Don’t Let These Thieves Steal Your Affiliate Commissions
Affiliate marketing is one of the quickest and easiest ways to make money online. That’s because you don’t have to deal with product creation or customer service headaches. All you have to do is recommend products to motivated buyers. Then you sit back and collect your affiliate commissions.
But beware: Your affiliate commissions can vanish in front of your very eyes if you don’t protect them. Here are the top three ways to start banking more affiliate commissions and to prevent them from vanishing right in front of your eyes:
1. Stop using direct affiliate links.
You probably already know that it’s a good idea to cloak (hide) your affiliate links. Doing so will help ward off the link hijackers who switch in their affiliate ID for yours, and thus steal your commission when they buy the product. It also reduces the number of buyers who “cut off” the affiliate portion of a link and go straight to the sales page (perhaps thinking that doing so will somehow give them a better deal).
But there’s another reason to stop using direct affiliate links: you could end up with hundreds of “dead” links all over the Internet.
You see, if you make a blog post, tweet about an affiliate product or include your direct affiliate link in an ebook, then what happens if the vendor stops selling that product? You’ll have dead links. Maybe hundreds of them.
If instead you use a redirect link, you can change the redirect link to point from the dead affiliate link to a similar affiliate product in just a minute or two. And in doing so, you could potentially save thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions.
2. Look for these common sales leaks.
If you carefully and thoroughly examine the sales process, you may find that the biggest thief is the product vendor! Sometimes the vendor is just a new marketer who doesn’t know any better. Other times, you may find vendors who are deliberately trying to rip you off.
Here are some things to look for:
- Google AdSense ads on the sales page. Some marketers don’t realize that a sales page shouldn’t have any distractions, and that the only way to leave a sales page is via a back button or the buy button. Other marketers know exactly what they’re doing – you send them traffic for free, and they get the money every time someone clicks on their ads. Either way, avoid these vendors.
- Alternative payment options. Another sneaky way product vendors reach into your pocket is by offering multiple payment options on the affiliate landing page. This is only troublesome IF you don’t get credit for the purchase when the customer chooses a different option. For example, if the vendor uses Clickbank for affiliate tracking, then obviously you won’t get a penny if the vendor encourages customers to call their orders in.
- Customer service reps that send visitors to a new page. Watch out for this sneaky trick: sometimes when a prospect has a question, the customer service rep (or the vendor) sends the customer to a different sales page. End result? You lose your affiliate commission!
3. Find out what loopholes the vendor will use to keep your money.
Here’s one last tip: Always read the TOS (terms of service) and affiliate agreement. Sometimes you’ll find outrageous payment thresholds that allows the vendor to legally keep your money until you reach that threshold! Other times the vendor charges a huge “accounting fee” just to cut you your check.
