The Wrong Way to Treat Your Affiliates

Sorry, but this is going to come off as somewhat of a rant. I’ve been in many affiliate programs, and I’ve been scammed by some. I put in the hard work and I’m not treated well. This post will go into that a bit.

When I Was Scammed as an Affiliate

I’m going to go ahead and name the company because it seems like they’re maybe not around anymore. It was the Monkey Bar Gym in Madison, WI. They were a client of ours, and I liked the equipment they sold and their philosophy (at that time). I got into what they were doing, and I saw the benefits of taking my time and promoting them. Well, I did for a while. I think a couple years.

I can’t remember if I ever saw a payment from them or not, but I remember I didn’t get paid – ever. They like shut down the program – with pending payments to their affiliates not taken care of. I seem to recall it was something like $300 or so. I never saw it. I put in the work – I wrote articles, I put links on high traffic sites I owned… nothing. I never got paid.

Be Late on Payments

You never be late on payments if you have affiliates working for you. That sends trust down the toilet. If they have to ask where the payment is, that’s bad news. Like, how can you ask them to work harder for you and yet leave them hanging on payments. That simple does not work. You affiliates will spend their valuable time and energy on something else instead.

This is happening right now. The payment last month was late. I had to ask about it. Again, this month – the same thing. Not cool. The payments have been coming in around the 20th of the month for a long time, and then the last two months… late and no word about it. Not cool.

If I create a new website and am deciding which ads to run, I’m going to think twice about promoting your business if you’re late on payments and don’t say anything. I’m going to be working on an ad system for all my sites where can just click and turn ads on and off. When that’s the case, it’s going to be nice and easy to show ads for the affiliate programs that care about me.

Have Webinars But Don’t Share a Link to the Recording

If you beg and beg for me to come to your meetings, and I have a scheduling conflict, you really should provide a link to a recording. It’s just silly not to. You can’t expect your affiliates to revolve their life around your schedule. Things come up. Life happens.

Don’t Give Us Less Than 24 Hours Notice to Run a Promotion

I mean, this is just senseless.

What happened recently: “Hey, run this promotion in the next 21 hours and you get a bonus… or your customers do… or both. We’re not sure. It’s confusing how we’re explaining it, but go out and do it now.”

Like, what? Seriously?

This is rude. You’re not giving any notice, and you’re expecting your affiliates to just drop everything and serve you with less than a day to do it. No way. Life does not work like that. Tell us a week ahead when it will run, what exactly the offer is, and have it run for more than a few days.

And don’t willy nilly come up with a promotion, on the spot, in a meeting, with no thought put into it, and give us a couple days to get it done. Oh, and then basically scold us for not doing it, saying we don’t care.

Give Us Good, Branded Assets to Share

Any company that cares about their brand will provide the assets to share. Not something like, “Hey, go create your own, but we have to approve them” or something like that.

Don’t have a big launch, delay it, and during that delay don’t update your assets, and then expect us to heavily promote you. Silly.

Make sure your brand is consistent, too.

Don’t Keep Changing Your Website

This is bad. You keep changing your website, and you don’t set up redirects. We’re linking over to them, and now our sites look bad because we’re linking to pages that don’t exist. It’s on us to manage your ineptitude.

And don’t change your website to something really lame that looks worse. Yikes. Your website needs to convert – period! WE are sending the traffic we’ve worked so hard to get. If your website stinks or has not been split tested to convert well, you can’t come back at us for it. It’s your job to make absolutely sure the website you put up converts at a very high level.

You need to convert the traffic for us. If only 2% converts, that stinks. Double your conversion rate and you get happy affiliates that actually really want to send more traffic. Do you even know your conversion rate? Are you willing to share it? If no, then it must be terrible, or you don’t even know (wow).

Run Your Affiliate Program Through REAL Affiliate Software

Use something proven – not something that’s half done that sort of works. There are good platforms out there. Use them. They let us deep link your site and still receive a commission. You’re silly not to do this.

Conclusion

Yes, this is a rant. I told you it would be.

I thrive as an affiliate on consistency, planning, and offers I can actually get excited about. Missing payments, poor execution, and last minute offers that only seem to last a minute are big mistakes when running an affiliate program. You’re shooting yourselves in the foot. You can’t treat your affiliates poorly and then harp on them to make sales for you. It doesn’t work that way.

As affiliates, we’ve been burned here and there. We don’t know if all the time and effort we put into something will pay off or not. We take the gamble. We spend our precious time and effort into what we believe will pay off. We know how to do get the traffic. You need to convert it.

It’s times like these when I realize that creating your own, profitable tools to promote is the best way to go. You have control. You can do it how you want. You can treat yourself well – and how you should be treated.

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