1. It takes massive server and database resources to keep
track of every click for over 1,000 affiliates.
2. Keeping track of individual clicks for over 1,000
affiliates makes the database grow to unwieldy sizes in a
small amount of time.
3. We have always had a policy in place where affiliate
accounts must have a specific percentage of sales versus
clicks. If it exceed that amount, we would be forced to
disable the account. This became increasingly impossible to
accurately asses and calculate for our over 1,000
affiliates.
4. There was in increasing amount of abuse of the
pay-per-click program, where automated bots were being used
to generate clicks, and banners were often being displayed
in rotation with other banners falsely, to generate massive
pay-per-click numbers on accounts, and we were getting
overburdened with trying to keep track of these abuses.
5. The costs of maintaining such a huge database using
such massive server resources grew more than we were
comfortable with, forcing us to spend more time, energy and
money on something that should practically run itself.
So, we know that all of our trusted and treasured
affiliates should not be penalized, but after careful
consideration, we realized that clicks only account for 1%
on most affiliate accounts, with a maximum of 5% of the
total monthly commissions being paid in pay-per-click links.
By discontinuing the pay-per-click portion of the program,
it has allowed us p to not only better manage the affiliate
program, but to ensure that every conversion is accounted
for accurately and efficiently, while better using server
resources, again allowing multiple daily backups of all
statistics and accounts.
Our affiliate program grew more than we ever imagined it
would, and as a result, keeping individual click stats for
over 1,000 affiliates made the database grow to over 2GB in
a small amount of time...much too big for any system to keep
operating or to backup on a daily basis as we do.
Also, considering that many competing programs offer 15%
and we offer 20%-25% commission rates, and no other
competitor we've studied sees the kind of click conversions
we provide our affiliates with, we decided this would be the
best way to proceed with the program.
Since making the change, administration has been far more
reliable, allowing us to concentrate on making our shop even
better, which directly helps our affiliates generate more
sales and commissions. It frees us to make a great site even
better, while allowing us to keep prices as low as possible;
all things that help the customers our affiliates send to
us, stay on the site and complete a sale.
