There have been a few rumblings in the affiliate world in the past few weeks about a handful of advertisers breaking the terms and conditions they are bound by and their that protect affiliates.

The affiliate relationship is a two way thing, with both affiliates and advertisers (and often the network as the intermediary) expected to do their best to ensure everyone involved is treated fairly and with respect.

Affiliate Chris Frost had recently experienced being kicked off a few affiliate programmes at very short or no notice and with no explanation why. He therefore decided to share his thoughts on his blog. Chris kindly allowed us to lift the content from the blog and post it here.

It serves a useful reminder to networks, agencies and advertisers to ensure when they do make changes to their programmes’ terms and conditions they do their very best to keep their affiliates informed at every step:

“The past week or two has seen a lot of affiliates being messed around by networks and merchants with suspensions and partnership deals ending left, right and centre.

A bit of fuss has been stirred up following one instance where one merchant appears to have sent a blanket email culling most affiliates even without the network’s knowledge – more can be read on Jasons blog.

So to help networks & merchants better understand why affiliates get hacked off, this is how it works for me personally, and a lot of other small affiliates;

• We trawl through 100s of emails every day and spot a new programme announcement on a network we’d like to promote in the future. Maybe not right now but in a month or so.
• We plan for the future and apply online while thinking of a strategy.
• Sometimes we are auto accepted – great!
• Sometimes we’re marked as pending and have to wait weeks for a decision.
• In some cases we’re asked to show examples of where we plan on promoting the merchant (Affiliate Window’s Darwin should address this in the future and many affiliates have an online portfolio).
• If refused, it’s often because the merchant hasn’t checked out all the opportunities being offered. Some will see “discount voucher site” and shudder, without checking their online portfolio and realising they also have a lingerie content portal.
• If accepted, we then go on to create pages, deeplinks, product reviews for this merchant and their goods, spending a lot of time, money and effort.
• A merchant then suspends or ends the relationship for whatever reason – in most cases no reason is given at all.
• We then have to remove all deeplinks, reviews and pages – or like most, we’ll actually point them to your competitors.

I understand there are legitimate reasons why you want to end a relationship with affiliates, or to be more previse, websites. These include brand protection, PPC infringements and of course when a merchant moves to another network. What I don’t understand is why you can’t explain the reason behind your decision. Why don’t you share it with the affiliate and take 2 minutes to explain the reasons rather than relying on the “there could be many reasons…” standard network email? Be honest and transparent!

In my experience I’ve been rejected from programmes, only to email the merchant with examples of where we planned to promote them, to be accepted. Why didn’t the merchant / account manager / agency just ask me in the first place? Why didn’t they check out my other websites?

Networks can help combat this by removing the option for merchants to end a partnership without any reason. Maybe they can add a text field where the merchant can explain the reason for their decision. Why not have a question on the form asking the merchant directly “Have you made direct contact with the affiliate to try to resolve the issue first?”. Would you be surprised to see a 90% “NO” return rate? I and other affiliates wouldn’t!

During the A4U Roadshows in Manchester last year, the IAB along with networks, all gave presentation that stressed merchants needed to communicate with their affiliates in better ways. This isn’t communicating to just the affiliates who are on a particular networks christmas card list, nor those affiliates who have a popular blog or large twitter following – this is ALL your affiliates!

As affiliates we have to be transparent when applying for a programme, merchants should be held to the same accountability and made to be equally transparent. Don’t reject us because of the type of sites we run, noting it as “brand protection”, only to allow a similar site to promote you on the quiet! It’s bad enough with closed PPC groups that in most cases add no value!

Every stage should be transparent… and for those that believe it is, sorry but you’re a misguided soul. Once this is achieved, the affiliate industry will once again become a fair, open and honest industry that we can all be proud of.”

You can read the full blog post from Chris on his Web Affiliate blog.