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Affiliate Programs That SuckPOSTED ON December 21st, 2007 BY cygnus |
You may have clicked here expecting to see a list of programs we’ve worked with and terminated relationships with; well, it’d be easy to say anything from Linkshare or CJ, but that’d be far too easy and not entirely true since there are a few gems on both of those networks… plus you should really just figure that shit out on your own. No, I’m going to instead give you a list of the types of programs that absolutely piss me off. If you run an affiliate program or are thinking of starting one, you don’t want to make this list because you’ll lose out on ton of super affiliate business. For an example let’s use finger sandwiches as the product in each sucky affiliate program type (I’m sick of widgets and am hungry).
“Back Off I’m Starving!”
Please Test Us, We Pay 50% Less and Will Keep Spamming You Even After We Fail You
Some affiliate managers might as well be pushing bulk e-mail sends with the amount of spam they send; most potential affiliates need to be shown a program once or twice before a decision to test is made - if I’m getting $5 per finger sandwich sale at a good conversion rate, why would I even consider $2.50?
I see this mistake more with new affiliate programs that are misguided by thinking that an affiliate should be honored by such a proposal to make less money. What’s even worse is when the said affiliate gives the program a proverbial bone by running it for a little while, sees that the offer converts even less than expected, drops the program, and then continues to get nasty spam about how sorry he’ll be by not using the program anymore. I soooo want to name names here, but won’t.
The onus of research doesn’t just fall to affiliates; it falls to affiliate management too. Want to know how much you should pay and what kind of conversion rate is acceptable? Join some competitive programs, run them, and then tweak your own program to beat them. Otherwise, don’t waste my time, and certainly don’t make sales letter threats, because you absolutely kill any chance of a repeat test in the future.
Our Technology Changes Weekly
I’m all for the progression of technology as it pertains to improving efficiencies and overall profitability, but change for change’s sake drives me batty. Let’s say my programming team takes the time to create a lead system to feed you qualified finger sandwich purchasers using your query string post. That’s a quick thing to do, but if we have to implement that on a bunch of sites, it gets more time consuming given our penchant for testing and not botching the user experience. Want to change to a XML post two weeks later? Fine, that’s a better method anyhow, but still annoying. Switching to a web service two weeks after that? Getting on my terms a bit. Moving over to an off-the-shelf solution two weeks later? I just dropped you.
I’m Scared of Decisions, Run It By Legal
Some industries are so heavily regulated that some amount of legal intervention is necessary to keep the riff-raff out. However, it becomes evident when legal runs the marketing department. How does this work?
Aff Manager: Here’s the copy to use.
Cygnus: We like to write our own stuff, incorporating the key elements provided.
Aff Manager: No, it has to be word for word.
Cygnus: Um, then you’re not going to get anything that ranks; you’ve got 100s affiliates using the same crap copy.
Aff Manager: This is what legal has approved. Also, you can’t use the product name anywhere on your site and are required to provide exactly how you intend to market us.
Cygnus: Wow, so it sounds like you guys don’t like getting sales from affiliates.
Aff Manager: Isn’t there anything you can do?
Cygnus: Nothing that your legal would probably approve of.
Threaten To Sue, Oh Wait, It’s You!
This has happened more than once, where we agree to build out some white label sites specific to the various finger sandwiches a program offers. A few weeks go by and then we get a cease and desist for using their images without prior authorization or something along those lines. Simply by clicking the provided links a less litigious affiliate manager might have seen that the link was for her affiliate program, or heck, checking the URL list we provided to her a few weeks prior.
The couple instances where we acted against our best judgement and ran a program for the “I’m scared of decisions, run it by legal” types, this has been the outcome. Unreal that it occurs, and more unreal that they even bother to try making money online.
Flexible Payments Available: Every Other Month
Know why I hate the phrase “the check is in the mail?” It’s because we normally have direct deposit or wire transfers setup. The only thing worse than not being paid on the agreed upon payment schedule is not getting paid at all, and this is usually a precursor to just that. Back when CJ was synonymous with affiliate marketing it was an extremely frustrating experience making a finger sandwich sale on Jan 2, only to get paid for that sale on Feb 20th, unless the advertiser took the extra month option to scrutinize sales, making the payment occur on March 20th.
Needless to say, my favorite programs don’t just offer to pay weekly, but actually DO pay weekly… there have only been a couple of instances where we stuck with an affiliate program long term when a payment was skipped, and even then it was because we were notified in advance of some unforeseen financial hardships.
Butterfingers The Pixel Dropper
I’m not about to open up the can of worms that is how to best determine if a finger sandwich sale should be attributed to me, another affiliate, or the main vendor. Rather, I want to point something out that makes me angrier than a newly awakened fasting bear in the middle of a salmon shortage… drop a tracking pixel and you’re done, simple as that. Once an affiliate is comfortable with the volume of finger sandwich sales that is likely to occur on a daily basis, logging in to some tracking system to see that you have 0 sales because someone changed something is absolutely infuriating. Some programs will go so far as to not provide make good payments because they simply have no way of knowing how much you “really” did; I usually update their company names into Pud’s deadpool as I swap out to a competing offer.
So do you want to run an affiliate program that doesn’t suck?
- Research how much you should offer targeted affiliated based on your conversions, when compared to your competition’s payouts and conversions.
- Pick a stable technology for your systems integration and stick with it.
- Let affiliates choose how to market for you, limiting them only when absolutely necessary.
- Pay on-time, pay often.
- Never, ever miss a sale for any reason whatsoever. If something goes down, trip over yourself to keep that affiliate happy.
There are a lot of other things affiliate managers should do to be successful, but like stock picking, keeping it simple is often key… mind the basics and the rest will fall into place.
Cygnus
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