A couple of days ago, people behind my favourite affiliate program, Thesis Theme, announced that they were moving from an in-house run program to an affiliate network Share a Sale.
All affiliates got an email from Brian Clark, co-owner of Thesis, and a post was published on Copyblogger.
All affiliates have to re-register for the program as they stand to lose on the sales when the old program shuts down in 60 days time.
As any active affiliate, I registered for the new affiliate program right away and have now changed all the links.
There are several things I don’t like about this move though:
- No free withdrawals other than a check (at least not for non-US where I am from). You have to pay $7 to get your money out. This is pretty bad compared to the original Thesis affiliate that paid automatically on 1st of the month, no charges and directly into your PayPal account.
- Difficult registration process (at least for non-US affiliates like me). My account still isn’t 100% set up and I cannot withdraw any money until I sign some document and fax(!) it back to Share A Sale. I now need to go and Google “how to send a fax” first before I can get any money out.
- Very, very little information! Comments on the post on Copyblogger are shut down. Not sure why. I would think people were asking too many questions and people were complaining. So I emailed them to clarify something. No response. They might be busy, but still you should be there for your customers when you do such a big change.
- What about sub-affiliates? The question I emailed was about sub-affiliates. Over the time, I have referred a nice amount of sub-affiliates. These are bloggers that I am supposed to get a revenue share from all the commission they earn selling Thesis. My question is still in the air, what will happen with my sub-affiliates?
These are the 4 main concerns I have about this change. I don’t think Thesis people did enough for their customers / their affiliates in this move and I hope they make it right.
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Sadly, I have to agree. I attempted to register on the Shareasale site – I got to the submit stage and was told they had ‘messed up’ and would get back to me. So far, nothing. Shutting down the Copyblogger site was also a bad move.
I’m outside the US so copping the $7 withdrawal fee didn’t make things any better.
All up, not even one little bit happy … c’mon Thesis … talk to us.
I agree as well. Now we have to spend 12×7= $84 on fees just to get OUR money into our own bank account. This is a shame and losing out on our sub affiliates does not make it better..
Hi Marko, sorry I missed your question – we got buried with way more email than expected after then announcement.
I’m a bit confused by your question though. Although the old software showed people who signed up under you, we never paid any amounts for sub-affiliates. The program has never had a two-tiered commission structure, and as for now, that will stay the same as always.
Thanks for responding Brian. Wow about sub-affiliates. You actually have a section called sub-affiliates which states: “Refer people to our affiliate program and earn a portion of their earnings.” and give us the link to which we should send over sub-affiliates plus the stats of their earnings and how much comission I stand to get from that. How can this happen that it is just now that you are telling people that you do not pay for sub-affiliate revenue? Nobody has ever told that before! It should have been clearly marked that subaffiliates section is not real in this case.
It was built into the software we used and you can’t “turn off” that element even if you don’t activate it, which is one of the many problems with the software. But we clearly spelled out the details of the program itself, which never included sub-affiliate commissions. I wasn’t even aware it included that language, because we never activated sub-affiliate commissions. You’ve never been paid commissions for sub-affiliates, so again, I was a little surprised you thought we ever offered them.
If the sub-affiliate feature were live, that language would contain a specific commission percentage. I agree it shouldn’t have been there at all, but like I said, that software was badly designed in many areas.
There were many other problems with the in-house software we used, which Missy and Kim can provide exhaustive details about. They worked so hard to make sure we paid affiliates every dime we owed them, but it became very clear that we had outgrown trying to handle things in-house.
Sorry again Marko. I hope you’ll stick with us.
I should have been more vigilant around sub-affiliate stats, I just saw all the stats being there updated live so I never saw any reason to doubt that you guys were not paying.
I don’t think you clearly spell out that there is no sub-affiliates. You just don’t mention it on the sales pitch but when I’m logged you guys do sell that feature by having links to it, by providing sub-affiliate links, by providing us with live stats on how many sub-affiliates we have, how much they have earned and by telling us you can earn money bringing sub-affiliates. It should have been marked clearly from you that there is no sub-affiliates despite what the site says.
Thesis is a great product and my blog is run on it, so I don’t plan to move because of this, but you guys have some things to fix.
Marko, no offense but how do you not realize that you weren’t getting paid for “sub-affiliates”? Don’t you check your earnings etc?
Also, in any affiliate program I’ve ever been a part of, paying for sub-affiliates is a HUGE selling point. The fact that they spelled out what you get paid for & it never mentioned sub affiliates should have been a big clue.
How much did you think you were getting paid for them? What percentage etc?
Also, we shut down the comments when SAS CEO Brian Littleton provided his personal email address at the end of those comments for people to contact him (which many people have and got their issues quickly resolved).
With a direct email address provided, we didn’t want people leaving questions in the comments that might get missed. So please feel free to contact Brian directly.
I have resigned up, however I am not sure I plan on trying to promote Thesis. I am close or at the stage that I would rather have a client that I do the work for them. I have a developers license and have learned a lot in the past about modifying it. I would rather have that in my bag of tricks. It’s a great theme for sure. I just wish I saw more unique site designs with it.
I wasn’t too impressed with the fax in information. At the same time I appreciate why it is done. I think it will help with the serious people.
I am kind of confused on the 7$ to withdrawal – couldn’t you wait until it’s a large balance and do a lumpsum withdrawal? And paypal charges their fees too which can add up a lot and fast – especially on a lumpsum coming into your account.
Change sucks. It’s especially tough when you feel like you’re asking questions and they are going unanswered.
Give it to Brian Clark here this morning leaving comments! Hopefully you get everything worked out that you need.
Seeing Brian’s name reminds me that I need to check out the Bonus Module in Teaching Sells. PIMP!
Just to help: If you are non US, Shareasale say you need to send the fax form but in fact it is not really a must. Though ethically you must sign and fax it sooner or later, you will receive your cheque if you reach payout ($50 I think).
And to send fax from the web you can try Moneybookers.com internal web fax system. Cost $1 I think.
Thanks for the info Kurt. I will see if they send the money or not first time, and then I’ll find a way to fax them if it is really needed.
Please correct the comment above. I meant:
Though ethically you must sign and fax it sooner or later but you will still receive your cheque if you reach payout ($50 I think) even if you have not yet faxed the form.
May be they were not able to handle the pressure of this hence they moved to third party.
But I am sure in coming months they will see decline in their revenue because of new change, plus they will also loss those affiliates who are not from USA.
Lets see what comes out.
May be they just want to filter out non-us affiliates… have you thought about that?
May be it’s their business strategy after all.. and if you read the tweets from one of the partners in that society you may think that you better be a good looking WASP southern american cowboy to be worth the effort.
But they did not complain when we bought the theme, right?
Marko,
This isn’t good, but you’re right this is something they should of fixed. Perhaps being more direct and clear on their part would have been best.
I didn’t like that I have to send in a tax form, but these days the US Government is reaching way deep, so what are you going to do?
Marko,
I tried to sign up with an affiliate freelance writer’s program and they used a third party. It was so convoluted, cumbersome and pain-in-the-assy that I gave up.
Come to the Dark Side, my friend. Headway awaits to take you places you never dreamed. Serious.
Cheers
George
I guess that’s why diversification is good when it comes to affiliates – if one affiliate makes a rule change (which is always a possibility) which is unfavourable to you, your income stream isn’t completely gone.
Great point Russ!
I really don’t understand all the concern about sending in a fax form. If you’re a US citizen and you make over $600 from the affiliate program in a year you’re required to pay taxes on it.
This is a standard practice of every affiliate program I’ve ever been a part of.
It can be a real time saver if at the beginning of each new year you fill out & scan in a new W9 and then just email that to each affiliate program that requires it.
Like you, I too think this move sucks for non US residents. Not so much of having to fax that piece of declaration, but more on the time it takes for a US check to clear before I can really see my money.
If share a sale do not like paypal, the least they can offer is payment through Western Union like what Adsense is doing.
At the risk of blowing sunshine up anyone’s butt, there are lots of programs on Share a Sale that you could hook up with at the same time and make a little extra cash in the process.
Extra cash is always an agreeable thing!
The blowing of sunshine is now officially over.
Btw, Marko – I love your blog and it’s one of few that I visit on a regular basis. You’re a great example of just how outstanding the Thesis theme is and can be.
Good point Joi! And thanks for the kind words!
Hah, this is complete retard city. $7 to get your money that you earned for them? That’s like an advertiser saying… “oh yeah, but first you must pay us some cash, then we’ll buy the ads on your site” -OR- an employer saying to the employee “Yeah we’ll pay you for the work you did, but you must pay us some cash first…”
Makes no f*cking sense. Even if you are moving away from the direct deposit PayPal method (another idiotic choice) and towards cheques, there is no reason to be charging your affiliates. I suspect angry affiliates and lost business, at least in the beginning.
Thank god I ain’t using Thesis.
Marko – you’re spot on about the misleading affiliate program speak. I queried when the affiliate commissions for upgrades stopped and was initially told it never happened. Then, after sending a screenshot was told oh yeah it used to but stopped when Missy came on board. More transparency would be nice about the fine print and changes – we all have RSS technology and emails.
I’ve also been trying to get a response from Brian or Chris for a few months now and nothing. Like nobody is home. Not feeling all that welcome suddenly. It will be interesting to see the payouts for first half of Jan 10 considering that the old affiliate system was turned off so suddenly without the majority of us getting a screenshot of our earnings – always helpful to check you’re getting paid properly AND helpful if not necessary for tax purposes. Back to the tax records – all bye byes when they pulled the plug!
I am quite amazed how the Thesis team has messed up in such a big way for their international affiliates. I really wonder if they have chosen to make their affiliate program completely US-centric based on sales statistics or whether they are just plain stupid and forgot that there is a world outside the US.
The Thesis affiliate program has received a lot of praise in the past and I have always enjoyed using it, and I think it is a big part of the success behind the Thesis theme. I don’t understand why they would outsource such an apparently important aspect of their business to an external company with a horrible crappy affiliate program web interface and stop communicating with their loyal affiliates.
Have these guys made too much money and can they now only think of going to the beach?