This was one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve conducted in the Friday Podcast series.
Nicky Senyard, originally from Australia, is an affiliate marketing veteran, having founded two affiliate networks – the ShareResults affiliate network and Income Access focused on online gaming.
I’ve known Income Access affiliate manager Jamie Fortunaso from the forums for close to 2 years and his professionalism has always been apparent. It’s no wonder that Nicky has created one of the most personable and enjoyable networks to work with.
(Left-to-right: ShareResults/Income Access founder and CEO Nicky Senyard, Income Access affiliate manager Jamie Fortunaso, ShareResults affiliate manager Le Michelle Ngyuen)
During our discussion we covered a gamut of topics including:
- Business considerations when merchants add affiliate marketing to their sales/distribution channels
- How the affiliate-to-network and merchant-to-network relationships can be enhanced
- Geographic growth of affiliate marketing opportunities across North America/Canada, Europe and Asia
Merchants and affiliates will get some great content out of this session.
Check out the Friday Podcast:
-> ShareResults affiliate network
-> Income Access online gaming network
Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins has got the pictures from the professional photographer from the recent Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas last month (all 630 of them) and has mentioned them on the Affiliate Summit blog. You can check out the Affiliate Summit West Flickr photostream.
Here’re some of my favourites:
With the ShareResult affiliate network affiliate manager Julia Steat at the Great Affiliate Road Rally
With Notebook Forums‘ Laura Alter (yes, she is 6’ and wearing heels…)
After talking to him for about a year, I finally got to meet B5 blog network’s training manager Tris Hussey
At the social media session with Justine Ezarik and Tris Hussey
Zac Johnson and Amit Mehta at the Super Affiliate session
At the “Engaging the Media” panel session with Lisa Picarille, Anik Singal, Valerie Stevens and Jim Kukral
I don’t know about you, but I think Jim Kukral deserves some type of award for being the most photographed!
Be sure to check out the other pictures at the ASW photo collection.
Affiliate Summit as always was a blast (I still have about 500 of my own pictures to put up somewhere…).
If you’re keen to bring your affiliate business to the next level, be sure to check out Affiliate Summit East from Aug 10-12 in Boston, MA.
This is a follow up to my “What Happens When Merchants Don’t Play By Affiliate Marketing Rules?” post, which I believe affiliate marketers will be keenly interested in.
I called the merchant and talk to them, and what they told me surprised me.
But first, a summary: With a gap in a web service merchant’s affiliate commission payouts on an affiliate network and their in-house program, I was keen to hear what veterans in the affiliate industry had to say. The commission payout through the affiliate network was about 50% higher, compared to the merchant’s in-house program.
Communicating with the merchant was certainly a key point in addressing this issue and some might say the information gap was being unfairly used in this instance:
“That’s retarded. Tell them to retroactively apply the network rate to your in-house sales from the date they started that network rate. If they won’t, dump them..” – Geordie Carswell, RevenueWire EVP.
“I attribute the fault in this to the affiliate manager/team handling your account. It is he or she’s job is to make sure affiliates (super or not) are taken care of. That person should have given you the choice as to which network you promote their program through, or at least told you about both offers. You are a well known affiliate and blogger and you should have been informed of both options. The affiliate marketing managers of Pepperjam are in constant contact with the affiliates who make a difference our programs. We build and form relationships to gain trust. The affiliate manager who was assigned to you did not do that.” – Robyn Martin, Pepperjam Affiliate Marketing Director.
“Before I began working for LinkConnector Affiliate Network, I was the affiliate manager for a few different companies. I considered it one of my responsibilities to keep our payouts consistent between the in-house program and the network programs. If anything, our in-house program sometimes had a higher payout because no additional fees were involved. I would never have considered that disparity between commissions – that’s just shooting yourself in the foot.” – Jeannine Crooks, LinkConnector.com Affiliate Sales Manager.
“I personally feel strongly that bigger and pro-actively managed programs SHOULD offer 2 versions.
In-house and a good network. TYPICALLY, but not in this case the in-house commissions would be a little higher, possibly longer cookies, etc. to make the in-house option more attractive and offset network costs…a possible scenario hit me that COULD make sense of this situation. Not saying this scenario would make the situation any easier for you to take but…
If the merchant, like many are was clueless and the affiliate program was not being tended to properly and they hired an OPM.” – Linda Buquet, 5Star Affiliate Programs Founder.[See the 5Star discussion thread]
Which is in-line with what I would expect. An in-house program would have lower operating costs and could give out higher payouts, but the opposite scenario is at work here.
And Chickenfeed AKA Millnic Media‘s Jason Bailey chimed in with:
“you got hosed and it is your own fault. This IS the standard practice and fully within the marketers code of ethics. (I can see the shit flying at me already…)…In House programs are notoriously low payers. They are also usually the most poorly managed of the places you can pull a particular offer from. CPA networks have schwacks of experience with a wide variety of offers, merchants and publishers. In house affiliate managers are often the webmaster as well, and quite possibly the night doorman to boot (not always  **dodges shit** –)…
You got hosed. If you were doing well at $60, think how much better you’ll at $90. Hell if the CPA network is offering at $90 on the street and you can push some volume, I’ll bet the can get $95 no sweat. Suck it up. Don’t make that mistake again. Lot at the bright side – You just got a $30 pay bump!..Join all the big networks and shop around. Get them fighting each other for your traffic. You have to be the squeaky wheel to get the big payouts. Logging into CJ to see what is new doesn’t cut it.
And as Share Results Network affiliate manager (more…)
