Forkbeard

And then we get to the invoicing:

I have a few fundamental rules that I follow when deciding which affiliate programs I trust enough to send traffic to. The single most important criterion I use is: "Does this program sound like it wants to pay me? Are they making every effort to sound reassuring about the idea that I will get my money no matter what?"

The email FAILS to meet that criterion. It fails hard enough to set off alarm bells, warning sirens, and bright red flashing lights. This does NOT sound like someone who is making "getting every affiliate paid on time every time without making them beg for it" a top priority.

1) The default rule for any program is that they must pay without demand. I promote hundreds of programs. Some of them pay me, on average, no more often than every two years or so. A blog post from five years ago generates a $13 sale that recurs for many months, it can take a long time to get to a $500 bank wire minimum. It shouldn't matter. I shouldn't have to worry. The program should pay me without demand when the minimum is reached. These are the irreducible basics of the affiliate/program relationships. If I have to notice that I've reached a payment minimum and make a payment demand, the company goes on my list as potentially shady and not to be trusted for future promotion. An affiliate-driven invoice process (with no payments until the affiliate sends an invoice) is unheard of in this business. Trust me, DDF Cash, you do not want to be the innovator in this space. If Euro accounting rules require an invoice, do what everybody else does: generate an invoice, display it in the affiliate interface, and send an email inviting the affiliate to "send it" by return email confirmation.

With respect, if the back end systems aren't in place to handle your new requirement, it's too soon to communicate those requirements to your affiliates. Meanwhile, the email says:

You're not ready.

2) The email also says:

Unless you have some fancy new technology that lets me send an email to a physical street address, this strongly implies that you want paper invoices sent by actual postal mail. Which you are demanding, on November 13, for payments due as soon as December 1. Once again, that's going to be an impossibility for overseas affiliates, which creates the strong impression that you aren't really concerned about getting affiliates paid on time, every time. (It doesn't affect me; you only owe me like $13 at the moment. But it sure doesn't give me a warm fuzzy about earning another $500 with you. Because you really aren't sounding like you are 100% committed to paying me out when that happy day comes.

Paul writes in this thread:

That's not "clearer", it directly contradicts the email you sent.

Have you really been running an affiliate program for all these years without understanding that it's your obligation to pay affiliates without making them demand payment first? I want to get paid out when I reach the minimum in NATS, that why I didn't set a higher minimum. It's shady programs that don't pay up until the affiliate writes and demands payment. If you're not a shady program, you don't want to look or sound like a shady program. This makes you look and sound like a shady program. And whether you are "looking to keep" anyone's payments or not, you damned well know and understand that there will be affiliates who never invoice you. You will pocket that money. You are not among the angels here.

That's genuinely offensive. If you truly are looking at new financial compliance requirements, how hard would it have been to drop a specific sentence about what the requirements are? If you did that, it would give you a believable excuse for walking away from your obligation to pay without demand. But you didn't do that.

Nobody wants to drop you for "being compliant". If anybody drops you it's going to be because you sent a LOUD signal that paying your affiliates is not a top priority.

You could have said:

But you didn't say that. You sent a bunch of word salad that boils down to "Fuck you, we're not paying you any more unless you guess which documents we want, guess where and how we want to receive them, and start generating invoices whenever you want to get paid."

Then you responded to criticism about that by going "you should have emailed with your questions." Not "Oh my god, you're right, that email was a confusing disaster, we are so sorry, we're furiously working on that now, please look for another email tomorrow that will clear everything up."

It makes you look bad. It makes you look VERY bad. Because it makes you look less than committed to getting affiliates paid on time, every time, without demand. It makes you look like you really aren't concerned about doing that.

If you want to get all huffy, call this "ridiculous" and insinuate that anybody with a problem with it is against "being compliant", well, that's your right. But it just makes you look worse and confirms the initial bad impression.

If you want affiliates, they need to trust you to pay them. Appearances matter. The way you communicate your requirements? It it matters. The impression you give, the amount of zealousness you display, about making sure affiliates get paid? It all matters. And you have screwed this up, big time. You screwed it up in the email and you screwed it up worse by coming here and sneering at the affiliates who complained about your first screwup.

Free business advice, take it or leave it. I promise I won't be invoicing you for it. There's still plenty of time to fix the damage you've done, but not without losing the bad attitude first.

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