Some affiliates think that merchants are being too restrictive. However, merchants who ban adware and other line-of-fire affiliates can be more attractive to content affiliates or publishers because they are also stopping them overwriting the cookies of the affiliates who introduce their site to new customers.
These are the sort of things that many merchants address in their terms and conditions. Opinions you get from others (myself included) will always be biased towards what is best for their own way of doing business. What you allow will depend on many factors and you are the only one that can decide what is best for your business.
Here are some of the issues commonly addressed. Some may be relevant to your business, others won't.
PPC - pay per click restrictions
- Bidding on your brand name/URL and variations and misspellings People who type in your url in search engines are like the customer about to walk into your door. Try it and see what you get.
- Display and Landing page. Does the paid advertisement show your URL and appear to be your site? Are you willing to pay an affiliate commission if this customer clicks on that link?
- Content of the advertisement. Does the copy of the advertisement fit your brand? Does it reflect positively or negatively? Does it mislead the customer in order to get a click.. and a commission?
- Bidding on competitor's names. New Google rules means that anyone can bid on anything. Try names of florist networks to see how this works. Do you want advertisements to your site appearing when someone is trying to get to your competitors site? What sort of effect would it have on your customers and your brand?
- Bidding against your own pay-per-click campaigns. This is one of the most contentious issues with some merchants demanding that affiliates never bid against them on their brand and/or any of their target keywords. An argument against allowing affiliates to bid is that it merely drives up the prices; and argument for is that you and your affiliates combined can crowd out the competition.
Content affiliate restrictions
- Content of text or image advertisements. Some merchants want to specify the exact copy and method of advertising. This can backfire as publishers are often better at designing the advertisements to match their audience and site. We prefer to design our own advertisements to suit our sites but are willing to run it past the merchant first and they invariably agree to our suggestions. This is much easier when you have a working relationship between the advertiser and publisher.
- Out of date prices. If you supply datafeeds with prices, you risk some affiliates having old prices on their sites. To customers, seeing a lower price on an affiliate site and clicking to find the new higher price can seem like false advertising. If they buy, the affiliate still gets the commission even though the customer might still be annoyed with you. If they don't because of the price difference, you both lose.
- Coupon and specials sites. Discount coupons are popular with some merchants and shoppers. If one of these bargain hunters goes to your site and decides to search for yourshop discount before buying what will they find? Is the coupon site working for you, or just getting in the line of fire?
In an ideal world you wouldn't have to think about these things, but the nature of affiliate marketing means that you are dealing with many people with different ideas of what is fair and reasonable in business. If you are too restrictive, you risk losing good affiliates, but if you give free rein, you risk losing both money for unearned commissions and good affiliates.
What are your experiences? Do you prefer to let affiliates do whatever they like? Do you want more control? Do you find that they comply with your terms and conditions?
