Affiliate Marketing - Merchants Are Lazy
I know I already blogged about that, it was for a merchant that (still) didn’t answer me for an order of 50 items. One of my visitor asked to have a discount for such a high order and I contacted them 3 times, still waiting.
This time, this is another merchant, and if I say they don’t care about affiliates, they may also don’t care about themselves and being promoted properly.
Okay, you may already know I have started a website and I was going to reveal the name when I make my first sale. The first sale is made, the website is Replicas Suck, Authentic Fashion Deals.
I promote apparel, jewelry, watches, handbags, shoes… only authentic stuff, cause replicas suck, that’s the direction of this blog. I also talk about emerging designers that most of us don’t know, but still offer great quality products, and cool style.
Well it sounds like a press release, it’s not, so let’s get back to the purpose of this article. One of the merchant I promote, Bosca has its affiliate program with ShareASale. I like using ShareASale, it’s easy and convenient and also merchants can publish their whole catalog, so you have affiliate codes for each products on their websites.
This is of course something really cool when you want to promote something as large as fashion, there are thousands of products. Sadly, not all the merchants use this feature, and this is the case of Bosca.
Bosca products are leather made : handbags, travel bags, briefcase, wallets, well… mainly luggage. Excellent quality, a recognized house, leather working from near a century. The products are great but there is a problem, at least for me.
On Replicas Suck, if you look at the bottom of the page, there is a banner for Bosca, that says “Bosca | Life. Luxury. Leather. ” This is the only banner they have to propose. No other formats, not any other link for a special category of products, just this.
Of course, with ShareASale, you can create a custom link to any page of a merchants store.
One banner only, the only problem ?
No. This is not the only one. Since there is no product datafeed I thought I could use pictures of their products, I would have save the pictures of the products I wanted to promote and upload them on my server. But first I needed the permission, so I asked.
Bosca affiliate program is managed by another company, so my email got to this marketing company. A nice guy answered me, said he submitted my request and I’ll get a reply soon.
Now, guess what was the reply. Negative. I can’t use their products pictures on my website to promote them.
This is really something irritating. You are doing work for them and you want to do it right. I could have used the pictures without any permission and they may never see this.
Now, if they thought a little bit they would know that when you have a product, people like to see it, especially in the fashion world, where style is something that influence our choices. Ladies, would you buy a handbag without seeing it ? Or any clothes you could buy online, (gents too) ?
At least, imagine this situation. Let’s say you have two merchants to promote, and you decide to display 10 products from each. Well you can with the first, but not with Bosca. There are 10 more chances that a visitor clicks on a picture to see more details of the product.
If a picture amazed you, or if you find something very original, you will wompletely forget about the others.
Maybe they never heard a picture speaks more than words.
Well, you can do the promotion of a merchant, without his products pictures. But will you do it more than once ? When there are 100 products, you can imagine 100 posts or articles, 1 per article.
Too bad, merchants are lazy. They could ask their affiliate marketing manager to create a product datafeed, or code for each product categories, or for some best sellers.
The first sale made from this website was for a $139 item, not from Bosca. Damn, the commission was only 6% ($8.34). But that keeps growing
