When starting a program, How many webmasters are recommended to beta test?
 

When starting a webmaster affiliate program, how many webmasters should you allow to beta? I know paid campaigns and internal company campaigns are key, but if you want to get an idea of how the affiliate program will work out, how many webmasters would you ideally want to include? What should the payout rate be in terms of percentage? How long should beta testing be done before the actual release?

about three fiddy :)

Well it's hard to say I had a webmaster program going for about 3 months...I decided it wasn't worth it.

I have 100-120 webmasters and out of all the ones that signed up..

3 of them actualy promoted. and only 1 was doing a decent job...

Yikes. That's a scary thing. If you had personal friends promoting it, what would you consider a good test? 5-10 webmasters (actually pushing it some traffic of course)?

Ever consider getting in touch with those 100-120 webmasters and finding out one by one why they didn't start promoting your site and making improvments where needed?

After all.. the liked your sites and offer well enough to sign up... :2 cents:

If I had an affiliate program these days, I would make sure my company was relentless about stuff like that.

at least three.

That's what I was thinking. Also, what is a good amount of time to beta a program before public release?

Sorry guys. I'm new to this aspect of the biz and I want to try to do this right. :thumbsup

at least a month or so..dont roll out your program until all the tools for the webmaster are in order..

I would say you would need at least 3, sending at least 1k a day from different traffic sources. If you only have 3 sending from tgp/mgp you wont get an accurate picture of your conversions, and you will be adjusting your tour to compensate for poor ratios. If you have a few affiliates you can sort by affilate, and make your determination from there. It's more about different traffic sources than quanity of traffic to test a new program. Hope this helps.
Cheers
Duke

Thanks for the in depth answer Duke. All of those points are very solid and I will keep all of those in mind. Also, thank you TDF for the time estimate. :thumbsup

If anybody else is willing to drop some knowledge, it'd be much appreciated. :thumbsup