Being an affiliate marketer, aka publisher, can be easy and difficult, depending on how you look at it. Once you have a website or community that is generating revenue, your job is to at a minimum, maintain that traffic and revenue but ideally should be looking to grow it. 

The biggest pain points for affiliates today are:

  1. Broken tracking links
  2. Expired offers
  3. Geo-targeting
  4. Compliance
  5. Programs that close
  6. Lack of advanced ad tools

Broken tracking links

So many affiliates have broken tracking links it isn't funny. Just take a quick look at FTX that still to this day has nearly 1000 different domains linking to FTX with a tracking link. The tracking URL structure is ftx.com/referrals and this is still being done. These links are on live affiliate websites that haven't removed them. 

For every brand and program that goes offline, it leaves in its wake a sea of broken tracking links. These links simply lose money and conversions for every click they generate. 

Expired offers

Just like broken tracking links, you'll find numerous expired offers all across the internet and social media sites. If you just take one industry like casino affiliate programs and think about how many casinos there are, when signup bonuses change, this causes problems. What kind of problems? Users clicking on tracking links thinking they will get offer A when they get offer B which can usually be worse. The end result is pissed off users that go back to Google and start their search all over again. They'll likely not revisit your site as a result. 

You can find numerous sites with expired bonuses everywhere. This is costing money for the affiliate and the sale lost to the operator as well. 

This problem is actually a big pain point for affiliate managers too. When an affiliate manager has a bonus or offer changed on their brand, first thing they do is contact their affiliates to ask them to update the offer. They would be lucky if 10% of their database updates the offer and another 10% in the following month. It just requires constantly asking and contacting affiliates to make these changes. 

Geo-targeting

For all the billions of WordPress websites out there, most don't have any type of geotargeting plugins in use. There are no shortage of geo-targeting WordPress plugins you can find but many affiliates just don't know what is involved in integrating them. 

Simply put, by not using geo-targeting of your ads, you are losing out on sales. Nothing is worse in being in say a country outside of the US and being given ads that show as if you're based in the United States. It just makes you think the website owner only cares about one market. It has already been proven that even in the SaaS world, giving users the ability to pay in their local currency increases conversion rates. The same is for any offer you can find. 

Compliance

Compliance is no fun, just ask Ian Sims from Rightlander whom we had on the Affiliate BI podcast to talk about compliance. 

As much as compliance isn't a fun topic, it helps operators save money and it really forces affiliates to be accountable with their marketing and keeping their site up to date. Compliance can be heavy in many niches in affiliate marketing like gambling, personal finance, investing, forex, cryptocurrency and even diet and nutra. As an affiliate, you need to follow the laws of the countries you operate in. This can often mean you'll want to have geo-targeting plugins so you can adjust your offers to be compliant in those unique markets. 

Programs that close

This happens all the time. In face in the last 2 years, StatsDrone has supported over 1000 affiliate programs while marketing 900+ as being closed. Every affiliate program that closes leaves a debris of broken tracking links on the internet that will never convert again. When a program closes, this means affiliates are left with numerous tracking links they need to change on their network of sites. In some cases, an affiliate might need to remove 100s of links. This is why it helps to use a link tracking system or CRM to manage all of your tracking links. 

Lack of advanced ad tools

Something that most affiliates don't know but the biggest and most successful affiliate companies all seem to have the most advanced tech. That is they have tools that have automated geo-targeting built in, always compliant and have a large database of offers. Their sites are very data driven and automated and always optimized for conversion. 

Affiliate CRM tools

Are there any affiliate CRM tools on the market? Hardly any. If there is one affiliate tool that tackles CRM, it is StatsDrone which has the ability to document your conversations with notes. The 2nd feature of CRM is the automated invoice generator to make your life easier issuing invoices and tracking those payments too. 

StatsDrone affiliate stats redesign

The entire team at StatsDrone has been working hard the past 5 months on doing a full redesign of the app. The reason behind the redesign isn't because we think the app needs to look prettier but rather we've had the chance to get feedback from our most valued users. We have realized all the things we need to do to make this app the best affiliate stats aggregator. 

We know affiliates are problem aware of trying to capture all your affiliate data but we think most affiliates are not solution aware. 

The stats app is meant to solve as much of the problems affiliates have today to make life easier. That is to save time and to make more revenue by optizing your business and staying on top of revenue leak. 

You can see the new app redesign in action at the SiGMA World Europe conference in Malta Nov 13-17th, 2023.