I just wanted to share frustrating affiliate story with you. Back on November 2, 2007, I was accepted by the YouSendIt affiliate program.
I was interested in promoting YouSendIt, because I’ve been a satisfied, paying customer of their service for a while, and I’ve recommended them (without compensation) to lots of people.
If you’re not familiar with the service, it’s a way to transfer and share really big files (up to 2GB), and I’ve found it really useful to share big video files, PowerPoint, etc.
Anyhow, I was planning to run a whole big campaign to promote YouSendIt in my blog, sites, newsletters, etc.
But the other day, when I logged into Commission Junction to check my internal messages, I found out that they had booted me from the affiliate program.
There was no reason given, so I am assuming they had this idea that affiliates would become instantly active and generate tons of leads.
The reality is that it doesn’t happen that way.
A lot of people talk about the 80/20 rule, or even 95/5, where 5% of affiliates are generating 95% of the transactions.
Then there is the long tail of affiliates that can bring in a few leads each per month.
I think I could have been in the top echelon there for YouSendIt, and driven good number of new customers to them.
But now I’ve been alienated both as an affiliate and a paying customer.
I would encourage affiliate managers to take this into consideration before pruning bunches of affiliates from their program so quick and without cause.
Affiliate marketing isn’t a channel where you can hit a magic button and get results.
You need to do some hands on work - affiliates are partners with the merchants and should be treated as such.
I never got a phone call or e-mail from YouSendIt to try and activate me or ask how I planned to promote them. They just bounced me after a few weeks for no reason.
Happy Holidays, YouSendIt.
