3 Affiliate Program Yellow Cards
Lots of affiliate programs out there to promote on your blog, website, or pretty much anywhere else online (Twitter, Facebook, AdWords, etc.). So much so that there really is little reason to futz around with duds, or worse, cheats and deadbeats. Not that they can all be spotted until after the fact. But, borrowing some terminology the World Cup has brought to our non-soccer playing culture’s lips, there are a few “yellow card” warning signs to look out for. Here are my three.
Some say these are red cards. Scams, even. And in many cases they’re right. But not always. Hence my preference to treat these as yellow card warnings that require analytical, careful treading. But again, there really is no shortage of affiliate programs you can tap and work; I wouldn’t be surprised if you just decide not to hassle with such yellow carded affiliate programs.
Yellow Card #1: Not on a Popular Affiliate Marketing Network
If a program isn’t being run and administered on a large or fairly popular affiliate marketing network – like Commission Junction, LinkShare, Shareasale, etc. – that’s a yellow card for me. Not an automatic reject, but suspect. It’s those that run their own independent “in-house” affiliate programs that make me do a careful approach. It’s a payment thing – not only is it way too easy for the indies to screw you on that, their power over this critical portion of the affiliate marketing transaction is pretty much, well, practically absolute.
The thing about the big boy networks is that they pay you. They, in turn, get the funds from merchants. Since it’s the big boys’ name, business and funds on the line, they take certain measures to assure that the merchant’s got the money for the game. No, they don’t have kneecap-breaking Guidos on the payroll (at least I don’t think so) – they do smart little things like require merchants to set up and deposit funds into accounts beforehand, accounts the networks use for paying us. The big boys even monitor these accounts, requiring that they be maintained at certain minimum levels based on projected traffic and sales activity. Bottom line: With the affiliate networks, it’s likelier we’ll actually get paid.
Just because a program is independent and not on one of these networks doesn’t automatically mean it’s a no go, however. Just yellow carded. The MyHelpHub program and line of products, for example, is independent, but it’s done right by me through the years I’ve promoted them as an affiliate. And no doubt there are many more out there just like them.
Then there are those programs that use interesting “impression percentage” technology, using order processing scripts like Rapid Action Profits and $7 Secrets. With those, we affiliates essentially get paid directly, with order payments going straight into our PayPal accounts. If programs that use that tech are to be yellow carded for any reason, it probably won’t be for core payment issues.
Yellow Card #2: The Nothing’s Being Sold Landing Page
This is interesting since, as marketers, we know that it typically takes multiple contacts and message exposures before a prospect is converted into a paying customer. So it isn’t strange or unusual to see a landing page that quite aggressively or even mainly tries to get the prospect to sign up or subscribe to the merchant’s free mailing list, usually in return for getting a free something or other (report, ebook, member area access, etc.). No attempt is made to sell anything on first contact. The technique works quite well, particularly for info products. For the merchant, anyway.
Thing is, the affiliate (you) who sent the traffic initially… you just get left out of the loop and are basically screwed.
Well, not always. The aforementioned MyHelpHub program, for example, does it right, employing cookie and IP tracking technology for proper affiliate compensation. No way no how foolproof – nothing is – but it’s way better than if you see the same no-sale-list-building strategy done by ClickBank merchants, for instance, what with ClickBank’s raw affiliate referral coding not suited at all for future sale affiliate tracking.
This really is one of those areas where you need at least a good working knowledge of what’s happening technically for you to be able to properly evaluate if your efforts will be properly tracked and credited or not. But regardless of the tech in use, seeing this kind of list-building technique employed by the merchant should make you nervous. Think about it: Once the merchant has the prospect’s contact info, nothing’s really stopping him from sending the prospect to buy through a different payment mechanism than the one supposedly being used for the affiliate program.
The only real way to check for this is to click through your affiliate-coded links and see where you end up. Even if a program has passed this test – with a traffic destination that tries to actually sell product, not just collect email addresses – you’ll still want to check back periodically. Merchants changing their landing pages and strategies without telling existing affiliates isn’t exactly unheard of. (Notice how I avoided calling them sneaky.)
Yellow Card #3: Merchant is Difficult to Contact Directly
Online consumers know the drill, unfortunately – some online merchants are just terribly difficult to contact directly. No visible mailing address or phone numbers, not even an email address. At best, a “support ticket”-style system. This is sadly par for the course, it’s turning out.
But that’s with customers. There are merchants that do that with their affiliates as well. And we’re business associates, when you get right down to it.
More often than not, I’ll be able to find some direct contact info somewhere. An email address, at the very least, that’ll get to a warm body who can answer any questions. But even so, I don’t think I need to explain further why I find it disturbing that I – whose intent is to send business their way for our mutual benefit – have to go through that crapola.
What happens if I really can’t find any contact info anywhere? That’s when I pull out the red.
(This article originally appeared on Wordpreneur.com.)