[gotapex]

FYI, company to avoid at all costs: CruiseDirect on the CJ platform (https://members.cj.com/member/accounts/publisher/getadvertiserdetail.do?ispopup=true&advertiserId=965192).

They say they pay 15% commissions on each sale, 120 day return, online or offline (this is what they say: "And with CruiseDirect's TotalPay program you get paid for all sales - whether online or offline - because CruiseDirect requires all customers to go online to complete their transaction.")

Order placed for:

Total Fare: 7618.00 USD
Total Taxes/Fees: 41.32 USD
Total: 7659.32 USD

At 15%, it should be a commission of $1148.90. Even if they remove taxes, it would be a commision of $1142.70.

Shows up on CJ as:

Amount: $1,297.44
Commission: $194.62

They're underpaying this sale by $954.28

Furthermore, called 5 days later to add more services to that order. Additional cost: $320. Additional commission: $0. The sale did not show up at all. BTW, this was on a clean computer (no spyware, no cookies extraneous sources, etc).

After I contacted the affiliate manager about this, they changed the wording in their description:

Direct your visitors to CruiseDirect, and earn 15% to 25% of the total commission generated on each sale!

Basically, you do not earn on your sales. You earn commissions on a fraction (which they apparently determine) of each sale.

[JoyUnltd]

It sounds like you only earn 15% commish of what they earn on the sale. Good to know, they're one of my affiliates. Thanks!

[kea12345678]

That is absolutely unbelievable.

[Drewbert]

Their original wording was clearly incorrect. Which is a pretty stupid thing to do.

They're paying you 15% of THEIR commission, so it's probably 15% of 20% of the total, or something.

[Drastic]

Wow that absolutely sucks.

Forget that merchant.

[Gordon]

They should be compelled to email ALL their affiliates with the correct wording/terms.

They should also be compelled to correct their affiliate terms in CJ and if they fail to do either, CJ should give them to the boot.

This is outright cheating their affilates, no two ways about it.

[UncleScooter]

www.bbbonline.org

[simcat]

"earn up to 25% of the total commission generated on each sale!" So basically you earn a variable percentage of an unknown percentage of a purchase amount.
Who could have a problem with that? lol

I remember looking for travel merchants in the past & seeing a lot of them having misleading terms and fine print re: commisions. I guess the travel sector really IS competative.

[affiliate4all]

Gotapex
In any case, they ought to pay you 15% for any purchases prior to mending their wordings. Use the AAQ and claim your commish. I wouldn't have let anybody a hand at my $$$. Really doesn't make the remotest of sense to me unless this is a clear case of fraud and all of their affiliates should e-mail the AM and CJ at once.

[7-days]

Thanks for the heads up on this one. They should have compensated you in some way, if not the full amount indicated.

I'll make a note to avoid this merchant. Thanks.

[MichaelColey]

I know of one other merchant who pays a percent of "profit" instead of a percent of sales (and like this merchant, it's a low percent).

15-25% of profit doesn't seem like a lot. I've always assumed that most good merchants share about half of their profit with affiliates. For instance, merchants that have a 20% margin pay about 10%. Merchants with pure profit (like Ebooks) pay about 50%. Obviously this must vary quite a bit.

I've created a poll for merchants (http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=62047). I'm not sure that many will vote, but I'd love to see the distribution of what percent of profit merchants pay.

[begabloomers]

Michael, do you mean gross profit or net profit? Half the gross profit would be unsustainable.

[Billy Kay]

I;ve had 2 merchants - also on CJ - that had the same problem

Like you, they changed the wording after I contacted them (and after the sales)

Only your gut instinct can say if it was fraud or just an oversight.

You also need to ask yourself why no ther affiliate ever brought this up to the merchant before.

Either other aff's never check their stats... or this is the merchant's first sale :)

(look at their green bars)

[MichaelColey]

Michael, do you mean gross profit or net profit? Half the gross profit would be unsustainable.Many companies pay that much or more. eBay pays up to 65% of their gross profit on affiliate sales. Some software and/or eBook companies pay 50-75% commissions. Many travel companies pay 5% commissions (half of their cut).

I think the key is to look at affiliate sales as incremental sales and realize that increased commissions can greatly increase those incremental sales. To maximize earnings, you need to look at the incremental costs related to those incremental sales. You also need to consider the life value of customers, since many customers that affiliate send to you can be a steady stream of revenue in the future.