission rate. It was not the frequency of emails. Though I will say as an objective, measurable factor, that was pretty close to being the second factor.
It was very close. It was pretty darn close in the sense of if you look at the top 20%, for example, versus the next 20% and so on. If you broke it into 20%, there was a clear difference, a clear hierarchy in terms of number of emails sent. The difference was when you got inside that top 20%, the top 10, and the next 10, there was almost no difference. So that wasn’t. It was not whether or not they had a Facebook group or other place to communicate. Although again, the top 25% did have something like that more often. But there really was no clear delineation Amongst the top 25% with something like that.
It wasn’t the contest. It wasn’t any of the things I think I’ve ever discussed. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before. That was what made it so surprising. If what I found just backed up the stuff that I’ve shared before, you know, well, yeah, look at me, I’m so smart. But it wasn’t that it was one thing. The who, the who who signed the emails, who was the point of contact? And I don’t mean a man or a woman. I don’t mean a certain name, you know, like Matt McWilliams. It was this. Was it a person or a faceless entity or quote unquote team? So was it signed the so and so company team, or was it signed Matt McWilliams, Alice Smith, John Johnson, whatever.
That was it. So check out these stats. The top 10% of all programs. So the top 800, the elite of the elite, 96% of them were signed by an individual name or multiple names. They might be signed by a team, but it was their names, real people. The bottom 10%, 91 through 100% was only 10%. But look at this. The 11 through 20 percentile was 92%. The 21st through 30th percentile, 83. The next 10% of the program, 69%. The middle 40 to 50 and 51 to 60 were 56 and 44. Again, these are a lot of numbers when you look at it.
The bottom 10%. Only 10% of programs are signed by a person. Of Those with a $0 EPC, only 14% of the programs were signed by a person. The top 1/3, 91%, came from a person or multiple people. In other words, a team, but with a name. The bottom third was only 14%. The middle third was right at about 51%. So right in the middle, as you would expect, right.
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That is a clear delineation between great, mediocre and bad. And even among the great, there was a noticeable difference between the elite, the outstanding and the really good. So do I think that using your name versus the so and so team is the defining factor? When I go back and look at the first change I made when I took over, Talked about this, I don’t know, like five to 10 episodes ago, how I grew an affiliate program for 15 million to 325 million a year in about four years. The first thing I did was stop signing the emails. The so and so team and I started signing it. Matt McWilliams, affiliate manager, name of company.
Do I think that that was the reason why we were able to grow that program by a factor of over 20? No, I think it’s more of a signal. Again, now keep in mind, 4% of the elite programs that we studied did not have an individual and 10% of the bad programs did. So clearly there’s more at play. So do I think that if you suddenly start signing your emails with your name, it’s going to 10x your revenue in a month? No, I think it’s a signal of other factors. Could it be that programs that sign their emails this way are just better run? Yes.
Like, it could be a sign, it could be a symptom, not a cause. But I do think there’s a certain level of psychology at play here. Like, this is fascinating data and the trend is so obvious. Like the correlation between successful affiliate programs and having a real person or two as the main point of contact makes a lot of sense when you break it down psychologically and operationally and behaviorally. So here’s why I think this happens. All right, first thing, trust in relationship building. Trust in the ability to build relationships.
Affiliates or entrepreneurs are not employees. They need to trust that the program they join is legitimate and worth investing their time into. And so when a real person signs email, it signals accountability, it signals trust, it signals relationship. Whereas the affiliate team, it’s like corporate bureaucracy. While Mike from Company Name it feels like a partnership. People trust people. I mean, this is a psychological thing right here. Corporations are evil. People aren’t. Well, you know, we all know, I believe, you know, corporations are just people. But it’s in the name. Seeing a name makes the communication personal.
It makes it human. It makes it credible. The second thing I see at play here is when you have better support and the name equals the likelihood of better support. When I see a name, I see that they’re more likely to provide me with better support because it’s a name, not just some corporate entity. Better support equals more engagement. High quality affiliate programs understand that support matters. Affiliates are going to have questions. They’re gonna have questions about tracking and promotions and best practices. And when you have a name for a contact, it implies accessibility.
Someone is there to help. And so the Bad programs, if affiliates don’t feel supported, they stop promoting. That’s why their EPC is $0. They haven’t had a sale in over a month. Whereas the elite programs make affiliates feel valued so they stay engaged and they drive revenue. Third, clear ownership is what leads to better performance. When you have someone’s name attached to it, that’s the most valuable thing I have is my name. When it’s attached to the communication, the affiliate manager feels responsible for the success of the program. So again, it’s a psychological thing. So that means better onboarding because someone owns the experience. Right.
We’re going to be proactive about helping affiliates giving them advice to optimize. Right. Instead of just like the transactional emails, we’re going to be more helpful and responsive. And so the bad programs kind of feel like a set it and forget it system. There’s nobody responsible, nobody’s running this. So affiliates just get lost. Like I mentioned earlier, elite programs have real people who own the affiliate success. The fourth thing, just that personalized communication, personalized email.
When I see an email from a name, I’m more likely to open it than when I when it comes from the such and such affiliate team, it’s a mass email. And so we see this, the low performing the low EPC programs, they send generic automated emails where the top programs use real names, personal follow up which is what increases the rates of activation and engagement. The fifth thing, I kind of touched on this earlier but the top programs treat affiliates like business partners. When a real person signs an email, again it’s all about a signal. It could be signed, whoever and you could send just as many emails. But that real person signing it, that name says we care about you. I personally, Matt McWilliams, am invested in your success.
I personally, Matt McWilliams, I’m here to support your business and so it makes them more likely to promote and stick around. So the top programs, they treat affiliates like business partner, not just traffic sources. Whereas the bottom programs are just, I don’t know, it just kind of feels mass market. The sixth thing I see is that the elite programs have a stronger community and word of mouth and a lot of that comes from that personal touch.
Affiliates who feel connected to a real person are more likely to refer others. I would bet this is just a guess that the faceless programs don’t get a whole lot of referrals. I get hundreds of referrals every quarter for our clients specifically saying, let me introduce you to Matt, let me introduce you to Matt. Here’s what Matt can do. And so we build that community and their community connected to each other. And I get tons of word of mouth referrals from other affiliates.
The seventh thing I see is with the really low EPC programs, they have a lot of affiliates who sign up and do nothing. And it comes ultimately, again from the lack of relationship, the lack of that name. When I have a name, it signals like when I say, I’m happy to get on a call with you and create a promo plan, what that means is I’m gonna get on a call with Matt. Whereas we at the such and such team are happy to discuss promotional plans with you.
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Who am I going to talk to? What do you mean, who’s we? And so you get a lot of affiliates who never get active because they don’t know the next step. And usually while a lot of times the next step is talk to Matt, talk to John, get on the phone, get on Zoom. That’s the next step becomes a very clear next step. And so the data clearly shows that elite programs invest in relationships.
The more human, the more connected the program feels, the more successful. It is very simple. So if you’re running an affiliate program, you’re running your own affiliate program or somebody else’s, you work for somebody, put a real person’s name on communication. It is not just a small detail. It is a direct source of extra revenue. I cannot stress that enough. And I think, again, there’s so many other psychological things at play here, but I think you’ll be a better affiliate manager if you do it. I think you will feel more connected to your affiliates, they will feel more connected to you, they will make more sales, they will want to do more for you. People want to do more for people than they do a corporation. That’s just reality. There’s nothing wrong with that.
There’s nothing wrong with that. So use it to your advantage. If you’re not currently doing this, change it right now. Again, I don’t think the overnight is going to triple your revenue or anything like that, but I think in a couple of months, in combination with many of the other things that I’ve talked about, could certainly increase your revenue10,20,30,40,50%. And start inching your way up into one of those elite programs, which that’s the goal from this episode. So I’d love to hear from you. What’s your biggest takeaway? What are you going to do with with this information? What are you going to put into practice? I think it’s obvious the one thing that you should do. But what else could you put into practice from this episode?
I’d love to hear from you. You can text me anytime at 260-217-4619. So shoot me a text or anytime, just shoot me a text 260-217-4619. I’m going to tell you right now it’s a good one and you don’t want to miss it. So hit subscribe if you haven’t and I’ll see you then.