Resolving Merchant-Side Affiliate Commission Tracking Problems
I just re-read the following comment regarding a merchant-side affiliate tracking problem that Kaycee posted to our forum some time ago.
I was appalled by her merchant’s response and wanted to make all of our readers aware of how best to handle a sticky problem such as this one.
I have a niche website featuring several merchants. Of those, two have been very steady earners for me for the last year …
About 6 weeks ago, all of a sudden conversions from the one of those merchants completely tanked! Zilch, zip, nix, nada, nothing. I’m not doing anything different, links are working fine, their merchant account is active, nothing broken on their website that I can see and I’m still sending them more or less the same amount of traffic which is reflected in my Shareasale stats. Their overall performance on SAS has flatlined also.
As a comparison, the other merchant is still converting at their usual rate.
Should I ask the program manager about this? I’m not even sure what or how to ask …
Any thoughts?
It sounded to me like the problem was probably a tracking issue at the merchant’s check-out and recommended that Kaycee should contact them ASAP.
Kaycee later posted that the merchant confirmed that they had indeed updated their site and accidently left the affiliate code off the “thank you” page and that it was now fixed.
I suggested that Kaycee contact them again and ask that she be paid commissions on estimated sales.
She did, and the merchant’s reply was “No, sorry, we can’t do that”.
Say WHAT?
Over the years, I’ve encountered affiliate commission tracking issues on the merchant side several times and the merchants ALWAYS paid up – based on each affiliate’s previous traffic and earnings history.
In many cases, a ‘bonus’ percentage was added to the commission payment as an act of good faith.
Those merchants realize on which side their bread is buttered. They were still making sales because their affiliates were still sending traffic.
They also know that if they don’t take the appropriate course of action to compensate their affiliates fairly, their reputation is at risk. There’s no shortage of opportunity to out bad merchants on affiliate forums.
So, “no, sorry” isn’t an answer.
The correct response is just basic common sense — you break, you pay.
After receiving an unsatisfactory initial response from the merchant, I would have broached the issue with the network directly. In the unlikely event the network couldn’t solve the problem, I would most certainly have advised the merchant that I would no longer promote their product. Seriously, why would an affiliate want to work with a merchant who apparently doesn’t know how to work on their own site without breaking it and then cheats affiliates out of commissions.
Last but not least, I would have chatted the issue up on other affiliate forum and named names.
And therein lies the biggest clue. I’ve never had to resort to that last step.
Have you encountered affiliate commission tracking issues on the merchant side? What was your merchant’s response? Were you able to come to an amicable solution? Let us know.
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Rosalind Gardner is a Super Affiliate blogger, author, speaker, and Internet marketing consultant.
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Yes, I have had a similar problem. I won’t name names this time. But it was actually the affiliate tracking software that was broken. they had a data center outage and there was an entire days worth of commissions down the tubes. They would not pay at all because they said the data center outage was beyond their control. The merchant was still up and running however and continued to make sales. The merchant did not offer to pay me either based on past history for Saturdays and I didn’t ask because we have had a very good relationship over the years and I do not want to stress it now.
However, I believe that this particular affiliate tracking software glitches a lot. I can’t prove it, but I believe it to be true.
All of this has conspired to make me want to be a merchant for my product instead of an affiliate.
I will have my own affiliate program soon. And you can bet that after being an affiliate and ‘knowing’ that I’ve lost plenty of sales due to affiliate tracking software – I will be taking care fo my affiliates.
Rosalind,
Have you ever experienced a merchant that has a suspiciously large number of voided sales? And it always seems to coincidentally be the large amount sales. Any idea on what a “normal range” for percent of voided sales is? Appreciate your insight.
This is not a perfect fit for this topic, but I have to ask if anyone has been cancelled from an affiliate program for being too successful. One of my programs cancelled me after several months of them being concerned that I was taking their customers. They eventually trumped up reasons for cancelling me and while I asked them to change their terms of service to reflect what they claimed I violated, they still have yet to do so. This is a very large, high profile company.
Because my pages were so successful at selling their products, I began promoting their products through another vendor who purchases from them.
Within 6 weeks, this vendor informed me that I violated his terms of service, yet is unable to tell me how. I only used the links that he had available in Commission Junction, which remain there even yet. He also informed me that he didn’t have time to discuss this as he had to fix his relations with the company that he purchases his products from. Interestingly, this is the very same company that originally dropped me.
I have asked Commission Junction for assistance in understanding this situation because nothing has changed within this vendors terms or links and there has yet to be a valid reason for terminating me. Commission Junction remains silent after more than 2 weeks.
I was sending more than $10,000 a month in product sales to these companies. To the original one, I was sending them recurrent club orders numbering 80 – 110 a month that didn’t add into the dollar sales amount.
What the heck is this? Do companies only want affiliate links and not their sales? What sense does this make? Certainly what it proves is that our affiliate business is only as successful as our vendors will allow us to be and that they can shut us down any time they chose; what are our options… their practice seems illegal, yet they have the control as is included in the terms of service.
I would love to hear what you have to say about this, Ros.
life is tough for affiliates, no doubt about that. i think i agree with everything Rosalind has to say, though actually discontinuing the promotion of a merchant based on one incident is probably not realistic as it will likely cost you a lot more money than you lost during the outage (though i can’t tell how long that was for – i would notice after 2 days). but making your grievance public is something i would recommend. affiliate managers should never be rewarded for mishandling a situation. i wonder whether the response would have been the same if you were a super affiliate for the merchant, which i assume is not the case.
Hi Roz,
Thanks for the reminder and for the advice.
I’ve had merchant-side issues in the past, too, and sometimes on sites that I admittedly was a little lazy about monitoring. The most common issue I’ve had involved cases similar to the one mentioned, and I didn’t catch the errors right off the bat.
Note to self: test links and tracking frequently to prevent tracking snafus.
Have a good day!
-John
Great headline. If your cookie has a bite-sized action and your reader completes the action, I think two things happen. Their self-confidence goes up (which feels good) and their trust in you increases.