I can’t believe it’s been 11 years since I last did a Naughty and Nice List! (Looking back at that one is actually pretty fun) This year’s version is going to be a combination of Naughty and Nice meets Blind Gossip. Obviously companies have bottom lines and shareholders and lots of reasons for making business decisions in Q4. So I won’t reveal any names. But Santa still knows!!
The Naughty List
Dasher and Dancer
These two go together because they share the same parent company. These big name jewelry companies sent out an email on December 13 saying they had to “reduce publisher commissions” due to “budget constraints.” December 13…. jewelry… like peak holiday shopping season. What they meant by “reduce” was actually “eliminate.” Yep… 4% down to ZERO. So affiliate links would still work, but the affiliates would not get any commissions. A little late to try to swap out all of your links on high converting pages for the remaining holiday shopping season. So I guess they just got themselves a lot of free traffic.
Prancer
You know how we always tell customers that they won’t pay more if they shop through our affiliate links? That is NOT the case for a merchant I discovered this week. When trying to figure out why my conversions had dropped from 5% to 1% all of a sudden, I started looking around their site. Turns out that the product I was heavily promoting is actually 25% cheaper if you go directly to the merchant website than going through my link. And they are advertising the lower price everywhere outside of the affiliate channel. Of course affiliates were not told this. So we just look like chumps promoting this “great deal” for a higher price than the customers see everywhere else.
Vixen
How can this NOT be that huge world-ruling conglommerate that continues to dominate our industry news with it’s frequent fluctuations? If any company was a Vixen this season, it was them. Big rule changes. Huge traffic implications. No one knowing where they stood from one day to the next. If you define Vixen as “shrewish and ill-tempered,” they nailed it. Both attractive AND frightening. (Wait…this same company was on my Naughty List last time for a totally different reason!)
Comet
This astronomically-big company made a huge change to its terms of service in the middle of holiday shopping season and with only 7 days of notice. For publishers, it means making some big decisions about their links and the possiblity of having to change out tens, hundreds, or even thousands of them after reviewing conversions, commissions, etc. So much for spending time with the family this week! While the policy change in itself was likely warranted, the short notice and the holiday timing was unacceptable.
Cupid
What’s not to love about an email company who gives you a quote for what you want to do and tells you their system will do it? Then as soon as you create your account and upload your list, they immediately charge your credit card double? And when you ask them for help with getting their system to do what you need, they send you a link to their support database and tell you they can’t help you any further than that because you don’t pay them enough. I mean, what’s not to love, Cupid???
The Nice List
Donder (the O.G. Name from the Poem)
I logged into a network account this week and saw all of my transactions for a niche merchant for the month of November reversed. That seemed odd considering I was promoting strictly via content, didn’t use any coupon codes, and the transactions were all from different clicks on different days. I reached out to the merchant and within one hour they had not only investigated the issue but reversed the transactions back and set out to figure out what had glitched in their system. A+ for believing an affiliate AND jumping in to help! And this was a merchant who didn’t even know me! He was just helping because he actually cares about his program.
Blitzen
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Does that seem weird and oddly specific? Well, they blocked a law that requires most affiliate marketers to file a “Beneficial Owners Interest Report,” at least temporarily. Given that most of us didn’t even realize we had to do this and the fines for it are pretty steep ($591 a day), this injunction will hopefully give everyone time to figure it out so at least no one has to pay any fines for being late.
Rudolph
A food merchant that surely sees a lot of holiday sales already not only issued an affliate exclusive coupon but extended a commission increase for the holidays! Affiliate exclusive coupons are so helpful for publishers who do deals of any kind. Or even who write content but augment it with deals. And a commission increase across the board when we saw so many decreases?? Rudolph was as close as you could get to Santa!
The Elves
I ran out of reindeer, but on my personal Nice List are a number of affiliate managers and agencies who kindly gave me commission increases for the holiday season. Even when I couldn’t promise traffic, they were willing to give me increases in exchange for placements. Your network is everything in this industry!!
