Affiliate Marketing - Leaky Merchants
In thinking about a couple merchants that were reported as having “leaks” on the Affiliate Trust Forum, I feel it necessary to find some value consideration in the method from the merchant’s perspective. Two very large merchants, Amazon and Overstock.com, were reported as having leaks. eBay has leaks as well. These are very large profitable corporations that can’t be passed off as being clueless to some negative impact from inclusion of external links (leaks) on their ecommerce sites. In fact, you can safely assume that these links are beneficial to the bottom line in one way or other since ROI drives corporate marketing methods. <SPECULATION>The links included on these big brand sites must belong to sister companies, companies having some vested interest, or companies with mutually beneficial agreements in place.</SPECULATION> There are undoubtedly other motivations for external links.
But as a merchant myself, with no sister companies or special agreements, external links make no sense whatsoever. Once we’ve attracted a shopper to visit the site, the only external link I want them to take is the one that authorizes their credit card.
So where does the smaller merchant fit into this grand scheme? At the Amazon end, the small independent merchant end such as mine, or somewhere in between? Is that “somewhere in between” simply the result of observing the methods of the big guns and following suit without an understanding of the ramification, lost sales?
For the marketing affiliate, leaks are another black hole that sucks potential commissions when they’ve delivered the customer. Affiliate Trust provides a mechanism for observation and reporting of leaky merchants. Merchant alert emails are sent as a result of these reports and a merchant representative invited to join the discussion and address the concerns of their affiliates. As we interact with leaky merchants many of these questions will be answered and published.
2 Responses to “Affiliate Marketing - Leaky Merchants”
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March 19th, 2009 at 12:49 am
Hi,
Thanks for publishing this article. I never bothered about these leaks in past because of my inexperience. However, Affiliate Trust Forums is the place where I learnt about the leaky merchants. I really wish if companies like Amazon.com and Overstock.com read this article and provide their thoughts and take necessary actions to avoid advertisement leaks. Affiliates apply their hardcore efforts to bring shoppers to Amazon, Overstock and other merchants and it is such a waste of effort that those shoppers are transfered to other sites just for a few cents. Who is taking the loss? Affiliates are the one who are taking loss of commissions when a shopper leaves Amazon.com or Overstock.com without making a purchase simply because the shopper found an external link on merchant’s site. Hope merchants take this seriously and avoid such leaks in future.
Regards.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:17 am
I really would like to hear some of the merchants perpectives regarding leaks, as I simply can not get my mind set around why they allow them. What is their reasoning for those external links? I am still amazed to see a merchants website loaded with Google Ads or worse affiliate links to their own competitors websites. I will not promote merchants with those types of leaks. Do leaky merchants not understand that this is keeping good affiliates from joining their programs? I work hard to send them traffic and would like to see a commission for my efforts. Them receiving a few cents for a click on a sponsored ad or a commission from competitive affiliate links does not pay my bills.
I really like the idea of the Merchant alert emails being used to invite the merchants to discuss these issues. A good stream of communication is always a plus and hopefully some of these leaky merchants will see the error of their ways.