Posts Tagged Merchant Declines
Free Links to Merchants or Try and Monetise?
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on May 23, 2010
Affiliates are often asked to put themselves in the position of the merchant (or their agency) and take into consideration what they want from the relationship. For this blog post if you’re not an affiliate, climb into our shoes for a change and see whether you think differently.
Let’s say you have some content on your site. You have a link to Retailer X that you’ve given them for free. You’ve never misrepresented that retailer and you have a (hopefully) decent reputation. The retailer also has never complained about that link and in fact they (and many of their peers) seek you out to use the service you offer.
Retailer X then launches an affiliate program. This means that you can potentially monetise that link on a paid on performance basis. You’ve now gone from officially earning nothing to potentially picking up a few bits and pieces sales wise.
Now, you know that it’s unlikely that big potatoes are going to come your way from this relationship. However now that you’ve got Retailer X as a “favoured link” it means that they get extra promotion, possible newsletter coverage and inclusion in your offers/codes sections as well as, provided you have time and the offer is good, stuck in front of your community.
So the question is this, bearing in mind that your focus is quite simply generating revenue for your business, so that you can continue giving your users the free service they enjoy and offering many sites a free service they enjoy….
… would you leave the link as “free” or stick on the affiliate link and go for the hope to earn from it option?
Now let’s flip that over to the merchant (or their agency). They’ve now gone from paying definitely nothing to potentially paying something for a few sales that they may or may not have gotten from the traffic you’ve sent. Sadly no one will ever be 100% sure.
Should they be upset or bothered by your actions?
Is it right for an affiliate to try and monetise their free traffic to a merchant site?
This is a follow up to my last post – Will Our Conversion Rate Ruin Your Affiliate Program – II and the comments within. Whilst I don’t like arguing with merchants publically (honest guv) sometimes needs must as no one else will fight our battles in AM. In this case a number of interesting points have been raised which are worth exploring, so thanks to those who have commented.
Make Sure You Check Your Commissions Cancellations!
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on August 10, 2009
One thing I’ve forgotten to do regularly is check why some commissions get cancelled. In general I’ve just assumed that there’s probably a fair explanation as to why something has been turned down plus I’m also a tad too busy to go and do a detailed check (or playing just one last game of Bejeweled on Facebook). However, after checking a report on Affiliate Future last week OLD’s top tip of the week is…
Make Sure You Check Your Commissions Cancellations!
The reason behind this is quite simple (1) you may well find that a merchant is cancelling your commission without a valid reason and (2) you may come across some explanations like this one…
Not an authorised affiliate – please unsubscribe
Now at some point we were an authorised affiliate as we were able to pick up links for this Holiday Merchant. As far as we’re aware no one has bothered to indicate at any time that we’re not authorised plus as the links still work you’d kind of assume all is fine and dandy with the merchant.
Perhaps communication has failed somewhere along the line but we’ve asked for an explanation regarding the cancellation.
If there’s not been a notice of removal of links from the merchant then the commission should really stand. If we’ve been removed from the program at some point and missed a notification then you’d think links would be shut off so we’re not wasting our time.
Either way it just shows you need to be checking all reports and keeping an eye on what’s happening with your commissions.
The one plus point is that AF do allow their merchants to explain, albeit glibly, why a commission has been declined. A quick look round other networks and I can’t see anything that offers a reason for rejection in the reporting from any other network apart from Paid on Results.
Most certainly I think that merchant explanations is something more networks need to implement so as to increase transparency regarding commission cancellations.
