Hey hey everyone, and greetings from beautiful Coffs Harbour, NSW. I am currently answering Ask Kirstys from the back of my smashing wee camper van over a nice beer at the end of a days driving.

Now, the above title isn’t the only question I was asked for this particular ask Kirsty, but I’ve decided to feature them together as they are all related to that time when you are choosing your very first niche and working out what offers you should feature, and how you should present them.

Now, I must apologise to Nick H who asked these questions. It’s taken me over two weeks to get around to answering. Sorry Nick, but I got there in the end

Hi Kirsty,

Nick H

OK, I will answer these in turn!

When do you decide to call it quits on an offer or niche?
Generally speaking, I tend to give a niche 500 clicks to cut the mustard. However, that depends on how much I am paying per click and whether or not any sales are being generated at all. If there’s been absolutely nothing after a couple of hundred clicks (and where I’m convinced I’m covering all bases) I tend to call it quits. I do imagine this is much more cautious than a lot of affiliates… but its never done me any harm.

If some sales are happening, but you aren’t making a profit, it’s important to analyse what has been selling.

One thing I do always say to would be affiliates is that it is VERY important to track which keywords are converting when trialling a new niche. I don’t think I have ever found more than 4 or 5 niche areas where SOMETHING didn’t make me a profit. Sometimes a single search term can convert and provide a good EPC whilst the rest of the campaign, possibly hundreds of key terms, is a dodgy load of old poop.

It seems like you promote most of your offers through bigger sites with plenty
of content and several pages, is that right?

Hmmm…. yes you do need a reasonable amount of content to create a site that Adwords will like. However, that does not necessarily mean you need to spend huge amounts of time creating a site that really works. I’ve created sites in a single day around a small range of products (or even a single product) which are perfectly acceptable for Adwords and bring in a decent EPC.

I would recommend that a newbie try to identify a single product that they feel would convert well and creates a mini site around it. An old site of mine http://www.vaginaldilator.co.uk converts really well, has a decent amount of info and works fine for adwords. It was quick to make, ranks well in search engines giving me free traffic, and didn’t take much longer to create than a single page Yahoo effort.

Admittedly Yahoo can be a reasonable way to test things. However, I rarely do this and I think you’d end up spending a lot of time working for very little traffic. I’d recommend spending a wee while extra on your content to get a few hundred percent more visitors from Adwords. I’ve also found that not all niches convert well on Yahoo, probably due to their slightly different keyword matching techniques.

Do you find that the EPC that the Networks report is accurate enough to base
your max bids on?

Gah… no, not really. EPC is an average, and like all averages can be skewed by many factors. EPC can be artificially inflated by heavy presence of discount code and cashback sites. Also, if the merchant is allowing brand name bidding that can also make things look healthier than they will be when you give their products a whirl.

Similarly, the EPC can be lowered by the presence of one or two low quality affiliates who are sending less relevant traffic in high volumes to your target merchant.

As you are likely to be looking at promoting a small group of merchant products the EPC data won’t be terribly accurate. The best thing to do is follow these steps: -

- Work out what you think the average basket size for your product grouping would be.
- Ask the affiliate manager for a rough idea of the conversion rate. If this isn’t forthcoming… sit down and ask yourself if you think the EPC data you are seeing really is accurate. If it seems to good to be true – it might be.

What I think I’m getting around to here is…. yes, there is an element of “finger in the air” with this one. Unfortunately the only thing that will help you with this is trial and error and the application of some common sense. Eventually, you will get a “feel” for what is going to work and which sites will convert.

The most important question to ask yourself is “Would I Buy From Here?” If it’s a no – stay away!

I hope this helps…. good luck!!

OK, that’s been a month off… it’s long enough… time to get back to the internet coalface, and resume a little bit of the work that makes sure my Duncan can continue to live in the style to which he has become accustomed (oh, and me as well!). We had an absolutely lovely time in Auckland, and even had our very first wedding present bought for us by Duncan’s family. They suggested an artist, Helena Blair, they thought was pretty damned good and let us commission a painting to remind Duncan of NZ.

Here’s one that his folks actually bought and upon which we partly based our commission (excuse the image, it really doesn’t do justice).

So, anyhoo… I’m having my usual “rusty” start to work. I have totally lost sight of where I am up to with things and there are a lot of campaigns I’ve simply switched off because I couldn’t keep enough of an eye of them. Now THAT is the sign of a truly good holiday.

However, it’s definately time to get back into things. The Lingerie site I’ve been talking about so much recently needs lots of TLC in its formative months. I need to add content like the very blazes in the early stages to keep that lovely free traffic coming in!

I’m feeling really bad about not having had much of a chance to post to this blog… so I will be trying to make up for my slackness during March. There will no doubt be the odd real estate agent related rant slipping into things as we are both about to spend a lot of time dealing with them.

http://www.realestate.com.au – my new bible!

More from me soon

I’ve had a bit of an e-mail from a nice chap called Eamon this week. It was a bit of an impassioned plea.

“Oh ho.” I thought. “Here’s a would-be affiliate at the end of his tether and no mistake about it!”

Basically, he’s been asking people for opinions on his carefully crafted affiliate site, and gotten a LOT of negative feedback and absolutely no suggestions about what to bloody well do about it!

Here’s his e-mail: -

Hi Kirsty,

Any kind words of encouragement?

The Site: http://www.dogfightuk.com

Hi Eamon,

Glad you found the blog useful!

The site is at least quite clean looking in terms of design and you clearly know how to manipulate datafeeds. With that as a start, you’ve really done a lot… the rest is just due dilligence and can really be done quite easily…honest!

OK, I will start with a bit of harsh criticism (sorry!). I really hate that domain name. As a web user it makes me wonder exactly what I’ll see when I click that link! OK, from a posh branding point of view it might make a degree of sense, but I think you need to find a brandable name that’s more obviously connected to men’s grooming. Without a multi-million quid advertising campaign I think the trendy-sounding domain you have will put new users off before they even click through from a search engine.

But Criticism aside….

Here’s a bit of a checklist for you to work through. I’m sure you’ve heard all the other criticisms before so instead of demotivating you I’m going to tell you what else you need to be doing to make this site work.

1. Content, Content, Content – Much like the mantra of those irritating TV real estate agents the old adage about content being kind is just sooooo true. You need to put in a whole load of work to create some truly unique content about your products. If you want an ice cube’s chance in hell of ranking for some of those brand terms you will need to write some unique copy about each of the brands you are going to be featuring. I’ve been doing this for a new lingerie site of mine -
http://www.lingeriebrands.co.uk

It is absolutely what you need to do to make the site work. No ifs, buts or maybes. Follow this up with product reviews, how to articles, skincare advice and as much male grooming type things as you can cram in and you will be on a winner. It’s a huge job and no question about it, but if you want to make a go of affiliate marketing you need to be able to provide
good content.

You might consider adding some of this content in a blog format as Google really yums this kind of stuff up and indexes it real quick.

2. Get Some Link Lurrrve!
You need to spend a bit of time getting some nice, relevant incoming links. Again, a blog section can help you to do this as you will be able to submit yourself to blog directories and target other bloggers for exchanges.

I did an “Ask Kirsty” about building links a while ago, perhaps you might find it useful if you’re not familiar with basic techniques.

affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/ask-kirsty-how-to-quickly-build-effective-links/

A few links in combination with some compelling content, and you’ll be up to 150 SEO visitors a day real quick!

3. A Bit Of SEO Jiggery Pokery Goes A Long Way…

Your pages are clean cut and look quite nice, but a few simple SEO Tweaks will make them just as attractive to the search engines as to your Metrosexual site visitors.

- Get some nice relevant text high up on your home page. Part of the box currently containing the picture of that smashing young fella in his jimmy jammies would be favourite. I think the current design looks nice, but could be put to better use. Perhaps leave the chap sitting there and add some nice text and links about your key content.

The reason this is a good idea is that search engines see the home page of a site as the most relevant to your content (hence it’s called the index page). It’s therefore given additional weighting in the search engines, and optimising it gives you the best chance of ranking for really generic search terms.

- Fiddle about with your navigation and move the breadcrumb menus I noticed you were using on some pages. I thought it should be at the top of the page rather than below product descriptions. Very minor I know… but that’s where users will look for it!

I also thought you should extend usage of your breadcrumb menus throughout the site. You seem to have them at individual product level, but not on the actual brand feature pages.

- Your use of the brand logo on each page is good. However, I reckon you need to get that pushed down the page a bit and pop in a nice looking bit of header text saying the same thing. The content towards the top of any web page and the contents of fields such as headers are used by search engines to work out what the page is about. The more text of relevance to your brand names you can get in, the better from an SEO standpoint.

- Improve Your Cross Linkage
Again, the more pages in a site which link to your main areas of content the better. Once more this is because of how search engines will analyse the structure of a site to determine which are more relevant. The more incoming external links to your page, the better they will rank.

Phew! Well, I could say more but I reckon I’ll have given you about 3 months hard yakka with that one.

I did get a follow up mail about this from Eamon as I double checked to make sure he’d realise I might post his query! He says he’s off to have a re-think. I thought the site was pretty savable, but I’m thinking that Eamon has maybe decided to try something a bit smaller for his first attempt. Getting a site with that breadth of content right is a lot of hard work when you’re not sure if what you are doing works.

Good luck Eamon, do let us know how you get on!

Hello. Remember Me? Kirsty? Yeah, I know there’s been the odd bit of tumbleweed floating around this blog recently but as the title suggests I’ve been taking a wee step back and having a bit of a break.

See, what a lot of people tend to forget once they really get into the cut and thrust of affiliate marketing, is how this really is a wonderfully flexible way to make a living. Remember when you first heard about affiliate marketing? “Oh man… that’d be brilliant. No more working for the man. No more of the 9 to 5 grind, I could do anything…” Scroll on a year or 3 and….

How many full timers d’you reckon actually find that time to have a break, kick back, and let things take care of themselves for 3 or 4 weeks? Not many! There’s too much of an obsession with being a “super” affiliate and not enough on being “just good enough”

Right now, I’m feeling like all the effort I’ve put in during the last 4 months has been just that. “Just good enough”. In the last 6 weeks I’ve earned what used to be 12 months salary, selling just short of £400,000 worth of holidays to Brits desperate to know they have something to look forward to once the winter doom and gloom has receeded. I’d fully intended to keep up the pressure during this bit of my trip… working a few hours a day and keeping things rolling. However, after all the stress of leaving the UK I’ve pretty much flopped out and decided to enjoy a bit of the sun here in Auckland. Right now, we are at Duncan’s home having a jolly nice time meeting all my future in-laws and generally touristing about the joint.

Unfortunately, this has meant I’ve neglected the old blog. For this, I apologise unreservedly. Even now when the guilt has gotten too much I can’t think of much affiliate related stuff to be pontificating about. Except how I feel. Right now my feeling about affiliate marketing is that “it’s time to kick back and enjoy waiting to be paid!”.

Normal service will be resumed shortly. In the meantime, why not take my Affiliate Quiz and see if you need to kick back as well? While you’re doing that, I’ll be spending a lot of time here in New Zealand doing stuff like this….

*That’s the back of my future mummy in law’s head on the right!

It’s a great old feeling when you can relax and enjoy the fruits of your labours.

PS. If anyone has any Ask Kirsty questions now would be a great time to get them answered… I’m not really doing much else! Contact Me via my form if you’ve got a question you just can’t get around!

Well guys, here I am back in Melbourne again suffering from a healthy dose of jetlag and a nice cold which Duncan kindly passed along to me so I could enjoy it on the plane!

Dubai was a pretty interesting place, well worth a visit. Unfortunately we didn’t do much when we were there as we were so knackered we spent a LOT of time sleeping. When we arrived I wasn’t at all sure I was going to be able to stay. The night before our flight out, my dear old Grandmother had a heart attack. I ended up flying not knowing how serious it was or if she might have passed away by the time we got there.

Fortunately it transpired that she is OK (as ok as an 83 year old having her second heart attack can be!). However after all the worry and various teary outbursts from good old Kirsty on the journey we were both bloody knackered. We did manage to go and have a bit of a look round on the Dubai Big Bus Tour, so we got to see all the sights. Here’s a picture of windswept little me in front of the Burj Al Arab, the famous 7 star hotel (I don’t earn enough to stay there just yet!!)

We’ve no pictures of Melbourne as the sum total of our activities have been sleeping (for 17 hours last night) and putting our van into an aircon repair place ($700 for a new compressor before we’ve even got into the bloody thing!).

Hopefully things will be a bit less exhausting from this point on, and I’ll be able to get a few affiliate related posts up and running. Speak to y’all soon!

Well, thats it for us and the UK for a while folks. Tomorrow Duncan and I are taking off for yet more worldwide fun. I detailed our travel plans in a previous post.

We have so much to do in the next 6 or 7 months it’s very nearly overwhelming. Once we’ve done a little bit of travel, we’re off to the Sunshine Coast with a budget of $550,000 AUD to buy ourselves a nice house out there. It is with more than a bit of a backwards glance that we’ll be getting on the plane at Glasgow Airport tomorrow. I’ve had a great time catching up with my friends and buying lots of bridal finery for myself (and some of them!). I’m also going to miss all my fab affiliate pals who I’ve really enjoyed raising the odd jar or ten with at various events.

The downside to the lifestyle Duncan and I have at the moment is the upheaval. I’ve sort of got to the stage where I want to be settled in a nice posh pad of our own (and so’s Dunc!). However, to do this we’ve got to actually get off our bahookies and get something bought.

The other thing that’s causing me a bit of sadness is that my Grandfather passed away on Monday and I’m not going to be able to attend his funeral. The family had hoped it would be today (Thursday) so I could attend. But it wasn’t possible. Why? A GRAVEDIGGERS Strike! Honestly? Do you ever feel like the big man in the sky is getting at you?

And another thing. When does the funeral start tomorrow? Yes, just as my flight is due to take to the air in Glasgow at 1.30pm. I’m not the world’s best in airports / on aeroplanes most of the time, so I would like to take this opportunity to publicly apologise to everyone who has to deal with me tomorrow (specially poor old Dunc). I’m not going to be a happy chappess. Just between you and me, I am somewhat prone to hysterical outbursts at very stressful times. Could be an interesting departure for everyone

However, to end this on a positive note, thanks for reading the blog and I promise to post a bit more once we are away from the UK. I’ve not had a lot of time this month what with various wedding preparations, problems with my two investment properties, and general panic about leaving. I hope I’ve made up for lack of quantity with a little quality, lol.

I’ll be posting lots of pictures from Dubai, I only hope Duncan doesn’t get fed up with me and do a bit of a swap for a nice quiet camel or two.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu!

I know I talk a lot about WordPress on here… but I really can’t highlight enough just how great I really think it is for affiliates on a budget (or just plain stingy Scottish affiliates like me!).

I wrote my other guide -WordPress 101 – All You Need For An Affiliate Site a while back, and a lot of people found it quite useful.

But what happens when you want a little more complex solution for a broader more in-depth site? It’s off to the web developers, right? Stop right there oh hasty affiliate!!! WordPress is not simply a solution that will create a site based on a chronological “list” of data. You really can do an awful lot with it.

With that in mind, I am going to show you guys a site I have been developing since the start of November. With this site I think I’ve really shown what a cracking job you can do using WordPress, a bit of work, and a little basic HTML / CSS knowledge. Obviously what I am talking about here is not suitable for total beginners, but I genuinely feel that most people can achieve results like this after a relatively small learning curve.

(click image to open site in new window)

So as you all know, I do a lot in lingerie… this is my new SEO friendly lingerie site! It’s absolutely jam packed with unique content which funnels visitors through to a feed based section where all the products I hope to sell are at. As you’ll see, it already has a PR2 and it is already getting around 100uv’s per day despite being brand new.

Gosh Darn Kirsty, that’s awful good. However did you manage that?
Gee thanks guys, I’m happy with it too. Here’s a list of the things we used to make this.

1 ) A Premium Magazine Style WordPress Theme
We bought Brian Gardner’s Revolution Magazine Theme. As you’ll see from my site, the theme is insanely customisable using and comes in 2 or 3 column homepage designs. It costs just $79.99 for a single use. I bought a multiple use package for $249.. and Brian has since kindly reduced the price by $50 just to piss me off! However, for designing such a great theme, he may consider himself forgiven (for now). Cost £125

2. A Bit Of CSS Stylesheet Knowhow
We altered this theme a fair bit, but all we really had to know was some basic to medium stylesheet type stuff and we were able to sit down and completely alter all the colour schemes. If you want to see what some others have done with this same theme, check out Brian’s showcase section here… it really is amazing all the different ways you can customise a well thought out theme. Cost £0.00

3. A Teeny Tiny Bit Of Photoshopping
Duncan created the logos for me in Photoshop. He’s only got basic knowledge in Photoshop, but the site logo only took him ten minutes to actually create, with slightly longer to make some of the buttons. We got the fonts from one of them free font type sites and popped them into our Fonts folder in the C drive so Photoshop could then reference it. Cost £0.00

4. Some Really Cool WordPress Plugins
I pretty much used all the same WordPress plugins I referred to in the WordPress 101 post. I also bought a plugin to manage a newsletter subscription database. This cost me all of $15. I’m not going to link to it as the chap who was selling it didn’t respond to my communications when I could not get it to work. It’s only now working because the tech support guy at Clook was extremely, extremely helpful and told me what the issue was and how to fix it.

I also used a wordpress related posts plugin to help me add additional content to each of the pages I’ve created for the various Lingerie Brands I have featured so far. The one I found works the best for me was Similar Posts, by Rob Marsh. It was certainly the easiest to install and works out related posts based on their entire contents rather than just tags and titles. The idea with this is to constantly be adding fresh content to my various pages, thus keeping Google interested in paying me a wee visit.

I’m having a couple of issues with how this plugin looks on the news articles themselves. I’d really like there to be some kind of command that excludes related posts from being displayed in some categories. But hey… that’s a pretty minor grouse and one I might work out how to get over.

Finally, I found a totally awesome link exchange plugin by Eric Medlin which creates a link submission form for your WordPress blog and which also monitors whether or not people are continuing to reciprocate links and also records the page rank of the page on which your link is being displayed.
Cost £7.50

5. A Little Bit Of Dreamweaver To Make The Brand Profile Page Structure
We created a really basic table in Dreamweaver to format all the images within the lingerie brand profiles without the rich text editor stuffing them up. Again, only ten minutes work and something someone with a basic knowledge of Dreamweaver or simple HTML coding could do very quickly. Cost £0.00

6. Medium Range HTML, Dreamweaver & SQL Skills To Create The Feed Section
We re-created the blog template in static html and created a database driven affiliate feed site with Duncan’s SQL skills. He’s only a basic level competence in this, but he’s managed to put together a nice looking shopping area mirroring the blog design. I don’t think this is entirely necessary. You could also use a free service such as Affilistore if you wanted a feed site, and link to it from your blog navigation. Alternatively, don’t bother with the feed site… I felt it was a good fit for this subject area so have included it. However, linking direct to merchants would be just as effective in many cases.

7. A LOT Of Time Devoted To Content Writing – I’ve written 150 unique articles for this site so far, totalling somewhere in the region of 10,000 – 12,000 words. NB, if anyone even considers copying any of this content… do beware my notorious Scottish temper. I do check regularly and I am evil personified when you get on my bad side.

Despite the domain and site only being weeks old I am seeing good search engine rankings already, which really does show the value of good content. The “Content is King” adage is well worn for a reason. And as John Lamerton has been saying on his blog, Affiliates need to realise good unique content is the way forward. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with. Cost £0.00

Total Cost Of My Nice New Affiliate Site: £132.50, Plus One Hell Of A Lot Of My Time!

There’s still lots for me to do on this site, the brand possibilities are endless. I also want to add images to each of the post excerpts on the home page. Brian Gardiner has a fix for this, but for the life of me I can’t work out how to do it!

*guffaw* *snort* *chortle*

OK, I think I’m OK. Maturity levels are rising *snigger*, oops.

*Deep Breath*

OK, I had a really interesting e-mail today from Grant who is wondering about a campaign where he’s managed to optimise his direct to merchant ads well and is achieving some really good CTR’s. Unfortunately, despite his effort the product isn’t converting for him.

Here’s his question : -

Hi Kirsty

I wonder if you could shed some light on my PPC campaign.

I have been marketing a Clickbank product for about 3 weeks now tweaking the
ads and keywords so that I get a good CTR. I have been linking direct to the
Merchant to see if the product converts. Now being the beginning of the year I
thought a weight loss related product would be in demand.

I opted for this product www.nomanboobs.com this is my domain but with the
redirect to the merchant. I managed to get the following CTR with my 3 ad
groups:

1. Man Boobs – Rid: CTR = 10.58%, Clicks 98, Avg Pos 2.4, Sales None
2. Man Boobs – How CTR = 15.92%, Clicks 61, Avg Pos 2.3 Sales None
3. Man Boobs – Lose CTR = 5.71%, Clicks 24, Avg Pos 3, Sales None

Now the above Keywords were targeted as per the Ad groups ie Rid, How & Lose.
Would you say the Sales page is poor quality or my approach is lacking.

I had another campaign running that targeted Chest Fat with the same stats but
no sales.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Love the Blog

Grant

Hi Grant,

Well, first off congratulations on being able to optimise your ads to get such excellent CTR’s. You have obviously done a great job with your optimisation. I don’t think I’d advise relying on this kind of URL redirect in Adwords as a long term strategy, as they’ll probably catch up with you in the end. However, that’s not really the issue here!

If I’m reading your e-mail correctly, I think you were bidding on terms such as “lose man boobs”. I don’t think there has been anything wrong with what you have done. If you were getting any conversions at all, but couldn’t make them pay I might be inclined to advise you to try and find some more niche search terms in your area and try to get them at a lower CPC.

However, I really think what this is down to is the merchant landing page you are sending your traffic to. First of all, pages like this really turn people off. They are so 1999! Secondly, place yourself in the position of the unfortunate soul who needs rid of his manboobs. Just how far down a page full of ugly text and exclaimation marks would you scroll to find out what you needed to do about it? Obviously consumers want information, but there’s definately sales overkill at play.

I think the merchant page is really awful, and I’m not surprised you haven’t had any conversions. Usually, I might encourage you to send a few more clicks to give your new campaign time to “bed in”. For this merchant though, I tend to feel that these kind of offers will probably suffer from such dreadful conversion rates that you’d be best to cut your losses and look for something else.

Next Steps To A New Merchant

Firstly, don’t be too disheartened… at least you’ve perfected your ad optimisation skills.

I think they key to finding something to promote is to look at something you might buy personally. Sit down and and have a bit of an internet brainstorming session and write down a list of products that appeal to you. Things that work well are obviously higher value items, and perhaps things you can’t buy from too many retailers.

I wrote another Ask Kirsty article a while back that you might find useful… How To Find Your First Affiliate Niche

Also, I’ve no experience with them myself, but I’ve read a few rumblings about Clickbank not being suitable for newbies. The link is there, I’ll let you make your own mind up.

You’re on the right lines… so the best of luck to you!

Well, I’m sitting in my office here at Affiliate Stuff towers gazing out of the window at 12.20pm on an absolutely miserable Scottish day. The heating is up full pelt, and I am sat in my favourite pair of pyjamas (the blue ones with yellow stars on) and my big fluffy red dressing gown (yep, you’ve guessed it… there are stars on it!).

There really is no finer feeling than watching all the normal folks struggle on past the window in the cold on a day like this. People with “real” jobs, not ones living in affiliate fantasyland like I seem to be!

I think the only thing that could make me feel better would be if I were able to buy some nice personalised affiliate jim jams. I’ve been keeping an eye out for personalised adult pyjamas for years. I’d dearly love a set of flannel jim jams for winter and a cotton set for summer emblazoned with this…

In my opinion, there’s no better way to spend a day than in your jim jams. The fact that I also get to make a topping income and travel (alas not in my jim jams), makes my days spent in my favourite mode of attire just perfect!!

Right… so on what planet does it take 22 days to answer a perfectly reasonable question from an affiliate? And then you wonder why affiliates get so pissed off with your impersonal tattle and shoddy treatment they are forced to resort to poetry to get back at you?

So my CJ balance has had over $4000 locked for several months. Wondering why, I dropped them a line on January 1st. The support thread is below, my first question is at the bottom.

Balance $4000 for Several Months
Discussion Thread
Customer (BlueIndian .) 01/22/2008 01:26 AM
May I please have a response?

Customer (BlueIndian .) 01/16/2008 01:44 PM
Hello. I am still awaiting a response on this query please?

Customer (BlueIndian .) 01/09/2008 05:04 AM
OK, I was aware of the wealth of nations situation. However, at the time when the situation arose my balance dropped by the sum in question.

Can you confirm that you guys added this balance back on as locked transactions?

Many thanks,

Kirsty

Response (AGorska) 01/09/2008 03:41 AM
Hi Kristy,

Thank you for your email. I’ve checked your account and it shows that your locked and unpaid commission is related to Wealth of Nations advertiser who is no longer with CJ.

We certainly understand the inconvenience this may have caused you. We do took steps to contact advertisers about these issues and, in this case we have to deactivate their account.

Unfortunately Commission Junction cannot pay publishers until the necessary funds are deposited and we indicate this specifically in the Publisher Service Agreement that you agreed to when you signed up for your Commission Junction account:

PSA Section 3(e) states: “CJ shall have no obligation to make payment of any Payouts for which CJ has not received payment from the relevant Advertiser of all monies due to CJ (including for all Payouts owed by such Advertiser to all of such Advertiser’s Publishers).”

We’ve tried to retrieve payment from this advertiser (they own us our commission and publishers’ commission) but because the Wealth of Nations became a bankrupt and they went into liquidation we are not able to enforce these charges.
We are really sorry about this situation but we cannot prevent this as it is risk involved in each business.

Sincerely,
Commission Junction Client Support

Customer (BlueIndian .) 01/01/2008 05:56 AM
Hello.

I’ve had $4,044.49 sitting in my account balance for several months. Its locked transactions and I can’t see from the reporting what they relate to. Can you please clarify what this is?

Many thanks.

Apart from a few points in that e-mail which me and my affiliate associates would argue about (yes, you could do something about it CJ). I’m merely wanting reassurance they haven’t made any errors with my account. How long should it take? 22 days? I think not!!!!!

I know you have my e-mail CJ, you’ve a support system in place that means you can’t help but have it. So why no response. It’s not hard. It’s also the answer to why I will never promote any new CJ merchants. Ever since that first sorry story I’ve had no faith in your ability to support your affiliate business partners.

And that is why you are the weakest link…

Goodbye!