This article was born out of frustration and anger… anger aimed at affiliate program administrators who have very little concern for hard working affiliates.
I have had the rug pulled out from underneath me on several occasions, and frankly I am fed up. If you are considering joining a 2 tier affiliate program and the only payment option the administrator of the program has to offer you is PayPal, BEWARE!
By using PayPal as a processor for a 2 tier affiliate program, the merchant is in violation of PayPal’s terms of service and will eventually have to shut down the second tier. This creates a bit of a predicament for affiliates who put quite a bit of effort into recruiting other affiliates.
Advertising isn’t something you can simply pull the plug on at will, causing everything to come to a complete standstill. Ads you have placed in the past, some of them paid for out of your own pocket, can go on producing results for months or even years.
This is the part that angers me the most!
By not offering affiliates an alternate payment method, merchants can go on reaping the rewards for quite some time without actually having to compensate their affiliates.
If you happen to own a web site you are also faced with the task and cost of making modifications. Either that, or continue to send free traffic and create affiliate signups for a merchant who is no longer willing to pay you for this service. Each new affiliate who signs up not only becomes a potential money earner for the merchant by making sales, they are also added to the merchant’s personal mailing list and therefore becomes a potential customer as well.
This is one sweet deal for the affiliate program administrator… not so good for the affiliate.
Another very unfair practice concerning affiliate programs that is very wide spread on the internet is the placing of affiliate signup links on sales pages. There are actually times when I have seen two links on a sales page, one at the top of the page and one at the bottom.
I have sent countless emails to affiliate program administrators in an attempt to put an end to this practice; a practice which very effectively robs affiliates of their hard earned affiliate revenue. To be fair, most comply, but trying to persuade some is like beating your head against a brick wall.
Creating a separate landing page for affiliates to send traffic to is, in my opinion, a simple solution to the problem.
This is a subject I am very passionate about, and something that many other Internet Marketers and I have been fighting to put an end to for several years.
Granted, things are changing, but very slowly.
Copyright © 2006 All Rights Reserved
Roderick Fewer has been marketing on the internet since 2002. His web site FreeAssociatePrograms.com provides information, tools and resources for Internet Marketers.
Visit us at http://www.freeassociateprograms.com or contact us through our help desk at http://www.freeassociateprograms.com/hesk/ at any time.
