“Affiliate Programs That Sucks…..”
Have you ever had this experience….. you pick an affiliate program to promote, you send some traffic. Before you know it, you are getting some sales! Yes, you are profitable! Then you update your business ROI spreadsheet and everything looks really positive. You look at your bank account or PayPal account and you notice something not right!
Your commissions are not paid to you yet! What happened? This is the problem with private affiliate programs which are not on any affiliate network. Since they are not on any networks, they can take very long to pay you and still get away with it!
Sometimes, these products have a 60 day money back guarantee and your commissions will only be approved after 60 days. If you are using paid traffic to promote such programs, make sure you have enough money because this is bad for your cash flow.
Go back and read the affiliate sign up page, read the fine print and you would find that some of them have a very high payment threshold. If you only got 2 – 3 sales then your sales stopped, then you might not get paid at all!
There was once I promoted such an affiliate program, I missed the threshold by just under $10 and I had to wait for a very long time to be paid. Then I tried to request for my commission but the merchant just told me to promote again!
On 1 hand why should I promote again since the conversions are not good enough and it takes so long for commissions to be approved. On the other hand, if I do not promote, I will miss my threshold and I may never get paid! Either way, I am on the losing end…..
Affiliate Networks And Private Affiliate Programs
Affiliate networks are more reliable when it comes to payments, especially the more established ones. You also have a wider range of offers to choose from. Your payment is consolidated nicely for you. The only disadvantage is that you would have more direct competition.
Private affiliate programs may or may not be reliable when it comes to payments. Your commissions might take a longer time to be approved and your threshold might be high. Your payments are not consolidated for you. The main advantage is that you would have much lesser direct competition.
What To Look Out For
Sub ID Tracking
Almost all the major affiliate networks, including CPA (Cost Per Action) networks have subid tracking. This is important if you are doing paid search such as Google AdWords because it helps you identify the keywords which are making you money and the ones which are not.
Payment Mode
Are you getting paid by check, direct deposit or PayPal? If you are not a USA citizen, clearing checks would take awhile. Mine takes about 30 days to clear plus I have to wait 2 weeks for the check to arrive in my mail. This is why my top choice is always direct deposit and my second choice is PayPal.
Cash Flow
When you use paid traffic, you usually have to pay within 30 days. If you get your affiliate commission after 60 days, you will have to use money out of your savings. On the other hand, if you get paid after 15 days and your traffic bill comes after 30 days, you pay for it using your commission.
Conclusion
This was my story….. When I first started out, I promoted so many different affiliate programs that I had difficulty keeping track of who have paid me and who have not. Now my approach is to always make it a priority to promote offers from affiliate networks first.
If you still want to promote offers from private affiliate programs, you can play it safe by not promoting it actively. You can promote on your resource page or your autoresponder emails. In this way, even if they pay you late, cash flow is no big issue for you.
Look at it this way, if you are getting sales while promoting in a passive manner, it only shows that the offer is converting. When you can see that the offer converts plus the merchant pays you on time, that is where you can choose to promote more actively.
Enjoy…..
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