So if you are on a performance-based deal, I mean, I do these with revenue share deals. I’m also an affiliate where I drive traffic and then I get paid – it’s a simple way that works.
How do you make sure that you’re getting paid or tracked? You know, when I was an affiliate in the beginning – and I’m still an affiliate now, so I’ve been an affiliate for a long time – there were often problems with the cart, it didn’t track the link properly. But that is a pretty good way to get most of the sales captured. It’s probably going to change in the future with cookies and so forth. So you want a good tracking system.
I know that some systems were not as good as others at tracking and I could tell because I was driving paid traffic. And I could see the conversions in my traffic platform, but they weren’t showing up in the cart. And I would even have people who I spoke to on Skype, or I knew in real life, go and buy and it wouldn’t track and then I’d have to follow up with the company. And in most cases, they would track it back to me. Then on some of those big launches, it gets very messy, because the contact might speak to several people or even buy someone else’s bonus at the very end, and wipe your cookies and they get the credit. There’s not much you can do about that.
What about in more gray areas? So with revenue share deals, there’s no affiliate link, there’s no cart. So now you need to start dealing with people who you trust, you want to make sure you trust them. So all the communications, up to the point where you go forward, would be a good indicator of how much you can trust this person. And there are some industries that are in general more or less trustworthy as well. I like to build up a good base of trust. I also build in a provision to review the books so I can actually have a look at the books.
And of course, I know a lot of the people I’m sending and if they pop-up as a customer. So you could do things like get access to the customers’ area. You could ask your people how they got on. And they might say, “Oh yes, I bought” and then you can see if you got credited for that. If you’re doing something like referring people to other businesses, I remember I wrote a funny email about how I used to make money because I lived on a dangerous corner where people used to crash. And I used to call up the tow truck, and they would go and pick up the car. Now I could look out my window and I could see the tow truck pick up the car. So I knew that I’d get my spotter’s fee. So getting some visibility is always good. You won’t always have that visibility, which is why you need trust. And ultimately, it just comes down to that.
But if you have a bonus or some other way you can stay in touch with someone after you refer them, that will be good. Some gentle follow up, anecdotal, how did you get on and they say they purchased, you can make sure that it gets tracked. And then once you see that that pattern is established and you are getting paid, then you can relax a little bit knowing that they actually appreciate your business and they want you to send more people. And that’s how I recommend you go about it if you’re getting paid on performance.
The other thing of course is make sure you get this deal set up with multiple people, so you don’t just have one source. Because if that source dries up, or they change their business model or they stop paying you or something happens, you’ve got protection. And you can turn your attention to the second one or the third one or the fourth one. You might even be able to replicate your system in multiple areas. I imagine if I took my tow truck story, if I identified other people who lived in dangerous places that always had tow trucks, I might have been able to teach them the system and get a cut. Who knows? And if the tow trucks ever did it, then they’d probably clean up as well. Literally.
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