I'm Just Sharing

I’ve been looking around for the next big thing to test in some fashion, and came across Paydotcom as someone to check out. What attracted me to it was seeing that they supposedly similar to Clickbank, which, as you know, I participate with in some fashion. However, what they offered is that when someone purchased an item, you automatically got paid through your Paypal account, or you’d get a monthly check, no matter the amount. That sounded enticing for my internet marketing efforts.

I went to the site and looked around first. The company creator is Mike Filsaime, more known for his Butterfly Marketing campaign than Paydotcom, so I figured it wouldn’t be all that bad. It didn’t look terrible, and they even had a widget and their own affiliate program that you could sign up for to promote them. I checked out their marketplace and saw some things that looked similar to Clickbank, and I figured “what the hey”. Signing up as an affiliate was free, and I’ve signed up for other things, so I went ahead and signed up.

It wasn’t until after I signed up that the first little irritation hit me. They pay you your commissions immediately, but they also charge you a fee for selling someone else’s product. I wasn’t crazy to see that. They will either send you a bill, or you can give them a credit card and they’ll just take it out of your earnings on a monthly basis. For some reason, getting charged to market someone else’s products just doesn’t sit well with me. Maybe that’s how it works for other affiliate programs, in the background, but I’ve always been of the assumption that all fees incurred were paid by the marketer, not the seller.

So, now I’m irritated. I decide to go look through the marketplace, to see if there was anything that might spark my interest enough to even consider paying a fee for selling it. There wasn’t; nothing really interested me all that much. I’ve been known to be persnickety, and maybe that’s how I was feeling after finding out about the fee, but, well, truthfully, most of what I saw being promoted looked like junk, and expensive junk at that. I’m not saying it’s junk, just that the way it’s listed gave me that impression. They do have lots more stuff than Clickbank, or at least it seemed that way. Both of these is probably because, unlike Clickbank, Paydotcom doesn’t examine what the marketers are selling up front. With Clickbank, you have to show them your sales page, how you’ll accept payments, and then your return and refund policy before they’ll allow you to use their services. With Paydotcom, they let you go and “hope” you’ll do the right thing.

At that point I decided it wasn’t for me, and wanted to just cancel and delete my account; nothing, nada, zip. I couldn’t find it anywhere. The best I could find was how I could cancel my “newsletter” subscription, which supposedly I was going to get paid for, but since I never signed up for one, nor gave them a credit card number, I’m assuming that I wasn’t going to get it, though I started wondering about that because I did give them my email address to my Paypal account. Maybe I’m paranoid, but that smacks of smarmy from where I’m sitting. I did send customer service a ticket asking to have my account removed, and they did remove me the next day.

Obviously I’m not recommending this group to anyone, although I’d love to hear from anyone who’s using them to see if you have a different point of view on it. Maybe if you’re looking for affiliates to market your product you’ll feel better about it all, but from an affiliate marketing perspective, I’d say this company may not be the one for you. By the way, I did do a little research on it after I decided I wanted out, and there were some concerns expressed by others. One is that Paydotcom seems more like a virtual company than a real one; it’s almost like it’s just a middleman for transactions, since the seller is the one who’d be paying you, and Paydotcom can auto-bill you without there being anyone around. A second was that it looks like many of the products are old and some are expired, which then makes it seem like the site isn’t getting regular maintenance. I’m not saying these are necessarily true, just a couple of items I saw that others have said.

In this case, it’s “seller beware”. It won’t be me.

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