Comments on: Photobox Spring April Fools 7 Months Early? You Gotta Be Kidding Me Guys!!

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:13:50 +0000

Here’s the most important bit – Why is there not a general announcement going out regarding changes to programme terms? It concerns me deeply that rather than creating a transparent set of rules that affiliates can see before they join the programme, this merchant is choosing to create a new set of unpublished performance rules.

My point is Business is mostly about relationships and performance.

The more volume/quality leads you drive, the more bargaining power one has. There are no “set rules” for any affiliate relationship.

E.g. If I can drive 1000+ Leads while the average affiliate drives 50 , would you give me preferential treatment?

I apologise if I sound critical, I just want to state there you should not try to air this out publicly at first. Try to give a phone call to the Affiliate Manager and you might be able to patch things up with a slightly higher payout and monitoring quality again. Right now, it seems the bridge with this merchant is burnt because of this post.

While 1000+ quid is not a great sum of cash, no point burning bridges if you dont have to

Take a look at http://www.quicksprout.com/2008/08/06/got-screwed-think-twice-before-burning-the-bridge/

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 07:51:44 +0000

With all due respect to you Peter, did you read my post? I suspect not.

I don’t have a problem at all being pulled if my leads ain’t cutting it. Nothing in my post was “angry” I felt it was a very well balanced exploration of the situation.

This post was about transparency and affiliates being given an appropriate notice period re: programme changes. The other point was that 22 leads are hardly enough to judge performance on.

Perhaps you should read it again.

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 06:23:11 +0000

Your leads werent converting, hence you got pulled, what is there to be angry about?

In the end, for some reason, the quality of your leads were not up to standard and it was not a win-win situation. It is standard procedure to set different commissions based on the quality of leads in the Finance Industry.

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:53:53 +0000

Update – well, I don’t know who Jamie thinks I am but I can’t find any messages from him.

I wonder who he did communicate with about this?!?!

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:45:37 +0000

Thanks guys And yeah Winston they’re not going to be bothered are they. However, the point I was making is that they don’t appear to have calculated properly whether they genuinely are making a long term loss from the leads. No skin off mine, it’s a very small amount of money.

For the record, Jamie from Photobox did post a comment here saying I should contact him if I “Didn’t understand” anything about the changes and saying he’d sent me a PM. Unfortunately I think I must have deleted it along with a spam comment by accident. Sleepy this morning!

By: Winston

Winston — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:03:38 +0000

Yeah agree with the point about them making it clearer. I think transparancy in such issues isn’t too much to ask! Im not sure they will be too fussed about you pulling the links though – after all they claim they were making a loss from it! !

By: matt

matt — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:35:55 +0000

Tristan do I have this right – Lastminute were paying affiliates to sell tickets at a loss? (Huh?)

By: Tristan Palser

Tristan Palser — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:23:49 +0000

I Had a similar experience with Lastminute.com – Was told to stop promoting Concert tickets as I was sending too much traffic and they apperently were making a loss on each ticket, but in there commission structure they were specifically telling affiliates what the concert gig commission rates were.

I too accept that the merchant has to with out question make a profit but their mark ups should be decided before they ask us guys to promote their stuff and not altered as soon as you send them a decent amount of traffic.

By: matt

matt — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:39:24 +0000

Getting mails from ‘noreply’ addresses drives me crazy, in almost any context.

The sender assumes the privilege of preemptively grabbing your personal attention (the world’s scarcest resource) yet doesn’t have the good manners to reciprocate. GRRRRR!

By: Dean

Dean — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:02:28 +0000

That is a major p*ss take. In my short time marketing I’ve noticed that a lot of online retailers seem to resent their affiliates making money, as if they are free-loaders or something, not appreciating all the effort and expertise that goes into SEM. Thanks for sharing