Working with CashPile, the subscribing merchants have several ways to alert affiliates of their support for the rating service. Merchants can place a Rate this Program button on their affiliate statistics and reports page or an AffiliateVoice Rated Merchant button on their homepage. The AffiliateVoice satisfaction survey is very brief, but asks meaningful questions concerning a program's ease of use, quality of support, promotional tools and tracking effectiveness of the online marketing program. Ratings are based on a 1-5 scale, with one being poor and five representing excellent. Merchants and affiliates participate on a voluntary basis.
Affiliates can fill out a survey as many times as they like.
However, only one opinion at a time will be aggregated on the final rating card. If an opinion on a program already exists, affiliates will be asked if they would like to replace that with a new one. Because affiliate programs are constantly evolving, affiliate opinions are likely to change, as well. Ratings are updated on a real-time basis to make the information timely and relevant for both merchants and affiliates, alike. Performance quality varies quite widely by merchant, product or service, marketing support and even commissions paid to the affiliate, Trubey said.