[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/affiliate-program-management\/affiliate-program-audit-costs-how-to-do-one\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/affiliate-program-management\/affiliate-program-audit-costs-how-to-do-one\/","headline":"Why Affiliate Program Audits Costs So Much","name":"Why Affiliate Program Audits Costs So Much","description":"A common questions I get when I say my affiliate program audits cost $X,XXX is “Well XYZ firm did it for free so why won’t you?”.\u00a0 My response to that is always “Well, you get what you pay for”.\u00a0 When I sent that to one company in particular, they sent me the audit\/evaluation from a […]","datePublished":"2015-05-05","dateModified":"2024-02-17","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/author\/adamriemer\/#Person","name":"Adam Riemer","url":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/author\/adamriemer\/","identifier":2,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fda62f751f2a6c2ec2b079fedff69720852e4a65633212ffb11832454c29160a?s=96&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fda62f751f2a6c2ec2b079fedff69720852e4a65633212ffb11832454c29160a?s=96&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Adam Riemer Marketing, LLC.","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/arm-logo-2.jpg","url":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/arm-logo-2.jpg","width":600,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"http:\/\/adamriemer.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Depositphotos_3469360_original-e1423494453197.jpg","url":"http:\/\/adamriemer.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Depositphotos_3469360_original-e1423494453197.jpg","height":"500","width":"500"},"url":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/affiliate-program-management\/affiliate-program-audit-costs-how-to-do-one\/","about":["Affiliate Program Management"],"wordCount":988,"keywords":["affiliate progam audits","affiliate program audit","how to do an affiliate program audit"],"articleBody":"A common questions I get when I say my affiliate program audits cost $X,XXX is “Well XYZ firm did it for free so why won’t you?”.\u00a0 My response to that is always “Well, you get what you pay for”.\u00a0 When I sent that to one company in particular, they sent me the audit\/evaluation from a competitor (which was not cool of them to do) and it was exactly what I expected.It ended up being a series of three power point slides or about 1 page worth of actual content.\u00a0 It proved my point as to why real affiliate audits cost thousands of dollars and is why I’m writing this post.It is broken out into two main parts.Why it costs so much (me rambling a bit)What you should expect to see from basic affiliate program audits as far as deliverables (this is the good stuff)By @arrow123 \/ purchased from DepositPhotos.com1. Affiliate Program Audits Are Expensive Because…..Just like with an SEO audit, it takes at least one full-non-stop day (bare minimum) to complete one.The person performing the review has to test for adware, check for SEO harm, look through your terms and conditions, do keyword research, test for trademark bidding across multiple networks (not affiliate networks), review all creatives, go through at least your partners, analytics packages, etc…Smaller affiliate program audits are normally 10 pages of content and probably have a couple of supporting documents.\u00a0 If you pay for an average one, you should expect a 15 to 20 page document with supporting add on documentation.\u00a0 For full-all-out affiliate program audits, expect 18 to 35 pages of content and supporting documentation which may include interactive media.Affiliate program audits are a ton of work and I do not know anyone who can complete a “real” one for free.\u00a0 Lots of scammers will pretend to do one and feed you crap that sounds good, but any person that knows what they are doing cannot do it for free or for less than a few thousand.\u00a0 At a bare minimum you’re looking at 10 or 12 hours of work…bare minimum.Ask yourself, if your friend or a stranger, even a potential client asked you to spend 12 hours and give away a ton of your knowledge for free, would you do it?\u00a0 Probably not.\u00a0 If you did, the potential client wouldn’t need you since they get a free business plan and even though you love your friends, can you sacrifice an entire weeks worth of work for them for free?\u00a0 Anyways, enough rambling and lets get into what goes into affiliate program audits.by @artenot \/ purchased from DepositPhotos.com2. What You Should Expect in an Affiliate Program Audit?So now that you know why affiliate program audits cost thousands of dollars, what should you get from them?\u00a0 A quick side note, I know some competing affiliate management agencies will be reading this so I am only including what is in my basic audit (and there are still a few things left out).\u00a0 Full and regular audits have a lot more in them, but this is what to expect from very basic affiliate program audits.An overview of the programReview of all of your creativesReviews of your network based affiliate emailsReviews of your outbound recruitment emailsAn overhaul of your TOSA guide to state nexus (but know that unless the person is a Lawyer, it is not legal advice,,,only opinion based)An overview of your top XY affiliates includingwhich ones use adware (99.9% of the programs I audit have it in there and I can almost guarantee if you have coupon sites and loyalty sites as a part of your top ten every week, you have this issue)which partners are poaching your PR and SEO (this is done through multiple methods, even when you exclude adware)which partners add valuewhich partners poach your internal efforts and cause financial damagemissed opportunities with the partners and ways to pitch some of them (probably not all) to add you to these placeswho to remove, keep and who to watch closelya list of potential partners and buckets of niches to go after and how to approach some of them (you might not get all)a fully redone (content wise) affiliate section for your site, the network sign up page, etc…strategies for newsletters including samples custom written for your programan advertising strategy to attract new partners (many firms will only include the basics but give details on implementation in the follow up call)If the affiliate program could have a positive or negative affect on your SEO or put you at risk for a penalty with the search engines. (This includes links and images being used the right way, content, tagging, etc…\u00a0 Read this post on affiliate programs and SEO if you have any questions).And moreAs you can see, affiliate program audits take a ton of time and work.\u00a0 If someone has submitted something that doesn’t include the above, guess what, you didn’t get a real audit.\u00a0 A good way to tell is the coupon and adware section or by affiliate section.\u00a0 If they say you’re clear, it doesn’t exist, isn’t in there, they’re probably lying if your program is on a large network.\u00a0 If it’s an inhouse one, you need to look at other sections of the audit to tell.The above is the basic audit and doesn’t even include everything that needs done.\u00a0 If you think you might have an issue, if your program has gone static or you just want to revitalize and see if there are more opportunities, please contact me and I’m always happy to do affiliate program audits, but depending on our work load, it might need to wait for a few weeks.The image on this post was purchased from DepositPhotos.com."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Affiliate Program Management","item":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/affiliate-program-management\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why Affiliate Program Audits Costs So Much","item":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/affiliate-program-management\/affiliate-program-audit-costs-how-to-do-one\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]