Not All Business Partners Are Created Equal
The “weasel” as I have now come to think of him (see my Bad Debt Monster post last week) has sent further emails in which he wriggles and squirms, blames everyone else for the situation and tells me I will be paid as soon as I sign and send to him his revised agreement. When you enter a contract on one set of terms you do not accept a revised agreement (to your detriment) when the terms of the previous deal have been breached!
This sad situation got me thinking over the weekend how potentially dangerous it is when doing business online. Every vendor seems to have an affiliate program and the number of potential affiliates clamouring to sign up for a piece of the pie is staggering. Now we all know most affiliates don’t actually do anything so the problem I am about to identify will not apply to them BUT those who do take action potentially run some significant risks.
THESE ARE THE CHALLENGES:
Is the vendor genuine?
Do you know whether you’ve actually introduced visitors who have made a purchase?
How long will it be before they pay out commission due?
Assuming the sale sticks (ie no refund requested) will the vendor honour the agreement and pay the commission?
What if the vendor has financial difficulties and needs the money for their own use?
What if the vendor goes bust?
How can you enforce an agreement particularly if you are based in different countries?
Is it worth the legal expenses?
To me many of these problems, if they arose, are insurmountable and would be time consuming to resolve and quite likely financially prohibitive.
The answer, is to avoid getting caught in this situation in the first place!
AFFILIATE MARKETING
If affiliate-marketing is your chosen business model (as it is mine with my first 6M Profit Method business) then I think it is vital you think very carefully about who you are partnering and select very carefully the affiliate program and thus the business partners you will promote. Rather than run the risk of the vendor not paying further down the line, wherever possible you should choose a program where you are paid by a third party, such as ClickBank - read about CBMall here, or where you get paid your split immediately, via PayPal for example.
That way you are not at the whim of the vendor but a very large and hopefully financially sound and ethical organisation.
However, there is another extremely important element to this. DO NOT BE LAZY. Under no circumstances should you do what most affiliates do & simply promote the affiliate link. You must get into the right business mindset and go about setting this up the right way.
You must have a web page that does two things for you:
COLLECT NAMES and EMAIL ADDRESSES
1. Collects the name and email address of your visitors before they view the affiliate product sales page. Why, so you can follow up with those individuals and provide them with more information and develop a relationship with them. If theygo straight to the sales page you will never be able to contact them again (I know, I’ve commited the cardinal sin with the ClickBank Mall link above - but I want you to see more about a ClickBank business model rather than some peopke not reading it because they don’t want to provide contact details)
TRACK YOUR VISITORS
2. By having all visitors channelled via your own web page you can track numbers and get a much better idea of your own ratios and with the reporting function of ClickBank, for example, you will know who has purchased. If you insist on becoming an affiliate for a vendor who will (hopefully) pay you direct then tracking all of your leads will give you a better idea of how successful that program is for you.
Before someone tells me, I know ClickBank doesn’t pay immediately but my point is they do pay at certain thresholds and agreed payment dates whereas with a vendor direct you are totally reliant on them fulfilling the promises on their sales pages.
Back to the “weasel”. I’ve met this guy on numerous occasions, I have years of experience of assessing someone’s trustworthiness and yet I still got caught. Why because he was a crook? No, simply his situation took a turn for the worse and rather than honouring his commitment to me - and no doubt others - he used what is rightfully mine to pay his other debts. If that can happen with someone you’ve met personally, think how easy it can happen in respect of a web page and the person behind that who is the other side of the world.
It probably wouldn’t be the original aim but many human beings are self-centered and have the business ethics of a “weasel”. Be careful out there.
