An Affiliate Marketer's Challenges

After the product creator relaunched his program and paid me the sum accrued to me, they removed the ledger details showing the people who bought what and so on & so forth..

The stats in the month April & May show that the sales were accrued but the ledger is gone for all 3 months - March, April, May 2011. Is this ridiculous?

If I was paid an amount, I am entitled to see the stats. Telling me that the EA affiliate program is shut down means there is something fishy going on out there. Don't you think so? Isn't this ridiculous especially because you now have a 100,000 leads from your affiliates and still don't want to share the rewards with your affiliates in all honesty & diginity? would you ever work with such a marketer?

So how come Mark it shows up in the stats that the affiliate is building leads and thereby accruing sales?

The thing is I see that 4 of the sales are of the original launch and the other sales seems to be upsells. Now, the marketer didn't notify his affiliates that he won't pay commissions on upsells even though the sales happened from the affiliate marketers marketing funnel. How can you not credit the affiliate for the sales that happened through his marketing funnel? Isn't that amazing?

Since there is no notification, don't you think it must be taken as the marketer pays for all upsells and downsells unless he notifies in writing that he won't pay for upsells and downsells? Isn't that clear for transparency?

Neither they discorded the traffic arriving from affiliate links to their squeeze page so is this a marketer's fault or is the affiliate responsible for this?

Ronak.

Hi Ronak,

No, it's business.

Perhaps they're loading the front end in order to keep the back end for themselves?

Would you prefer $500 per sale with a chance of $500 on the back end?

I agree with those two quotes.

Affiliates work for one off payments (generally), vendors use affiliates to build a business. If you feel that it's unfair, you know what to do about it, right?

Oh come on when it's your money you won't be taking it 'so easy' LOL It's $1500 man - a whole lot of money. And 'take it easy'.. have I gone bonkers that I will take it with a pinch of salt?

What pisses me is that the marketer never informed affiliates about the upsells and downsells.. and when the sales turn up.. they say we don't pay on upsells! Whoaa~

If it was a zero 0 more, it would had been $15000 & that would have been disastrous. don't you think so? get going..

I don't think he is...nor is this the place for starting to "Covertly" start talking about or bringing in other vendors...I'm sure there's a forum rules violation there somewhere :-)

As Ex Rat pointed out...it could be and probably was a mistake by their affiliate tracking system...and as others have pointed out, not everyone pays on all upsells..

Does not seem to be a gap, it seems that affiliates registered to promote XYZ, and then the vendor released ABC to their new list, which was outside of the XYZ, thus not warranting commissions.

Not necessarily...and it depends on what was messaged. Not all vendors pay on upsells, and something that is released 30, 60 90 or even 6 months later cannot be deemed as an upsell

Not necessarily.

1) It depends if a"Lifetime Commissions/ Cookie" has been offered or if it's a limited cookie. For instance, Clickbank Products only offer a 60 day cookie. So if you're promoting a CB product and one of the leads you sent sits on the fence and decides to purchase on day 61...you are out of luck.

2) A affiliate should get paid for ALL Buying customers that they refer for a "Particular" product. The "KEY" there is understanding that it's specific to a particular product...and does not always include upsells.

In fact, there are a ton of vendors who offer 50% front end commissions, then a reduced 30% or 20% on upsells, especially if it's a time intensive upsell such as a mastermind or One on One coaching.

....that's not what happened here though. It sounds like they released a new product outside of the original product, post launch.

Here's my 2 cents

1) To answer the question is it Fair? --> Yes. (you got paid for what you originally signed up to promote)

2) Should have there been a bit more disclosure (a tracking mistake was made) -->Perhaps.

3) Does it mean something "shady is going on"....not really, it could just mean that the affiliate program for that particular product is closed. Especially with infusionsoft.

The deal here is, that you signed up to Promote the original product release, in which you were paid the appropriate commissions for.

Some vendors include lifetime commissions, some don't, but nearly all of them don't pay commissions for all of the other products they may release in the future and market to that new list they just built.

....meaning that if I sign up to promote a Product today, drive all sorts of leads that convert and get paid..... I'm not necessarily going to get paid if the product creator releases a whole other product (Live event, coaching etc) outside of the original product.

Example. Joe releases -Joes Hotcakes, how to make the best hot cakes in the world. Everyone promotes Joes hotcakes, drives leads and gets paid.

Then 3 months later, Joe releases a new product that ties into his hotcakes...but none the less is a different product.

lets say this product is "Coaching" on how to make the best hot cakes in the world. Joe never advertised this as an affiliate offer but wants to market this new offer to his new list (that affiliates help him built..which is the whole point) and makes sales.

The affiliates who originally promoted Joes Hotcakes are not "entitled" to commissions for any of Joes other products....unless he offers it as an affiliate program. (Which is what you were basically told...you registered to promote one thing, and what "Commissions" showed in your account was for something completely different...which was a mistake)

What happened here is that Infusionsoft is a very good platform, that tracks everything....it's almost too good. The vendor, who I'm pretty sure was not 100% familiar with the system did not realize that when they offered their New Product to the leads that were generated by affiliates from their original offer was going to track sales for their new "In House" offer.

What should have happened is that the new offer be set up as a stand alone. (Similar to creating a new product via Clickbank)

I'm sure this was a mistake...and mistakes happen.

Does it suck...well, if you logged in and saw commissions due then yes....but it still does not entitle an affiliate to receive those commissions.

It sounds as if the affiliate manager let you know that it was for a different promotion.

In reality, there perhaps should have been a polite email sent, on behalf of the vendor, letting affiliates know that

"Hey, we just ran a promotion to our internal list that was crediting sales when it should not have been....we apologize for this, we screwed up...but want to clear the air that those commissions will be eliminated from your ledger...we appreciate your support and Understanding...and will let you know when our next promo for affiliates is coming)"

...or something along those lines.

It's not the best situation...but it does happen...and you just need to move on. :-)

All the best
Sean

I really don't know what your problem is. You seem to be complaining about the fact that you sent a load of people to a certain offer. They bought. You got paid a commission.

Where is the problem?

They bought other stuff from the product owner. Stuff for which you have not signed up as an affiliate. Therefore you are not entitled to a commission. The fact you sent them there in the first place doesn't mean squat. You already got paid for sending them. Why should you get paid again?

I'm really sorry if I'm missing something here. But you seem to be complaining about an issue that isn't an issue except in your own mind.