Online marketing agency NETexponent has released the results of a 23-question survey of affiliates on AffiliateBenchmarks.com. The survey was "designed to help affiliates develop and evaluate marketing best practices." Some of the questions asked include:

• Average number of affiliate programs one belongs to
• Percentage of merchants promoted on an affiliate's website and, of those, the average number of orders generated
• A selection of the top three affiliate technologies used
• Preferred methods of communication
• Performance of various advertising units - A full 45% of affiliates who responded are not using video ads, while another 15% don't know how their video ads perform.
  
• Conversion rates
• Traffic generation methods - SEO ranks first, PPC second and email marketing third.

Also according to the survey, the top three reasons for joining any particular affiliate program are 1) commision amount, 2) product being sold and 3) the brand.

"We were hoping to uncover practical information about affiliates and their experiences by conducting this survey, and we were not disappointed," said Chris Kramer, Media Director and Co-Founder at NETexponent. The survey collected 450 responses, according to AffiliateBenchmarks, and included participation from very small to super affiliates. The survey is available as a free download for 30 days from AffiliateBenchmarks.com.