11th January 2008

Pleo Robot Dinosaur – Promoting Big Brand Merchants Does Not Equate to Better Commission

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The Pleo Robot Dinosaur as you are aware is on the upper end of the price spectrum for toys, however it has proved to be immensely popular.

As an affiliate some are conscious about finding products which are competitive in price & are in stock or can be pre-ordered if not.

As an affiliate you have to look at which merchant also provides suitable commissions for your efforts in pre-selling a product, amongst other important factors as part of your decision making process.

Unfortunately, too many affiliates don’t look beyond the end of their nose & promote via the largest recognised merchants, not realising they, the affiliate, could only be getting a fraction of what they could be potentially earning.

As part of my decision making process their are a number of factors, the combination of conversion & commission to create an EPC being the top two when “combined” generally.

However, big brand has little influence in my ultimate decision of which merchant to promote, and I have been fortunate enough to do relatively 0kay within the industry for the financial security of my family.

Recently there are been some vociferous threads on the froum pertaining to Next, Play.com & Dixons who have been offering unattractive commissions to affiliates, when the price of the product is very comparable and if not cheaper via other merchants. Resulting in you the affiliate earning a fraction of what you could be earning.

Here is a little summary of several merchants on that terrific network Affiliate Window who sell the Pleo Robot Dinosaur.

I have done a little homework for you on the Pleo Robot Dinosaur, pulling prices from Shopwindow, to illustrate just a typical example where Big Brands Pay Less & that affiliates should look further afield.

😀 Iwantoneofthose
Price £249.00 : Commission 10.00% – 15.00% = @ £25 to £37.50 : Delivery £3.95 : You Can Pre Order

🙂 Gadgetshop – Price £249.95 : Commission 7% = @ £17.50 : Delivery £3.95 : Out of Stock But In Feed : No Pre Order

🙂 thetoyshop – Price £249.95 : Commission 7% = @ £17.50 : Delivery £3.95: Out of Stock But In Feed : No Pre Order

😡 Play.com – Price £249.99 : Commission 4% = @ £9.99 : Delivery £3.95 : Delivery Free : You Can Pre Order

mad: Dixons – price £249.99 : Commission 2.5% = @ £6.25 : Delivery £4.95 But not available to buy : No Pre Order

I classify Play.com similar to Next & Dixons as taking advantage of their brand size by paying lower commissions.

So ….

IWantOneOfThose pays @ 400% to 500% better commission than Dixons

IWantOneOfThose pays @ 250% to 375% better commission than Play.com

IWantOneOfThose pays @ 142% to 214% better commission than TheToyShop

IWantOneOfThose pays @ 142% to 214% better commission than TheGadgetShop

—————-

I haven’t ascertained yet if we get paid commission on the delivery cost for any of the merchants … I am waiting to hear back so I can update this blog entry accordingly.

See Deal or No Deal

If I was promoting this product, based on “just” the information above, then [b]IWantOneOfThose (IWOOT)[/b] would be more favoured. Even though Play.com has Free Delivery, along with the other two merchants at 7%. But certainly not Dix0%ns.

So I wonder who as an affiliate would take a £15 less commission per item (ie as in Play.com example) to save the customer £2.96 from delivery charge & price differential. i.e. You lose £15 for the customer to save £2.96 … Unless you are a saint of course.

Maybe offer the option of the best commission & lowest overall price, however on face value (not inc delivery cost) IWOOT is the cheapest & offers the best commission (by a cinsiderable margin. I expect after doing the maths, it would probably be more financially rewarding to primarily list the main option as the one from IWOOT.

P.S. Play.com grates me with their poor commissions & conversion is only on a par with other options … & … I am not impressed with the management at The Toy Shop & The Gadget Shop or their draconian keyword policy. And don’t forget with Dixo%ns you cannot be sure commissions get categorised correctly.

FAO IWantOneOfThose affiliate program … I WANT ONE OF THOSE !!. Hint Hint

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 1:01 PM and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 6 responses to “Pleo Robot Dinosaur – Promoting Big Brand Merchants Does Not Equate to Better Commission”

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  1. 1 On January 11th, 2008, Lee McCoy said:

    Paul – the thing is IWOOT converted woefully compared to Gadget Shop or Findmeagift for the Pleo – and I’ve contacted Paul Smith about this and we’ve had a good dialogue about the reasons.

    I’ve sold many hundreds between those two merchants. When they go out of stock Dixons and Play.com take up the slack. The thing to realise is that when products are in high demand it’s better to get something rather than nothing.

    It’s also important to look at whether the commission rate is inclusive or exclusive of VAT as there is still a lack of consistency here.

    So looking at the EPC’s for the Pleo I’d put the Gadget Shop and FMAG ahead of IWOOT.

  2. 2 On January 11th, 2008, Paul said:

    Hi Lee,

    I couldn’t agree more on the VAT aspect. Again something which is unclear on merchant information pages pertaining to commision rates.

    Affiliates need to know if they are getting paid on either the gross or net value of the product as well as the delivery costs element too, something I have brought up several times over the years ie What Is The Real Deal, pertaining to an oler blog entry of mine named “Deal or No Deal” back in March.

    https://www.mooseontheloose.co.uk/deal-or-no-deal.html

    Findmeagift illustrates how further affiliates should search, I simply got the results from the shopwindow, rather than a blanket search across all networks for illustration purposes, thanks for finding another option.

    Also effective EPC a factor combining conversion rates & commission rates is required to find the most suitable merchant, I was saving that for a later blog entry, but it looks like I have been preempted.

  3. 3 On January 11th, 2008, Paul Smith said:

    Paul, I think you’ve raised a good point here and thankyou for using IWOOT to illustrate your point, we’re not the biggest merchant selling Pleo’s by any means yet we do work hard with our affiliates and feel we offer a fair reward for the work they do for us.

    Lee, I think it’s a little unfair to generalise that we convert poorly for the Pleo full stop. We sold out of our Pleo’s this month the day after I had an email from an affiliate saying he had started promoting them, I personally validated 12 sales for him generated in little over 24 hours at a very healthy conversion rate.

    We have as you mentioned had a dialogue regarding the reasons for the poor converion you saw and it’s something i’ve continued to look at since. Over December our Awin index reported we had over 7% conversion rate via our affiliate channel, our best performing affiliates told me they were converting at over 10%, yet every now and again i’d have an affiliate say we didn’t convert as good as our competitors … I truely wish I could get to the bottom of it lol :o)

  4. 4 On January 11th, 2008, Lee McCoy said:

    p.s. stop asking difficult questions (6 + 8 apples is … bugger)

    anyways.

    I think there does need to be a set of principles for what products should appear in feeds.

    When we download them ourselves we can filter ….

    But if it’s straight into Shop Window, I doubt we can.

    Perhaps some focus should be put on this aspect???

    I’m sure Awin would be responsive – in fact its in their best intrests too!

  5. 5 On January 12th, 2008, Shane said:

    Nice to see Dixons yet again leading the way in world class commission crappiness stakes huh.. their stock buying department must REALLY suck compared to the rest of the UK retail scene as they can only manage to pay 2.5% where others buying far lower volumes no doubt, can afford to pay at least 142% and up to 500% more.

    I do agree with lee that something is better than nothing, but in the case of dixons and other similar companies so blatantly taking the proverbial like them I’d take nothing rather than fill the already strained pockets of an exploitative company like them.

    With companies like this, the more we let them do it, the more they will do it, and when others see them doing it and getting away with it some will try to follow suit.

  6. 6 On January 12th, 2008, Lee McCoy said:

    @ paul re “Lee, I think it’s a little unfair to generalise that we convert poorly for the Pleo full stop.”

    I don’t think I said that. I certainly didn’t mean that. I don’t have other people’s sales data so I can’t say it categorically didn’t convert. All I can say it didn’t convert for me.

    I think my best merchant was Gadget Shop who, from recolection, I managed 14 sales in an hour and a half one morning.

    I still can’t work out why they didn’t convert me – I hope I wasn’t the target of some sort of spyware???

    Lee

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