Affiliate Program Being Cancelled and Deactivated – Grumble, Sigh, Grrr

I received an email today telling me that the affiliate program for a shop I promote on one of my sites will be cancelled and closed, after October 31st affiliate commissions will no longer be paid out for referrals.

This is a huge headache and it’s certainly discouraging as I’m getting back into working on my niche projects after some crazy life stuff took over my time and I needed to step away for awhile…

The affiliate program in question was poorly managed to begin with, but I tolerated it and worked with it as best I could because it was literally the only affiliate program for the products I wanted to promote. I even offered more than once to help them with their affiliate program, to help them set up better tracking and reporting, to recruit new affiliates for them, and to work with their program manager to set up some cool new tools for affiliates to use. They ignored me frequently or shrugged it off with relies like “we don’t need those fancy things” and “we’re low budget,” to which I even offered to help them for free just so I could have better tools to use in my promotions. So now I’m frustrated and a little bit sad.

I need to seek out replacement links and start the task of replacing all the promotional links ~ side note: thank goodness I use redirects on everything so I can just go to my Pretty Link dashboard and swap links out without having to sift through blog posts to find each individual link. So far I haven’t found a specific program to replace the one that’s closing, but I can probably dig up a few Amazon links to use and I’ll gladly replace some with links to other sites that don’t have affiliate programs just to share the love. Maybe if I get lucky I can send someone enough traffic to consider opening their own affiliate or referral program! (I can dream, can’t I?)

I’ll have a notebook handy all weekend to brainstorm new monetization ideas for that niche site… I have a few ideas already, but I feel like I need to mix things up more and offer something creative. A lot of similar sites simply sell advertising, and while I do offer advertising there I want to do something more, something bigger, something that’s both profitable and fun that doesn’t clutter up the sidebar. If you have any ideas or tips, please do leave a comment. I’m open to all suggestions 😉

Loretta

Transcriptionist, passionate cross stitcher, writer at heart, wife, mom, and finder of lost shoes… Loretta Oliver, married to the comic book geek of her dreams and mother of four amazing young men, has been working from home full time since 2001. With a busy transcription service business, a few niche sites, and a handful of other internet marketing projects on the go, the computer is always fired up and the ideas are always flowing.