Forum Moderators: skibum
I suppose its too much to hope for one that pays affiliates per click at more than $0.05 per click?
"Please note that search marketing is NOT allowed. Affiliates will NOT be paid for donations generated through search engine marketing."
I know many programs do not allow bidding on their trademarks, but the RNC program is the only one I can think of that forbids all SE efforts.
I had one guy I was helping, who emailed all the merchants asking if he could use PPc direct. As with most of these things, a lot of the programs are run by media agency type middlemen, who rarely reply to emails from publishers, so he assumed that the answer was no.
Another guy made a small fortune from the same merchants, all PPC direct, with no problems.
Moral of the story - if in doubt, just do it!
I'd disagree with that - rather if in doubt, read the affiliate agreement.
Some programs forbid PPC bidding for their trademarked name(s) and/or certain terms, and if the affiliate is caught, they agreement might stipulate that the merchant has the right to charge back, and/or disallow any and all commissions.
Problem is forgiveness may come in the form of forfeited commissions.
Like Shawn says, read the agreement.
If a merchant (or middleman - whoever I have to go through) can't be bothered to clarify something, I send my traffic elsewhere. What makes you think you'll get a different response when a big check is missing?
btw, great minds think alike, but fools never differ. ;-)
If you're worried about the merchants domain being the one that shows in the ad, buy a domain and forward it to your affiliate URL using the forwarded domain to show in the ad.
Around the time the first check was due, I noticed my aff. account was suddenly "inactive". I emailed the program manager and he explained that ppc traffic was not allowed at all - that it competed with their in house promotion. He told me to read the TOS.
I usually scan TOS for any PPC language or send an email about it to a manager when signing up, but had neglected to do this when signing up for this merchant. Needless to say he could have widtheld all commisions from that month. I explained my situation and was able to work out a lesser commision so I didn't lose money.
So in this case I was happy with the lesson learned and not out any additional moeny, but it makes me think about the logic of managers that set up commision structures and then limit their exposure and traffic in any way. To me, a sale is a sale is a sale, and affiliate managers should never want to lessen their market share.
The trademark issue is a similar problem. Preventing affiliates from promoting a brand in order to sell that brand shows a strange misstrust in the affiliate, and ultimately, I think, leads to lesser sales and less success for the Program as a whole.
What gets me, is they have lists in CJ that they give affilites for words that should not be bidded on. These are not trademarked terms either. To hell with them.
C.K.
If they do not permit bidding on any brand names, then the company needs to work out agreements with other merchants in the category such that they will not bid on each others brand names or else send out C&D's to keep other merchants and their affiliates from bidding on their brand names.
If they allow affiliates to bid the minimum on thier brand names, then the merchant needs to bit about $0.25-$0.50 on their own brand name and warn the first time and kick affiliates out of the program whose ad show up higher in the search listings who do not heed the warnings.
Some merchants are challenged when it comes to writing ads which necessitates the $0.25-$0.50 bids to stay above affiliates who can pull 2-10X the CTR of the ad the merchant writes.
Some merchants make affiliates add all their branded keywords as a negative keyword which is dumb because via broad match there will be a bunch of competing ads showing up for these terms.
But, other companies are still bidding on these terms, as well as their affiliates. So instead of the top 8 listings being this company and it's affiliates, it is now this company and seven of their competitors. Makes no sense to me.
