Networks which take months to payout

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Ok now this has always been a gripe of mine with some of the major networks (buy.at and trade doubler spring to mind for me)

You literally have a scale of which the most popular networks pay out :

weekly - webgains

fortnightly - affiliate window

monthly - commision junction, affiliate future

in 2 months - buy.at, trade doubler

I am only mentioning the above networks, as these are the ones I deal with. Does this put you off promoting merchants who are on the longer "waiting for payment" windows ?

Hypothetical question now - If a merchant was on one network and was paying fortnightly and was offering 5% commision, and the same merchant was on another merchant and was offering 6% commision but was paid 2 months in arrears, which would you choose ?

I am forever put off promoting merchants on tradedoubler and buy.at due to the long waiting periods for payment. It makes it worse if you run the merchant on PPC as you cannot forecast your validation rate against your PPC budget for up to 2 months, so therefore do not know if it is worth running PPC.

Your thoughts are welcome, as I think this is an issue amongst alot of affiliates, and I strongly believe that if networks did not hold back payments for so long ( I know there are reasons, but they can be set up differently from the start like other networks do) then there would be many more affiliates promoting programs.

Cheers

[tbp]

I prefer quick payment, for cashflow, although after christmas I now have a nice slush fund so it's not so much of an issue.

I would probably go for 5% and quick payment, than 6% and a 2 month waiting time.

Its one of the reasons that I prefer Affiliate Window over other networks.

I promote Splash plastic on webgains, and get really annoyed with all the commissions going on delay for 2 months! (Well that and the fact that around half are declined). Think its a ridiculous amount of time, and im considering stopping their campaign. Other cards get validated in a week or so, so I don't see why they need 2 months.

[HarveyC]

Agree with you there; in fact at one point I nearly reviewed payment systems for each and network I'd dealt with to try and persuade them to change for the better.

Buy.at are definately on the poor side with payment times, but they're now paying via BACs and at least they have reporting.

Quite frankly for a multi million pound company, DGM have a pathetic excuse of a system, where it's practically impossible to work out what you're owed and never mind when you're being paid. If there was a 1% lower commission on Awin, I'd switch over to them immediately - don't see why I should line their pockets when they put so little into their reporting system anyway

[gunneradt]

I'm glad someone agrees with me on dgm - ive never got a clue what I'm owed. However, at least their system is regular and on time unlike some networks which haven't been mentioned yet.

[KamikzMX]

I try to avoid using tradedoubler because of this, I will promote a merchant on them, but only if I really need to promote that merchant and they aren't on another network. 95% of the merchants I promote are on Awin, its by far my favourite network because I love the interface and they pay regularly, although not had chance to really use webgains, so I can't comment on them.

[graeme]

At Paid On Results we launched our new payment model Payment On Request in November. This means Affiliates can get paid whenever they want, meaning it could be weekly, 2 weekly or monthly, its up to you. Once a sale has been validated and paid for by the Merchant it is ready to be paid out to you, no wait time or delay.

Most our Merchants pay in advance meaning as soon as a sale is made the commission is ready to be paid once validated. We also clearly publish our Merchants validation times for you as well. Effectively it means if you earn commission today from a in-funds Merchant which is validate by Monday, you can be paid on Tuesday by BACS.

[HarveyC]

Yeah, the POR system looks really good; I'm looking forward to becoming an "on request" user. Nice to see merchants being proactive over archaic!

[Andrew Copeland]

I promote Splash plastic on webgains, and get really annoyed with all the commissions going on delay for 2 months! (Well that and the fact that around half are declined). Think its a ridiculous amount of time, and im considering stopping their campaign. Other cards get validated in a week or so, so I don't see why they need 2 months.

Hi tbp,

Thanks for the feedback. We realise that the 2 month wait is pretty long. However, Splash Plastic have now implemented weekly files to validate delayed transactions which should hopefully speed up the commissions coming through.

The reason for the lengthy delay period is that Splash Plastic pay commission on activated cards...not applications. Therefore there is a delay between the application being processed and the customer actually receiving and activating the card. The 2 month delay is in place to ensure that we give the user as long as possible to activate their card and therefore generate you commission.

Please let me know if you have any other concerns regarding this or any other Webgains program.

[leaddo]

I have to agree on the times payments take to be made on DGM and also the reporting system. OK, you have been invoiced a particular amount per month, but there is no indication when those were actually paid. On top of this, to have a £100 minumum before you're paid each month (or £25 per quarter) makes it a little behind most of the other networks to say the least.

I do use other networks because of this if the programme is available elsewhere.

[Julie H]

In fairness to DGM (which is new for me) I know Helen is working on this as she has mentioned in a previous thread on the DGM forum. Unfortunately, not everything can happen instantly in corporate companies.

[mattb811]

Thanks Ms Hegarty!!

As Jules says Helen is working on changing this. She's out of the office at the moment but will update the forum as soon as she's back.

Thanks,

Matt

[HelenMarie]

Hi All,

I completely take on board of all these comments and as Julie mentioned this is something I am working on at the moment.

I can give an early heads up that the monthly commission threshold is going to be reduced significantly for Bacs payments for the next payment run in February. I will be able to confirm the amount within the next few day's and notification will be sent round to all affiliates.

I will keep everyone updated on further developments. However, if you do have any issues with payments in the meantime or need any more information please let me know and I will personally look into this for you. My details are below.

Regards,
Helen

[8601cam]

Just for clarity, please find below details of the payment process by Affiliate Window:

1. Merchants validate transactions
2. We do not wait for payment from merchants, we pay affiliates in the next available payment run
3. Merchants are invoiced fortnightly and are encouraged to validate frequently (AWin Index scores well for faster validations)
4. We pay our affiliates every fortnight

Merchants do not need to pre-pay as we pay out immediately for valiadted sales for all merchants on the network.

We do not claw back genuine valiadated sales, even if a merchant goes under and the network is unable to secure payment. We act as the financial buffer for affiliates.

We have accelerated international affiliate payments so they now receive cleared funds as fast as our UK affiliate partners.

We are working on a new process which will hopefully see all our affiliates paid even faster.

Kind Regards

Mark

[smingle]

Just for clarity, please find below details of the payment process by Affiliate Window:

1. Merchants validate transactions
2. We do not wait for payment from merchants, we pay affiliates in the next available payment run
3. Merchants are invoiced fortnightly and are encouraged to validate frequently (AWin Index scores well for faster validations)
4. We pay our affiliates every fortnight

Merchants do not need to pre-pay as we pay out immediately for valiadted sales for all merchants on the network.

We do not claw back genuine valiadated sales, even if a merchant goes under and the network is unable to secure payment. We act as the financial buffer for affiliates.

We have accelerated international affiliate payments so they now receive cleared funds as fast as our UK affiliate partners.

We are working on a new process which will hopefully see all our affiliates paid even faster.

Kind Regards

Mark

Exactly why you are my number 1 network of choice and deservedly won Network of the Year

Keep up the good work

[HarveyC]

Ditto for Awin

Appreciate the response Helen - good to see the threshold being brought down to a reasonable level, but the real problem lies with the reporting system and 2 month waits - IMO it's about time to send a note to the web developers