[AffiliateFirst]

I'm just wondering what Vann's uses as an criteria for approval?
It's more of a question about 'per sale' programs in general.

Why would you reject any application?

It would seem with the CJ interface that it costs the same to have 100 affiliates or 3000. (let me know if I'm wrong) Granted maybe your CJ stats would drop a bit, but isn't it better to get more exposure?

Your paying publishers for sales, so if they don't produce sales but show your banners and links why do you care? (I can see rejecting some questionable content sites but I'm talking in general)

To me that's kinda like approving who wears a Vann's.com t-shirt when walking the streets.

Richard White
AffiliateFirst Directory (http://www.affiliatefirst.com/txt/)
AffiliateFirst Submission Services (http://www.affiliatefirst.com/submit/)

[Vanns.com]

Richard,

These are all great questions. I appreciate you asking them. Let me start by telling you why Vanns.com would reject an application - Pornogrphy, Gambling, prejudicial, lewd or degrating content are all rejected (but very occasionally get through and are removed as soon as they are discovered). Also sites that use questionable ethics in their marketing efforts are often removed...such as sites that serve up ads based on site keywords, sites that use pop-ups/unders overzealously and any site that we get numerous complaints about. Further our company has agreements with the vendors whose products we sell that state we are not allowed to ship the products we sell outside of the United States (any truly authorized Consumer Electronics dealer has this same policy). Because of that policy Vanns.com auto-rejects publishers that are outside of the United States. We don't want to mislead anyone that we can offer them something we can't. Now, there are a good deal of sites located outside the U.S. that generate a majority or all of their traffic from the U.S. I will approve these publishers if they contact me through CJ or at netprofits@vanns.net.

Number of affiliates - there can both be a huge difference and no difference between having 100 or 3000 publishers. If you only have say 30 publishers that are driving traffic that pays them $100 in commissions a month then you'll only be paying those commissions even if you have 3000 or just 100 publishers. Now if you have say 250 out of 3000 publishers that are driving traffic that pays them $100 in commissions a month then yes there's a huge difference in the cost. But don't get me wrong I would love to have 250 publishers that all drove some serious traffic to Vanns.com.

You're right we are paying for sales and nothing else. Those affiliates that give us a good deal of impressions but no clicks and no sales can actually be valuable in branding us and getting us exposure.

I see that you were rejected recently from our program. In all honesty, it was a mistake...I'm glad you brought it to my attention. and I'm sorry. If you'll still advertise for us I'll get you re-approved as soon as you say "go ahead" but if you won't I'd understand.

Thanks for your comments and I hope I've addressed them to your satisfaction. If not, please let me know.

Thank you,

Matt Ranta
Vanns.com
netProfits Affiliate Program
Manager
netprofits@vanns.net

[AffiliateFirst]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Vanns.com - Matt:
Richard,

If you only have say 30 publishers that are driving traffic that pays them $100 in commissions a month then you'll only be paying those commissions even if you have 3000 or just 100 publishers. Now if you have say 250 out of 3000 publishers that are driving traffic that pays them $100 in commissions a month then yes there's a huge difference in the cost. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Matt,
This is the only part that I don't get, what the huge difference in costs would be. (other than commissions, of course)

I brought this up because of a conversation I had last night with a client. He produces portals for many websites and we compared notes. We both have about a 7% rejection rate with CJ and of that 7% we found that most of those merchants programs will fail within a year. (just a couple of guys talking, nothing scientific) That why the question about per sale programs.

I can have your program listed on my site in a few minutes as Vann's was listed before I applied.

Thanks,
Richard

Richard White
AffiliateFirst Directory (http://www.affiliatefirst.com/txt/)
AffiliateFirst Submission Services (http://www.affiliatefirst.com/submit/)

[Vanns.com]

Richard,

It would only be the difference in commission amounts. And you could say time spent managing a program is a cost as well. The larger the program the more time one must spend managing it. Keeping track of 500 affiliates is a lot less time consuming than keeping track of 4000. As a company, the more affiliates you have, the more time you shold spend monitoring your program. For instance, if an affiliate originally were to sign up and be approved (content fits,no porno,etc..) by a company but later that affiliate should decide to add something to their site that would warrant a rejection from said company it would be much easier with 500 affiliates than with 4000 to monitor such activities.

I hope this answers your question but if not let me know and I'll be happy to expand upon it.

Also, you've been re-activated in our program. Thanks for giving us a second chance.

Thank you,

Matt Ranta
Vanns.com
netProfits Affiliate Program
Manager
netprofits@vanns.net

[paulcook]

I just applied to become an affiliate at cJ for my brand new site Home Theater In A Box (http://www.hometheaterinabox.com).

I am curious how much money per month your top performing affiliates are making. You seem to have a decent site that looks like it converts pretty well.

Also, some of my other merchants pay 5% commission on electronics. Will your program convert at a higher percentage to make up for the lower commission rate?

[Vanns.com]

Thanks for applying to out program. I checked out your site and approved you just a few minutes ago. Nice site by the way.

Here's what our top 5 publishers made in commissions last month:

$203.60
$161.91
$133.91
$133.52
$109.05

While I can't attest to the conversion rate on other sites I can tell you ours runs around 2.5% for affiliates in general. Some of our higher commission earning affililates have lower rates and some have much higher rates though.

I'm currently looking into implementing an incentive program that may assist in earning more commissions. Also, we are considering other programs that may make our affiliate program more enticing and provide better sell through. I don't want to reveal any of this yet but I will keep everyone informed as these programs are developed.

I hope that this reply answers your questions. If not, please let me know and I'll give you more information.

Thanks!

Matt Ranta
Vanns.com
netProfits Affiliate Program
Manager
netprofits@vanns.net

[walleyewarrior]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Because of that policy Vanns.com auto-rejects publishers that are outside of the United States <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sorry to say it this way but merchants thinking like this need to get with the program.
It's called the world wide web!!!!
Like most affilaites even though I may be in Canada means little. Estimates 85 % plus is US traffic. I need to find an electronics merchant who may actually convert sales from clicks.

Maybe someone else may want this traffic.
WW

It was so cold last winter that I saw a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets.

[Vanns.com]

Walleye -

I can understand your feelings about this. The problem we have is this though:

We are a fully authorized dealer from all the vendors whose products we sell. Therefore we have to follow a great deal of policy that is established by those vendors (ie-Sony,JVC,etc). One of the biggest policies that they have is that we can not ship outside of the United States. So, if I advertise on websites that generate a good deal of their traffic outside of the United States I'm mis-leading those people. Which isn't right. As I've said previously, I'll gladly approve people who live outside of the states but whose sites generate U.S. Based traffic...they only need to contact me.

I wish we could sell our products outside of the U.S. we'd make a killing... but we can't. Therefore I won't mislead people by advertising on sites that generate traffic that is mainly based outside of the U.S.

Thanks -

Matt Ranta
Vanns.com
netProfits Affiliate Program
Manager
netprofits@vanns.net