When it comes to my organic affiliate marketing efforts I prefer to stay away from the CPA networks. There are a number of reasons for this, perhaps the main one being the rolling nature of the offers they have. In a nicely managed PPC campaign it’s no issue to swap out offers, however when you are simply link dropping on your content pages it can be a real pain in the ass when an offer is dropped. Multiply this by 10,20,50 offers that you’re running and it becomes almost unmanageable. So I stick to affiliate programs directly run by the seller. This also has it’s downsides, besides minor problems like having to organise my numerous affiliate account logins by far the biggest issue is that of being ripped off, being ripped off is shit!
Last week I discovered that yet another company was ripping me off via their affiliate program. I’m not going to mention names but I will mention the niche, web hosting. The company in question are a fantastic cheap hosting option and as a customer I’ve never had a problem. As an affiliate though I started to get a little suspicious when I noticed the offer I was split testing with was converting 300% better than theirs. One day a while back I did get all worked up and thought about sorting it once and for all but before going in full rant ahead there was always a niggle in the back of my mind that maybe it was just to do with the web pages of the 2 companies concerned. Maybe one just didn’t convert very well, even though they have a huge number of customers and seem to be one of the hosts experiencing real growth at the moment. Long story short, I never did get around to sorting out the discrepancy.
So anyhoo, last week. I did some old fashioned referral marketing, a friend (I mean a real friend, not an internet contact) had been in touch with me and wanted to know if I could recommend a host for his new small business website. No problem, I had the perfect company in mind so I passed the details on (making sure to let them know that what I was passing on was an affiliate link). This really is like old school personal recommendation stuff. Besides I knew I’d end up helping with the website so if nothing else it would make life easier having a host I was very familiar with. I waited 1 day, 2 days, 3 days for the sale confirmation. There was none. Now I know for a fact that the sign up had been done (I’d had a copy of the confirmation e-mail sent to me so I could help with name servers, see I knew I would end up helping 
) I also know that the only time the person had visited that website was through the link I gave them. All this and still no commission.
I can hear you saying “But Paul it’s only 1 sale?”. Yes, except that this is the second time that I’ve personally referred somebody to them with no commission. The first time I treated it as an anomaly (we we’re both working out of the same office so maybe an IP issue) but now I’m convinced that something isn’t right. 2 confirmed sales and a massive difference in sales with the other host I promote. I wonder just how much money I’ve lost out on in the last 6 months alone?
The lesson here is to act when you get the feeling that something isn’t right and not hold off. It’s all too easy to make excuses for people but at the end of the day it could leave you feeling very blue
3 Responses to “Being Ripped Off Is Shit!”
Willem
December 9, 2009
Paul, no one likes to get ripped off, but it happens with too many of the hosting companies, and also Amazon. You didn’t say did you, or did you not contact them and asked what’s going on with their ripp off? I had the same problem last year with probably the same hosting company and since than am not longer their affiliate.
|What you mentioned regarding the CPA offers, and how often you should change campaigns is really a big time issue, but their payouts are much higher than other types of earnings.
Paul B
December 9, 2009
I’ve asked for an explanation but I imagine my enquiry has already been stamped with the big red “ignore this” stamp and currently caught somewhere between another dimension and the bin.
On the plus side I’m positive that I have the winning numbers for the lottery tonight.
|Jeff
December 15, 2009
Getting ripped off never feels good. You should return the favor and name the host that did it. Companies like this should be wiped off the face of the Earth. And by their own self inflected reputation destruction, they probably will disappear.
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