In the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, where over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed, we asked, “How do you most often find out about an affiliate program and then join?”, and 25% responded with “Affiliate Directory.”
The affiliate directory played a big role in my affiliate marketing history, as I worked for the first affiliate program directory, Refer-it, back in 1999-2000.
Back then, affiliate directories were a needed resource, because there were fewer ways to find affiliate programs at the time.
But now it surprises me that many affiliates still rely on the directories. I started up an affiliate directory called Affiliate Thing years ago, but killed it in 2009, because I found it to be unnecessary.
Additionally, I didn't like where they were heading with a great many of them featuring affiliate programs, because they were two-tiers (they were getting a piece of the affiliates joining under them) or the spaces on lists of the top affiliate programs were being sold.
However, affiliates are clearly still using what I consider to be the equivalent of Yellow Pages for affiliate programs.
So which is the best affiliate directory?
Well, I took a look at those ranking best in Google, and there isn't one I'd recommend for affiliates to use.
But for merchants, I'd suggest submitting your details to the affiliate directories that are ranking well, but don't pay for placement.
So do you have a concrete recommended list of directories? We are currently going through our database of directory entries and updating our program everywhere since it has changed tremendously. Do you think that it is worth the time and effort?
Hi Olga –
There are none that I would personally recommend, so I don’t maintain a list.
I think it’s worth keeping the entries up to date for any directories on the first page of Google for the search: affiliate directory.
There are actually none of them we would probably i believe highly recommend, thus really don’t manage a list.
There’s no doubt that it is really truly worth always keeping a blog posts up to par to get a lookup directories to the initially website with Bing for any investigation: marketer list. Hasan@ http://366living.com