It’s rare I post about merchants changing their commissions, I don’t usually feel strongly enough to complain. After all, merchants have to bear their margins in mind. However, this change from PhotoBox has just been so badly done and has left so many questions I’m afraid I have to make my concerns public.

E-mail Title: Commission change

Hi Kirsty,

I have been reviewing your site performances for the month and currently we are paying out more commission than revenue generated.

We won’t be able to operate like this moving forward as it makes no financial sense.

Looking at the sales figures the repeat purchase sales for your site are well below our programme average so I will need to change the commission we currently offer you.

I will be changing your commission as follows:

£2 for new customers orders
12% on repeat orders (was 8%)

I will make the changes on Friday at 1pm

Should you wish to discuss this in more detail please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards,

Jamie

The return mail address is noreply@affiliatewindow.co.uk so alas my polite reply asking for more information simply bounced back. Not an e-mail address in sight either. This led the already irritated Miss McCubbin to decide to simply blog about it instead of asking Jamie what this decision was based on.

I’m Deeply Concerned About The Implications of This on Programme Integrity.

• To be fair, the site I have the links placed on is a free photo printing type site, so perhaps it does encourage freebie hunters. However, the majority of the traffic I send is general photo printing terms rather than freebie traffic. It is all highly targeted PPC traffic so I know there are no quality issues. Why my traffic is poor has me stumped.
• From my interpretation, they’ve based their decision on the performance in the current month alone? Surely I’ve read that wrong. For a decision of this nature looking at historic performance figures over say 12 months would be a fair metric to use. I’ve only sent them 22 leads this month, how many customers would repurchase within a month anyway? Not really a reasonable data sample on which to base the conclusion that I’m seriously under performing? Actually, even the 226 leads I’ve sent for this whole year isn’t entirely a decent data sample from which to conclude a lack of performance. I’m sure some Photobox affiliates generate that many in a few days.
  
• Some more information about exactly which metrics of rubbishness my traffic is displaying and how it differs from the “programme average” would have been appreciated too. It might just have given me some insight into how it could improve and made me feel Photobox were being totally transparent in their dealings with me.
• 48 hours notice? That’s just a little quick, isn’t it? Its not the way you’d treat a “mainstream” business partner. I find myself asking the question “why is it OK to treat affiliates this way?” May I be so bold as to suggest that 30 days notice along with an advance e-mail explaining the process and detailed reasons would be a more appropriate way to deal with this.
• 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.
• For example, from the information within the e-mail I’m having my lead rate reduced and there is no threshold at which it might be increased again? Is this something that Awin have agreed to? If changes like this are made it should be within the broad terms of the programme, catered for with Awin technology. To have your commission reduced privately with no publicly agreed threshold for increase doesn’t seem terribly fair.

Let me make this very, very clear here – I’m not going to dispute the right of the merchant to make changes to the terms of their programme. The whole point of affiliate marketing is that the merchant should make a profit!

However, if Photobox are going to pursue this policy of assessing what happens after a lead is paid out it should be made absolutely crystal clear within the terms and conditions of their programme. For that matter, if they are finding a lead based renumeration is not working generally, wouldn’t it make more sense to alter the whole programme accordingly?

The overall tone of this e-mail just gets under my skin somehow. Perhaps it is the lack of notice, perhaps it is because it makes it clear Photobox don’t value me at all as an affiliate. There is no “I hope we can find a way to move forward” or “Perhaps you and I could explore ways to improve things”. It’s a case of “Like it or lump it”.

Well Photobox, I’m not a big affiliate of yours. My average 23% conversion rate doesn’t seem to impress you, nor did you seem inclined to check the outside possibility I might be able to increase volume or quality in the future. This year I’ve generated just 226 leads and last year it was only 319. Those sales come from a mini test site I set up and didn’t do a lot with.

I’ll simply say this Photobox. You’ll have 320 less leads in 2009. I’m pulling your links right now. The way this has been actioned has eroded my trust in your business ethics.

I will leave you with this quote from the Photobox programme page on Awin…

“we believe our affiliates are valuable investors our business”

Hmmm…

Oh, you gotta love affiliate marketing sometimes. So the new Adwords rules went live on Monday and I was on alert for the search landscape to change. Nothing happened. Spin forward 24 hours, and as the new ads begin to show on big name brands such as Next and Currys… I give my Adwords account repeated checks for unexpected clicks from long forgotten adgroups. It was all fine.

“Phew.” I thought. “My long-term bad habit of always deleting the contents of old adgroups but leaving the ads up in case I later decide to promote the merchant another way is OK – I’ve not missed anything!”

With a happy heart and secure that all was well, I wandered off and spent a rare night having quality time with Duncan (as opposed to obsessing over affiliate-world).

Happy Happy Joy Joy…
Imagine my sheer delight at the whimsical nature of Adwords when I awoke from my repose this morning and logged into my “A-OK” Adwords account and saw these two beautiful lines in a campaign that only usually has a spend of around £35 a day in total.

Yep. That’s right, a couple of old ads from before the dawn of time which had been prohibited due to trademark issues, suddenly lept into life, and buggered right off with my cash. The top one doesn’t even have an effing affiliate programme any more.

Of course, this is my own fault for being incautious, I had absolutely no idea those ads were there. I can’t even remember putting them into my account. I bet I wasn’t the only one getting a shock when I logged into my PPC account today!

My only consolation is that my adgroup budget saved me from losing any more than a couple of hundred quid… but it did put a wee bit of a hole in yesterdays profits.

Its a bit like Christmas in reverse is this. Google coming down your account chimney and leaving you a present to find in the morning. Except Father Google Christmas doesn’t leave you a nice present, he leaves you a big bill for something you didn’t want.

AARRGGGHHH!!!!!!!

Tsk, tsk, tsk…. Paul. What were you thinking?

What’s Going On?
Some of you will remember that I previously mentioned someone had ripped off the concept behind one of the sites I regularly post about on here. New design and graphics, but all the content that had taken me so long to write had been re-hashed and the site structure was strangely familiar. This lady was not amused. As soon as I made mention of it…. the site magically vanished from Adwords.

“Oh well.” I thought. “Perhaps he just got carried away after reading about in on my blog.”

Because you do read my blog, don’t you Paul?

Now ladies and gents. Once you’d put down to an over-ardent newbie getting carried away. But how might one feel if it happened twice? How would you feel if the same person did it twice?

We’d be Bloody Furious Kirsty…
Yes gang, you would, wouldn’t you? If you’d spent 3 months of blood sweat and tears creating a complex site, only for your content to be rehashed (not very imaginatively I might add), your structure stolen and your Adwords format virtually duplicated.

So Who Was It Kirsts? And What’s His Postal Address?
Well gang, despite having all that information… I’m not going to post it here. I’d rather give our enthusiastic young chap the opportunity to do the right thing. I don’t even like having to make this post, but unfortunately Paul hasn’t hooked up his e-mail address yet… so my (amazingly restrained) message to him earlier this morning bounced back.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. I give all the information on this blog freely. I am open about what I’m doing in order to help others. Why? Because I believe in helping others to achieve the affiliate dream. I can’t be surprised this has resulted in someone stealing from me, but I hoped it wouldn’t.

The only solution I can come up with is to stop sharing this sort of information. To have my ideas stolen like that is deeply painful and upsetting. I don’t know if I want to be made to feel like this again. Poor old Duncan is now going to have to spend the evening creeping around and trying to sneak relaxing alcoholic beverages into my vicinity.

So Come On Paul… Do Everyone Else Who Benefits From My Open Approach A Favour – Do The Right Thing Before You Ruin This Resource For Everyone

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!

Well, looks like I was wrong about Clook in my last post.

After getting a very nice and concerned e-mail from Jim at Clook (on a weekend day too) I decided to go off and investigate the incident further. The kind of incompetence I’d thought had happened just didn’t sound like this organisation I thought was so rubbish. He even avoided doing that dreadful public damage management type comment post and sent me a message privately.

Now, for those of you who don’t know – my other half looks after all things web design, updating, and product feed related for me (Yeah, you know what’s coming next don’t you?). When I initially asked him about updates he 100% guaranteed me he’d uploaded nothing during the entirety of July and showed me the link file version he had on his machine. It was a completely different size to the one on the server. There was also the fact more than one site had been hit by this malaise.

So, after the e-mail from Jim, I go off and check my other half’s machine. What do I find? Yep, the site files were altered on days that match the alleged Clook disaster. When I enquired of this he sort of got this funny look on his face. I don’t know if any of you readers have ever caught your kids out stealing from the fridge at 3am? It was that kind of look. “Oh THAT site alteration.” He says.

The next part of the exchange has been censored for reasons of public decency.

So. I am very, very sorry Clook Internet and Jim. You are wonderful. Beautiful even. Nay, you are the very best web host that has ever graced the face of this planet. You would never overwrite someone’s files, nor perform any kind of server maintenance without informing clients. This is why you are not currently in the kitchen cooking me a very nice dinner with a decidedly hangdog expression on your face contemplating spending the rest of your luxurious world trip on various hotel balconies.

So in the vein of the last post…

What Has Kirsty’s Other Half Learned?

– The reasons Scottish people are renowned for their firey tempers.
– Always check your site is completely OK after ANY uploads (something I’d already told him!)
– It’s a really good idea to give Kirsty accurate information before she goes nuts and posts abuse (that should have been directed at him) about a company on her blog.
– Check your site twice after any update.

So once again, if you are with Clook Internet… stay with Clook Internet. Nay, spend more money secure in the knowledge that they are not related in any way to the Dukes Of Hazzard.

I’ll let you all know when my fella has cooked me enough dinners to cover the lost commissions and when he’s allowed to sleep indoors again.

*Edit: Read this first, then check out my latest post to see what REALLY happened and why Clook are nice guys after all*

< AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!! >

OK, so towards the end of last month an affiliate programme that had been going great guns for me suddenly stopped converting so well. We hadn’t changed anything, and the affiliate manager said they sometimes had a drop off at the end of the July sales. “Odd”, I thought. “We don’t usually see this kind of drop off.” However, with all the bad weather in the UK I thought perhaps people were just miserable and not spending.

Enter Clook Web Hosting – The Villan Of The Piece

Today I finally get round to some site maintenance prior to my Fiji trip. Guess what? Every single one of my links to aforementioned merchant (and a couple of others) IS GOING TO THE WRONG PLACE!!!

I use a single file to manage all of my links for database sites. So without letting me know, it seems Clook in their wonderful wisdom have performed some kind of maintenance to the server… and re-uploaded all of my files on July 20th. In doing so, Clook’s wonderful tech staff uploaded an old version of my links file. Thereby ensuring my sites still worked, but none of the links went to the products I have so carefully been preselling.

I would have been better if the site had gone down TBH, I’d have worked out something was up a lot quicker.

And why am I ranting on here instead of contacting Clook? Because their Contact Us page isn’t bloody working!

I’m kicking myself for not having checked my links sooner, but when traffic is still getting through to the merchant, sales are coming in, and I haven’t changed anything it’s not the first thing I think of.

So What Have I Learned From Clooks Incompetence?

– That I probably need to perform random link checks every other day.
– That I need a new web host (which I totally don’t have time to deal with right now!)
– Always investigate thoroughly when there’s any sort of issue. Third party morons may be at play.

So guys and gals… if you use Clook Internet I urge you – think again!

< / AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!! >

So I get up this morning over here in Australia, full of the usual joys of spring at the prospect of my early morning stats check. There’s nothing better than a cup of tea and some stats in bed (and no, I have nothing better to do in there in the mornings before some smart alec asks. I’m just that sad).

Soo…. with it being a strong holiday booking season in the UK I was quite excited to find out how yesterday had gone. It was the first day of what is known as the “Glasgow Fair” in Scotland. The start of the two weeks that many Glasgow workers still get off each year. “Some scope for a few wee last minute bookings” I thought, mentally rubbing my hands in anticipatory glee.

So I log into my first network (I check them in the same order each day). And…… Nothing. Zip, Nada, Hee Haw in the way of any holiday revenue. In fact, my overall revenue with them was down by about 60%.

You already know what happened from the title… but I only found out after I checked the A4UForum and discovered that Fasthosts had suffered a huge outage across many client sites (and even it’s own homepage) right at the time when affiliate sales tend to peak.

Here’s the e-mail they sent out some time later: –


16:24 – 21:00

We realise that many of our customers depend on our services for their own businesses and that all of our customers expect and deserve a reliable and robust service from us. We sincerely regret that we were unable to prevent this issue and that some services were unavailable. Please be assured that we will thoroughly investigate the reasons behind this service interruption to ensure that the likelihood of similar problems in the future is minimised.

I find it hard to believe that a company the size of Fasthosts could have an outage of this nature… and in the e-mail they sent out was typically non committal in case any of their customers had the audacity to expect some form of compensation. Of course I know trying that one would be like trying to get blood out of a stone. I further know that the only way to guarantee uptime is to sign up with a more expensive host offering a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

But 4 Hours? Come on Fasthosts, its 2007 not 1999.

My day was saved because my strongest performing sites with the biggest PPC spend on them are with Clook, but all my profit margins were totally humped. Its not the end of the world, but I think I lost a good chunk of revenue yesterday (I’m thinking maybe 30% of turnover) and I’d be interested to know how much affiliate commission went down the pan over all the sites affected. So Fasthosts, on behalf of all the other affiliates I’d just like to say….

“Thanks for pissing all of our valuable traffic up against the wall!”

A huge amount of negative publicity and indignation was generated throughout the affiliate community when Nick Robertson of ASOS referred to his programmes former affiliates as “grubby little people” and inferred that many affiliates really did not add value to his business, ostensibly because they were engaged in dubious practises. A comment Mr Robertson remains unabashed about.

From the general furore about this in the Blogosphere at the time, one would assume that his was an outdated opinion of the affiliate sphere. But is it?

Over the last couple of weeks, I seem to have read the same story over and over in blogs detailing situations where affiliate networks or merchants assume guilt first and ask questions later. There is also a lack of protection of affiliates by networks in scenarios where merchants move the goalposts on programme terms with no notice period and summarily remove affiliate commissions as a result.

My gut instinct on the reasons behind this continuing issue of affiliates being unequal partners in the business arrangement is what I’d like to name “Grubby Affiliate Syndrome”. We are still viewed as non professionals who are not valued as the professionals we are by a staggering number of merchants.

A small selection I’ve found….

Chris Frost falls foul of Broadmatch issues twice and discovers complete lack of knowledge eminating from the affiliate network: –

Affilinet Accuses Again

Breaking Merchants PPC Rules

Paul Wheatley falls foul of CJ’s network quality department, where it appears they have solved their staffing problems and the overcrowding in the baboon house at the local zoo in one fell swoop: –

Network Quality At Commission Junction Needs Taking Down A Peg Or Two

A thread over at Abestweb highlights the issues involved in networks not protecting the interests of affiliates against merchant reversals where they change T’s and C’s without warning and retrospectively remove commissions

http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=90874

Jessica Luthi has some very interesting thoughts on this issue over at her blog also.

http://www.affiliateprogramadvice.com/blog/

From the Affiliate Stuff crime files: –

Primary Insurance change the brand name bidding goalposts and get my account payments stopped.

Primary Insurance – Clueless and Uncommunicative

And finally my ode to CJ bemoaning my $4300 clawback. This isn’t entirely relevant to this post as it did involve bankruptcy, but I’m pretty damned upset about it and CJ’s handling of the matter was, well… “Pish” as we say in Scotland!

Ode To CJ

So what’s all this about? There is a nasty smell in the air IMHO. It is not the grubby odour of grubby little affiliates, but the smell of affiliates being poked with the poopy end of the stick. We definitely have a problem with the way we are perceived as marketing professionals, which I must confess is no doubt partially engendered by frustration at the undesirable presence of a small minority of affiliates who still insist on habitually breaking programme rules or engaging in outright fraud.

However I do feel I have to stand up here and now on behalf of all honest affiliates and point out that there are a great deal of highly skilled pros amongst our number. It’s painfully obvious we often have much more knowledge and experience than the merchants themselves. Why are we not treated as the professionals we are? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been forced to educate a programme manager (or even members of network staff) who are managing affiliates based on flawed principles.

The most memorable of these was when I was working as an affiliate manager. I informed a well known UK network of fraudulent affiliate activity and described exactly how it was being perpetrated. The fraud involved affiliates registering multiple accounts under false names with sites the did not own listed. The sites in question were big name sites such as Telewest or Virgin Mobile. They would then put through large value cheque orders for which no payment would arrive. The hope was that merchants would not validate their orders and that erroneous commissions would be paid out on.

I discovered a huge number of these accounts, and passed them on to the network. The response I got was staggering. “This is not affiliate fraud”, was the smug and condescending reply. “These are ‘PPC’ affiliates who drive traffic from search engines. There is nothing untoward going on here, don’t worry about it.”

I will not record the words I said out loud when I read this response from an allegedly well-trained member of network staff. What if I hadn’t had the knowledge to contact his superior and politely suggest some retraining? I should have won a medal for self-restriant that day!

On another occasion I had £400 of valid sales removed from an affiliate account because the merchant had gone “overbudget” on their campaign. The network did nothing, presumably in the hope the merchant would allocate more budget in the future.

Yet another time I was removed from a programme for which I generated £14,000 sales a month for with no notice. The reason given by the manager who had started just that week? “Affiliates are affecting our in-house PPC”. When I pointed out 30 days notice was standard practise I was told that the e-mail I’d just been sent was all the notice I’d be getting. I then pointed out he could not possibly have analysed the effect of affiliates on in-house PPC. No reply. 6 weeks later the network quietly announced that affiliates were once more allowed to participate in PPC activity.

What I’m trying to point out in recounting these sorry tales, is that within networks and programmes there is still a woeful misunderstanding (dare I say mistreatment?) of affiliate marketing and the people who make their living from it.

Now, I would like to point out there are a huge number of programmes and network employees who are absolutely exemplary and hugely knowledgable. This post is not designed to mindlessly slag off these guys en-masse or suggest that they are uniformly running roughshod over affiliates. I am merely trying to point out that as things stand, the playing field is not even.

However, affiliates are too often considered the enemy, and I do not know of any other industry where a business partner is so often treated as a second-class individual or where contractual obligations only protect one half of the business partnership.

As things stand, affiliates often suffer from removal of earnings without notice, and the networks who are so happy to collect a third of their earnings do not stand up and protect their contractual rights (I’m all too aware we just don’t have any). As the industry has matured, affiliates have been required to jump through increasingly complex hoops to be allowed to promote merchants and to deal with ever-more exacting requirements from search engines such as Google. In essence, we have lifted our game considerably.

On the other side of the fence, merchants can still reverse commissions for any reason. Merchants can still change terms of promotion with no notice and remove earnings RETROSPECTIVELY. Merchants can do all of this FOR ANY REASON. In what other area of marketing can you treat suppliers like this? I’d love to see what happened if you tried that with the Times advertising department. “Sorry, despite the fact that the ad you ran for us on Sunday generated 3,000 orders we can’t pay you for the advert. Our budget’s run out. You’ll just have to lump it guys”. Yeah right.

So, here’s a challenge to the networks. Who’s going to be the first to stand up and protect your affiliate workforce?

I wait with baited breath.

A while ago I had a $4300 claw back from my CJ account with absolutely no warning or explaination. This was for commissions that had been paid out 12 months previously. At the time, I was mighty damned pissed off (who wouldn’t be?!?). It turned out that the commissions were from a merchant that had gone bankrupt. CJ then clawed back every penny from yours truly. The merchant in question was Wealth of Nations Clothing by Judy French.

I posted at the time on A4UForum, and to my surprise CJ were extremely responsive. They explained what had happened quickly on the forum, and even called me in Australia to say how sorry they were about it all.

At the time they promised to look into whether or not I might get a small amount back from the initial deposit paid by the merchant, and also said they owed me a big, big favour for the inconvenience. “We’ll see what we can do for you and drop you a line about it”, the nice young chap on the phone said. “Wow!!”, I thought. “What an improvement from CJ. I pledge never to sully their good name again.”

What have I heard in the 8 weeks since? Absolutely hee haw from CJ. Thanks guys! In honour of your excellent customer service skills and another recent annoyance, I have written a heartbreaking poem outlining your cruel betrayal of a trusting young affiliate beauty (what do you mean “who’s that?” Its me!)

An Ode To CJ – A Modern Day Tale of Love Gone Awry

The moral of this affiliate tale?
CJ’s policies will make thy wail!