Best Buy Slashes Affiliate Commissions
By Anna Johnson on December 23rd, 2008Nice one, Best Buy. Instead of giving your loyal affiliates their usual 1 percent commission on laptops and Wii consoles, just give them 0.25 percent instead. Happy Holidays.
Shawn Collins, writing in Affiliate Tip, points out that Best Buy’s move to slash affiliate commissions is similar to Apple’s decision not to allow affiliates to promote the iPhone when it came out. Both moves are ‘anti-affiliate’ and both will end up pushing affiliates away from such merchants.
While Apple may be safe for now, since it continues to dominate the digital media player and phone space, other merchants may not have the luxury of turning away their affiliates. I mean, it’s not as if a dozen or more retailers don’t offer the very same products for affiliates to promote (i.e. they DO)!
Pushing affiliates away by not giving them the higher converting offers or slashing their affiliate commissions is yet another example of the short-term, cost-cutting, anti-marketing thinking that seems to be pervasive these days.
Maybe it’s necessary and inevitable, but I also think those companies that take the OPPOSITE approach – embracing their affiliates rather than punishing them – are poised to prosper.
Source: Shawn Collins, “Best Buy Alienates Affiliates,” Affiliate Tip, December 21, 2008
