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Top 10 Tips To Avoiding Affiliate Program
Glitches
Excerpt
from Michael Campbell's "Internet Marketing
Secrets Newsletter" #17 (May 16, 2002)
When
it comes to making money with affiliate
programs, tracking the sales and cutting the
checks, glitches in the process often
happen. Have you joined some affiliate
programs? Guess what??? Glitch
Happens!
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1) It's not tracking the way it should
I'm a big fan of
being able to purchase through my own affiliate
links. It's not the discount I care
about. I want to use my credit card in a
real time situation and be sure my affiliate sale
got tracked.
Don't be surprised, this "fail to track" glitch
happens more often than you may realize.
Especially with new affiliate programs, new
product releases, even new product releases on
established tracking software.
Don't take THEIR word for it, that they put
through some test orders. Usually test
orders are done with an artificial credit card
number and they do not test every aspect of an
ecommerce system.
For example, I announced a product to my readers
and sales started going through. I was
getting email confirmations, but when I checked
the real time stats they read zero sales.
Several phone calls were required to get things
straightened out. They tried to blame
me. They said it was the way I was
redirecting the url. Lame excuse. It
was their software all the way along and they
fessed up to the fact later on.
The sad part is, I had to prove with email
confirmations how many sales I actually generated.
Lesson to be learned, don't take their word for
it. Prove it to yourself with a live credit
card, before you tell your friends.
2) You have a custom commission
I'm often given a
bigger commission than the average person when it
comes to affiliate programs. It's a nice
gesture by the affiliate manager, showing that
they realize the value of top affiliates.
Only problem is, not everyone in their office may
be in on the deal.
Turns out one manager promised me a big commission
and entered it into the system. A few days
later, another manager saw the larger than normal
commission, assumed something was wrong and
reduced my commission to a normal level.
Hmmm, I complained to the first manager and it was
reset back to the higher level. Next time I
checked, I was set to ZERO commission. HUH?
This time I phoned the owner of the company.
Turns out the second manager was never told about
the higher commission. He assumed someone
was trying to pull a fast one and set the
commission for that affiliate number to zero.
All was not lost though. An hour later, a
check for several hundred missing dollars was
headed my way.
Moral of the story, check your stats and get what
you are promised. Make sure they CC everyone
in their office about any special deals or
commissions.
3) They reset the counters
This is similar
to the glitch above and happens most often with
two tier programs. All sorts of people sign
up for the first tier to get the sales
commission. Then, they try to be sneaky and
greedy, signing up as an subaffiliate under their
own previous number.
That's not how two tier affiliate programs are
supposed to work.
One program I belong to did a compete "reset" and
nuked everyone not getting the standard 25%
commission. Only problem was, as a super
affiliate, I was supposed to get a 50% commission
on sales. I got caught in the reset along
with everyone else.
I only noticed because my paycheck was only half
as much as usual. One call to the publisher
got everything straightened out and I got a check
for the missing commission.
Moral of the story... if commission checks
suddenly drop in dollar value, log on to the
publisher's tracking system and make sure your
commission is what it's supposed to be.
4) You didn't read the affiliate
agreement
How many of you
actually read those long affiliate
agreements? We just want to get our links
and start selling right? Well, I got burned
for more than $1,200 because I didn't read the
agreement.
Turns out that the affiliate program is only open
to people living in the USA. Since I'm in
Canada, they refused to pay my commission.
My argument was, if I'm Canada, why on earth did
they allow me sign up as an affiliate in the first
place? Their response, you clicked that you
agreed to the terms of our affiliate program, why
didn't you read it.
Lesson learned, read the affiliate agreement and
check the fine print before joining anything.
5) Dyslexia runs deep
I often have a
bit of a problem with numbers. I'll switch
them around without realizing it. I look at
them, read them out loud, then two seconds later
write them down backwards.
That's exactly what I did for one major affiliate
program I belong to. Instead of recording 4535
into my affiliate code I typed 4353.
I kept getting emails from their system
congratulating me for sales but the monthly
paycheck was puny. Something didn't add
up. I should have been getting checks for at
least 10 times the amount.
I phoned the publisher and gave them my affiliate
number and they asked if I was Bob Smith. I
told them no, my name is Michael Campbell.
They said sorry, but that's Bob's affiliate
number. To quote Homer Simpson. "Doh!"
After finding out what my affiliate number really
was I muttered something about wondering how much
money I'd lost. She quickly remarked that I
lost over $2,000 in commission since
January. Double Doh!
Moral of the story, if it seems like you are not
getting a paycheck relative to the efforts you are
putting in, check your affiliate codes and numbers
to be sure they are correct. One simple typo
can cost you thousands of dollars.
6) They can run but they can't hide
One way to check
the relative health of any affiliate program is to
look at the numbers on the paychecks they send
you. This is the check ID number.
Every bank check has one. It's usually in
the upper right hand corner.
Sneaky, huh? You know exactly how many
checks they cut and how much effort you are
putting in. You can use that as a barometer
and gage the success of the affiliate program.
If you are making only $100 a month and putting in
an average effort, chances are everyone else is
getting a similar amount. If they're cutting
only 10 checks a month, it might mean the product
is a dud or has a very low conversion ratio.
If they're cutting hundreds of checks a month, the
product is a hot seller.
For example, let's say last month you received
check number 6250. (You do record them don't
you?) This month your check number is
6273. That means, this affiliate program cut
a mere 23 checks this month for its entire
affiliate force.
Lesson learned... Fewer checks means the
program is highly specialized, or it's pathetic,
or they're trying to pull a fast one by not paying
affiliates. Unless it's one of those multi
tier programs (explained below), you might be
better off focusing your efforts elsewhere.
7) It's a life time - multi tier
affiliate program
There are about
10 people on the internet who are fans of life
time multi tier commissions. They are the
ones that got to announce the product in the first
place.
Think about it. If you see ads plastered
everywhere saying you'll get lifetime commissions,
they really Really REALLY want you to join.
That's because if you - or anyone you sign up -
ever buy anything from that program, the original
person gets most or all of the commission, not
you.
Lesson learned, unless you are first to announce a
multi tier life time program and have a big
mailing list, be very careful you're not making
someone else rich with your advertising efforts.
8) Getting the runaround
Be sure the
checks are signed and dated or you may as well be
getting checks from space aliens. Double
check everything, before you try to deposit the
checks in the bank.
This was a favorite tactic of an affiliate program
that was having financial difficulty.
Eventually they went out of business owing me a
lot of money.
They'd "forget" to sign the check. Then
they'd send next month's check, but not a
replacement for the original one that wasn't
signed. Grrrrr!
Finally, two months later I'd get a
replacement. Then they'd "forget" to send a
check for the current month, or make it out to the
wrong name. It was a sorry song and dance.
Lesson learned, if you're getting the run around,
run away to a different program. Life's to
short and precious to waste your time being a bill
collector for money that you've rightly earned.
9) They shut it off without telling you
Almost every day
I get notices from Commission Junction about
companies that get discontinued from the
program. Hmmm, strange how some of these
companies have a habit of "running out of money"
just in time for the long weekend.
Four days go by with no commission and I'm left
wondering if they'll ever come back. Well,
at least CJ.com gives notices.
A few of the smaller internet marketing programs
I've promoted in the past were shut off without
notice. I was linking to dead air space and
didn't know it until one of you pointed it out to
me. Thank you.
Lesson... if you have a lot of sites and a lot of
pages, test for link rot at least once a
month. You may have dead links and
frustrated users, when you could have been making
money instead.
10) What you're linking to sucks ;-)
Not really a
glitch but a very common mistake.
After reading Clickin' it Rich and
learning how much money was to be made from
selling professional music gear, a client of mine
decided (without consulting me) to put up several
sites on ukuleles. Yes, that four string
thing kids play in grade two.
Yeesh! She thought that, because no one
could spell it, she could optimize pages for
typos, as well as correct spellings. Good
idea, wrong product.
A ukulele is not professional music gear! I
told her to put up sites dealing with reverb units
and digital recorders. $1000 items that earn
$100 commission per sale, not $40 ukuleles that
pay $4 commission.
She thought that maybe the digital gear would be
damaged in shipping.
Dude! Professional music gear is meant to go on
the road, be bashed about by burly roadies and
have beer spilled on it nightly. Shipping in
a cushioned package is the best it will ever get
treated.
Moral of the story, make sure what you're linking
to doesn't suck and has big enough commissions to
warrant doing the work - building web sites - in
the first place.
Conclusion
That's a wrap for
this issue. If you keep your eyes peeled for
the top 10 affiliate glitches, you'll make a lot
more money from your online business.
Now that you know what to look out for, here is an
excellent affiliate revenue generator. When
you link to my new ebook Clickin'
it Rich you'll make over $17.00 US per
sale. Join us! I've provided a special
page, just for you:
http://www.clickinitrich.com/affiliates.html
All my best,
Michael Campbell
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Author of Nothing
but
'Net and Clickin'
it Rich
Copyright 2002 Dynamic Media Corporation
Sign up to receive his newsletter "Internet
Marketing
Secrets Newsletter" here:
http://www.InternetMarketingSecrets.com
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