Special Report: Affiliate Marketing

CS: What criteria do you use when choosing affiliates?
McAdams: They need a certain amount of visits to their sites; they have to follow rules we set forth; and they must be established within the affiliate network for a set period of time.

CS: How do you determine how much to pay new affiliates?
McAdams: We offer a flat fee for every sale an affiliate drives to our site. Additionally, we give an incentive if they can drive more than a preset amount of sales in their first month. We like to kick-start each new affiliate who comes on board. It all comes back to how many sales the affiliate can drive for us. We don’t compensate the affiliates differently based on whether they send new customers or returning customers to us, but we do compensate more based on milestones we set forth. We put different incentive plans in place depending on where the affiliate falls within our tiers.