I was looking at an affiliate program that I would like to promote, and I see that they will charge £5 to review my affiliate application. If I am accepted, they will return the funds, but if I am rejected, they keep the money. I have never seen anything like this before. Is it normal? Is it ethical? Should I pay the £5 or look elsewhere?
This is something I have never heard of in affiliate marketing. Quite frankly, I am sort of floored by it.
I understand that it can be onerous for affiliate managers to go through all of the applications and perform due diligence. But I think this is ridiculous to tell affiliates the have to pay for the privilege of applying.
And affiliates deemed to not be worthy are out the money. That’s a bad joke to me.
In my opinion, you should not even consider paying them. Just go and promote the competition. Then you and their competition will have the last laugh over this ridiculous policy.
After I initially wrote this response, I came to find out that this wasn’t the policy if an individual merchant, but rather part of the application process to be an affiliate of the Affiliate Window network in the UK.
Perhaps this is new from Affiliate Window? I’d never heard of it before, and I’m not sure how it played in the UK when it was instituted.
As an affiliate, I find it to be hostile to newbie affiliates and affiliates overall.
Forget the long tail, I’d think this will ensure the cropped tail that shall never grow.
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There are other pertinent replies over at
http://blog.affiliatewindow.com/?p=49
so I’ll try not to reiterate the dialogue.
Jess, you’re so right, it is about choice. If we lose the odd good affiliate because they are deterred by the sign up then this has to be weighed against the safety of stopping fraudulent attempts to set up accounts, (which are diminishing in frequency).
AdGuy and Franklin, I made a reply in the AW blog which probably covers in more detail why we chose £5 and the reason not to refund for fraudulent attempts.
Carsten, affiliates who set up their first AW account are able to contact account managers who will supply unique invitation codes which by-pass the charge and credit process when setting up additional accounts. Alternatively we can set them up for you. Once you’ve proved who you are, there’s no reason to have to do it time and time again.
I agree with you on AdSense but it would be interesting to gauge the comparison of custom ContentWidgets to display relevant products, especially if they carry specific codes or bespoke offers. It’s being used by numerous affiliates including some new media portals
http://www.virginmedia.com/shopping/goshop/
http://sunshop.shopwindow.com/
As mentioned in my last post on the AW blog, working with us hopefully makes the investment worthwhile, which is probably why so many of our affiliates have chosen to defend us. All networks will tell you what you want to hear, we want you to hear it from our partners as they have no reason to deceive.
OK just a bit of reiterated dialogue
I also think that volume is a problem. I just have to look at my small resources site about internet marketing. I use affiliate links to the resource, if they have an affiliate program and allow me to link to the page that I want to refer to.
Some generate more commission than others, depending on the subject and the amount of competition. Because of the amount of platforms and networks out there, did I end up with 50+ accounts or so, just for affiliate links for this one site alone. If each of them would require me to pay 5 pounds for the signup, I would have 250 pounds and more spent , just to add the affiliate link. I think I would have been better off with AdSense under such circumstances and made Google happy. However, I am glad that this is not the case and that I am able to use editorial links (affiliate or not) to monetize the site instead of ads where I do not have control over. Needless to say, the number of AdSense ads on my site is getting less and less.
This is really a compelling discussion. I just wanted to say that here in the US, free registration in a network is the norm, and most networks have a look at a new affiliate’s work online before approval. They verify email too, and some do other checks as well. Some have no approval process at all.
At this point in my years online I would pay the fee that is being described if I had to in order to get into a good network, if they all started doing this. However, since we have great networks right here that are free to join, I personally see no incentive to join Affiliate Window even though there are a ton of testimonials in this discussion.
I would suggest that if they need this type of verification they could simply use a one time debit and credit of £1.00 by Paypal, and it would serve the same purpose, and all the affiliate is giving up is the email. Moneybookers would work too of course.
Having some insight into the number of dodgy affiliates who sign up for an affiliate account, I think this is an excellent idea (although i do believe the £5 should be refunded if the affilaite is not accepted into the system). I wouldn’t be surprised if we started to see this practice in the US sooner, rather than later.
Id send her an email and send them awins contact details. From the affiliates that have referred to awin, I have never come across one saying that they had a problem, but.. I did not mean to imply that there were none, my bad :0)
I still cant see why any affiliate would have a problem with a £5 investment that they get back. But as you say… the affiliate has a choice anyway and if them apples dont grab her then indeed she can go else where and surely thats the point, she is not confined to just one network and perhaps one networks loss is anothers gain? Or maybe lucky escape for the network and merchant? Depends how you look at it.
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