Thread: Can we really trust affiliated networks or merchants to pay out?

Can we really trust affiliated networks or merchants to pay out?

Can we really trust affiliated networks or merchants to pay out?

This has been bothering me for some time...

For over 1 year I been working with affiliate programs/networks and thousands of merchants and many social media viral products but have made no money what-so-ever so far...

Since becoming involved with Coupon Codes, I confirm that truly I only managed to get one merchant offer unto Google 1st page, from click in this offer it has generate sales of other products the merchant also sells... the observations I have starting from this point forward are, that either this merchant converts extremely well nearly 1click:1sale or that tracking of the clicks/sales may not be reliable at all, not just for this merchant but also for all other merchants... Looking at my own stats I'm much more inclined to go with the later option.

In this particular case the affiliate program/network is able to monitor when a sale has taken place, probably via some kind of transaction confirmation pixel/page after customer has purchased something, I can then see this information in the reports before the affiliate program/network has even invoiced the merchant...

I also have other offers on Google and Social Media, which have generated hundreds/thousands of click-through visitors but data from affiliate networks/merchants do not seem to correlate with my own analytics. In fact I also have a tracking solution in place to detect visitors which block all sorts of tracking analytics, and this data can range from 4% to as much as 60% in some cases.

Because of this data and the fact that just one merchant is being invoiced for sales with click-through analytics that potentially indicate approximately nearly 1:1 conversion rates, I can only come to the conclusion that all other click-throughs and possible even sales, when not tracked from the affiliate network side are not being even reported....

For one other merchant in particular, my past year analytics indicate that I have regularly send around 500 visitors per month to them but I have not made a single penny/cent, either from impressions/click-throughs or sales...

Can we really trust affiliate networks or merchants when it comes to counting impressions/click-throughs/sales?

If anyone has any advice or personal experiences about how to deal with this kind of issue could you please share it with me?