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It’s that time of year when we talk about who is on the “Naughty” list and who is on the “Nice” list. In the last 48 hours, I’ve decided that there are some merchants who belong on the Naughty list. Because of the nature of retaliation in affiliate marketing, I’m not going to name a lot of names. On the flip side, affiliates need to know just what is happening with certain merchants so that they don’t end up getting taken advantage of the way that I have been.
First on my naughty list, and I have no problem naming names, is Disney Movie Club through Commission Junction. I have no idea how the program is or is not actually related to Disney because it is not run by the same people as the Disney Shopping or Disney Games accounts. But to make a long story short, I had 100% of my leads reversed for October and was told that they reversed 78% across all affiliates that month. The reason wasn’t fraud or cancellation but rather that the leads “didn’t show up in their reports.” I’ve been in affiliate marketing for over 7 years, and I can’t make heads or tails of this rationale. I tried to get more information but in the end just decided to stop promoting them because clearly they don’t care about affiliates.
Next on my Naughty list is Snapfish. What better time of year to promote picture printing than December, when people actually remember to use their cameras? And yet it is during this exact time that Snapfish cut commissions on pictures in HALF out of the blue. Of course we got the same excuse that we always do about how they will be able to make their promotions more aggressive as a result of the cuts. But really what happened is that I lost half of my commissions. A friend of mine at Zumba summed it up best last night. “Isn’t Shutterfly paying 4X what Snapfish is now? Simple, I’ll shop at Shutterfly.” Thankfully in this case affiliates have a choice and can promote someone else pretty easily.
Third on my Naughty list is a satellite program on CJ that shall remain nameless. Their tracking is such that you get a placeholder credit in your account when a lead is generated and then as long as the person completes the activation and stays on for 30 days, you get paid within 60 days. 75 days passed on one of mine and I hadn’t been paid. I contacted them and, of course, they didn’t respond to my email. I checked their CJ stats and strangely enough their EPC is $0.00 for the last 7 days. Either they are supposed to be batching sales and didn’t bother to do it, or they are about to make a quick exit out of CJ without paying their bills. Either way, it stinks and is a naughty business practice. At over $100 a lead, you should pay when you say you will.
Lastly is my biggest beef right now and unfortunately a merchant that I have put so much into promoting in the last 30 days that I can’t afford to be dropped from their program. And that REALLY makes me angry because there is nothing that I can do. I had my commission dropped from 15% down to 5% today because I own a rewards site. But the site that I am heavily promoting them on is a niche site. And we had an agreement that I would promote the merchant at 15% on that site. Now that I am getting multiple sales each day, my commission is all of a sudden lowered by 2/3 with the fact that I own the rewards site being the justification for lowering it.
I’m a business owner. I understand that business decisions have to be made sometimes to keep businesses profitable. But in the cases of all of the above, the merchants just flat took advantage of me as an affiliate. And they are likely taking advantage of many other affiliates as well. Every time we open our mouths (or our blogs) to complain, we take the risk of getting dropped from programs or whole networks.
Stay tuned because you just know there’s going to be backlash on this one.
Gotta add this:
StacksandStacks.com – a generally well run program with a vast array of competitively priced top-notch products – just lowered their commission rate by 25%.
Hey Tricia, great stuff! I nominate Nordstrom for their .5 day cookie duration, in a vertical where 15-30 is the norm. Can we do naughty networks and OPMs next?
I only have had the single experience with a merchant and he is exemplary doing all he can to help affiliates.
The man is Milan Jara and he is a shining example of what all affiliates would want from a merchant. Having heard some of the horror stories from other affiliates I fail to understand why as to my mind a successful affiliate is going to earn for the merchant so why not give total support.
Top man Milan
From everything I have seen, you are right about Milan. It is great to hear people mentioning the merchants that should be on the “Nice List” as well. 🙂
Russ,
Tears came to my eyes…You see, this feeling can not be bought! Thanks so much buddy, I hope I will be able to convert the **** out of your traffic in coming months and for years to come. You are doing a great job by they way… I have watched you asking on the forums and listening to people like Bill S. and your sites are growing and getting better. I wish you a lot of success!
Another nominee is Overstock, which this week became an affiliate (http://www.internetretailer.com/2011/12/06/overstock-gets-e-book-smart-barnes-noble), packing their site with Linkshare affiliate links to Barnes and Noble. And will Overstock affiliates receive commissions for B&N sales? HAH!
“Naughty” doesn’t describe it; how about “Devious”?
Thats ****** up! The big boys think they can do whatever..:-(
These merchants suck! Sorry to hear that you got burnt.
There are a few on my naughty list right now too. One mysteriously started reversing commissions I earned from them a few months ago and came up with various odd reasons for it similar to your experience of being told it wasn’t in their reports. I finally just dumped them and switched out all of my links to another company selling the same products. They then wrote and asked me to come back! Ummm, no….
I have another big name department store that rarely tracks the clicks. I just ended all links to them too.
I wish I could call them out publicly to warn others, but I fear that wouldn’t really be in my best interests since I do sometimes still work with these companies for ad space sales.
Isn’t it so frustrating to be at their mercy that we fear speaking up? Someday I am going to be rich and “out” all of the merchants that have done me wrong. LOL (of course…I’ll probably get dropped now from a few just for saying that….)
I’ve never seen my name appear so often on a naughty list 😉
Seriously though, its a travesty that merchants feel the need to nickel and dime the very hands that feed them all year.
I have no doubt that you are quite used to being on the Naughty List….but for very different reasons. 😉
You tell ’em Tricia!
I hate it when merchants pull this kind of stuff. Obviously there are times when merchants need to change the terms, lower commissions, change cookie duration and stuff like that but it always sucks to get those emails after you have spent a bunch of time building a site around that merchant.
When I spend the time building a site and expecting to get 15% or so and then it gets cut to 5%? Terrible. I wouldn’t have built the site in the first place if I knew I was getting 5%.
We should start up some sort of advisory board where merchants can run all this stuff by us before they implement it.
A perfect example of who would be on the “Nice List” is Carolyn Tang Kmet from Groupon. We get an email today saying that there are going to be some commission changes and an explanation of why there is going to be a shift. Explains differences in quality and quantity. Makes perfect sense. Then specifically says “There won’t be any changes until Q4 is over.” So we have time to prepare and not have to worry about missing out on the sales that we have been building up to with all of our Q4 promotions. Whether or not we end up liking the changes, at least we have a heads-up about them and they are not coming out of the blue during a key earning period.
Yep, Carolyn should be on any “Nice” list.
There are plenty of good OPMs and affiliate managers out there. It would be nice if the clueless merchants sought out some help for their programs and the people managing the programs got some training of some sort instead of just winging it.
As the Manager of a Corporate Affiliate Program, I simply cannot wrap my ahead around the practice of making changes but not informing Publishers – the lifeblood of said Program. I think open communication is paramount, for sure.
I like your statement, though, about “perhaps not liking the changes but at least being told about them beforehand.”
P.S. I don’t know Carolyn well (have only spoken to her briefly once), but from everything I’ve heard, she is, indeed, a good example of how to do things “right” in the affiliate space.
Unfortunately, the merchants most likely to make these types of decisions are the same ones who are least likely to seek out input from an advisory board.
It’s probably a good idea to have a backup merchant in place before devoting a lot of time/effort into promoting a particular merchant in case things do go south for whatever reason. Kind of a micro version of “all your eggs in one basket.”