The Grumpy Affiliate Webmaster

It just never ceases to amaze me how coincidental our sales are when it comes to the way we treat our affiliate managers.  Sometimes it seems like if we act rudely to an affiliate manager, our stats suddenly drop off.  Make a comment to that affiliate manager about the sluggish affiliate sales and *bam* we’re making sales again.

I know that in this business that there are good days, bad days….good weeks, bad weeks…and even good and bad months.  I know that there’s some statistical fluctiations to be expected, and that like snowflakes, no two days are alike.  However I’m talking more about those oddities that we see.

I recently made a deal with a casino affiliate manager to increase their exposure on my sites.  In exchange I was getting a slight increase in commissions…this is a common way to negotiate - both parties win.  They get more of my overall traffic, and I get paid for the increase.  Needless to say that after about a week our signups dropped off DRAMATICALLY.

I’ve worked with this particular casino group for almost 5 years now, and have had the same affiliate manager for over half of that time.  I tend to trust them as they were one of the biggest online casino groups a few years back, and I’ve always had good conversions and excellent player value with them.

I watched our stats slow to a crawl…suddenly we were getting about 75% fewer signups.  We were still sending the same amount (and quality) of traffic, but nobody was signing up.  I waited a while and then emailed my affiliate manager back and asked what was up…of course he said nothing was wrong and it was just the way things work out sometimes.  Fine, I can sort of accept that.  Except…

48 hours later we had our best day in over a month.  Right after I emailed (politely, as always) and asked for him to check our link, backend, account, etc…things started working again.

Needless to say, this has put them on very thin ice.  While I’ve worked with this casino group for years and I tend to trust them…my bottom line won’t wait much longer on slow signups.  Whether it’s the casino ’shaving’ our stats, or just slow signups, we won’t keep sending our traffic into oblibivion…especially when we have to wonder if something fishy is up.

So who knows.  Are we bring shafted?  Are my stats being shaved?  I don’t know, but the whole things seems too coincidental for my liking.  I’m giving them one more week…we’ll see how we feel at that point in time.