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JLB
Joined:
05 Dec 2006
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24
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Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 5:03 am
Post subject: Another way to lose sales
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I have read about some ways that affiliates are being taken advantage of but here's one I haven't seen anyone else writing about yet.
It's not necessary to know any names, just get the general drift.
After having virtually no sales from a blitz advertising campaign that should have resulted in at least some sales, and could have been as much as $1,750 USD in commissions in one month, I had a second look at the trial software that I was promoting. To my surprise, the nag screen containing the only affiliate ID-related Buy button had an option to turn it off for the first 23 days of 30. In this case, the only sales affiliates are credited for have to be made through a link inside the software. In other words, any purchasers looking for a place to buy in the first 23 days would be diverted through the publisher's homepage with no credit to the affiliate.
I looked at another trial software being promoted by the same agent and found a different slant on the same problem. In this case I had to search long and hard to find the affiliate-linked Buy button under the Help menu, and it was not a button per se but the 11th text item on a list containing 14 links to the publisher's homepage. What are the odds a potential purchaser would click on the "right" one?
In both these cases there was plenty of room on the main screen menu to put a Buy button in plain sight but in both cases the publisher chose to hide it instead. Makes you wonder how prevalent this practice is?
I contacted the agent for these 2 companies - one of the more popular and reliable ones. They were sympathetic to my losses but said they don't have time to monitor publishers' software. It's up to the affiliates to check out trial software before they begin promoting it. If it doesn't seem affiliate-friendly, write the publisher yourself and query that.
You've been warned. |
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AllanGardyne
Site Admin
Joined:
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6326
Location:
by the beach, Australia
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Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 2:56 am
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Thanks very much for the alert. It certainly isn't affiliate-friendly.
I'd really appreciate it if you'd name the businesses involved. That would be very useful.
_________________
Allan Gardyne
AssociatePrograms.com - You're here. Explore it! |
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JLB
Joined:
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Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 3:16 am
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There's no point in mentioning company names here. I have communicated with the company I lost sales to and they have since fixed the problem by putting an affiliate-linked Buy button on the main program screen where it can be plainly seen and used by potential purchasers.
Unfortunately they have been unwilling to make up my losses as there's no way for me to produce a list of purchasers that they could cross-check with their own sales database. A hard lesson for me.
The point of my article was simply to point out to affiliates to make sure, if they're promoting software products, that the software is set up in such a way that the Buy button that would credit them for sales is plainly visible. Otherwise sales can easily be lost by purchasers going to the publisher's homepage instead. And unfortunately, there is no monitoring of this situation otherwise. |
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