I see affiliates from two perspectives.
Firstly as an affiliate, I see myself as a business partner to those merchants that I promote. I send them traffic, and if I make sales for them, I expect to be paid for my efforts in the form of a predefined percentage or lump sum.
As a merchant, I see my affiliates as partners and value the traffic they send me. My utmost priority is to make sure that any sales that are made are credited to the affiliate that sends me the traffic. This is essential if my affiliates are going to trust me and put effort into promoting my products. This is essential if I want my business to grow!
Most of my own products are related to internet marketing and webmaster tools. Because of the nature of these products, those visitors are likely to be knowledgeable of affiliate programs and probably Clickbank as well.
Imagine this scenario:
Joe goes to Google and searches for "webmaster tools". Something caught his attention over in the Pay Per Click ads, an affiliate link to a product that promises to make link exchanges easier.
"Hmmm" thought Joe. "That looks like a great tool".
Joe clicks on the PPC link and is redirected to a sales page. Scrolling to the bottom of the page, Joe sees that the product is $97.
"I want this", thought Joe, "but $97 is a bit steep".
Joe searches the webpage for that magic link, and he finds it easily.
"Great" says Joe out loud. "A link to a Clickbank affiliate program, and this program pays 50%".
After a few minutes, Joe has signed up for the affiliate program, created his own affiliate link, typed it into his browser, and revisits the sales page.
Joe's mouse clicks the buy link. He fills in his credit card details and clicks the purchase button. Closing his browser, he checks his e-mail. He watches as two e-mails are downloaded to his machine. The first is the download information for the new software he purchased, the second one is an e-mail with the Subject "Congratulations Joe, you have made a sale".
Joe checks his stats online for this new affiliate program and sure enough, he has made $48.50 commission on this purchase. In other words, he only paid $48.50 for the product.
OK, what is wrong with this scenario?
Is it fair that Joe used his own affiliate link to make a purchase?
What about the affiliate who advertised this affiliate program at Google? That affiliate paid for the click that started the sale process, yet did not get the commission.
What is going through the minds of merchants who place links to their affiliate programs on their sales page?
I would imagine that some merchants think about these points:
* I want to make $48.50 per sale minimum.
* If I offer it for $97 and give 50% commission to affiliates I will make my goal of $48.50 per sale.
* By adding an affiliate sign up link to the sales page, I can encourage people to sign up for my affiliate program, buy through their own link and get the software for the real price of $48.50, but the customer will be happy thinking they saved $48.50.
*Great plan!
I am sure that a lot of merchants don't see things this way - they just don't think hard enough about their affiliates.
A merchant that uses a link to his/her affiliate program on the sales page is using affiliate traffic as free traffic (whether they intend to or not). After all, the merchant does not need to spend time optimising pages or buying traffic - their affiliates will do that and send the traffic to the sales page for free. If an affiliate sends someone who becomes a customer, the merchant will make their money.
The big problem here is that being an affiliate is hard work. You do have to create content, buy and review products, possibly even pay for advertising. If YOU are doing these things as an affiliate, is your merchant doing their bit to protect your you? Unfortunately the majority of Clickbank merchants don't, and affiliates waste their time building pages and buying advertising to promote merchants who don't d
