5 reasons merchants love affilaites

I was talking recently with my coder dillsmack about how badass it is to be a merchant right now. You have all these affiliates breaking their back to drive traffic to your site so you can acquire new customers. They are doing this all on a "chance" they will make money. Meanwhile these merchants are RAKING in cash with all the new customers they are acquiring. I put together a little list of the top reasons why merchants love affiliates: 1) New vs Returning Customers - Remember the old saying about how a new customer is worth tons more then a existing? Well the reason of course is because once you acquire a new customer they feel comfortable with your system. I know when I see a special deal somewhere I will go back to amazon.com to see if they sell the item just so I dont have to fill out ANOTHER sucky profile and all that crap. 2) Affiliates will spam market everyone for you and you have complete plausible deniability with the affiliate company. 3) Affiliates will leverage their media buys and PPC experience to drive tons of traffic to your site for a CHANCE at a profit. 4) If a merchant breaks even to acquire a new customer this should be considered a overwhelming success. Its not only likely that this person will buy again (at which the merchant will receive full price) but also the customer will most likely tell friends. 5) Residual and reoccurring revenue - Most offers do not give reoccurring revenue past 45 days. This means that after a merchant gives you whatever for their period then they get the sales at full price forever. Anyway just something I was thinking about I wanted to spit out.