A heated discussion came up this week at the Commission Junction forum I do a lot of support at. you suck

A CJ affiliate said: “I am writing about the way in which advertisers do not really look out for the hard working affiliates. They are naturally in business to make money so if they can get away without paying too much in referrals the better for them. I know this sounds harsh but think about it. If you are an affiliate just check the Advertiser details page be it CJ or any other tracking program. My last personal opinion — CJ is not the affiliates friend. Here is an example of how the Advertisers screw the affiliates…”

He goes on to site a CJ Advertiser’s program detail page which offers a 1 day cookie and one time purchase occurrence. Then a heated discussion ensued about whether it was CJ, the merchants or both that were screwing affiliates. Many sited experiences with merchants they think intentionally “screw” affiliates. I offered a little different perspective on the issue:

Some affiliate programs SUCK because the merchants just don’t know any better! Many times when merchants offer a 1 day cookie or 1 time occurrence it’s out of total ignorance about how affiliate marketing works or how to set up CJ. You would not even believe the # of merchants that have a secretary, web designer or even the company owner themselves who know nothing about AM set up the program. When you wonder why some merchants never return emails or take weeks to approve you on CJ, many times it’s because no one is home and the program was set-up, then left on auto-pilot to some degree.

I know because I offer free consultations to merchants and get NUMEROUS calls where the merchant does not know what cookies even are, they don’t know what parasites are and they had some admin type set up the program and just expect it to run itself - then wonder why it fails. So it’s not always that merchants are trying to screw affiliates. Sometimes they just don’t know any better - which is still a big fault and points to the fact that they don’t value affiliate partners and this important marketing channel enough to give it the time and attention it deserves.

The parting advice I offered was: “CJ makes 30% of whatever the merchant pays affiliates, so they want you guys to earn more and they want long cookies too. I’m not justifying or making excuses for anyone, just telling it like it is. I’m MS. Pro-affiliate. I want you guys to make every penny that is fair. Some merchants just don’t know any better and some don’t have the staff to run a program right. Bottom line - you can’t push a rope and you can’t make every merchant see the light. So move on and find a merchant that will treat you right.” Then to myself I said “this is why there is such a huge demand for outsourced affiliate management.”

Come to the forum and vote in our Sucky Merchants Poll!