Is this odd?

[kayceee]

I have a niche website featuring several merchants. Of those, two have been very steady earners for me for the last year ...

About 6 weeks ago, all of a sudden conversions from the one of those merchants completely tanked! Zilch, zip, nix, nada, nothing. I'm not doing anything different, links are working fine, their merchant account is active, nothing broken on their website that I can see and I'm still sending them more or less the same amount of traffic which is reflected in my Shareasale stats. Their overall performance on SAS has flatlined also.

As a comparison, the other merchant is still converting at their usual rate.

Should I ask the program manager about this? I'm not even sure what or how to ask ...

Any thoughts?

PS - Hope nobody thinks I'm being rude and posting without an introduction - I introduced myself when I joined several months ago - then I badly injured my shoulder, broke my foot ... yada yada, just getting my life back again!

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hi Kaycee,

I wonder if the problem may be at check-out?

I would definitely contact the merchant and report what you've noticed. I'm sure they'd appreciate it as well.

Cheers,
Ros

[kayceee]

Thanks - I just fired off a note to them...

I've had reason to question things with this merchant before - I hate dealing with them, they're ... strange! And some of their marketing tactics are (IMO) questionable. On the other hand, in a niche with a lot of hype and mediocre products they sell something which actually works, and it's done well for me.

---------------

Update: I just heard back from them ... you were right ! It seems they updated their site and accidently left the affiliate code off the "thank you" page Anyway they say it's fixed now.

I can't believe they didn't notice that they paid a big zero to all their affiliates for a good month, and that they didn't test their changes enough to catch that mistake . Oh well, wish I'd asked sooner (I can come up with ideas, I can develop websites, I can SEO a site, when it comes to the business end, I'm still learning!) and I'll be happy to see those sales in my account again! Thanks again .

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hi Kaycee,

I'm glad they responded so quickly.

However, a really GOOD merchant would offer to pay you your average commissions during the period that the link was down.

YOU were still sending traffic. THEY were benefitting, but you were not...

Get in touch with them again and politely ask/suggest/demand that you be paid what you are owed.

I've had several occurences just like that, and the merchants ALWAYS paid up.

Cheers,
Ros

[kayceee]

That was in the back of my mind when I got their reply - I'll give it a shot!

Update: My politely-worded suggestion got a response of "no sorry we can't do that" . Ooh well - nothing ventured nothing gained ...