You can rebuild trust...
The first merchant was a one that had produced regular sales over several months. One month, we noticed that although we were sending the same amount of traffic, no sales were being recorded.
Before we had taken any action, the website owner made a personal phone call to affiliates (those who provide contact details anyway) explaining that their web developers had accidentally removed the code during maintenance. They even offered to double the commission for the next month as compensation.
That merchant turned the situation around and has become one of our most trusted merchants. We know they are serious about their business and customer service so we trust them to do the right thing by all the customers we refer to them. They are now one of the most highly promoted merchants in BCL.
or lose it altogether...
The second merchant had good products and was producing a few transactions a month without much promotion during their trial period. Before increasing their promotion, we checked their sales patterns and were surprised to find that all transactions were for the same low amount - and there were no products on their site for that amount.
A test transaction confirmed that the amount provided to the network on the tracking code was not the transaction value. We contacted the network, who contacted the merchant who claimed that the set amount had been accidentally put into the tracking code instead of the true transaction value. Although we were told via the network that the tracking problem was corrected, no apology or offer of compensation was made for the unpaid commission by the merchant.
It is difficult to believe that a merchant would not have noticed that they were only paying very small, and equal, amounts of commission on all sales for at least a year. Their performance incentive offering higher comissions for high sales suddenly seemed somewhat ironic. Trust was not rebuilt and the merchant remained on the "watch" list.
After a few weeks, we performed a test transaction to check the tracking was still correct before deciding again whether to promote them more. The tracking was correct. However, the merchant's response to our test transaction was simply to knock us off their affiliate program.
It would seem that either this merchant does not want affiliates who might check on them and catch them out, or their communication skills are so poor that we would not want to refer our valued readers to them anyway. They will never appear on any of our sites again.
Can you trust anyone online?
We must trust each other if we are to do business together and build mutually-beneficial, ongoing relationships - especially in the affiliate marketing world where so much is anonymous and the dubious actions of one merchant or affiliate can affect the reputations of so many others.
Good communication is the key to building and maintaining that trust - either by email, phone or in person. I like to meet merchants in person at least once and travel around Australia regularly to do so - either in private meetings or group meetings with several merchants and affiliates. Please contact me if you want to become involved in this.
