BlackStar

Here was my line of thinking with BlackStar: I thought we'd promote them even though they paid less commission than other DVD/video merchants, because their affiliate program is residual. If you refer a customer to them, you supposedly earn commission on every purchase they make, for life.

Therefore I reckoned that our sales and commissions would gradually increase, as we built a customer base and these people made repeat purchases at BlackStar.

However, this does not seem to be happening. Our commission is increasing as we launch new Web sites, but the residual element does not seem to be kicking in to generate us increasing revenue. This is despite us having hundreds of customers 'tagged' to us.

Are other BlackStar affiliates who have been promoting them for years seeing an increase in their commissions as customers they referred to BlackStar a while back make repeat purchases?

I was thinking the same thing the othe day.

Quite a few 'tagged' but the amount never seems to go up.

I was told that you had to have both URL's reg'd with them. ie. ab.com & www.ab.com for the tracking to work.
Also it's worth adding the id on the link to.
www.blackstar.co.uk/scp/id/myid

Like a knob - i registered years ago through the Guardian and have used that acc. ever since!!
Soon as I realised i made a new account.

Maybe other peeps have done the same!

I guess other folks are thinking the same .... I accidently typed this url

blacktar.co.uk/

Guess where it goes ... not blackstar /

That tickels me... lol

Jess :0)

I'm very disappointed with Black Star. I've had only one buying customer from 764 visitors.

I'm going to give them one more big push, and if that doesn't work I'll drop them and go back to Amazon.

I find that very hard to believe things like dvd, videos, computer games should sell all day long. I shift aload of books and I put very little effort into that..

I would seriously think there must be something wrong with tracking at Blackstar. Having said that ive seen my earnings from Amazon drop by about 70% of what I was doing 5 years ago.. though I would blame that on the rise in competion and PPC traffic.

When the new amazon uk xml feeds are setup I'll ditch all my blackstar links for those.

JF
To date
Click-throughs 3522
Registrations 58
Purchasing Customers 34

So, roughly one per hundred, not amazing but if the lifetime sale thingy workes should be better in the future........IF it works !

Cheers
Aly

One of our sites:

Click-throughs 15201
Registrations 133
Purchasing Customers 36
Orders £2,747.22
Billed £874.39
Commission Earned £43.72

What is tough is the difference between figure for ordered and actually billed. Difference caused by returns, cancellations, non-availability, fraud etc., but I find it hard to believe that two in three people who jumped through all the hoops to place an order are fraudulent, their video is unavailable, or they later cancel their order

Will stick with BlackStar, though, because of the lifetime income plus exceptional customer service.

Click-throughs 5412
Registrations 67
Purchasing Customers 53
Orders £1,001.55
Billed £788.44
Commission Earned £39.42

Also disappointed
If I was getting 1p/click that'd be 30% more than I've got here
My benchmark is always 10p/click equivalent
Below that and the company has a problem and while it may be tracking chances are its with their business. Most companies I've dealt with over the years with this sort of record aren't around any more.