Commission compensation?

[monkeyman]

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I've had nothing but a nightmare week this week with lost orders through tracking and such.

What do people feel about the compensation options that are put forward by the networks?

I always thought compensation should be for the orders/leads already generated.

Most seem to just offer increased commissions and you are then just expected to promote them more to try and recoup the money lost.
And whose to say the tracking won't fail again?

I do appreciate that some orders/leads may go missing but on some merchants it seems an absolute joke.

I had one recently were they went 2 weeks without tracking - 2 weeks!

Rant over

[EyeOfTheTiger]

Hi,

A tetchy subject if ever there was one. I joined the onestop program a few months back when they were paying £18 per app. There was no note of the fact that this was a re-established temporary commission structure set in place due to previous tracking errors occuring before me time. Imagine my shock for the commission to then be dropped to £15 at the end of the promotion. It makes me wonder why they can't pay that commission in the first place. It also makes me wonder whether or not there are merchants who"remove" tracking code for a day or two sporadically to save on a bit of commission and paying out on sales for a day or so. Certainly when I have a day with certain merchants without sales I sometimes let it be, but 2 to 3 days and I begin to get concerned, i'd of hopefully got something sorted or resolved within 2 weeks thats a hell of a gap!

In reality I dont see why there should be any problems with tracking. Code shouldn't get removed once its in and its tested but these things happen. If we get compo it's a bonus, if we don't and the merchant / network fails to fess up to any "tracking errors" or problems we can always vote with our clicks.

Tiger

[KirstyM]

Unfortunately, tracking code can and does "disappear" from merchant sites during various technical alterations, restores after virus attacks etc. It shouldn't happen, but it does!

If I have the misfortune for this to happen on a programme I manage, then affiliates are awarded by their previous EPC, as clicks during the untracked period are still recorded. It takes ages to work out though, which might explain the blanket commission increase approach by some merchants.

[Azam.net]

Not many merchants have the decency and sense of responsiblity of Kirsty.

God knows how much money we have all lost on faulty tracking. The ones we find out about are the tip of the iceburg.

After a lot of experience and lost money, I can assert without hesitation that it is a regular occurance for many merchants to not be tracking.

Even if tracking does inadvertently break - mistakes do happen, sites get upgraded - merchants don't exactly sweat to get them fixed. Is not in their interest to do so if there are no penalties - which there aren't in most cases.

It it takes them a few days to get the tracking up-and-running again, so be it. Affiliates don't usually find out and the merchant benefits from any delay.

About 20% of purchases made by my friends though my affiliate links don't show in my stats or earn me any commission. The facts speak for themselves.

P.S. Managed to fluster one network with dodgy tracking which they've hidden from affiliates. Have written them thousands of words in the last six months asking them to make ammends but they haven't. They have three more days to respond to my 'final warning' letter before I will initiate legal action. When I am finally able to write about what I have discovered, you will see how honest these big networks are.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

It's a persistant problem, where there seems to be inadequate testing procedures in place to ascertain or flag situations when a merchants conversion rate suddenly falls below a certain threshold or is zero. With the quantity of data available we would have thought this wouldn't have been a difficult task.

It has been repeatly commented on for a couple of years, but not a lot of priority or anything has been done about it. So much now we are moving more & more towards CPC models rather than CPA which incurs considerably less anxiety.

One problem is not enough affiliates report problems to the forum, so it sometimes becomes hidden which is of no benefit to affiliates. And sometimes when remuneration is offered it should be based on the EPC for subsequent durations, not commission increases.

>> Azam, If you have a problematic merchant program, report it to the forum so that fellow affiliates can make their own informed decision on whether to continue promoting that program, rather than them continuing to waste their time, effort & money. By not releasing information into the open is exactly what the network or merchant would want. If all know there are ocassional problems which we have to get on with, but it shouldn't deter from the suggestion that proper COMPLETE resolutions are not being maintained. i.E. the wearing down approach of a few emails to & fro until the affiliate loses the energy to pursue further.

A merchant or network putting their hands up being honest & actually resolving rather than just saying they are going to will gain a lot more respect than those we have to persistantly chase.

[eskimo]

It could be interesting to keep a league table of the networks and their performance in this and other areas, and see whether this could shame some networks into pursing these issues with more commitment.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

We brought up the suggestion of trend graphs in previous postings which didn't get much response.

One can assume that parties are quite content with some failures to continue, if we want it then affiliates should maybe push for it... Think outside the box .. look at the bigger picture .. consider larger long term gains & not just short term.

The Concept is quite simple really and displays as a chart very much like share price graphs, where you can view conversion rates, epc's & reversal rates for any predetermined time period. Comparing both your results & the network wide results as a whole as an overlay on the same chart... as long as there is no massaging of data. Then from this both the affiliate & network can set their own minimum thresholds to initiate a flagging system either by self-requested email to the affiliate or within the interface when you login. You choose the parameters of what is acceptable.

As well as being a powerful tool for all parties to be more effective... This will go towards indentifying problems at an earlier stage so that they can be remedied.

Affiliate marketing reporting MUST be a lot more transparent for these various analytics which would be a valuable asset for us to fine tune / hone our marketing skills & increase revenue / productivity. Rather than the Archaic & manual process we currently have to endure. By not having these tools only buries, hides & disguises problems which only occassionally come out into the open.

It's a win win situation all round.

Secondary to affiliate support ... any network who implemented would get preferential treatment of ALL programs within their network (not just those which cross over more than one network) ... Until then we will negotiate more & more CPC or hybrid deals until reporting & resolving tracking with remuneration concerns is at a level affiliates desire & deserve.

[Azam.net]

Agree completely with Qui Gon Jinn (what were you doing posting at 5:30am? ).

If this industry is going to attract serious business people on the affiliate side then there needs to be a lot more transparency. How can an affiliate be confident about spending thousands of pounds promoting a merchant when he doesn't know if their tracking is working, that they will acknowledge all sales, and that they will definitely pay commission without doing a runner?

At the moment, the situation is positively amateurish:

- add merchant's links to your sites
- wait a few weeks
- notice they are not earning you any commission
- give them a few more days/weeks
- notice they are still not earning you any commission
- do a test purchase/go through their affiliate code line by line to see if the tracking code is there
- discover there is something not quite right
- contact network saying you need to check this out
- network doesn't respond to your email
- contact network saying you need to check this out
- network doesn't respond to your email
- contact network saying you need to check this out
- network doesn't respond to your email
- contact network saying you need to check this out
- network doesn't respond to your email
- contact network with a more strongly worded email
- network responds saying nothing is wrong
- provide network with evidence that link is not working
- network responds saying nothing is wrong
- provide network with evidence that link is not working
- network responds saying nothing is wrong
- provide network with evidence that link is not working
- network eventually concedes something is wrong and plonker working for them writes one sentence email to you saying "tracking is now working" (network does not bother telling other affiliates of course)
- ask network for compensation for promoting merchant for months without earning a penny
- network does not respond

... could go on and on... but I got work to do

All I'll say is that the networks will lose out in the long run. We are giving more and more exposure to the likes of Adsense, Tribal Fusion, Fastclick etc. because, after having lost huge amounts of money because of the amateurish way the affiliate marketing industry is run, I'm not keen to being made a sucker of again and again.

It's sad, because the majority of merchants are honourable and honest. And these issues could be rectified ever so easily...

[Elaine]

Geez never considered all you ppc guys in this equation before - I get really really annoyed when I get fobbed off when querying the amount of clicks per sale - but at least I'm not paying out good money for these - just a lot of time and effort - maybe that's why I'm not taken so seriously !!

I'd be seriously furiously fuming if I was wasting money as well - I think any affiliate who has been at this a while knows roughly how many clicks per sale should happen - and we can all accept there are going to be the odd fluctations and we take into account outside influences

- time of year, weather conditions, major sports/music/royal weddings etc. - so to be treated by the networks as half-wits is a tad short sighted

- it shouldn't be long before we can all vote with our feet - there should be an abundance of programmes to choose from and the networks/merchants will be wooing the affiliates who can produce the goods!!

personally I'll go with the ones that listen when I suggest their tracking is 'off'