[lschofield]

Anyone else think this would be a good tool?

Maybe a simple list of merchants names and 2 columns: 1 signifying orders tracked and the other for the orders that didn't. Might be a good reference tool to have at a glance!

My two cents is that all of my test orders have tracked. These being: eBay, Paul Fredrick MenStyle, RealNetworks, DisneyShopping and CheapTickets.

Now that I think about it though, I'm thinking of a last minute purchase I made through one of my aff links to SkyAuction, and I don't think that tracked, but that was several months back and probably not relevant now.

I do think though that an at-a-glance summary would be very useful in more ways than one (when deciding on merchants, monitoring your existing merchants and maybe a sudden drop in sales, keeping merchants accountable, a good way to catch a bug in the tracking system, etc...).

I know some merchants don't credit if you purchase from your own links, and I think that is ridiculous. How can you effectively sell a product if you're not familiar with it? Every other company offers employees a discount on its own product. And in my opinion, affiliates are actually better than employees as far as a merchant should be concerned. We're expanding their market and introducing new clients to them, optimizing a much larger range of keywords for them than they possibly could do with one site, sometimes writing articles in praise of them, and all at no cost to the merchant unless the sale closes. Not to mention the added PR their own site gets for keywords if affiliates aren't redirecting the links.

[Sue]

The problem with a list like that is that things change. A merchant that tracks correctly in March may no longer do so in June ... and the other way round too. So a simple list would have to include the date at which the tracking report was made. That would be a lot of work to maintain. I think the seperate forum works well as we can, in some cases, see discussions about why something did or did not track.

[MichaelColey]

It's much easier just to search here rather than trying to keep a master list updated.

[Kevin]

Actually, and unfortnately, the list of merchants that have ever had an order not track would be simple to keep: All of them.

What would be good, but again tough to keep, would be a list of repeat, perhaps intentional, offenders. And search does work for that.

And as far as merchants paying for purchases through an affiliates own links, it could be argued either way as to the pros and cons. On one hand, it increases the possibility of fraud. And employee discounts are offered to employees, who are obligated to work for a certain number of hours during the week in support of their employer.

You of course, are under no such contract. You could sign up for an affiliate program, take your discount, and never put up a link in public. Right? :) Not saying you would, but common sense dictates that some would.

[Trust]

"I know some merchants don't credit if you purchase from your own links, and I think that is ridiculous."

Amazon and some hosting merchants. Can't think of any others, don't remember anybody posting any others. I've actually had every single test purchase I've ever done gone thru. It would be great to have a chart with Merchant Name and a couple of columns, Tracked, Didn't Track

Merchant X 10 1

So if somebody wants to go thru all the posts and put it together, I'll sticky it :)