Affiliate Marketing

Linkshare recently implemented weekly payment processing in an attempt to address their biggest weakness: late payments to their affiliates. I have waited many weeks to evaluate this new change and the verdict is in: it has made no improvement whatsoever. Linkshare continues to belittle their affiliate partners, by allowing merchants to wait up to 90 days before making payments, at their discretion. As a longtime Commission Junction affiliate, I can’t help but compare the two. I signed up with Linkshare because they are supposed to be number 2 of “the big three” - Commission Junction, Linkshare, Performics.

In a previous post about Linkshare’s new weekly payments I pointed out that CJ closes all transactions automatically within 10 - 20 days of the previous month’s end. This is a very affiliate friendly strategy and it ensures affiliates are paid more than 90% of their earnings 20 days from the previous month’s end.

In contrast, Linkshare allows their merchants 90 days to close and make payments on their transactions. That is 4 to 5 times longer than Commission Junction allows. This doesn’t mean any specific merchant can’t close them earlier, they can. But the fact that the default is 90 days is not very affiliate friendly. Merchants, just like affiliates, are very busy and don’t get around to things like closing transactions until they have to. As a result, affiliates are paid months late for their commissions. If you are an affiliate who runs PPC advertising, this can be devastating, because you have to carry your PPC bill and pay interest on it until the payments come in. The bottom line is, this eats into the profitability of any PPC affiliate.

I am going to share a snapshot of my experience with late paymets as of November 20, 2007 after 6 months as an affiliate with Linkshare. I feel this information is critical to affiliates and merchants considering doing business with Linkshare Corporation. I am doing this so any affiliate can fully understand what they are getting into if and when they join Linkshare.

As of November 20, 2007 I had not been paid out 69.2% of my commissions earned in September! That means almost 2 months later I have still not received the vast majority of commissions earned.

In contrast, at Commission Junction, I received 98.8% of my commissions earned in September on October 17, 2007 (over a month ago). Linkshare cannot compete with CJ as long as their payouts are untimely. This policy makes it clear to affiliates that Linkshare’s priorities are to please merchants and not its affiliate partners.

As of November 20, 2007 I still have outstanding, unpaid commissions that were earned in June, July, August, September and October. You would have to be the Buddha himself to have the patience to wait for these payments to be made!

The reality is, that many of them may never be made at all. Those in June and July are from merchants who left the Linkshare network without paying. Hence, Linkshare feels no need to pay me. Again another contractual arrangement made by Linkshare benefiting merchants and hurting affiliates.

I am sorry to report that even after the implementation of Linkshare’s weekly payment system, Linkshare’s payments to affiliates are Late, Late and Lacking.