Affiliate Tip: Beth Kirsch:

Affiliate marketing is powered by the dynamic, independent, resilient and vibrant entrepreneurial spirit of publishers and advertisers.

This is affiliate marketing’s greatest weakness and strength. In other words, it’s what is wrong and what is right with affiliate marketing.

Publishers don’t want to live the Dilbert life (and who can blame them?!?!); they want to do what they want when they want. They want to rely on their own street smarts and skills to run their own business.

That is the opening part of Beth’s answer to the question asked by Affiliate Tip:

How would you answer the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved? There are no right or wrong answers - just opinions that can help improve the industry.

How would you answer the question? Feel Free to post your answer in my comments block or visit Survey Monkey and answer there.

I would sya that the biggest thing wrong with affiliate marketing is that affiliates are treated as disposable by the majority of the program sponsors. Training, if provided at all is cursory and usually consists of “post out banner on your website and make money”.

This approach of throwing stuff at walls and seeing what sticks might work for a few companies out there, but I just can’t believe that they wouldn’t all benefit from a more structured environment where would be affiliates are trained and shown how to actually make this business work.

Imagine Ford Motor company, or Kirby Vacuums, or Century21 grabbing everyone that passed by on the street and saying, hey pass out these flyers and you get rich as a sales person for our company. Ridiculous in that light, isn’t it?

But essentially, that is exactly what most affiliate programs do with their recriuted affiliates. And it’s no wonder there is so much pain and frustration in the industry and so many people with so many negative attitudes posting in the internet marketing forums.

Well that’s my two cents, for what that may be worth.

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Dane Morgan wrote this in the early morning: