What to Do with Non-Paying Merchants!

One thing that I hate the most in the affiliate marketing business is non-payments. Many merchants expect us affiliates to bring them leads and spend money in the proces, but when it comes to paying us, they either pay us late or fail to do so. Now, I am not going to get into why not paying your affiliates can serious damage your brand and your business. To be honest, a lot of big brands actually do pay their affiliates under any circumstances. But smaller third-party networks often leave their affiliates open to these issues.

During my time in the affiliate marketing world, I have worked with big networks (e.g. CJ), and some smaller networks (with only a handful of products). And I have seen non-payment in both. The large networks usually protect their affiliates and try to get you the money you have earned. But those tiny networks can be tricky to deal with. You want to read the fine print before complaining to them about your merchant. In many cases, these guys put all the responsibility on you and the merchant to work it out. For instance, I was owed about $500 on one of these networks, but the merchant just refused to answer my e-mails or send me my check. The merchant told me that while they were “sorry,” I know the terms and conditions before I joined the network (meaning that I had to solve things with the merchant myself). It turned out that the merchant had to close its doors, and I never heard from them again.

The moral of story is that you should always track your revenue every month to figure out who’s not paying you. The sooner you figure that out, the better chance you have of stopping them in their tracks. Some folks just love to use poor affiliates to generate some leads and get the heck out. But I don’t like being taken advantage of. Do you?