£313,000 Worth of Next Traffic Up For Grabs
Yep, that’s how much I sent them last year - £313,000 worth of business and I earned £12591.59 in commission - quite a nice amount, paid for a few holidays and helped with the move to the new house.
The vast majority of this traffic originated from only a few pages:-
kids bedroom furniture - kids beds - kids bedding - nursery furniture
see a theme emerging here - mainly NON RETURNING PRODUCTS - although I will hold my hand up and confess to sending some traffic from my kids clothes page, approximately 2.5%, and maybe some clothes were bought through my other links (but, then again, maybe some furniture was bought through my kids clothes links!).
Now, if I’d never included Next on these pages and carried on sending the traffic to my existing merchants, I reckon I would have made (taking an average of 7%) £21,910, an extra £9329, which is another nice amount - could have spent it at Next on new furniture for the new house!.
In 2008, if I had decided to keep Next, and assuming I sent the same amount of traffic, my commission would have plummeted to £6260 - BUT, not only have I removed them I’ve replaced them with some higher paying merchants (more about this laters), so my average commission should increase to, about, 8.5%, bringing me in £26,605 - and possibly more as Google as just promoted my best keywords to those top 3 positions.
Given the above you may wonder why I started to promote Next and thier 4% rate in the first place, as I don’t normally include low paying merchants. I knew I would make a success of it - they do have some lovely kids bedroom furniture and accessories - and I reasoned that if I sent them good, quality, converting traffic, they, like most of my other satisfied merchants, would actually reward me with an increase in commission - oh folly!
So, why didn’t I ditch them when they inflicted a 25% pay reduction by reducing the 4% to 3%?
Because I’m a trusting soul, and when they replied to my ‘angry’ email with a strong inference that they would be looking to introduce a category based commission structure, which would take into account Affiliates, like myself, who didn’t incur vast amounts of returned goods, I actually believed them. I am considering changing my name to Pollyanna.
No prizes for guessing my reaction to the latest offering of 2%
Obviously I contacted Affiliate Window and informed them that I would be removing all Next links immediately, but would reinstate them if I was offered an higher rate in the light of the amount and quality of traffic I sent to them. AW were very sympathetic and promised to put my case to them as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, for Next, in the meantime, the merchants I had replaced them with have performed amazingly well - Tradedoubler and Buyat must be rubbing their hands with glee - and I’d be criminally insane to start promoting Next again - and Dave would probably have me locked up!
So Which Merchants Am I Using In Place Of Next?
Letterbox on Affiliate Window
GLTC, Bedworld and The White Company on Tradedoubler
Littlewoods Direct, Mothercare and John Lewis on Buyat
Amazon - found some cool kids furniture and acccessories there!
Clothes - Freemans and Grattan (POR & CJ) they pay 10% and NO RETURN CLAWBACKS ( you have to wait 10 days though)
I’ll also be including Woolworths, Urchin, Blooming Marvelllous and La Redoute soon.
So there are quite a few good, quality merchants who pay a darn site higher commission, to choose from.
Why I think that letting big, brand name merchants get away with paying ludicrously low commission rates is so bad, in the long term, for Affiliates, is a whole other blog, probably entitled
YOU PAY PEANUTS - YOU GET MONKEYS
January 11th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Excellent article Elaine
The sooner the so called ‘Blue Chip’ merchants start treating Affiliate Marketing for what it is the better *, after all no company in their right mind would cut the commission of a top salesperson.
*note to Next
Affiliate Marketing is a Sales Channel
January 11th, 2008 at 01:19 pm
Well done Elaine
Have you noticed any change in coversions with these new merchants.
One of the arguments for bigger brands is that they supposedly convert better hence a lower commision rate can still earn you more per click. Isnt always the case by any means though.
January 12th, 2008 at 03:56 am
Hello Elaine, very interesting article and the mind boggles as to why these merchants pay pittance, but its a case of the big boys dont give a damn. I can offer you a whopping 15% commision on all sales at my site www.sextoyshopping.co.uk yes 15%. I realise you sell kids furniture etc so my site may not be applicable, however, its the PARENTS that view your sites not the kids. If you sent me that volume of traffic I would go well out of my way to look after you!! If this is of interest please contact me via my contact us page and we can set you up as an affiliate quickly like others are already doing. My company is in its 26th year so we are well established and well respected. Look forward to hearing from you. Tony Pankhurst - Partner Magic Moments
January 12th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Tony’s obviously not familiar with the site or he would have realised that I have quite a healthy, popular section just for kids - think I’d better decline his generous offer, don’t want to confuse the little blighters
January 12th, 2008 at 02:59 pm
Sure is funny how these big merchants think they can offer dire commissions compared to the rest of the market place out there.
I guess they (and their legion of marketing graduates) don’t realise that by paying less and affiliates dropping them and using other merchants as a result, they will be actually making it far easier for their competitors to consolidate their positions, stablise their infrastructure, grow their affiliate schemes and get better rates for stock due to increased volumes, and grow in size and comptetor threat to Next etc.
Next will be more profitable for now but a larger percentage of a shrinking pie is still less money overall for Next in the future.
Hopefully everyone will ditch them and tell them exactly why… same for the zero commission jokers out there too.
January 15th, 2008 at 04:08 pm
Im trying to work out the Next logic… Im trying to see things from their side and all I can come up with is that they are obsessing about control of the brand. Perhaps affiliatewindow.com could shed some light from their perspective how they see affiliate marketing to be beneficial to Next with such a poor offering to affiliates. Would awin rather keep Next because they are a brand even though their own overrides will be reduced just for the sake of having a brand. If I were awin, I think Id stick to my guns on this one and just say aff marketing may not be right for you, Next >>>>
January 15th, 2008 at 04:14 pm
Well done on a successful website.
However, are you still getting 13,000 targetted uniques day?
If you are then I would expect a much bigger return than £12,500 for the year.
Hopefully with your new merchants you’ll make double
January 15th, 2008 at 04:47 pm
Martin that’s 1 merchant on 1 section of the site - rest assured I make full use of my 13000 daily visitors
January 16th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Nice article, Elaine. Couldn’t agree more with your actions and sentiments. Keep it up chica
January 16th, 2008 at 06:26 pm
Excellent article Elaine, I’m shocked how the so-called best new programme has acted since picking up that award.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:47 am
What a cheek! I bet they soon come back with some new rates for you next year…