A new thread on A4U has just revealed that commission is only rewarded for new customers. Someone at the agency that handles the programme defends this by pointing out that commission was raised from 2.5% to 8% when this issue was previously highlighted.

I haven’t got a problem per se with affiliates only being paid for new customers, but I expect the merchant to recognise the lifetime value of that customer and reward the affiliate accordingly.

By strange coincidence I ordered a Dominos Pizza Online last night (and forgot to use an affiliate link). I’ve just moved to a new town with my wife and 3 kids hence why we used Domino’s for the first time. To examine the figures let’s pretend I searched for “discount pizza deals Newtown” and found Dominos Pizzas via an affiliate site.

I spent £25 on a meal for our family of 5. That order would have earned an affiliate a one off commission of £2 with no further payment if I ordered a Dominos Pizza online again, nor would any other affiliate ever get paid if I ordered a pizza after clicking on their link. On their old commission structure an affiliate would have earned just 62p.

I actually found ordering a pizza on the Dominos website a good overall experience. The menu was clear, the site was easy to navigate, I had the option to pay online or on delivery and then the fun part was being able to track my order; first I was told the order had been received by my local Dominos store and wold be with me shortly, I was then told the pizza was being prepared, next it was in the oven, before going through “quality control” and finally it was despatched and the delivery man was on his way. Additionally there was a customer survey asking for feedback on how I rated the site (it’s great), the delivery man (he was charming) and the pizza (it was delicious).

This is exactly how the internet should work, Dominos were able to show me a full menu with special offers, personalize my experience, make ordering easy, keep me up dated on their progress, get some useful feedback and, now they have all my contact details, they will no doubt engage me with future offers and promotions.

Now our family isn’t big on takeaways but given the positive experience we will be buying our pizzas from Dominos for ther forseeable. So let’s say we order 4 pizzas a year averaging £25 an order for the next 15 years (the kids will be flying the nest around then). At today’s prices our custom is worth £1,500.00 to Dominos Pizza during that time. Yet they will only have paid 1 affiliate just £2 commission for that referral.

This absolutely shocking when you compare it with other affiliate programmes that pay for repeat visitors or casino/gambling sites who pay a huge CPA for 1st time depositors.

Personally I would love to see more programmes where affiliates continue to be rewarded each and every time a customer they referred returns even after the cookie period. Some gaming sites do this and it’s a great way of applying the affiliate model of rewarding on results.

So what do you think are we “grubby affiliates” worth just £2 for a customer who will spend £1,500?

As this blog is intended to give advice to “affiliate newbies” we may as well start right at the beginning with the help of this really useful video courtesy of one of the biggest online marketing gurus around Joel Comm: