Affiliate Marketing

Those who run in astrological circles are well aware of a time period known as Mercury Retrograde. I won't get into the technical details of what Mercury retrograde is , bu generally the two words can't even be said without a moan or rolling of the eyes accompanying the phrase. This is because during this time the energy is such that there are more opportunities for confusing communication, miscommunication, problems with shipping, contracts, and just all around frustrations in general. Basically, it sucks. Sometimes this plays out in my personal life and sometimes it doesn't. Unfortunately it seems that this particular Mercury Retrograde has decided make itself known more strongly than others have in the past.

On August 3rd, 2011 Mercury officially entered its retrograde period that would last until August 26th. In the grand scheme of things this may not seem all that long, but there is a time period known as the shadow that starts about weeks before and extends two weeks after this time frame.

On July 29th I was informed by KEEN, a company who I have an affiliate marketing agreement with, that the transactions generated by my ads were "suspicious". Because of this they decided to just delete $1,300 in commissions that I rightfully earned for the month of July. *POOF*... GONE... NO MORE.. So Sorry..

I contacted Commission Junction, the company that manages the partnership and was told that it didn't look like I had done anything fraudulent on my end. Ummm.. no.. I haven't.

I've exchanged numerous emails with KEEN's affiliate contact, Steven Chang and received several explanations as to why they have chosen to take this action. At first I was told that my links didn't work. When I checked the links they changed their story and said that they never said they were broken, but then asked me for screen shots. I sent the screen shots only to be told that the screen shots didn't really tell them anything.

I asked for further clarification and was told that of the customers that completed the transactions, only 5% came back and spent more money. Since the terms of the promotion from an affiliate stand point were that they had to spend "any amount of money", I didn't understand why this was a disqualifying issue.

I then received another email explaining that although the customers completed the transactions that were required for me to earn my affiliate commission, the customers had "suspicious" email accounts. I'm not sure what that means or how they would determine that an account was "suspicious".

Knowing how this promotion works I asked how that would matter since each person had to enter a credit or debit card to take advantage of the promotion. I asked if they shared an IP address and if so, if they could share those with me.

The next email explained that the accounts used pre-paid credit cards and the billing address for the cards didn't match the state that the IP address was from. So, do prepaid credit cards HAVE billing addresses?? Also, the IP address for an email account can vary depending on what mail service you use and isn't always dependent upon the state you live in.