What to do if you do not get your Affiliate Commissions

With affiliate marketing, the ability to do business across borders has many advantages but it also brings with some aspects you need to be wary of. One of these is what to if you don’t get paid your affiliate commission?

I’ve just has a relatively minor experience where I had to chase for a commission payment, albeit for a small amount (that’s not the point!). I promoted Willie Crawford’s recent Wedding Firesale. I don’t know Willie Crawford personally but have read enough of his stuff and seen enough mention of his name to believe that promoting this program was risk free. But then it started…

Initially, commission payments were to be instant but that proved too complicated. Then there was no payment when I expected so I sent a chase email. Response received. “I’ll have my accounting people look into it”. Sounds good.

A week later, I sent another email to check status. No reply. I phoned. No reply.

What to do? I’ll try one more email. I received the payment over night. Better late than never.

As I said, I’ve no doubt that Willie is a good guy to do business with, but if you’re going to do business online, you need to represent people or companies that you know will pay out regularly without delay or excuses. For that reason, I generally stick to the major affiliate networks, though there are a couple of exceptions to this rule.

If anything like this happens to you, don’t give up, keep it professional but progressively increase the pressure. If all else fails and you can’t/won’t take legal action, consider blogging about it or posting a warning in one of the affiliate forums. It’s important to warn other affiliates to prevent anyone else getting ripped off or suffering delays in receiving their commission.