Books Direct - Ouch

[Freebie]

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Dear Affiliates,

Commission levels across all Books Direct brands are consolidating from £10 to £5 per screened application. This reflects our business need to ensure that members are recruited on a profitable basis.

However, don?t be deterred, as we are still committed to bringing you great offers and enticing your traffic to make you money. Books Direct is the premier book club in Britain, bringing your customers exceptional value for money and great choice.

I hope that this news will not deter you from continuing to use our fantastic creative in 2004. The new pricing structure will come into effect on the 1st February.

Once again thank you all for your support Keep a look out for the next newsletter, with some great offers.

Kind regards,

Books Direct

[Mogga]

Is this on a session cookie?
Time for them to come off completely I think.

[Keith]

oh dear

However, don?t be deterred

I'm sure if the Books direct staff were told their salary was going to be halved they would be a tad deterred.

[Mogga]

I think I'll email and say why I'm dropping the program.

Done.

[Liz T]

Your feedback would be welcome, and I am sure they will be happy to expand on why they have had to do this.
I will pass this on to them..

For my own part, I do have some feedback -

I understand how this affects everyone, however the commission was always very high and in actual fact the cost of new members to Books Direct was way above the commission they paid. They were happy to pay a good bounty to you and have run a successful campaign for everyone for many many years now (they are one of our oldest clients) on this basis. Furthermore there were a high level of unsuccessful memberships post sign up which weren't deleted from your accounts, until they brought in the reconciliation mid last year.

No company can continue to pay out and make losses on their new members permanently.

I still think £5 is fair considering the new members only have to pay roughly £50 for an entire commitment - that is 10% cpa which is not bad.

In addition the conversion rate on the program has been consistently over 1% and so your earnings per click were anything but poor.

Other points of view are welcome on this,

Best Regards
Liz

TradeDoubler
www.tradedoubler.com
Improving online business.

[angelabx]

Conversions have been bad for a while and even at £10 it was looking weak.

At £5 they must be joking!

Come first of Feb it's an end to what once (long ago) was a very lucrative programme for me.

Goodbye BD.

[getvisible]

I'm suprised someone hasn't used the "weakest link" catchphrase on this one!

[Mogga]

liz - some feedback from an affiliate who is also a customer of theirs -

If they don't make a profit out of their customers it isn't through lack of trying. They constantly bombard customers with junk mail in their regular book packs - I had about 13 items of "selling stuff" in this months bookclub pack - they promote other bookclubs, videos etc etc.
They also charge postage on books considerably higher than other book sources - which makes it harder to promote them I think.

A session cookie for what is a years committment is quite mean anyway I think - if their customers aren't worth more for us then I'm quite happy to drop these next week.

Their program has dropped commission and cookie (and didn't they drop entirely last xmas ?) - not inspiring.

There are other book sellers online with more favourable terms and they will be getting my book traffic in future.

[Liz T]

Thanks Di,
Will pass this on,
Liz

[CMG]

Originally posted by Mogga
Is this on a session cookie?
Time for them to come off completely I think.

I also will be completely dropping them.
I don't think they'll get cheaper more effective advertising anywhere else! If they pay a few grand to stick an advert in a magazine, how many conversions does that generate? I seriously doubt they're paying less than £10/conversion!

[Jeff]

When Books Direct first joined Tradedoubler (over two years ago), they said at the time that the £10 they were paying was an introductory commission rate, and their normal rate would be £5. So I don't think we can complain about them taking two years to drop their introductory rate.

The problem with Books Direct is the way other factors have reduced their performance.

Even before this commission change I'm earning a tiny fraction of what I was earning two years ago, even though I'm sending them more visitors now. First they dropped the cookie length, then they changed the validation process, so the conversion rate has taken a massive drop.

As an example of the way this program has changed in the last two years:

Dec 2001: 409 clicks, £960 commission, £2.35 per click
Dec 2002: 804 clicks, £324 commission, 40p per click
Dec 2003: 1520 clicks, £86 commission, 5.7p per click.

When the conversion rate (and earnings per click) were high, it encouraged me to promote them more, and you can see the result of this in the increased number of visitors. But we've been rewarded for this by reduced conversion rates, and now lower commission. I'm not going to waste any more time promoting this company, I'll be sending people to Amazon instead.

[jess1]

Liz: Golden rule, merchants should never ever decrease their commissions! Ever! Its affiliate marketing unwritten rule!
Affiliates will drop merchants like flies if they do this. In all the years of affiliate marketing this is one lesson that should have been learnt at the beginning!

[Jon]

On the cost side, the quality of their binding and paper is significantly lower than it was "years ago". Once upon a time you could be proud of a collection of BCA books. These days, I have to turn the pages carefully for fear of accidentally ripping them!

On the income side, Mogga is absolutely right about the level of cross marketing they undertake. Many of those inserts cost third party advertisers a fortune. Their postage charges are hysterically high and you would have to work exceptionally hard as a customer to keep the cost of a commitment to only £50.

Far, far less than convinced by your noble, but arguably misguided, defence.

[John]

The £50 cost to consumer is an interesting argument, but slightly flawed... That is the minimum amount a customer can spend to satisfy their membership conditions, and does not take into account:

1. The average spend per member.

2. The cross-promotion of the other BCA clubs (as has been mentioned above)

3. The value of the member's details which are actively sold/rented on a CPM basis with every mailshot

4. The average cost per aquisition for other BCA marketing activity (newspaper/magazine ads etc - I'd like to see them get a CPA of £10 with those!)

The claim that they're losing money @ £10 CPA just doesn't wash with me, and personally I find £5 CPA an insult. We've already seen a decline in conversion rates from 15%+ in late 2002 to just over 2% following their "reconciliation process"

At £5 CPA, our links are coming down from the 1st Feb.

[Mogga]

Thanks John - thats what I meant - you've just expained it very nicely.