I’ve just had an email exchange with an affiliate who is unhappy at my refusal to pay her £253 in affiliate commission she believes is due to her for May.
Sadly for this affiliate, this particular affiliate program I represent has a negative carryover policy in place (if I had my way, this would be the case everywhere) and it works extremely well in this case.
In April, the single player attached to this affiliate’s account took away a 4 figure profit which put this affiliate’s account into the red to the tune of £342. They have subsequently dropped about 80% of their profits back to the house, but have seemingly walked away with the rest.
Now can anyone in their right mind please tell me why this affiliate believes she is owed money? The terms and conditions are quite clear and if she had a sizeable number of profitable players on her account and one took her to the cleaners, then by all means, I would look at helping her out. Dare I say it, it would not surprise me (as I’ve seen it countless times before) if she was acquainted with the account holder. Many affiliate programs have minimum new player thresholds in place, and this is precisely why. In fact, I may even consider adding this clause for new affiliates joining this program going forward.
But this purely demonstrates the ridiculous expectations some affiliates have of affiliate programs, their interpretations of common sense business practice, and the preposterous nature to which all-too-many affiliate programs have bent over backwards over the past 5 or 6 years to please their affiliates. I’m all for helping affiliates out in an effort to grow their business, but not when circumstances are as ludicrous as this.
She has threatened to pull her promotion of my client and “tell the affiliate world”. Boo, bloody, hoo. Maybe that world will tell her how ridiculous she is being. I doubt it though. I can expect a chorus of chastising communication clamouring for my common-sense to be curtailed and for my “carefree” clients to cast cash into the chasms of this community-concocted, confused commercial consensus. Crazy.
Tom Galanis 
Ok so programs should have negative carry over for all affiliates sending low traffic and unlikely to ever send decent traffic. But how is negative carryover a good thing for programs wanting to work with decent affiliates able to generate consistently good traffic?
For decent, knowledgeable affiliates to work with a program which runs carryover, it would have to be a real top class program in all other areas. For the program to retain these affiliates they would have to be willing to consistently waive the rule anyway so little point having it in the first place.
I quite agree Richard. Having no negative carryover detracts from the need for the program to become top class (a-la bet365). Dispense of no negative carryover as a general policy – it’s far too messy to class an affiliate as having the ability to send decent traffic from the off in any case. Offer it as an incentive to loyal affiliates pushing the right type/levels of traffic and deal with extenuating circumstances as and when they come about with newer/smaller affiliates.
Most affiliate programs, particularly those who rely heavily on affiliate marketing for their traffic, simply cannot afford to offer no negative carryover. The margins do not allow it. Many affiliate programs who do offer it are pulling some other trick in the background to stay in profit, so in many cases, since offering no negative carryover has become the norm, affiliates will find they have been losing out in other ways and they will continue to do so.
Getting rid of no negative carryover policies might actually clean things up for affiliates…
Yeah, good point Tom, certainly a fair few tricks being pulled out there!
William Hill