Speaking Of Dumb Affiliates...

Program owners, what do you do when an affiliate is using the wrong linking code and sending sales but not being creditted for those sales?

I have a guy right now who is sending 10 or so sales a week to Uniform Cocks from one of his sites but i have tried emailing him a couple of times telling him that his linking code is wrong and he hasnt changed it.

This has been happening for about 2 months now and whilst im enjoying the free traffic and sales i really want to find out who this affiliate actually is so that i can make sure he/she is being creditted with the sales they are sending.

I tried the whois infomation thing but they have privacy protection on their domain.

So, what to do, do i just keep accepting the free traffic and sales?

Regards,

Lee

If you want to be really nice, you could set up a redirect so that the incorrect affiliate code is rewritten by Apache to the correct code, but to be honest, if you've made a genuine attempt to contact the affiliate and gotten no response, you could just wait for him to contact you.

My experience is that the privacy protection services for domains do actually have email addresses that work... it forwards on to the actual email... so if you haven't already tried that, I'd say send an email there.

if it makes you feel better, you could just send his rev-share payouts to me to help finance my plan for world domination :shades:

Not sure i'm following this? If it's the wrong link, how is it still generating a sale, and how do you know who is sending the sale? If you know, then I'd credit him.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bec

Not sure i'm following this? If it's the wrong link, how is it still generating a sale, and how do you know who is sending the sale? If you know, then I'd credit him.

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Well the link is right, but he isnt using his affiliate ID in it.

Im able to see the URL for the referred sales in CCBill but unfortunately, he doesnt reply to my emails that i got via a WHOIS search on another of his sites.

Regards,

Lee

With a case like this, Lee, you think to think of what kind of webmaster you want to be known as. You are already meeting your contractual obligations, so it has nothing to do with legal anything. And you did try to contact him with is a big plus.

But you could...

a) do nothing
b) redirect traffic to his link via .htaccess or whathaveyou.
c) Send a letter to his address on record telling him to update his link.
d) Same as c), but also say that you are happy to sort out his earnings and pay him for what he should have earned if he contacts you anytime before August 1st.

Obviously you can't run a business for affiliates that don't like to use their linking codes. No one expects you to. But whatever you do here, it may wind up getting posted on a message board. You might just get a burst of nice publicity someday thanking you publicly for being such a sport and paying someone for his affiliate income when you were under no legal obligation to do so.

I had a case once where my assistant joined an affiliate program for me and failed to enter my ePassporte account. My finances were a mess back then so I never noticed that I wasn't getting paid. Several years later the company shifted over to CCBill links. We updated, started getting paid for them via CCBill, and never noticed the prior missing payments.

One day I noticed several hundred dollars of unpaid money in their stats area. When contacted about it, they said it was awaiting for me to enter my ePassporte account. Once I did so it went out during their next payment period.

The website did what was legally required of them and I can't fault them for it. But it sure would have been nice if five years before I had gotten a little note from them saying they had money for me if I'd go update my ePassporte account early. And perhaps year letters after that attempting to make good on their debt to me.

So to this day I continue to have neutral feelings for the affiliate company. They did what was legally required of them and no more. As such, I have no better feelings for them than any other affiliate. Perhaps that was worth the interest they made on my money over those years, but I'm not sure it's how I would want to be known as a businessman.

--Aaron

If the affiliate doesn't check the e-mail address that they provided when they signed up and you have made multiple attempts to contact them...

I'd notify CCBill so they have a record of the error on file then keep the money.

It really isn't rocket science to replace XXXXXX with your affiliate number in a link but it is an easy mistake to make.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GayGeek

a) do nothing
b) redirect traffic to his link via .htaccess or whathaveyou.
c) Send a letter to his address on record telling him to update his link.
d) Same as c), but also say that you are happy to sort out his earnings and pay him for what he should have earned if he contacts you anytime before August 1st.

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Well see, therein lays the problem....

b) I cant redirect his traffic via .htaccess because i actually dont know what his proper affiliate ID is.

c) I cant mail a letter to him because i dont know what his affiliate account is.

The way i figure it right now, for the last 6+ months this affiliate has just been sending me free traffic which is productive and there really isnt anything i can do about it because i cant check their detilas in CCBill and they use privacy on their domains....

I guess whoever it is doesnt mind giving away free traffic/money... I know right now im not minding at all :)

Regards,

Lee

Hrm. I'd suggest talking to CCBill but that's a moot issue. I put in a feature request almost a year ago and get monthly automated e-mailings from them now saying that they will get back to me shortly regarding my suggestion. CCBill has serious customer service schizophrenia. They can be so helpful in so many ways, and yet unbelievably awful in others.

Unless your affiliate software has a way to send him a private message next time he logs in (assuming you have a login area -- I don't recall), I'd say he's SOL. If he ever contacts you then you can pay up. But in the meantime, how are you to pay him even if you wanted to?

--Aaron