Hypothetical Affiliate Commission.

[jim2003]

Hello,

I am curious what people would choose if a general merchandise retailer such as amazon, walmart, buy, etc offered affiliates a choice between recieving (a)6% for any purchases made through an affiliate link with a 30 day cookie, or (b)2% for that customer for all of that customers future purposes, what would affilates choose.

Your responses can simply include (a) or (b) to keep it easy.

Thanks in advance for your replys.

Regards,

[chrisnrae]

Well, it depends. Would (b) apply even if the customer had previously purchased through the site before the purchase made via your link and future purchases?

[jim2003]

Hello,

Very good question.

Assume the site requires an customer registration. If a customer previously registered, you get no commission. Also assume this is a brand new site that currently hasth no registered customers, but of course that will change overtime.

Thanks for your reply.

[rfung]

I'm leaning heavily towards the 2% lifetime commissions.

My math might be off, but if someone buys 3 items from the merchant, it'll make up the 6% you would have earned through one sale.

For places like Amazon, I've come back again and again for purchases. I guess it depends on how likely a customer is to return to the merchant directly. Amazon is a direct destination, but small-widget-store.com might not be.

[MovingOnUp]

Definitely (a) for me. I shop at a lot of online stores. I can think of a lot of stores I've only bought from once or twice. There are some where I've bought three or more times (Amazon, Overstock, Ebay, etc.), but that field narrows considerably if I try to think of stores where I haven't bought anything yet but will probably buy three times or more in the future.

Perhaps something even more beneficial to you and to affiliates would be to offer a commission plus a new customer bounty. For instance, pay a 5% commission plus a $5 bonus for each new customer. This type of combination used to be much more prevalent than it is today.

[mwack]

I'd have to agree with the 6% as well. The 2% lifetime thing could work really well, but it's too iffy to be marketable.

[MovingOnUp]

Thinking back, I've worked with several merchants where I was supposed to earn a commission for life. Most are out of business now and the others stopped paying residual commissions. No, I'm definitely not interested in lifetime commissions. Pay me today for what I generate today.

[zivkovicp]

I would go for the 6% one time payout for the following reason:

What if my site refered 100 buyers this month, BUT 70 of them already had accounts? Then I just lost commission on 70 purchases... and even worse, helped make someone else money that should have gone into my pocket.

See? better to take the money and run! :)