> What I mean by that, if you're an affiliate,
> you
> still have to "trust" that the
> merchant is going
> to give you credit.

That's where the more traditional concept of Drop-shipping came into its own.

There was no concern about the merchant not paying because you kept your share of the money before passing the rest on to the merchant.

Of course, you then had to trust the merchant to deliver.

And likewise, the merchant had to trust that you were sending in all the orders you had received, and you weren't using the merchant's good name to generate orders and pocket all the money.

> With electronic tracking, an affiliate can
> log
> into their account and see proof of the
> visitor
> count they've sent and the conversion rate
> with
> order count. It gives them verifiable proof
> that
> the visitor did indeed make a purchase.

As long as you - the affiliate - can trust that the electronic figures you see are correct.

> The beauty of electronic tracking is that
> instills
> confidence in the tracking process.

Good point. It is not necessarily a more accurate indication. But it instills confidence because it is a third party.

Now it becomes a trust issue with the third party.

> Any merchant could
> just
> decide not to pay their affiliates, but that
> wouldn't be smart. They wouldn't have many
> affiliates for very long. But without the
> "Online Confidence" factor, it
> will be VERY
> hard (nearly impossible) to sign up many
> affiliates.

This is a volume issue.

You will always sign up someone. Maybe many someones. And those who sign up may be more pro-active in selling your product.

By making it easier to sign up and for those affiliates to keep track of their own sales - by using the online tools - you may get more sign ups. But that won't guarantee more sales. It should. Simply because there are more people pushing the product. But it's not a guarantee.

> I actually took orders over the phone for
> one
> of my products. Once I started an affiliate
> program, I got a slew of emails telling me
> to
> they wouldn't sign up until I took off the
> phone ordering option.

CRAP - Customer Requests Are Profitable.

I would like to know the next part of the above.

While you got a lot of people saying they wouldn't sign up until you took off the phone ordering option, how many of those same people followed through with action and actually signed up when you took off the phone ordering option?

Michael Ross