I know it seems obvious, but affiliate marketing is a business no different than any other business, whether it be on-line or off-line. There will be companies with strong business practices that succeed and pay their bills month-after-month, year-after-year and never leave anyone hanging. There will be companies that have okay business practices and pay their bills no problem until some kind of trouble arises where their okay business practices just aren't strong enough. These companies slowly stretch out their payment speed and can eventually just stop paying. They'll never tip anyone off on their problems because they can't afford to stop doing business or they won't be able to pay any bills at all. Then there are the companies that have horrible business practices who don't last longer than a few months, leaving tons of people unpaid.
How can you really protect yourself when you aren't sure which category the network you are working with falls under?
You can look for threads like this, or look at places like the FaceBook group where people complain about companies that don't pay. There are a few problems with that. First, that information isn't always easy to find. There is no single repository of this kind of information and despite an apparent need, nobody has stepped up to formalize this kind of BBB styled site. Second, that information isn't always dependable. As we've seen in many threads here, often times the complainers are affiliates who have been booted for ToS violations, and with nobody vetting the complaints, it's difficult to tell what's real and what isn't. Lastly, this information often comes out after many people have been left unpaid. So if you are currently doing business with a company that'll be leaving people unpaid, you won't know you are going to get screwed until it's too late.
You can ask for faster payments. This is really just an illusion of protection, though. Once you are doing any sort of decent volume, you'll be on weekly payments anyway and your overall dollar-amount risk won't change. You might feel like you are safer, but what's the difference between losing a month at $1K or a week at $1K? Nothing, you are still out $1K. You might argue that you'll be less exposed, but if you stretch that out to 2 missed payments, it winds up the same: Losing $2K in 2 months or $2K in 2 weeks. You are still out the same. If a network is using poor business practices, doing weekly payments will only speed up the process of them going out-of-business.
So what should you do as an affiliate? You should be doing some research before you trust any of your traffic with a network. Think of the network as a bank. Would you deposit your money at a bank simply because their tellers "keep it real", or because the bank manager comped you a few lap dances? Probably not.
While this may be basic info for some of you, here are some things I'd research before working with a new business partner (be it network or merchant):
- How long has the company been in business
- Who are the principals and are there any negative hits on them from past business dealings
- Google the company and do some reading. Look for good things and how they've handled bad things
- Is their domain behind WHOIS protection? If so, that's a huge warning sign
- How/where are they hosted/tracking. A shared server setup or a free tracking system is a huge warning sign
- How serious are they about their terms and what kind of traffic they'll allow to be sent to their advertisers.
The last point is important. Typically, when a merchant refuses payment to a network, or when a merchant loses their ability to pay because of cash-flow, the bottom line problem is sketchy/fraudulent advertising. Any network/merchant that knowingly and willingly encourages fraudulent traffic to "make quota", etc. is just looking for trouble. If you run into a network/merchant that does this (and I know some exist), you might want to rethink your relationship with them, or keep a VERY close eye on the amounts they owe you.
