Though I’ve been a way on a new year business opportunities tour of the far east I have been keeping my stubby yet well manicured fingers on the pulse of the affiliate marketing scene and it would appear there are some merchants who think affiliate marketing should be more of a charity act than a mutually beneficial business relationship, hence my pet name “Chaffiliate Marketing” for the new wave of “we don’t want to pay you to push some of the products in our data feed” school of charity affiliate marketing.

It’s bad enough that some commissions have been reduced to figures that bear more resemblance to ideal blood sugar levels than they do to payment for work done but now we have merchants trying to get away with paying nothing for sales and I’m afraid that I for one do not believe in pushing a product where we earn nothing yet the merchant earns a profit from our traffic, now before a few of you big content or comparison guys chime up and argue with me yes I can see a scenario where you have a user base you value highly that you will show them what they seek even if it earns you nothing, in the hope that they will in turn value your site enough to return and at some future date do an action which does earn you some money, so yes there can be a very, very small valid argument for showing everything you can even if it earns you nothing sometimes.

BUT.. and it’s a bigger BUT than Eddie Murphy’s was as Rasputia in Norbit !! This still doesn’t excuse these merchants from making out they can’t afford to pay a commission on a product where other merchants can and expecting us to like it and push it happily.

Are we really expected to believe that a company turning over as much as Dixons can’t pay even a few percent commission on a product where a smaller merchant with much less buying power still can ? Also if sold via the web and there is zero commission paid, how the hell can there be any profit for them in store on the same item with heating, higher staff ratio’s and rent, compared to a warehouse stock item sale via the web ?

It simply doesn’t add up, it’s not like the parent group DSG had a bad year in the UK compared to the one before (source) :

 “The electronics group turned in full year revenues of £7.9bn for the year to 28 April, up 14 per cent on the year. Pre-tax profits were £114.1m, down on the previous year’s £295.9m. The profit figure was dented by a series of costs, particularly a write down on its Unieuro operation in Italy and the costs of overhauling its PC City operation in France.

The UK computing operation - ie PC World - turned over £1.9bn, up six per cent on the year, and turned in underlying profits of £124.8m, down slightly on the previous year’s £129.4m.

Seems that whilst the 07-08 year isn’t going so well (Source) “This weaker trading, together with a more cautious outlook for the balance of the year, means that we now expect full year profits before tax to be some £40m to £50m lower than current expectations.”

It’s not all bad news of course, unsurprisingly : “Online sales through Dixons.co.uk and FotoVista did much better - up 31 per cent.”

It doesn’t take a MENSA member to make a swift guess as to where it looks like they are looking to recoup some of that £5.4 million UK turnover lost on the year before to make up the overall DSG profit, Some marketing graduate must chimed up and said “why are we paying affiliates for all the sales they make when our trade is 31% up, were are obviously a megabrand so lets only pay them as little as we can where we make 10% profit or more margin. Dixons made £114 million in the last full business year yet are expecting affiliates to send traffic and make zero on some items.

I wonder how many of Dixons suppliers sell them stock for zero profit, how many of the component suppliers sell their wares to those Dixons suppliers for zero profit, how many commodities suppliers sell the steel, plastics, glass, wire, rubber, chemicals etc. to those component suppliers and how many transport companies that ship items through each part of the supply chain do it for free.

I’m guessing not one of them at any step of the way, anyone with a IQ above 75 would agree that business has to be mutually beneficial to be a longterm relationship but it seems in all this it’s only the affiliate that’s expected to make zero profit for his part … which leaves the question to be answered :

Are you dumb enough to sell products for merchants like Dixons for free ?

I sincerely hope not, as once it this Chaffiliate Marketing attitude gains momentum it’ll be a hard job to stop it and you can bet the ones that were dumb enough will be the ones screaming loudest so it’s up to us to put our feet down firm and direct traffic away from merchants even dipping the toe in the 0% commission pool.