Monday 15 January 2007

Perry Marshall: What's Up with His Affiliate Program?

Perhaps it's just me, but I think something's up with Perry Marshall's affiliate program for his "Definitive Guide to Google AdWords."

In the 3rd quarter of last year, this program was my most successful affiliate program. Of those that signed clicked on the affiliate links, 49% of the people signed up for his email mini-course and 5% purchased products. However, after some changes were made, a weird thing happened in the 4th quarter. Since that time, only 24% of people clicking on the ads are reported as having signed up for the email mini-course and less than 1% (0.89% to be precise) have purchased products.

So, signups have dropped from 49% to 24% and the conversion rate for purchases has dropped from 5% to 0.89%.

Doesn't that seem like a rather odd drop to you? What's more, no product has been sold at all for months now.

Well, I just took a detailed look at Perry's affiliate interface and found that in the area where you generate your links, the drop-down box from which you choose the affiliate program you're promoting no longer shows "Definitive Guide to Google AdWords" (or whatever it used to display), instead it has "AdWords > test redirect for tracking stats."

So, were we supposed to update our affiliate links, is the affiliate program now ended, are we simply meant to use this new link, even though it indicates it's merely a "test?" I don't know but I do know that no-one has contacted me about this in order to let me know what's going on.

One final thing ... I didn't get paid when I should have last year so I tried contacting Perry Marshall, or the people handling his affiliate programs, and had a job doing so. For ages, no-one responded to any of my emails, even though I used the link provided on his page. In the end I had to do some detective work to find out his company's phone number. When I did eventually get to speak to someone they were very helpful but, all in all, the ability to communicate with anyone regarding the affiliate program was sorely lacking.

I earned some good money from this program, which meant I also earned Perry some good money. However, I am now having to consider dropping his ads entirely.

Before I do that though, I shall try contacting them again and ask what's going on. I'll let you know if I hear anything.

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