Check the integrity of your affiliate program
Copyright © 2001 by Earl H. Roberts
Are you checking the integrity of the stats at your affiliate monitor? If they aren't accurate, you are not receiving just compensation for your efforts. I am not accusing anyone, anywhere, of being intentionally dishonest, it is the integrity of the software which I challenge. If you are working an affiliate program you need to verify the integrity of the software being used too.
Integrity is not an idle question. Especially when a company initiates a reporting process change, you need to be checking to see if it is working, right!
On the day before yesterday, for the first time in almost two years, the reporting pages at my affiliate manager functioned smoothly. My sales were recorded, my stats were visible, MY COMMISSION FIGURES WERE ACCURATE.
That's great news for affiliates, isn't it? Accurate reporting at last?
Unfortunately, yesterday all of those transactions, all of the stats for that day before, had all disappeared!
Yes, every last one of them. All the sales, all the hits, everything. One whole day wiped out. Yesterday I get the message: "No data for the specified period"
I checked out transactions for THIS WEEK, that day had NO transactions recorded.
But do you know what is even worse? That third party master of sales is not responsive to the requests of its affiliates for more information. Time and again I have asked the company to get its accounting process where it would function accurately. E-mails are ignored; I have written to every department, and got absolutely nothing back. Telephone calls are not completed either. You can not call anyone there! You can not penetrate the great wall of indifference. Your money is gone and nobody there gives a damn.
I'm not the only one experiencing technical difficulties here. Here is a letter to me from Robin Windham at The Great Unpublished: "Due to the changing policies and sometimes inaccurate tracking from Commission Junction we have decided, effective March 1, 2001 that we will no longer continue our program with them."
Problems at the company begin even before you sign in. Quite frequently the sign in process aborts, Quite often when you begin typing in the password the password typing jumps BACK UP to fill in in front of the e-mail address instead of down below in the password slot.
Once you do get signed in the PAYMENT STATUS, the BALANCE or the AMOUNT OWED is frequently showing $0.00. Never mind that two hours earlier you had hundreds of dollars owed to you. The Amount owed is now ZERO, and you haven't been paid.
Even when there is an actual sum amount greater than Zero in the BALANCE slot, you go down to the Commission Earned -- month to date, and that number NEVER agrees with the sum in the top. Sometimes it is over, sometimes it is short. Only on the day before yesterday did those two sums agree. Now I have totally lost the proceeds of that day.
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