There are still many things I do not understand about affiliate marketing. One of such things is the way many merchants choose to handle commissions that need to be reversed. Depending on the products or services you choose to promote, 5 or 6 reversals can very easily amount to over $1,000 in commissions. This may not be a huge deal for affiliates earning 5 figure a month, but it certainly is from me.
So if you are an affiliate manger I ask you these questions. How do you handle reversed commissions? Do you explain to your affiliates why?
I am a big man, I can handle bad news. I understand my referral could have canceled the service or returned the product. It does not take that much effort or time to explain why you are reversing my commission. But it can also can help me to improve my campaigns, which in the end is a good thing for you as well.
I imagine that all the legal mambo jumbo in the agreement between you and me may not require you to provide any explanation. If this is your approach, I don’t want to work with you.
How much effort would it take to write up three or four stock messages? Most Affiliate Networks have sufficiently advanced software such that choosing from a list of common reasons should be the default. Most stand alone efforts use off the shelf solutions so surely this is just a lack of thought? I would have expected the technology to be ready.
When an affiliate-referred transaction has to be reversed (there may be a number of reasons for it: from canceled order to duplicate or even fraud), affiliate program managers MUST explain the reason for the reversal. Depending on the affiliate network, the field for entering the reason may or may not be available. If it’s not, they should email you about it (either via an affiliate network’s internal interface or directly). Of course, this is a best practice, but unfortunately there are merchants that do not explain at all… To me, this is unacceptable as it compromises their relationship with affiliates.
For some of the things I promote where I am offering a bonus, it gets even worse as sometimes you aren’t informed about a reversal/refund for a couple of months, or the numbers just don’t seem to tie up.
One of the biggest problems is changes in payment, whereby a new account might be created for a different credit card and a previous one cancelled.
The new account won’t have the affiliate ID attached.
One of the things that I feel will help the paper chain is for customer receipts to contain some kind of identification specific to an affiliate (the aff ID and subid), and for affilaites to be notified of cancellations rather than finding out in an accounting overview at a later date.
Also some funny things can happen with things like PayPal subscriptions that get cancelled due to primary funding changes, that might result in a new account being created (not assigned to aff), but more often a cancellation/refund.
And and Geno thanks for stopping by.
In my case to get $1000 in commissions I spend about $650+ on PPC, so it felt like flushing $650 down the toilet. I am not likely to spend a penny to promote the merchant in question.
Oh well such is life I guess…
I do not spend it on promoting anything. However, I do spend a hefty amount on PPC. Sometimes its around 40%, I do feel its a waste, but I am currently looking for an alternative
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