Do You Feel Worthy As an Affiliate?

I have been a fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship for a while now. I have followed their PPV events, and have paid for them in the past 6 months. If you are not familiar with the UFC, it is the top mixed martial arts organization in the U.S. Basically, folks get into a cage and beat each other up until there is a winner. The sport is very hot these days, and fighters are getting paid more for their efforts than in the past. But recently, I read an article about how some fighters did not feel valued by the organization. These folks were claiming that they shed their blood for the UFC, but UFC uses them and discards them as they wish.

This whole thing made me think about my own experience with merchants. There have been numerous times that I have felt as If I was being abused by merchants. For instance, you put your time and effort to create an affiliate portal only to have your commissions slashed in half by the greedy merchants. Some merchants have lousy tracking practices and don’t offer you commission on indirect leads. A few merchants ask leads to call up and by on the phone to avoid paying commission to their affiliates.

My most recent experience was with a financial company that asked me to remove all their business-related solutions from my site. They argued that after careful consideration they had decided to not work with us affiliates. Now, I get the merchant side of the story, but their answer or lack thereof to my complaints was a slap in the face, having worked for months to develop a portal for their business solution.

It’s one thing to kick out affiliates who are under-performing. It’s another to kick out those who are bringing you leads on an everyday basis. Unfortunately, a lot of merchants don’t care about you and I as affiliates. We are just tools to help them reach their goals, and they will discard us as soon as they don’t have any need for us. But there are a few merchants that actually want to build a long-term relationship with you, and those are the ones that you should really give your 100% effort to. Why would you give your 100% to a company that doesn’t value your efforts?

Your take: do you feel undervalued by your merchant? What do you think merchants should do to feel affiliates more valued?