7 important criteria when choosing advertisers to work with in affiliate marketing

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to chat with you for a while. I think your experience can be incredibly valuable for other affiliates to learn from. You have obviously succeeded in this space. And you had a new consumer test site as well called testproffs.se also in the pipeline if I understood you correctly? We can talk more about it a little later here, first I want to know more about you and how you choose which advertisers to work with.

What are the seven most important criteria for you when looking at new advertisers to work with?

1. One of the most important criteria for us is the brand. Is it a brand that fits well with our site in everything from range to the brand values. If the advertiser is not credible, it naturally also reflects on the pages where the brand is visible as well.
2. Is there a long-term potential in the collaboration? In order to succeed in the affiliate industry, it is incredibly important that there is long-term cooperation. Especially since we work in SEO, where each keyword can take months or years to rank for. We also see that long-term collaborations tend to provide significantly better conditions in everything from developing tailored campaigns to more favorable compensation.
3. Development potential, here it is all about finding new verticals or areas in which there were previously no advertisers. For example, it could be an insurance company that previously only offered compensation for home insurance but now also includes compensation for boats. If there have been no previous advertisers in an area, competition tends to be very low with good investment opportunities for us as affiliates.
4. Commission levels and the commission model is always important. Is there an ROI to be gained with the level of compensation offered by the advertiser? Does the advertiser offer a compensation model that fits? Here you can simply do a calculation and see if the compensation corresponds to the traffic value we can generate.
5.  Offers can also influence our decision to onboard new advertisers. Unique offers can be a USP that increases conversion and thus, for example, makes up for a lower compensation. Discounts and offers are also a good way to stand out with your own offer.
6. Conversion and tracking is something we also really focus on.  How good is the advertiser at converting traffic. Can we be sure that the tracking is correct? Some advertisers have very good conversion tunnels, others are less good, in the end it will affect how we choose to expose the advertiser.
7. Reviews are also something that can be included in the brand. What do customers say about the advertiser? How do they manage communication via Trustpilot, Reco, Facebook etc. We want to be sure that the advertiser offers a good product/service.

Aron Hwang and Vidar Hwang in their office in Gothenburg

Where do you often see other affiliates make wrong choices when growing their business?

Many affiliates, and that also applied to ourselves at the beginning, have difficulty defining themselves. Keyword analytics that point to low-hanging fruits in all possible verticals of products and services. Here we often see that it is better to focus on one or two areas and become as good as possible within these specific areas. That's why we at Evide internally always re-iterate the same phrase to ourselves "focus, focus, focus".

What do you see as the most obvious obstacles that many affiliates encounter and do you have any tips for getting through those difficulties?

Time and commitment, especially in SEO. Staying motivated when the process of climbing to the top can sometimes take months if not years. If you're new, start in an area with very little competition to reduce the wait, but try to also test what works and what doesn't without having to invest large sum of money and time.

What is your own background and how did you get started in affiliate marketing?

Vidar – My academic background is in international marketing, with a master's degree from Linnaeus University in Sweden. A good starting point in marketing, but very little to do with affiliation and search engine optimization. A friend told me about Malta where I got a job at LeoVegas without any prior experience in betting and casino. I therefore started there within customer support and later took over as the copywriter for the Swedish market. Then I moved on to the SEO team and there I also saw how much of the traffic came via SEO and affiliation in this industry. After three years in Malta, I felt it was time to test try out my wings and then started building our first affiliate site in insurance together with Aron. Since then, we have launched several websites in different areas where elyn is one our latest project.

Aron - My background does not have as strong a connection to SEO as Vidars, but I was previously a business controller and have studied MSc in innovation and industrial management. When our joint projects started to gain momentum and took up more and more time, I chose to switch completely to this industry. Having different approaches to SEO and affiliation, however, I think has mostly been an advantage in the longer term. This means that we often look at things from different points of view and can make better decisions. In the end, SEO and affiliation are also a lot about data and statistics, which is not that different from what I dealt with before.

Before we forget, you mentioned your new site Testproffs that you were extra proud of it. Tell us more!

Our ambition with Testproffs is to combine reliability with a high level of ambition for content and information. In this way, we believe we can contribute to a more complete user experience than we've seen on other test sites in the market today. If you take our test of vegan products from Happy Vegan, we evaluated each individual product separately and also made a fun competition of to be able to name "Best vegan tuna flavor!". I hadn't imagined that when I woke up that morning.

We also want to go a step further and really test every single product, the way a normal consumer would use it. These are real products we test that our advertisers send to our homes. We put great emphasis on objectivity, accuracy and independence in our tests. The goal is ito become one of the most trusted sources when it comes to assessing the performance, quality and value of new consumer facing products.

We believe in making consumer testing an entertaining experience. For example, we took and did a whole day outside in the Nackareservatet in Stockholm to do a test of products from Momo Jord. It was everything from breathing jewelry, tarps and hammocks that we and the test panel tested. An unbeatable afternoon where you really felt "Wow, I can't imagine that we get to do this for a living!".

In conclusion, whether the visitor is looking for the best kitchen equipment, the latest technology or the best travel destinations, we want them to be able to trust our website to guide them in the right direction. 

What is important to you in cooperation with an affiliate network? How can we at Addrevenue make sure to strengthen our cooperation more you?

There are several parts that are important, but for us the personal contact stands out as perhaps the most important aspect. A good collaboration is based on being able to contribute in both directions. As an affiliate, we need to give feedback on areas of development, new advertisers, compensation issues etc. It is also important for us that the affiliate network has a good and user-friendly interface, that payments and documents are handled correctly and tracking works reliably. And you've really lived up to our expectations in all those areas.

How do you personally feel that cooperation with Addrevenue has been?

From the very first meeting with the founders Heimar and Peter, we felt that there was an ambition and desire to improve an otherwise rather stagnant market of affiliate networks. A good drive and enthusiasm is something that we appreciate as it is in many ways similar to our own way of working. Therefore, it felt natural for us to test addrevenue.io with a couple of advertisers at the beginning, which have since become significantly more. An exciting journey and collaboration that has only just begun!