Registration is now open for a4uexpo 2008 the Affiliate Marketing Conference at ExCeL London on 14th – 15th October 2008.

Get in early and save £100 on the delegate rate by registering before 31st May.

Here is a snippet from last years event.

Buy, beg or borrow a ticket but make sure you get to the a4uexpo, it promises to be bigger and better than ever.

Click here to learn more and to register.

One enigma in affiliate marketing is what exactly does the merchant pay the affiliate.

The thing is all things are not equal some merchants pay commission on the full price of the goods the customer buys including vat, others deduct the vat before paying commission, to add another variable other merchants also pay commission on shipping charges. Any combination of these can and will be paid by different merchants, except maybe paying on vat and shipping but not goods, unless you know better.

So how much is 10%?

Lets take a theoretical order of £100* where the commission is 10%, shipping is £5. (*the £100 includes vat at 17.5%)

Not enough room to post every scenario so I’ll whiz through the most common.

Merchant 1 pays commission on the full value of the order including the vat – £100 @ 10% = £10

Merchant 2 pays commission on the full value of the order including the vat and shipping – £100 + £5 @ 10% = £10.50

Merchant 3 deducts vat at 17.5% before paying commission – £100 – £17.5 = £82.5 @ 10% = £8.25

So you see 3 scenarios and three very different commission payments in the worst case 10% of £100 is £8.25.

It would be nice if the information regarding what the merchant pays was available on the network merchant page, only place I’ve seen it is in the additional information on Paid On Results and then not for every merchant.