Martin Lee Affiliate Marketing

In this post, I’m going to share with you some of my past (and unfortunate) experiences in promoting other people’s product. These are some of the silly things that has happened to me. Watch out for these pitfalls and don’t let it happen to you!

All Work and No Pay

Unless you are using an affiliate network like clickbank or commission junction, you will always run the risk of not getting paid after you have made some sales for the merchant. And it is not just some unknown fellow who cheats you. Even some internet marketing gurus has done it to me!

Some of them make genuine mistakes and pay up promptly after you contact them. Others take an eternity to resolve the problem.

Whatever the case, if you are not keeping track of those commissions, you might just lose out.

Chasing for payment is extremely tiring and a complete waste of time. But for me, it is a matter of principle more than the amount of money involved.

Sometimes, there is no email address that I can contact directly. So, I have to submit a support ticket and get bounced around back and fro to many people. Here’s a sample conversation from my email archives:

Me: Hi, just to check. When is payment for promoting xxx product going to be made?

They: Hmm..I thought we made payment to all affiliates already. Give us your ID. We’ll check for you and get back to you in a few days.

(Weeks later…)

Me: Hi, have you managed to check already?

(Weeks later…)

Me: Hi, did you get my previous email? Any status update?

They: Sorry, we are still checking. We’ll get back to you again.

And so on…

No Tracking?

That is not so bad. Another group of merchants might even cheat or use tracking that is totally unreliable. There’s this big time internet marketer I promoted for. First of all, I tried buying through my own link to test out the tracking.

No sales recorded.

Hmmm..I’m sure the IM Guru’s system must be working. Nevermind, I will just send it to my list.

Someone from my list: Hey, I just bought this product on your recommendation. Thanks.

Logged into the system….no sales! Goodness knows how many sales I lost. No wonder there were zero sales…

Affiliates = List?

There’s another merchant who runs an affiliate program. He sends out plenty of emails to affiliates with the subject heading [Affiliates]. Well, you would expect the emails to be affiliate updates or tools for you to use.

NO! 95% of the emails are promotional emails. Fair enough. Take me off that affiliate email updates then. I’ll just continue to promote his products. But, wait, I can’t!

If you want to cancel your affiliate account and no longer receive email notices like this, send an email to:

xxxxxx

PLEASE include your affiliate ID in that mail so we can find and cancel your account.

I have to cancel my affiliate account to unsubscribe!

If you have other similar stories, I would love to hear them.

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