Are You Happy To Be ‘Bought’ By a Merchant?
9 Comments May 6, 2008 / Posted in Affiliate MarketingA bit of background is required for this blog: We recently started promoting a new merchant. We have a ’suck it and see’ policy and can quickly tell whether it’s going to work (i.e. earn us commission) or not work. Early signs are not favorable for the merchant but they’ll get a fair crack of the whip before a final decision is made. However, enthusiastic is one way to describe the merchant… in my opinion perhaps overly so… and regardless of how the stats pile up they’re in danger of being kicked off anyway – here’s why!
I hate being harassed and I hate not being listened too. Despite being told “we don’t offer tenancy deals” (not yet anyway), on our very first conversation the merchant still wanted tenancy – even after a long explanation about why they’re not getting tenancy. Anyway, after that conversation they then wanted to catch up by contacting me the next day! I mean come on, give us a chance to get things going. So the catch up was the first day after the bank holiday so about 5 days.
As I said above early signs are not good, and this has been attributed to the offer they have (it’s a gaming merchant btw) – yet other gaming merchants do well with similar offers, so I don’t agree with this and tell the merchant so. At this point things become surrealish!
Firstly I’m offered a large sum to get tenancy (we don’t offer tenancy). Then I’m told stats will start to look more favourable (this seems odd to me, why will they suddenly become better?). Then I’m offered a signed Southampton shirt (nice gesture, but I hate being ‘bought’). Finally I’m asked if Loquax is for sale or open to investment (it’s not.. not today anyway).
If you want to make someone feel very uncomfortable about working with you, do the above!
For me it just doesn’t ring true, and came across overly enthusiastic to the point of aggressive and at times almost desperate. Not the kind of merchant or affiliate manager I wish to work with.
Right or Wrong?
Should I have taken the money for tenancy and said yes to the signed shirt as well?
Are you happy to be ‘bought’ by a merchant, even if it’s one your gut instinct is to leave them well alone?
Is business always “about the money”?
Perhaps the way I work is wrong, but if a merchant performs well they end up getting the best promotion and (in theory should) earn the most for us. Other merchants can’t buy that position – they can get promoted to it by performing well though! As soon as you’re ‘bought’ the merchant, imo, has demands on you – and having a duff performer advertised in good spots isn’t good for your site’s reputation.
Gifts are all well and good, but send them as thanks or incentives – not to persuade me to forget the purpose of my site and pretend you’re a decent merchant.
And as for the money – of course it’d be nice, but funnily enough it’s not the be all and end all. If I’m not happy promoting a merchant, then they won’t be promoted, even if it means losing out on a few pounds here and there. Why? Because there are always better merchants around to work with, who at least don’t make this affiliate feel uncomfortable working with them in just under a week.
Update
The merchant in this instance has since apologised, although their comments have not been added as it ended up in yet more self promotion!
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interesting blog, Jason – been pondering along similar lines myself as Allkids is geting a really super duper makeover (professionally done – parting with hard cash ) and I’m wondering whether I should start getting more ‘hard nosed’ ’bout how to work with merchants/networks. Should I forget the loyalty and relevancy factors (as some Networks seem to have
)) and start simply looking at the money and even offering tenancy agreements for those juicy keywords/pages at No 1.
When you sell your soul sell it all, cause you can’t come back and play again
Doug
I’ve got a few of these guys, although I’ve never had one offer to buy my sites! The one time I tried a tenancy deal it was a disaster and frankly, it won’t be happening again. So I agree with you completely, and personally affiliate managers that act in a way that make me uncomfortable tend to really make me cross and less willing to do stuff for them. That’s especially the case if I’ve seen a bit of case history and know the partner isn’t performing as well as they like to tell me it does!
I have to be honest mate, I think that you’re missing a huge trick by not accepting tenancy deals. If you have the traffic to justify tenancy then why turn it down?
By all means, you are totally right to turn away crap converting sites with naff offers who want to buy a number 1 slot on your site. As you will lose credibility with your users if you suddenly start promoting this rubbish.
However….let’s say you have 5 bingo sites that all perform well and convert OK, treat you nice and even come and visit you in Wales or wherever it is you live
There is nothing wrong with going to those 5 guys and saying “hey, do you want to have the number 1 spot on my site? If you do then it will cost you an extra £5k per month”.
It’s just business mate, and nothing wrong at all with that. I’ve been trying to tell Elaine the very same thing for years
I see your point Kieron on top performers – and it’s something I’m considering for the top performers.
However, I don’t want pushy, poor converting, low quality merchants thinking they can just throw cash in the general direction and think they’re going to be given the world.
Jason
The other problem with giving a tenancy is if you’re stuck with just a couple of single brand banners, visitors will soon tune them out when looking at your site. If you can keep them varied and rotate partners, you at least stand a bit more of a chance of supplying an advert that users find interesting enough to click.
We use tenancy a lot on OLBG and it works really well.
By default we work on EPC and the better a bookies EPC the more exposure they get on our sites.
As you might expect the EPC of bookies varies substantially based on all sorts of factors like commission rates, conversion and (for the profit share deals) retention.
So if a bookies normal performance is not do good and only mertis a number 12 ranking on the site then they can either improve our commission deal, implement some of our suggestions to improve conversion or pay a fixed fee to artificially boost their ranking for a period (usually a month). Or they can stay at number 12.
So to me its just another form of remuneration. Whats good though is it sometimes comes from a different marketing budget so while I bookie might not be able to increase affiliate commissions they have plenty of tenancy budget left to spend.
I realise you are not maybe as money driven as me, but if you are going to have them on the site then you might as well make as much per click from them as possible, and being flexible in how thats done wont hurt..
So in this case what Id have done is say
1. conversions are so poor we cant leave you on the site under the current terms
2. If you pay £1000 per month we can have you on the site, but in a low position
3. if you pay £2000/month you can have top 5
4. If you pay £4000/month you can have #1
Obviously there are illustrative figures and you need to come up with your own numbers to offset the fact that you are losing clicks to the naturally good performers
Also if theres any seasonality then youd want to factor that in to the monthly prices as well
sorry, can anyone explain what is meant be a tenancy deal in this context? Thanks!
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