Lots of interesting comments. I can understand the panic because let’s face it when someone runs around telling the world how great they are and sponsoring “big” events you think,” feck, how did that happen to them?” I simply don’t know what happened in this case, but I can clear things up a little from the Paid On Results point of view.
I am a co-founder of Paid On Results and currently a director as well as shareholder in the business.
We have no debts, are cash rich, have no loans or overdrafts and we spend within our means. Now this sadly means that we can’t sponsor every event, or send our directors on jollies to Las Vegas in the name of “work”. Seriously, I am gutted about that one ;-)
As far as I know, we are the only Affiliate Network in the world that “Pays On Request”. Effectively this means you raise as many invoices with Paid On Results as you like during the month and all are paid within 7 days max of being submitted. Now for this to apply you need to have a UK based bank account and accept BACS payment. Otherwise its monthly payments for Cheques and PayPal .
How we work with the majority of our Merchants is on a vastly different basis from most of the other Networks. Merchants pay a small monthly fee and 99% of them pay commission in advance. This is kept in a separate account and as sales are validated our override becomes available to us at the same time commission is available to Affiliates. It’s totally in our interest to get Merchants to validate quickly and to keep paying their invoices in advance of running out of funds. If a Merchant runs out of funds Affiliates on the program are warned, we cover the commission up to the point we alerted the Affiliates of the problem. If a Merchant will only work with us on an invoice basis we look very hard at them to see if they are worth the punt but everyone is told up front if that Merchant is not working in funds, as it simply becomes a risk for everyone involved. If you know in advance you can avoid the risk.
Merchants have to pay to be on a Network or be profitable for the Network, so if you think a Merchant is “crap” then that’s your opinion, but keep in mind, some niche Affiliate is probably making a mint off the back of a little gem of a domain they have and some good SEO skills that the Merchant simply doesn’t understand. Merchants make a lot of money from Affiliate Marketing, even the “crap” ones but believe me, you have not seen crap. We get around 5 Merchants asking to join a day at Paid On Results, most get a polite thanks but no thanks. I am sure I have let the odd Beatles or Take That pass by, oh well ;-)
So I’ll sum up by saying i-level was a huge Agency that went down the tubes, big or small it can happen to anyone, so use your best judgement and hopefully you now understand how important it is not to keep your eggs all in one basket. Spread your risk so that when a company falls you think, “crap, lost a couple of grand and not, crap, my business is following them down the crappier as I was to pig ignorant of using multiple networks” ;-)
Best Wishes,
Clarke Duncan,
Paid On Results Ltd.
http://www.paidonresults.com/
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