- Newsletter Creator
- Posts
- 🧞 Rugging Affiliates
🧞 Rugging Affiliates
Hi there 👋
I was looking for more affiliate programs to promote to my audiences across the ACQUIRE.GG network. One was Convertkit as I’m actually going to be launching a newsletter on that (sacrilege to Substack I know) as want to start using the Sparkloop Upscribe feature.
However, something jumped out at me on the Convertkit Affiliate landing page:
Yes, you get recurring commissions but with a hard stop after 2 years.
This has implications if you’re attaching an affiliate account to a website and then want to sell that website asset. Most websites that are acquired (see my newsletter) are based on a 3-4x annual profit multiple, but how do you assess this for a new website/affiliate account (under 2 years) that has a cliff date where revenue will tank?
This was a change in the affiliate terms by Convertkit last year, which made, as you can imagine, a lot of existing affiliates very unhappy:
Oh! @ConvertKit just nuked their affiliate program. They will no longer pay you a recurring commission after September. Can you imagine being one of those affiliates making thousands of dollars every month and then it’s all gone?
— Jose Rosado ⚡️ (@joserosado)
2:44 AM • Feb 17, 2022
@ConvertKit Mistake not to grandfather in previous affiliates. Once you start to focus on cost savings & not growth it’s a slippery slope
— Mark Grimes (@markgrimes)
2:54 AM • Feb 17, 2022
@ConvertKit I really is nuts. I'm def not one of the "thousands" affiliates but really, @ConvertKit? Not even a reduction in the affiliate percentage. Bumping it down to 10% (hell, even 1 percent) would have been a blow, but this is something else.
— rochelle (@RochelleSanch)
5:08 AM • Feb 17, 2022
Even the top affiliates like Pat Flynn:
@joserosado@RochelleSanch@AmyPorterfield Quiet on social, but only because I’ve been having constant conversations about this privately with affiliates and many others since the announcement has been made…it’s a lot to process, and as someone who has been in aff marketing for so long, this is radical and uncommon.
— Pat Flynn (@PatFlynn)
4:11 PM • Feb 18, 2022
Other email providers have made similar changes:
I prefer not to complain on Twitter, but @ActiveCampaign have infuriated me. They're changing their affiliate commission payouts so you get nothing for any customers you've referred in the past unless you refer a new one in the last 6 months.
— Ian Brodie 🌶️🌶️🌶️ (@ianbrodie)
9:14 AM • Jul 1, 2022
@ActiveCampaign Just found out about this. Over $4k is now pending but will actually never be paid out. Huge bait and switch from @ActiveCampaign after being a partner since 2016
— CoinSnacks (@CoinSnacks)
10:08 PM • Dec 15, 2022
And it’s happened to me with Clickfunnels back in 2017:
And with the crypto exchange HitBTC also back in 2017 where I referred thousands of customers to them and they never paid a dime to any of their affiliates.
Have you been rugged?
Let me know in the comments below or just hit reply.
Cheers!
— Richard (@richardpatey)
🚀 Other Funnel Newsletters
How should you segment your audience? Personalize your messaging? And leverage automation to get off the "email hamster wheel"... without getting overwhelmed? These questions, and more, are tackled each week.
Discover the "secret recipe" behind 100 of the best sales letters of all time, and how to apply that to your own marketing.
A daily newsletter highlighting an interesting FB/IG/TikTok ad. “We spend millions per month testing hundreds of ads and share what we learn.”
This newsletter is monetized through affiliate links and from sponsorship.