Most business owners have signed up as an affiliate for services they use and trust. We have and do.
When we have a client that needs a particular service that we use, and believe in, we tell our clients of this service and provide our affiliate link (with disclosure) assuming that we will get a commission for this offering if they choose to use that service.
Do you do this and think you will receive commission?
Think again.
We offered an affiliate link to a client for a service we highly recommend, and we use, which our client signed up for. We discovered we were not paid commission and checked into it. We were told:
If someone clicks on an affiliate link after yours then they get the commission. <quote> last affiliate link clicked is the one that gets the sale. <end quote>
This started me thinking. So, you recommend a service to your client. You explain the benefits, also explain that it is an affiliate link, and send them off.
If they don’t sign up, so be it. But if they do and you don’t get the commission then what happened. Well here is some of my thinking from the quote above.
If you recommend a service and the client wants to check on reviews well they can land on a site that has embedded affiliate links (most don’t have disclosures). Suppose they like the review and they click on the link of the service name. They may not even realize that their action of clicking on a simple link of the service name is going to delete your cookie.
It sure never occurred to me,
So, do you offer affiliate links to your clients and assume you will be properly compensated for the referral IF the client signs up for the service?
Think again.
Likely you have lost in commissions.
What can we do? Not sure there is any answer at this point but wanted to alert you to this issue.
If I find any answers I will post them here. If you have any suggestions please share.
