Paid On Results Shines as The Sun Sets on DGM
Posted under: It was with a touch of irony that I read an A4U piece on OLD’s 2010 blogger award this weekend. In an interview after the awards they asked me why I thought so few UK affiliates maintain a blog… and pretty much since then I’ve hardly posted here. In part because I’ve been doing other stuff like taking photos of boats and bees, but also because sometimes it’s nice just to take a step back once in a while.
But the affiliate world doesn’t stand still and the fortunes of three UK affiliate networks are in focus at the moment.
At the end of July DGM went into administration, but it’s taken a further fortnight for the plugged to be pulled. As of the end of last week affiliates who had not removed links were given a pretty lousy 12 hours notice that dgmPro for the UK was being switched off by ADH Holdings who had acquired the system.
There’s an announcement on A4U and some quite direct comments in response to things.
Going public with views, at least in The UK AM industry, is often not the “done thing” so it’s quite refreshing to see some open commentary, especially from those involved. Quite often (and I’ve said this before) there’s an assumption that those involved in AM know what’s happening “behind closed doors” when they don’t.
Actually in fairness, I’m a nosey so and so and just want more gossip.
However open commentary isn’t being confined to just the end of DGM in The UK. Sunshine’s Chris Clarkson has posted an emotive post on his blog about Affiliate Future. His open letter is an interesting read and hopefully those who can react to his suggestions take them on board. In fact it’s Sunshine’s and their affiliates’ frustration with AF’s development (or lack of it) that has led to them opening with Paid On Results.
This move could be a key one for POR and early indications suggest that they realise this with the launch of their Sunshine Report. This is a bespoke reporting suite for affiliates of Sunshine.co.uk on POR and first impressions are pretty impressive. I’d be surprised if other travel merchants and affiliates aren’t raising one or two eyebrows in POR’s direction after seeing what they can potentially offer them versus what they may be getting elsewhere.
In fairness POR aren’t the only network innovating. Tradedoubler quietly announced Product Level Tracking (PLT) with RouteOne. From the email “PLT enables commissions to be offered to you on individual products”. So if RouteOne want their affiliates to focus on DC branded gear they can raise the commission for it. An interesting development to keep an eye on in the future.
For now though, the sun is most certainly shining on POR up in Scotland.
Hi Jason,
Another good read, as ever, from your award winning blog.
Just wanted to point out that the TD development is not new and many networks have had the ability to do this for years. Presumably this is why TD didn’t shout about it too much.
Unfortunately this is just another example of a development that precious few merchants have taken up. I remember talking to Clarke a while back and he said that POR had developed a load of really exciting functionality but merchants had not implemented it.
I’m not sure whether it’s the lack of education or the lack of resource that causes this. Maybe it’s down to them not understanding what the benefits of doing so are? Maybe if proactive merchants such as Sunshine revealed the benefits that they get from doing so, then we may see increased interest in driving affiliate marketing forwards. But I guess it’s not in their interests to do so…
Matt
Hi, just to add to what Matt is saying, the setting of commission for individual products or whole groups of products has been around for some time, indeed Paid On Results has had it since the launch of the Network in 2003. Strangely it’s not as popular as you would think, possibly because it takes a little work on Merchants side plus too many commission rates can easily confuse Affiliates. However it is popular with people selling a host of goods alongside say electronics as they simply couldn’t give decent commission rate if they had to live with one percentage for all products and base it off the electronics margin for example.
Just to add Paid On Results system can even tier individual products commission rates as well as individual Affiliates on these different products also, if anyone wanted to use it at this mental level of depth, but you never know
Clarke
Interesting to know that the TD development isn’t new and that it’s been available before. Does make you wonder why it’s not used though to spark affiliate interest.
I’m perhaps more inclined to post up something if a merchant contacts me and says “we have these things, they do this, you get x% if you push them” rather than the standard “we are merchant, you promote, we pay” – when they’ve got 1000s of items and I’ve no clue where to start other than “Merchant has voucher code” (which is usually it).
Perhaps Paid on Results could come up with a holiday/travel whitelabel or API. There may be an opening in the ‘future’….