I see affiliates from 2 perspectives.

Firstly as an affiliate, I see myself as a industry colleague to persons merchants that I promote. I throw them traffic, and if I make sales for them, I expect to be paid for my efforts in the form of a predefined percentage or lump sum.

As a merchant, I see my affiliates as partners and cost the traffic they throw me. My utmost priority is to make confident that every sales that are made are credited to the affiliate that sends me the traffic. This is essential if my affiliates are going to trust me and put try into promoting my products. This is essential if I want my industry to grow!

Most of my own products are related to internet marketing and webmaster tools. Because of the environment of these products, persons visitors are possible to be knowledgeable of affiliate programs and probably Clickbank as well.

Imagine this scenario:

Joe goes to Google and searches for “webmaster tools”. Amazing caught his attention larger than in the Pay Per Click ads, an affiliate link to a produce that promises to make link exchanges easier.

“Hmmm” thought Joe. “That looks approximating a vast tool”.

Joe clicks on the PPC link and is redirected to a sales page. Scrolling to the bottom of the page, Joe sees that the produce is $97.

“I want this”, thought Joe, “but $97 is a bit steep”.

Joe searches the webpage for that magic link, and he finds it easily.

“Great” says Joe out loud. “A link to a Clickbank affiliate program, and this program pays 50%”.

After a few minutes, Joe has signed up for the affiliate program, created his own affiliate link, typed it into his browser, and revisits the sales page.

Joe’s mouse clicks the pay money for link. He fills in his credit card details and clicks the buy button. Closing his browser, he checks his e-mail. He watches as 2 e-mails are downloaded to his machine. The original is the download info for the novel software he purchased, the next one is an e-mail with the Topic “Congratulations Joe, you have made a sale”.

Joe checks his stats online for this novel affiliate program and confident enough, he has made $48.50 commission on this purchase. In other words, he barely paid $48.50 for the product.

OK, what is erroneous with this scenario?

Is it fair that Joe used his own affiliate link to make a
purchase?

What on the affiliate who advertised this affiliate program at Google? That affiliate paid for the click that started the sale process, so far did not obtain the commission.

What is going through the minds of merchants who place links to their affiliate programs on their sales page?

I would imagine that various merchants judge on these points:

* I want to make $48.50 per sale minimum.

* If I offer it for $97 and present 50% commission to affiliates I will make my goal of $48.50 per sale.

* Via adding an affiliate mark up link to the sales page, I can give confidence members to mark up for my affiliate program, pay money for through their own link and obtain the software for the true fee of $48.50, excluding the consumer will be glad thinking they saved $48.50.

*Great plan!

I am confident that a lot of merchants don’t see things this way - they presently don’t judge tough enough on their affiliates.

A merchant that uses a link to his/her affiliate program on the sales page is using affiliate traffic as free of charge traffic (whether they intend to or not). After all, the merchant does not call for to use time optimising pages or buying traffic - their affiliates will do that and throw the traffic to the sales page for free. If an affiliate sends somebody who becomes a customer, the merchant will make their money.

The big problem here is that being an affiliate is tough work. You do have to create content, pay money for and review products, possibly even pay for advertising. If YOU are doing these things as an affiliate, is your merchant doing their bit to protect your you? Unfortunately the majority of Clickbank merchants don’t, and affiliates waste their time building pages and buying advertising to promote merchants who don’t deserve it.

The bottom line
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If you are promoting products aimed at webmasters, the traffic you throw will possible know how to “steal” your commission. In this state it is vital to barely promote merchants lacking the affiliate mark up link.

If on the other offer you are promoting products to the common public, e.g. weight loss products, dog training eBooks etc, this affiliate mark up link poses less of a problem since most of the traffic you generate wont be affiliates themselves (most wont even know what an affiliate is) and wont have the basic skills to mark up at Clickbank, create a link and buy through their link presently to obtain a commission.

What can you do?
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If you come across a merchant that you want to promote and they have an affiliate mark up link on the sales page, telephone them. Inform them on your concerns and that they should treat you as a partner, not the source of free of charge traffic. Propose that they remove this affiliate mark up link.

The natural reaction I get
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Merchant: “I obtain a lot of affiliate mark ups from this link,
there is no way I am removing it!”

Ask the merchant how many of persons affiliates ever make a sale or ever throw every traffic. This is exactly my point. The merchant is receiving a lot of mark ups purely to obtain a discount. For each individual who signs up as an affiliate to obtain a discount, there is one affiliate where being robbed of his/her rightful commission.

Most of the “affiliates” you obtain via a mark up link on the sales page are barely signing up to obtain a discount, they are unlikely to ever try to sell that product.

The barely affiliates who will promote the product, are persons that pay money for the software, exercise it and approximating it. They see the benefits and can sell it fine to their visitors. These are the barely affiliates merit getting, and you wont obtain them from an affiliate mark up link on the sales page.

The best way of receiving tough working affiliates is to protect your affiliates from this brand of link hijacking, add their trust and do all you can to help out them out. Put together a relationship with your affiliates and most of all, make confident they are rewarded for the traffic they send. To this end, remove that affiliate mark up link, and when somebody buys your product, throw them an e-mail outlining the benefits of your affiliate program. Dynamic affiliates respond fine to knowing their merchants are protecting their interests.

A final thought
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If there are 2 similar products, similar price, similar commission, one sales page with an affiliate mark up link, one without, which would you favor to promote? If you want to make cash online with affiliate programs, take it seriously and launch contacting merchants.

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Andy Williams is author of the free, ezSEO internet marketing newsletter, contribution subscribers up-to-date info on every one aspects of internet marketing.
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