Wayne Porter<\/a> at Revenews.com got me thinking<\/p>\n\u201cIt brought back memories of AffiliateUnion a turn-of-the-century movement where affiliates were banding together to try to negotiate fair and open contract disclosure. Now the tides have shifted and the momentum is clearly in the hands of the powerful affiliates. No need for Unions anymore, affiliates who can frame their thoughts as professionals will find that they too can influence the market.\u201d Whilst this is just one aspect of why the affiliate union in the US did not go on to fulfill it\u2019s potential the concept in itself, I have to say is still a great one. If networks are completely controlled by their top affiliates and top merchants in terms of the economics involved, then are we to believe that they have their smaller affiliates and merchant\u2019s best interests at heart?<\/p>\n
Affiliates have to take a leap of faith each time they join an affiliate program, will the merchant be honest and not claw back legitimate commissions. Will the merchant validate their sales in a timely fashion? Can the merchant see my key words and not use them to their own advantage?
\nHas the merchant knocked their tracking code out? Will I be recompensed for loss of earnings?<\/p>\n
Merchants on the other hand have also a trust issue
\nNot all affiliates play fair, the financial industry is a great point in case. Pay per lead programs here are ripe for some dodgy affiliates to seize the opportunity in attaining commissions on a fraudulent basis.<\/p>\n
Some affiliates are not adverse to ppc (pay per click example google adwords) using the merchants name and sending the consumer to a competitors site. Paid search, brand bidding is such a grey area that even the savviest of us all can find themselves knee deep in politics.<\/p>\n
There are issues with affiliates not updating their merchants promotional material, discount vouchers codes (coupons) where they are expired but not displayed on the affiliate\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Networks seem to be in the firing line when it comes to trust. Because affiliates some times don\u2019t have a merchant contact email or number, affiliates are obliged to contact the network. Because of the volume of queries, networks can be slow to respond. For merchants the sales pitch they got seems to fall short of what is being delivered.<\/p>\n
But there are good affiliates, good merchants and good networks, and perhaps we should highlight them, put a spot light on them with a strong message of how it should be done.
\nCould an affiliate association be part of that? Could it award a certificate for best practice and immediately signaling to any affiliate, this merchant has followed a code of conduct?<\/p>\n
My personal opinion is, we do need some standardisation within the industry, terms and conditions need to be transparent and in laymen\u2019s terms. There does need a body that can represent affiliates in terms of loss of earnings through merchants absconding, in terms of legal issues they have found themselves in. I do believe that there should be some accountability from all sides of the fence. I do feel we should all be working together on common goals that could only benefit every one. Idealistic,La la land or good idea?<\/p>\n
Jessica Luthi
\nAffiliateProgramadvice.com
\nCreated 15\/04\/2006<\/p>\n
—————————————————-
\nI Want My Lolly<\/p>\n
Until you become an affiliate it is incomprehensible to understand what you have to do in order to make a living. Some merchants take a dim view of affiliate marketing. The negative myths and rumours that maybe circulating, I can guarantee have come from merchants who simply don\u2019t understand affiliate marketing have limited technical skills or have poor performing programs, don\u2019t understand the complexities of the internet or have limited online marketing expertise, worse case they have a product that no one wants. There are a number of reasons why some merchants take such a grim view of affiliate marketing and are happy to vent their frustrations and skew findings to their fellow colleagues and other potential merchants about to take the plunge into this industry and I can promise you in each case there will be an underlying reason why their programs have or are failing and I promise, its not the affiliates that are the problem.<\/p>\n
Affiliates are by and large business people making a living out of promoting merchants. They use a myriad of methods to drive sales and leads. Some of those methods involve technology, some use their own website loyalty, some use their own cash to use on pay per click, some use email marketing and some are turning to traditional marketing and some use organic SEO. Some affiliates may have their own website or combination of websites, some may not have a website at all. Affiliates may use one or a combination of different marketing approaches of the afore mentioned. All are time consuming and heavy on human resources. The financial rewards can be poor or great depending on the affiliate\u2019s level of expertise, time and money. Example www.tagmydog.com is my website. It is product feed driven. Because there are no industry standards for product feeds and the majority of networks don\u2019t check their merchant\u2019s data feeds, merchants are allowed to upload any old format or what ever they can scrape from their back end software. In order to promote a merchant on tagmydog.com I must first ensure that the datafeed is in the correct format. I kid you not when I say it takes me a morning to work on just one merchant\u2019s data feed just to get it in a basic format. Now I am not an affiliate for the simple reason, if I had to do what they do every day and cope with the following, I would be bald from pulling my hair out. Have a look at the following\u2026 this happens every day, it\u2019s a wonder we have any affiliates at all and could explain why Grecian 2000 sells well!<\/p>\n
Merchants remove pages from their website without even thinking that affiliates could be sending traffic to this page. Answer: Don\u2019t delete the pages, put a redirect.<\/p>\n
Merchants looking at affiliates websites from their office computer then get a call and have to take an order over the phone. Affiliates think yes, nice one and then become annoyed when you claw that commission back. Answer: Clear your cookies if you know that your computer is used for manual transactions.<\/p>\n
Merchants start their affiliate program with big huge commissions then reduce them when they start realising that their budget is running out or that its cutting into costs. If you have done this and are still wondering why no affiliates are promoting you\u2026Answer, talk to your accountant, if you have no accountant talk your affiliate network find a commission that you can stick to comfortably, rather do this before the launch of your affiliate program rather then after a few months. Example: If I gave you a whole lolly and just as you were about to eat it, I took it back and gave you back just the stick, would we still be friends?<\/p>\n
Merchants hosting company goes kaput for a day or two cos Larry\u2019s pot noodle ended up in the plug socket of your dedicated server (it can happen). Annoying to the merchant in terms of lost sales, not nearly as annoying to affiliates who find out that they are sending their traffic to a page can not be found. Just because the merchant\u2019s sales are affected there is no contract to say affiliates should not be given the opportunity to swap their links for the interim period. Answer: Communicate with affiliates, tell them what\u2019s going on and what you are doing to try and fix the problem. I guarantee affiliates will give you time to sort it out before they swap links.<\/p>\n
Merchants decide that not only are they going to sell their own products but they want to sell the other merchants products too, hey they get a 10% kick back from placing a merchant affiliate link on their home page or other pages. Scratches their head when Mr PPC affiliate after spending \u00a3x in sending traffic to the merchants website, finds that their paid traffic is being sent off to another merchants website then ceases to work with the merchant. Answer: You have a thank you page, this is probably the best spot to do a business to business promotion.<\/p>\n
Merchant with ACCCD (Affiliate Commission Clawback Clicking Disorder)
\nThis is when merchants think that there is no one watching and goes a little too far in clawing back commissions even when they know that the sale or lead is legit. Merchants like these have lost even before they start. Affiliates do test sales with their own real money. Answer: If you think you can get away with it, an affiliate program is not for you.
\nEven if you really do have high returns, its down to you to get those returns down.<\/p>\n
Jessica Luthi
\nAffiliateProgramadvice.com
\nCreated 14\/04\/2006<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is there good cause for an affiliate association in the UK? There have been many debates in the past about the pros and cons of an affiliate association. Who should run it? What would it do? How could it benefit affiliates and merchants and affiliate networks? Could independents become involved? Who is responsible and for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"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=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.affiliateprogramadvice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}