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Why Do I Have So Many Problems With Commission Junction Affiliates?

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on May 31, 2011

It must be something with me because I don’t see all that many other people complaining about these things, although I bet they are and I’m just missing them. Once again I’m having an issue with a Commission Junction affiliate that won’t pay me and another affiliate that’s dropping me; sigh…

The one that won’t pay me is called NothingButSoftware, which of course means they’re all about technology. I purchased a LCD projector from them for one of my local organizations, a non-profit, and I should have gotten a very nice commission from them. Instead I’ve gotten nothing. I’ve sent them 5 emails, 3 regular emails and 2 through CJ, but I’ve not heard a thing.

Here’s the other side of this, though. CJ states that the best they can do is contact their affiliates and ask them to respond to their publishers. That’s the response I’ve gotten every single time from them. That and their standard “if we haven’t heard from you in 3 days we’re going to assume the problem has been taken care of.”

What the hey? You know, I’ve had this love/hate thing with CJ. Some of the affiliates they’re hooked up with have been wonderful. I would easily recommend 123inkjets because they usually pay you within hours. I had that one issue with GoDaddy but once they learned about it they took care of me. Once I had an issue with FootballFanatics, a sports apparel company, but once I provided them proof they paid me (well, eventually anyway). But some others, like these NothingButSoftware people and 101Phones (which still shows me as an affiliate even though I yanked them over a year ago) are horrible. I did have a problem with Finish Line as well but that was through Google Affiliate Network.

I can’t be the only one who believes that if a company signs an organization to help push their products that they should establish some standards for how they’re supposed to work with you. I get the impression that each advertiser is running things their own way and CJ is just the puppet intermediary. That’s a shame, and they probably wouldn’t like the association, but I keep getting cheated by their publishers and it’s not fair. And if it’s happening to me consistently then it’s happening to others as well.

I did say I have another affiliate dropping me, right? This time it’s a company called Organize.com, and they’re dropping me because I live in New York, and our state has decided that these companies are supposed to be tracking any commissions I might have and paying taxes on anything I make. And Organize.com has decided I’m not worth it; okay, all New York publishers aren’t worth it.

I have to admit that years ago I didn’t like any of this, and now I’m siding with the companies against the state. Sure, states need money, but what gives them the right to pretty much take money out of my pocket, money that I’d be spending in the state and paying taxes on the stuff I purchase, to try to get funds that, for the most part, I’m not really earning anyway? I can imagine the trouble it must be for some of these web companies to try to track all these different state rules; I’m not mad at them for this. At least they didn’t drop me because supposedly I wasn’t making them sales like Brookstone did. And get this; even PokerStars hasn’t dropped me, although I pretty much can’t do anything with them for now since I can’t advertise to an American audience and thus it pretty much kills what I can do with them.

Affiliate marketing isn’t supposed to be this difficult. You make a sale, you get paid, you move on. This type of thing keeps coming up, not having affiliates pay you, and then it destroys the confidence we have in the process. It’s no wonder we’re always writing and worrying about scams.

Except this isn’t a scam; it’s just bad business practices.

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I Know Nothing About Affiliate Marketing

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 2, 2011

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about affiliate marketing, something I’ve been a part of for at least 5 years by now, and wondering “what the heck am I doing wrong?” I’ve made few affiliate sales over the years, but at least I can say I’ve made some. I guess that puts me ahead of a few people, but so many others are really rocking the industry. Then, after yesterday’s escapade and thinking about it some more, I realized one very interesting fact; I know nothing about affiliate marketing!

Going Crazy by Frédéric Dupont

That’s a very disconcerting thing to come to, and though it’s probably over the top, especially since I once wrote an article on how affiliate marketing works, truth be told I’ve been looking for answers for a long time. I’ve read a lot of stuff; I even put together a post where folks could download free ebooks on the subject.

Last night on Zac Johnson’s site, as he was talking about another affiliate marketing program, I left a comment saying that it was nice for him to profile, but I wondered how he did things, even though I had read his book Six Figure Affiliate Blogging and even wrote a review on it. No answer yet, but he’s probably still asleep since I wrote it around 2AM.

You know what the problem is? Well, it’s actually twofold. One, I’m not innovative when it comes to marketing in the first place. It’s never been my strong suit, even though I’ve been working independently for almost 10 years now. I’m okay at networking, which has saved my behind over all these years, but marketing; nope. Two, with all the books and such that I’ve read over all these years, information I’ve eaten up and memorized and understood, I’ve never picked up that one big nugget that I’ve really been looking for, and that’s the first 3 steps of it all. And no, I don’t need to read “create a product” or “set up an autoresponder” or “capture emails for lists” again; none of that tells me a thing. I once asked Willie Crawford this question and he said he’d think about it and get back to me on it; didn’t happen, unfortunately.

I belong to Commission Junction as one of my affiliate programs, as you know. I used to pop one of their products or banner ads into every post up until the new year began. At least half of the time the product or banner ad had something to do with the topic of the day. Obviously just showing something that no one was interested in on that day didn’t work, as I rarely made sales from doing all that work, though I did get a few clicks here and there. My question was what the heck was I really supposed to do when I either selected a product or a banner ad from one of these advertisers; that’s the step I’ve never really gotten.

At least I did get one question answered a few days ago on Lisa Irby’s blog, where she had a post, along with a video, titled Why Some Blogs Don’t Perform Will Affiliate Marketing. It wasn’t in the video, which was still neat to watch, but in her response to the comment I made on the blog. I said it sounded expensive to do what she did, having to buy a lot of domain names, and after a back and forth she said she doesn’t buy a bunch of domains, but drives people to an existing site where she markets her items.

That was an aha moment for me because she’s the first person to ever say that from all that I’ve read. It takes a load off my mind to know that I don’t have to do like some of these big time marketers, create a product, buy a new domain name and push it like crazy. Whew! At least stage one is set; I’ve finally learned something useful, so thanks Lisa. That one nugget gave me other things to think about, and really that’s what it’s all about. I now have a better idea for what I could be doing.

In 2009 I wrote a post called Let’s Learn Affiliate Marketing Together; seems we still need to learn that lesson.

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How Do You Market Short Sales Products?

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jun 23, 2010

I’m actually putting a real question out to the masses (yup, y’all get to be the masses today) because I honestly don’t know what I could possibly do with this particular situation.

Most of you know that I’m hooked up with Commission Junction. The ads at the top and on the left side are CJ ads, and they rotate the banners each time someone stops by. And when you see products at the bottom of each post, most of them come from CJ as well.

One thing about some of the affiliate programs I participate with is that they send out regular emails talking about some of their promotions. Those that have a one month promotion are easy to deal with, because I have that sales page you see to the right with me holding the parrot that I update every couple of weeks with those types of things as they come. Those are fairly easy to handle.

The ones I’m having an issue with, and that I’m asking y’all how you’d handle them, are the advertisers that have sales that last anywhere from 24 to 72 hours only. These things come fast and furious, and sometimes the deals are pretty sweet. However, I do have other things to do, and having to go through all those emails every day, set up the code on the site, then go back and remove it during the same time period is overly cumbersome.

I had thought about popping those things onto this blog quickly, but my mind says that would degrade the quality of the blog, as who’d really want to see a post with only sales ads in it? I don’t think I’d want those things popping up in my reader all the time, even with big sales, because I doubt I’d be interested in every one of those products. I know some people might be, but I’m thinking that’s a bad way of handling things.

So, my issue is what to do with those things. Do I just ignore them and move on with my life? Do I create a blog where I can just pop those links in and go about my business? Do I try to find an hour every day to either pop new links in or remove old ones? How would you handle it?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010-2011 Mitch Mitchell

GoDaddy Almost Drops Me As An Affiliate

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on May 12, 2010

Okay, this time I have to admit I’m stunned.

I got a letter on Friday saying that as of the 14th I’ll be dropped as an affiliate from GoDaddy because of low sales. This one shocks me because over the years I’ve probably made the most money as a Commission Junction publisher from GoDaddy than I have from anyone else. I get all my domains from there. My friends mainly get their domains from there. I’ve recommended to my clients that if they want to get a new domain to go there.

Now I’m irked. I mean, if I’d made no money from them I still wouldn’t like it because, after all, it’s not costing anyone anything for me to help promote them. But when I’ve made some money for someone, and for myself, and then have them want to drop me… that just seems disingenuous. They did say I could write a letter explaining why I shouldn’t be dropped, which I did, but when someone only gives you a week to respond and you’re responding by email, and it has nothing to do with you as a customer, well, I don’t expect much.

Or at least I didn’t. I got a response back from them, saying they weren’t going to drop me after all. They appreciate me as a customer and publisher, and were looking for those who were no longer participating in the program. Whew! Talk about timing; this part is a rewrite of the original article that was going to post at this time, and I’m glad because I’ve always been a fan of GoDaddy, and for once it’s an affiliate that I’ve made money with.

So now I don’t need to find someone else who markets links, because I don’t work with anyone who decides I’m not good enough for me. I did that with Brookstone and have never gone into their store. I thought I was going to have to push domains through 1&1 instead, since that’s where I host my site. Nope, guess I’m good.

I’m glad it’s worked out for once in my favor. Now, let’s buy GoDaddy!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010-2011 Mitch Mitchell

101Phones Not Paying Me My Commission

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Feb 19, 2010

Once again, I have to “out” one of my affiliate programs for not processing my commission on a product I’ve marketed for them.

At the end of my post about the Six-Figure Blueprint book, I posted an affiliate product from 101Phones, a 2-line phone with two portable extensions, which in essence gives you 3 phones to put in different rooms. About two weeks ago I had someone purchase that phone; I know that because I was informed of the purchase. I got the numbers I needed to verify it, just in case I never got credit for it.

This is another company through Commission Junction, so I went to the CJ site and found the affiliate information for these people and sent them an email with all the information. By the way, I waited a week to see if my commission was going to show. I waited 3 days, and didn’t hear a thing. I then sent a second follow up email, and I included another email address I found for the company, as well as an email address I had for CJ, which I’d had to use at one point last year when I initially had problems getting credit for another sale. Here it is, 4 days after that one, and once again I’ve not heard anything.

In the second email, I told them if I didn’t hear from them I was going public with my complaint; this is it. Now, why am I doing this? One, I think two weeks is long enough to wait for notification of my commission, especially since CJ says it should only take a week at best. Two, I don’t want anyone else getting cheated if these folks are scam artists. Three, I know they’re on Twitter, and since my posts show up on Twitter when they see the headline, if they care about their business, they’ll head over here and see what I’ve written and I’ll get some kind of action. It worked that way when I had issues with both Panda and Football Fanatics in the past.

It’s hard enough to make money online without feeling as though you’re being cheated. This time around, though, I have to admit that I’m surprised I haven’t heard from Commission Junction either. After all, they’re the initial folks helping to support these companies, and it has to make them look bad when they’re affiliates aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.

If it takes another 4 or 5 days to get some action, I’ll be removing any advertisements for their products, sending them an even sterner email, then probably dropping them forever. I kind of like their stuff, and the product was delivered very fast, but if this is how they treat their affiliates I don’t want to have anything to do with them.

Yeah, this is how I take a stand; I hope y’all don’t just sit by and let someone treat you badly, especially when it’s money that’s concerned.