{"id":154,"date":"2007-04-21T11:49:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-21T16:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.80.208.152\/affiliateprogramadvice\/?p=154"},"modified":"2008-02-21T20:59:50","modified_gmt":"2008-02-22T01:59:50","slug":"affiliate-commission-leakage-zero-tolerance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/2007\/04\/21\/affiliate-commission-leakage-zero-tolerance\/","title":{"rendered":"Affiliate Commission Leakage (zero tolerance)"},"content":{"rendered":"

AffiliateProgramAdvice.com pledge
\nWe feel so strongly about google check out that we pledge we will not support any merchant who uses google check out without factoring in their affiliates why? Its called affiliate commission leakage, what does this term mean?
\n<\/strong>
\nThis is when a merchants has their own (affiliate or commercial) links taking their affiliate’s referred visitors away from the merchants site resulting in lost affiliate commission.<\/span>Common examples could be..<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Merchant has their own affiliate link to another complimentary merchant.
\n2. Merchant has their own ad sense running on their site.
\n3. Merchant has obvious telephone number so customer can call in a place an order.<\/span>
\n4. Best one, Merchants site is down and out, affiliates were not notified.
\n5. Banners with domain name extentions
\n6. Google Check out is a new one for the UK<\/span>If you want to attract the best affiliates in the business, look at your website and see if you have any affiliate commission leakage. A lot of serious affiliates will not promote you if they think their traffic is being diverted.<\/p>\n

Here are a few simple tips to have some, not all of your cake and eat it.
\nIts about compromise.<\/p>\n

<\/span>1. Merchant has their own affiliate link to another complimentary merchant.
\n<\/strong>You can still have this, but put it on the thank you page, it\u2019s actually more target traffic for you and wont annoy your affiliates.<\/span><\/span>2. Merchant has their own ad sense running on their site.
\n<\/strong>Errrm if you need to run adsense on your site, then this flags up that business is not too brisk, rightly or wrongly if this is true or not, this is what a lot of your affiliates and competitors with be thinking. Why should affiliates send traffic if you are going to take that traffic and make money from it off the back of your affiliates. I have seen a very well respected aff network allow their merchats to do this, where the heck is their quality control?3. Merchant has obvious telephone number so customer can call in a place an order.<\/strong>
\nYou don\u2019t have to get rid of your phone number, you should have a contact page any way, put your phone number there, your customers will still find it. If that is really going against the grain. You can do what our super stars truffleShuffle.co.uk have done, they created a landing page (took less then half an hour to do)
\nBefore <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>www.truffleshuffle.co.uk<\/span><\/a>
\nAfter <\/span>truffleshuffle <\/span><\/a>can you spot the difference?
\nwe now get affiliates to link to this landing page without the telephone number
\n(please note you now have been cookied if you went through the truffleshuffle link, you may want to delete this, go to internet settings to delete cookies). Most of the affiliate networks now offer pay per call so you could even still have the phone number and affiliate referred visitors can still be tracked. Ask your network if they support this.<\/span>Our new client lovehoney has this in place too.<\/p>\n

<\/span>4. Best one, Merchants site is down and out, affiliates were not notified.
\n<\/strong>Hey we all know that you need to do maintenance on your website. But did you tell your affiliates before you did it or did you do what some merchants have done and just done the maintenance without really thinking how it would affect them? Gentle reminder, affiliates are businesses that have to monetize the space on their website, if they find out that your site is down for maintenance, they are not making money, some will now be losing money, just like you. Please schedule any down time and give affiliates notice. Most will have no problem at all with this. You will earn a lot of respect if you keep your affiliate notified.<\/span><\/span>Some times, your hosting company may go down or a server needs rebooting, cool no problem, let your affiliates know what has happened and what you are doing and when you think it will be fixed.<\/p>\n

Some networks now require merchants to compensate affiliates for loss of earnings if your website goes down for more then x hours\/days without warning. Usually, the way compensation works out is that, your affiliates generating sales will be averaged out and then added to their accounts, AffiliateProgramAdvice.com support this as its about affiliate livelihoods and loss of earnings.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>5. Banners with the domain name extension
\n<\/strong>Sounds silly maybe, but why remove the domain name extension after all its how customers will remember the site? (ok quick tip, if you don\u2019t have all your domain name extensions, then any kind of brand building could be halted in its tracks, should you want to enter another country by way of exmaple) Customers may type the domain name directly into their browser or directly into google. The point being its your name that you want people to remember is it not? All our clients banners have no domain name extension, some networks insist that you remove this from your banners. You can still indicate country example Astrobingo UK<\/span><\/span>6. Google Checkout<\/strong>
\nGoogle Check out is a new one for the UK. Its not new, its been in the US for a while, but is come across the pond on swift wings. If affiliates have done their job and sent you a new customer, new sales helped you build your brand contributed to the growth of your company added their contribution to that lovely car you drive, that beautiful home you own, or that lovely cold beer you are drinking, what ever you are doing, by not complying with your affiliate networks request that you track affiliate sales through this check out option (if you have it) in the same way you track affiliate sales through your own payment gateway, then you may very well loose some of your affiliates. Please think about this very carefully and ask your self, is it worth the risk. This is going to be the biggest test of how you feel about your affiliates, chose wisely is my advice.<\/p>\n

Affiliates.. if you spot any of this with a merchant you want to promote, contact them or the network, don\u2019t be heavy handed, just explain why they need to make some minor adjustments and all the good that will come out of it. Remember its about education, no excuse for any affiliate network, but some merchants wont know what they maybe doing wrong, give them the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AffiliateProgramAdvice.com pledge We feel so strongly about google check out that we pledge we will not support any merchant who uses google check out without factoring in their affiliates why? Its called affiliate commission leakage, what does this term mean? This is when a merchants has their own (affiliate or commercial) links taking their affiliate’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[182],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}