Comments on: Mr Grumpy Affiliate Has Another Moan

By: Dave B

Dave B — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:51:28 +0000

Just expanding on Paul’s point about rejections, it is not only better for merchants to not pay on cancelled sales but affiliates as well.

If a merchant pays for cancelled sales they have to set a lower commission rate to accomodate this. Normal affiliates end up receiving less commission for true sales in effect having to subsidise the fraudulent activity. If programmes are set up to pay on all sales, they can be targeted by the unscrupulous, making it worse for everyone running proper activity.

It only seems like normal affiliates are missing out because the rejections are visible.

I think more merchants will move to only paying out on confirmed sales, after all isn’t the essence of affiliate marketing that a merchant pays only for sales.

By: Tom_A

Tom_A — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:01:14 +0000

Hi Keith

Good point on the reversals. There’s nothing worse than getting some sales from a new site and then finding them vanish shortly after!

By: Joe Connor

Joe Connor — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:44:29 +0000

Spot on Keith, linkshare and not being able to deeplink at all is the worst offender of the lot but their text links do “degrade” gracefully after they expire to the merchant home page – something other networks could implement.

By: Chris Frost

Chris Frost — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:23:36 +0000

I see Toys-R-Us have just announced a change in URL structure, meaning that we all have to change deep linking. Great timing now that most affiliates have their websites all up and running

By: Lee McCoy

Lee McCoy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:21:56 +0000

“old whinge bag” that was a perfect opportunity to link to me?!! oh well!

By: Chris Brown

Chris Brown — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:40:37 +0000

Just to pick up on the deeplinking thing, I recently started looking at Linkshare for my aff sites and I have to say I am shocked that I can’t build my own simple deeplinks.

By: Paul Smith

Paul Smith — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:37:12 +0000

Reversals of sales – The problem for merchants is that if they pay out on everything then it becomes quite simple to abuse the system.

Imagine the situation – I’m an affiliate and I click through my own link and go on a bit of a splurge, I spend £10,000 kitting out my living room with a brand spanking new plasma TV, complete with surround sound speakers and top of the range DVD player thingy, Bit of a bargain because i’ll save 10% (£1,000).

However i’m a bit of an unscrupulous affiliate and I decide 2 minutes after ordering I can’t afford it after all, so I call up the call center and tell them to cancel my order before it’s even been picked, no problems at all, most places will cancel it for you there and then.

See the problem here? If i’m a merchant who approves 100% of sales then i’m down £1000 in the blink of an eye because the commission will get approved.

Agree with the 301 redirects, agree with the deeplinking, but there are too many people out there who will (and most probably do) abuse the system if you simply pay out on everything.

By: Jason Dale

Jason Dale — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:40:59 +0000

“Blimey Keith are you taking over the victor meldraw role from the Duckman?”

Oi.. cheeky blighter!! I’m as happy as Mr Happy, Head of Happiness Reasearch at the University of Happy, Happy Town, Just North of Happyshire!

Now that Keith bloke – he’s a miserable sod

By: purple

purple — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:33:33 +0000

Blimey Keith are you taking over the victor meldraw role from the Duckman?

I must admit i agree with you re deeplinking, one of the first pieces of advice i got all those moons ago was deeplinking to the product will increase conversation, so any network which makes deeplinking hard in 2008 needs to go back to affiliate marketing school lesson one!

By: Andrew Clapham

Andrew Clapham — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:28:21 +0000

Excellent post – I know how frustrating the above points can be.

Don’t get me started on Merchants changing the URL structure of their websites….. and deleting images!!!