With all the talk of toolbars and loyalty sites lately, it reminds me of an issue that I have heard discussed at almost every network advisory board meeting I have been to.

Many times loyalty site members forget to shop through the loyalty site and perhaps either go direct to the merchant site or go through a different affiliate site. When that member then asks the loyalty site why they didn’t get their reward, the loyalty site does a transaction inquiry with the network. “Missing transactions” seem to be a big issue. The real issue is user error most of the time, but usually the network will fix it so that the loyalty affiliate gets their credit so the member gets their reward.

It doesn’t matter if that person actually went through your site, you have no way of knowing that do you? But the loyalty site has that member who will give them their information that they can in turn forward to the network.

Is it fair that the loyalty site gets credit just because they have the information needed to claim credit for a sale and no one else is none the wiser? Isn’t this just as bad as having a toolbar that overwrites a cookie or pops on another affiliate’s site or links? Does it matter to the network who brings in the money as long as they get their cut?

Shareasale in the past did not allow software or toolbar affiliates into their network. This was one of the things that made them well liked and trusted in the industry. When well respected affiliate Fatwallet, with a long history of ethical behavior, let it be known months ago that they were going live with a toolbar, Shareasale decided now was the time to revisit that choice.

Shareasale held a Roundtable on Tuesday February 3rd to discuss the issue with affiliates, merchants and others in the affiliate industry. I was quite disappointed in the webinar, I had expected there to be much more discussion and more passion in the debates. To me it seemed a non event considering all the vocal people voicing their opinions on affiliate forums; I didn’t hear any of that at the webinar.

Was it because people decided it was futile, did they assume Shareasale had already made their decision? The timing did seem to many to be questionable, that right at the time Fatwallet was coming out with their toolbar, Shareasale was discussing letting toolbar affiliates into the network. Is it because historically Fatwallet has been upstanding and ethical and Shareasale thought it would be good to make this exception? And is it really just about Fatwallet as many had assumed or is Shareasale getting pressure from their merchants wanting to have software affiliates in their programs?

And even though word had been out to networks and some merchants for quite a while about the Fatwallet toolbar, why now say this issue has just come up? Some think Shareasale was waiting for the right time, figuring out how to handle letting Fatwallet stay in the network.

Even if the Fatwallet toolbar follows all the rules of fairness, does this open the door for less scrupulous affiliates to enter Shareasale? Will there be constant compliance checks? Bigger networks can’t seem to do a good job of it with their compliance and quality control departments, how will Shareasale a smaller company be able to keep up? Would they just limit the number of software affiliates to a select few? Has affiliate marketing lost its white knight? Or are we all in an uproar about nothing? Time will tell I suppose.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Cyber Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.