Commonly, everyone thinks that choosing its affiliates among a group of the largest top-producing affiliates, creating that way a maximum of traffic, is the best strategy.

Buy.com proved that on the contrary, the smaller to medium players perform a better role in contributing incremental sales while helping to minimize the costs. The site experienced 37% year-over-year sales growth through its linkshare.com affiliate program with a 16% increase in the number of affiliate sales partners.

The main strategy was not just to increase the traffic's site via common affiliates but to focus on targeted core-producers. These new affiliates are smaller to mid-size affiliates who drives a few sales each month.

Expanding your affiliates partners to smaller ones certainly means average a lower volume per affiliate but also reduced costs per order... With this strategy, Buy.com has reduced its average cost per order by 22% over the previous year.

Overstock.com also reported strong result with the same online strategy. Its total orders and revenue increased an average of over 28% each month for the six months ended December 2002 through its LinkShare affiliate program.

Overstock.com used also LinkShare's Dynamic Rich Media links and experienced conversion rates of 4.3% during December 2002, that's over 1,300% higher than the industry average (0.3%).

Source : Linkshare.com