Stop Loosing Money With Affiliate Programs

Posted on January 17, 2007
Filed Under Affiliate Networks, Affiliate Programs, Ebooks, Forums

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A new year begins and we think about good fortune and getting essential ‘Things To Do’ tasks in order. As I look through my web sites and make some updates and amendments I find that a few programs have been either discontinued or redirected to a completely different web site without prior notice.

I wouldn’t mind but I did not receive any forewarning.

Beware of any merchants who change the destination URL of your ‘ money making affiliate link to a non-profit making destination.

OK so some merchants have gone bankrupt or changed business but this leaves YOU the affiliate ‘in the dark’ until to attempt to login to your stats or check some links.

I normally perform broken link checks but this does not reveal problems, particularly when the link is redirected to another ‘live link’.

Yeah, you guessed it I’m a little peeved at this.

The good news is that I have used link tracking tools so in most cases all I need to do is to edit the URL to another. I’ll take it all in my stride and think of it as general site maintenance.

A word of warning, keep track of ALL of your affiliate programs and contact the merchant if you suspect tracking problems of any kind.

Normally you will receive email notification of changes or cancelled programs so add these essentials emails to your address book.

The worst culprits are those that do not contact their affiliates to notify them that they have changed the entire structure of their affiliate program. Without naming the company directly, they have changed from a regular commission structure open to anyone to a drastically changing eligibility to ‘partners’ who can bring them One Million Pounds in business per annum!

Now I have their emails whitelisted and I contacted them by email and direct by phone to change my personal account details.

They claim that the program changed during summer 2006 and notified all current affiliates via email. If this was true then how can they explain that in October 2006 when I called their office that NO MENTION was given regarding the startling new changes for ‘eligible partner’.

I know of many other webmasters who have affiliate links to the site on their web sites and they too had absolutely no idea of the change in the affiliate program. Especially as their affiliate links still point to the main web site, giving them no immediate cause for concern.

This company is huge and has no excuse for such underhand tactics.

Any way I thought it would be helpful to point out some changes that you should be be aware of.

Of course there are affiliate program managers who take the necessary steps to ensure that their current affiliates are well informed of program and policy changes.

Details of some programs that have changed are as follows:

Armand Morin changed his affiliate program during December 2006.

I have to admit that I had subscribed to several emails and unsubscribed from what I thought was the Big Seminar however it would seem that I accidentally unsubscribed from the affiliate program as well.

Oops!

I owe a HUGE thanks to the Super Affiliate, Rosalind Gardner for her post.;-)

Just as well that I use tracking links for affiliate URL’s so all I had to do was change one file and viola all of my money making links were updated instantly!

Allen Says sent out an email during December 2006 to announce that his MyBlogNetwork.com will be discontinued. All affiliates with a balance will receive their commission payouts.

The good news is that Allen has a brand new site in addition to the infamous Warrior Forum, called My Warrior Network.

Russell Brunson has some highly motivated affiliate managers working for him to skyrocket the performance of affiliate sales. Plus he has a prime quality new DotComSecrets home study course I previously mentioned
that you should check out.

It’s one of the most comprehensive blueprints for setting up a highly profitable business.

Top Tips

Just remember to always keep in touch with your affiliate program managers and keep a list of all programs you have signed up for. Read my affiliate tips to help you decide what key points to look for when deciding to enroll into an affiliate program.

Also take some time out to review your affiliate programs make sure you are getting paid on time and evaluate your position. You may want to discontinue some programs altogether but make sure you request your payments before deleting your account.

Beware of affiliate programs that require YOU to initiate a request for payment or else you will forfeit earnings due.

I read an email from Phil Wiley who had this problem.

If I can get details of the company he mentioned I will post a comment here for you.

Looking forward to that next big check. LOL

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Comments

5 Responses to “Stop Loosing Money With Affiliate Programs”

Shane W Cramer on April 4th, 2007 1:04 am

Every affiliate program on the Internet is promising to make you money then you join them and sweat it out promoting your guts out only for them to disappear or change the links so that you earn nada.

who can we trust?

Even merchants on affiliate networks can close shop and leave us affiliates with hundreds of links to remove. Getting fed up with my current state of bad dues.
JD Wagner on April 7th, 2007 11:43 am

People need to double check their programs and sign up for the one’s they are gonna use. Get rid of programs that don’t pay or you have no time to promote and check that your click thru’s are tracked from control panel may help in the long run.

Don’t you think?
Ariel on April 7th, 2007 2:19 pm

Enjoyed reading this site, i needed some info on this subject & your post helped me out a lot thank you for that
Richard Myer on November 29th, 2007 5:50 pm

I’ve given thought to this and will be looking through my affiliate programs to weed out all the one’s that are not making money for me.

I didn’t think about promoting a program that no longer exists. Is this legal? Better to check all emails in my address book, although many times I get messages from several email addresses from the same company. it’s hard to keep up.

Will bookmark this article and make sure I’ve done this before my upcoming new year resolutions. thanks
Nancy P Redford on December 21st, 2007 4:35 pm

Hi everyone,

It’s now coming up to Christmas 2007 and once again I’m deleting and sorting through affiliate programs once again.

Seems like a NEVER ENDING pain in the neck sometimes. Usinf raw affiliate links can cause time consuming problems when you need to change code or remove a program alltogether. I highly recommend cloaked URL’s so that you can chsnge the destination URL remotely and not lose out on commissions. Find some software links here:
http://www.miriadz.com

Nancy