Eric Nagel

How To F*#! Your Affiliates: Black Friday to Cyber Monday Edition

Eric Nagel

I have been, or can be if you click on a link and make a purchase, compensated via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value for writing this post. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Merchants often screw over their affiliates (see Got My Panties.com In A Bunch). Sometimes they know what they’re doing, and sometimes they just aren’t thinking clearly. Sometimes they play dumb, and sometimes they just really are dumb.

Last Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 2:31 PM (for those of you not reading this the first week of December, 2013, last Thursday was Thanksgiving, and at 2:31 I was enjoying dinner at my Mom & Dad’s house), I received a commission change notice from Cellars Wine Club:

In case you think that table is useless and doesn’t tell you anything, you’re right. A few hours later:

So I emailed Cellars, but the person who put these rules into effect wasn’t in the office. I guess he, too, was having Thanksgiving dinner with his family. But someone else did get back to me:

This is just so our new customer targeted coupon codes can’t be combined with an affiliate commission.

After another email back & forth, I was finally told three codes which would be non-commissionable (but there’s 4, 0% commission actions listed). We had none of these on our wine club review site, so it wasn’t a big deal.

However, after checking our stats this weekend, we noticed we had some sales that resulted in a $0 commission. Looking at their site, we see:

There on the landing page is one of the non-commissionable coupons!

So let’s review the process:

  1. We refer users to Cellars Wine Club, expecting a commission on the sale
  2. Cellars Wine Club displays their non-commissionable promo code, which the user applies
  3. The user makes a purchase
  4. We get $0 commission

I understand not wanting to pay a commission and apply a coupon to a sale, but then don’t show the coupon to the user if the affiliate cookie is set!

Now, going into the busiest shopping season, we’ll be referring customers to a merchant, and racking up $0 commissions.

That’s how to F*#! your Affiliates: Black Friday to Cyber Monday Edition.

Update: Brian Littleton, CEO of ShareASale (where this program is hosted) is stepping in to make this right. Thanks, Brian!
Update 2: See comment from Mark. Coupon code was only supposed to be shown to existing customers, not everyone. I just checked, and when clicking through our link, I do not see the coupon code displayed on the site any longer. In addition, our $0 commission sales have been updated to give us the credit we deserved. Actually, no matter what I do, I can’t get the code to appear. I use Pingdom to monitor merchants, and will set up a monitor to make sure the code does not reappear on this page.

This problem started days ago with some emails, and quickly escalated to the point of having to write this blog post for resolution. It’s a shame affiliates have so little power, but in situations like this, we cannot be ignored.

I personally reached out to every wine club affiliate and informed them of the situation, and others spoke up as well. This is the perfect situation where a niche affiliate community would have helped; if you’re a leader in a niche, I encourage you to start one now. When (not if) a merchant makes a wrong decision, accidentally or not, you’ll want your competition to help fight for what’s right.