Hey everyone! Today we’re talking about a very juicy topic which is on ‘what to do if your affiliate program partner isn’t paying you your commissions.
This is something I have recently had experience with. I have been an affiliate for this particular program for over a year now and I’ve been promoting this product that I use every day and absolutely love and believe in. But I realized that the affiliate partner wasn’t actually paying me out my commissions!
To be fair, I let this go on longer than I should have. I really should have actually followed it up straight away, but I didn’t get around to that. So let’s get in to what happened!
So what happened is I was like “Alright, it’s been long enough, it’s been like almost six months, and I still haven’t been paid off for like 3 of these sales.” So I just sent a friendly e-mail saying “Hey, I’m just letting you know that I have made a couple of commissions here…” and I took a screenshot of the earnings and attached it to the e-mail, and I said “Just wanted to know when I’ll be getting paid out these commissions, so if you can get back to me, that would be awesome.”
I left it at that, then a couple of weeks passed and I still hadn’t heard back from this person. So I thought, “Oh okay, maybe it’s my e-mail, maybe I got it wrong, I’ll just send another follow-up e-mail.” That was about a month later and in that time I’d also made another commission.
I sent the next email off tha said, “Hey, I’m just following up on my last e-mail. I’m not sure what’s happening with the whole commission thing. Could you, please, let me know what’s going on because I’d really like to know, either way.”
Another couple of weeks had passed, and I realized, “Okay, I need to put on the force now.” Because this is what we tend to do, we tend to leave it because we don’t to hurt the person, make it awkward or make them feel bad. Plus asking for money is awkward as frick! We do that, but we really have to stop because at the end of the day we’re in business.
So I laid on the force, and by “force”, I mean I blasted her (privately) on different social platforms until she replied to me. 😂
I like sent the same messages saying, “Hey, I’ve sent you two e-mails, and now I’m following you up, trying to get a hold of you in any avenue I can think of because I’m not sure if you’re getting my emails. It’s about my unpaid affiliate commissions. Could you please let me know what’s happening?” and then I sent it off through Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.
The next day, I finally got a reply! And what do you know, my commissions were paid out the very next day!
It’s very easy to think, “Oh well, she probably just paid it out because you finally hassled her so much that she did.” And that might be the truth or it might be that she just didn’t get my emails or that there was a glitch with the software that wasn’t sending out the commissions.
There’s no point worrying about that stuff because it’s done, and I don’t want to think ill of this person because you don’t really know what people are going through.
But, what do you do if they aren’t getting back to you, if they’re not replying to your emails, if they’ve just disappeared off the face of the earth? Well, there is a couple of things you can do:
SEND A FEW FRIENDLY EMAILS
You can do what I did. Send the person or company a couple of emails at first, and if they don’t get back to you, then hit social media and try and contact them that way.
If that doesn’t work, then I recommend to try a little bit longer, send a few more emails. Because at the end of the day, you are promoting this person’s product, and when they make a sale through you, they would never have made it without you. And so I think it’s fair that you should be chasing up for this commission you have earned.
You’ve put their link on your blog – that’s prime real estate. You have shared it on your social media, you’ve shared it with your list, your readers, and they trust your opinion, so there’s a lot more at stake here than just a commission. So I honestly feel like you should be paid out your commissions, and you should, you know, within reason hassle this person or company enough to pay you out.
IF THAT’S NOT WORKING, ABORT!
But if it’s not happening, if they’re not getting back to you or if it’s going a bit south, I would really recommend to cut ties with it. Just completely cut ties with the person or company because it’s just not worth the hassle.
You’re running a business, you are the professional, you are making progress, so it’s kind of a waste of your time trying to chase up these commissions when it’s just going to send you into a mental funk.
If you’ve been promoting this product over all avenues, take it off your blog, take it off your social media, take it off anywhere else you have promoted this product. And if you have a blog post that you have written that is specifically for all that product, I recommend you delete it or if you’ve got a good amount of traffic going to that post and you don’t want to lose it, I recommend to replace the current product that you have with another similar one that you’ve used, you trust or you’ve researched a lot on.
Have you gone through a similar situation with an affiliate partner? If so, how did you overcome it?
