Why The Google Affiliate Network Stinks

by on January 27, 2011

I’ve made money with many affiliate networks and programs in my day.  Commission Junction, Linkshare, AffiliateFuture, ShareaSale, Epic Direct when is was Azoogle, Clickbank, Ebay, Amazon, Neverblue, and a slew of other smaller individual company programs.

I don’t make a lot of money with many of them, drawing most of my earnings from Amazon and Google Adsense mainly due to simplicity and easy of use.  Sure, there might be a better offer on Commission Junction for a page of mine, but I’d rather create a new website and toss some Amazon links on there in less time than it would take to find a good offer somewhere else, get approved for their program and change all my links.

But I have one site that I created on a whim that really doesn’t match many products on Amazon.  The few products Amazon has that match that site are not stocked by Amazon and every few months I have to make sure the links are still valid, which started to piss me off.

Never having used the Google Affiliate Network, I figured I’d give it a try.  They had a good offer for this product niche, where a reputable brand name site was offering 20% commissions per sale (vs Amazon’s 7-8%) with a 30 day affiliate cookie.

So why not.  Since I already had a valid Adsense account with tax information, it was easy to setup an account.  Still had to be approved by the advertiser, which annoys me, but I can certainly see why they might not want their brand advertised on a hate site or something.

I wondered why the Google Affiliate Network didn’t get more attention in the affiliate world.  Most people don’t even bother to mention them when talking about the top affiliate networks.

Well, now I know.  It takes three months to get paid!

It surprised me.  Google Adsense is fairly standard, paying out on a 30 day window.  Meaning you get paid for clicks the next month.  Your total earnings for January are paid the end of February.  I thought Amazon was the worst here with their 60 day payout (earnings in January are paid in March).

So the sales I made with this advertiser in early November on Google Affiliates just posted to my account today.  But guess what?  That doesn’t mean I get paid!  That means Google posts it to MY ADSENSE account, which pays out 30 days later.  60 days to post from Google Affiliates to Google Adsense, then 30 days on top of that to get paid.

The top affiliate programs have a 14 or 30 day payout max.  For folks like me who turn organic search traffic into affiliate commissions, it’s not that big of a deal.  I didn’t spend any money for the traffic, and thus waiting 90 days for a payout isn’t a huge deal.

But for anyone who buys advertising, it’s a killer.  You pay for advertising as you use it, not 90 days later.  Shell out thousands of $$$$$ for advertising in January for a Google Affiliate offer, you won’t see a return on that money until April.  Want to start advertising a new product?  Better have 3-4 months worth of advertising money to burn.

So Google?  I’m out.  Call me when you have a reasonable payout time.  Google Affiliate Program employees and companies posting offers on the Google Affiliate network, take note!  This is why you fail.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

blae December 3, 2011 at 10:13 am

Yea there’s hell lots of red tape in google affiliate network… I had a shock of my life when i realized that threshold is USD100 and now i am going to have another shock of my life after hearing that google only payout after 90 days. Jeez thought i could get my commission before christmas.

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