Get rid of TD

I am seriously considering dumping TD as I see them as a crap network.

I earn around $8,000 a mth with CJ and about £100 with Tradedoubler. Even ASOS was better on CJ.

Can anyone offer any advice on whether to dump em or not.

Cheers

I think what would be more productive is if we could organise a roundtable meeting with Tradedoubler. We personally have a number of issues with Tradedoubler and am generally very unhappy.

As it stands at the moment, if the program is on another network, we will opt for their links even if they are a less prominent network. If there is a problem, it is either not attended to our satisfaction or favourtism strongly falls on the side of the merchant where they tend to bow to the TD - Merchant relationship a lot more than the TD - Affiliate relationship.

But no doubt some will swear by them and enjoy a quite good rapport. There are quite a few positive atributes with their overall stats, content generators etc.. but we we place a lot of empahasis on aforementioned threads.

However, to move forward we do need to open dialogue on a face to face basis, rather than phones and/or emails regarding obvious problems which have lingered on far too long unresolved, whereby we can air our grievances and look at amicable solutions.

Hopefully TD would not shy away from affiliates holding out the olive branch, which leaves the ball very much in their court.

No doubt the debate would be heated, but it needs to be done. And if we are invited (which is unlikely) would not accept being fobbed off.

Quote: "Getting rid of TD" - wouldn't be the solution, they have the potential to be a great network but are failing miserably in the most fundamental areas.

Yes, I'd agree that some kind of resolution is necessary.

As a merchant, I am very happy with our relationship with Tradedoubler but are understandably worried about the growing number of complaints.

I'd certainly like us collectively to get to the bottom of it, as from a merchant point of view, we'd like to ensure that all parties are happy with the way things are working.

Kind regards,
Abbie

abbie.alter@opodo.com

Abbie,

I can't speak from other affiliates perspective, it's up to them to lurk, post or participate. But we generally are reluctant to promote merchants to the degree they perhaps deserve.

But having contact details for affiliates to communicate directly with merchants could dilute a lot of problems. Unfortunately TD are forthright in withholding this information.

From your point of view has your involvement on the forum, helped bypass potential problems by understanding and developing the association (between affiliate / merchant) and maybe develop the program better if you had not?

I only ask this, because it's your proactive involvement in the forum togther with actual action / implementation (like your content generators) which gives us the confidence to promote a genuine merchant like yourself, which may otherwise have been overlooked becuase of having our fingers burnt with other travel companies.

I'm not going to rant on about TD, I have expressed my views enough times before. However, I will say that I agree with QGJ - I always chose to promote a merchant at an alternative network, if an alternative exists.

I think if TD opened up affiliate to merchant communications it would help a lot.

For example: One problem I have is I want to add a few product feeds from TD merchants to a site. I've written spiders to collect the data, as TD wouldn't respond to an email asking if they had datafeeds. But some of the merchants have robots.txt banning all bots, so I'd like to contact them to get the OK. I've emailed TD again to ask for contact details at the merchants, but again I get no reply - not a 'Sorry we cant give that info' email, just nothing.

If you compare this to Apple Store, who are on TD but list a contact address, things couldn't be more different. They have been helpful and actually sound grateful for the exposure - if old more could be like that.

Open communication and a presence on this forum would, I feel, help TD's reputation flourish

I find that a program will always convert the lowest on TD.. not sure why but I think its because they take the referer into a account and if they dont match you dont get the sale.

I tested this by doing a test on the GM card and it didnt come through.... you can test this yourselves with ADsubtract.

Tradedoubler is an affiliate network for MERCHANTS not affiliates I find.

My preference is CJ, DGM, Buy.at, AW, TD, Indy.

TD could easily be the UKs best if they got rid of the referer system and started to put more effort into affiliate communication.

BTW:

We could all send a letter to merchants telling them the problems we are having with TD and tell them they would be so much better off with CJ bet they would soon respond then.

TD is kind of drifting into insignificance on our site. Pretty much everything is covered by the other (better) operators and for what we make with them every month really isnt even worth mentioning and if they were not around it truly would make no difference to our world.

David

In 90% of occasions when an intermediary sits between 2 parties (e.g. TD between merchant and affiliate) and they don't want direct communications, they either have something to hide or they are extremely insecure about their position.

Having said that - don't be too hard on poor 'ol TD. Things have improved. After all you it was'nt so long ago you would have been forgiven for thinking that Session Cookies were part of TD corporate policy.

Also it's important to remember that they are a Scandinavian company which in many cases means that you have a bunch of guys with aspirations of developing a worldwide empire from the inside of an igloo - and most of them have never been further south than Copenhagen. The Scandi companies I've worked with nearly always seem to be run by eskimos that are all experts on the UK and European markets, but have even never left the Arctic Circle. It was a major step forward when they started using homing penguins in an effort to improve corporate communications.

Ever seen a penguin with "Volvo" stamped across it's forehead - of course not - and that's because the poor ol' penguin can't make it all the way to London - and thats the main reason why international communications with Finland leave so much to be desired.

And did you ever wonder why a mobile phone is called a mobile phone? It was because when Nokia first built the telephone they tried tieing it onto one of those homing penguins, and then getting the phone mobile, by trying to get the penguin to fly over here carrying it. It actually nearly worked until they found out that they had'nt attached enough cable to the phone and the poor 'ol penguin only made it half way before crashlanding in the North Sea. Actually it didn't work out too bad for Nokia because that's when the boss called Olaf, decided that they would call it the worlds first undersea communications cable - and things went from there.....

....believe it or not!

I agree with Abbie...

Jess

If it ain't working, dump it.

Ultimately if something is not bringing in the money replace it with something that does - "i'll leave it a bit longer to see how it does" does not pay the bills.

Find another merchant or network that will pay & be nicer to affiliates - hopefully ASPs will realise that being fair to affiliates keeps affiliates on their network

Merchants & Networks remember- an affiliate is not just for Christmas...

I agree with most of these comments but some recent issues I have had with TD have been resolved and my e-mail were eventually dealt with in good time.

Pericom - could you expand on this?

"I tested this by doing a test on the GM card and it didnt come through.... you can test this yourselves with ADsubtract."

I'm doing well on gm card (but maybe I should be doing better?), and I know some other people are commenting how its not working too well.

Cheers

There have been several occasions where I've tried the same merchant on different networks, and every time TD's performance has been better than the others.
For example when buy.com were still around and they were with TD, CJ and UK Affiliates, TD's performance was around twice as good as CJ, and over ten times as good as UK affiliates.
I did the same test for BT Internet, and TD's performance was much better than UKA's.

My main issue with TD is that the performance is too variable from day to day. I can go from £150 one day to £30 the next, back up to £150 the day after, and there's been no change in the amount of traffic I've sent them, and the other networks will have stayed steady during this time. Maybe this could happen very occasionally, but not as often as it does with TD. And the bad days seem to be getting more frequent.