Sell via affiliates? Make DAMN sure you pay them
There is nothing worse than a seller who does not pay their Affiliates promptly. I made a sale of a product on June 30th - I'm still waiting for my commission payout of $38.
OK, so $38 is not a great amount, and to be fair I am not worried about the cash. I am more worried about the absolute lack of communication from the vendor.
The product was sold via "PayDotCom" (PDC) which is a central repository of downloadable products - and a way for vendors to easily sell via a bunch of affiliates.
I believe that PDC terms and conditions require that vendors pay their commissions owed within one month of the sale. With this in mind I waited 2 months before posting on the vendors forum to request payment.
Note that the vendor has replied to other forum posts since then. I bumped the forum post 3 weeks later - no response. I bumped it again 3 weeks after that - no response. I bumped it one final time 3 weeks later. Again no response.
I then started hunting on the PDC website to see if there is a way to get them involved. After all, this seller is not sticking to the T & C that hs signed up for. Apparently, if a commission owed is more than 1 month overdue, PDC will provide a way to report this, so that they (PDC) can take action. Well, I've been unable to find a "way to report this".
Conclusion
PDC need to make DAMN sure that Vendors using their service sticks to the T & C. Vendors need to make DAMN sure they pay up promptly. And Affiliates need to make DAMN sure that they promote Vendors who act appropriately.
Comment by Adam Dempsey — November 2, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
Hope you get it sorted and you get your payment
Comment by Chance — November 2, 2007 @ 1:50 pm
As someone who has had to integrate with PDC's service, let me tell you their site and service is nothing more than a bag of smashed assholes.
Good luck. I've never had a PDC forum post get answered, and emails to their support team just fall in a black hole.
Comment by Paul Forcey — November 3, 2007 @ 6:12 am
Chance,I agree 100%.
I stopped using them and bought JVM just because I was getting emails from people telling me they couldnt buy my item as PDC was so slow it kept dying on them.
Slow as Snot
I believe was the description.
I also found it incredibly difficult to work out who was owed what, the interface is crap and to make it worse it just kept on crashing.
I have seen your post, not in the pdc forum, Gary and I cant see why he is ignoring you, seems pointless to me.
Paul
Comment by burt — November 3, 2007 @ 9:58 am
I believe the reason for the non-payment is because PDC only allows a Vendor to pay ALL affiliates at one time (I think that's correct).
Hence, if there are say 50 Affiliates waiting for an average of $100 each, that's $5000 for the Vendor to pay out in one go. And if the Vendor has already spent that money? Well - people just don't get paid and Affiliates get ignored.
I posted into the Forum to let the Vendor know that I have made a blog post, I'll give it 3 weeks and if there is still no response, I will let you all know the Vendor that you need to avoid in future.
Comment by Oli — November 3, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
PDC does have one use - it makes us appreciate Clickbank a little more
Comment by burt — November 29, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
Well, I finally got paid. It took 5 MONTHS for the vendor to finally sit up and take notice. Even so, it took a Private Message in a different forum for him to realise that I wanted payment.
I've stopped promoting that particular product!