Affiliates (recruited authors)

[BarryDavidson]

I've gotten friends to sign up, and yet not a one of them have submitted any articles. They were like I was, writing for free or mostly free, and yet none have made the transition to being paid well.

[Celeste Stewart]

Beaker, I have mixed feelings about it. I'm certainly grateful for finding CC, but would I have paid someone enough money to buy a brand new car simply for providing me with a link that I'd eventually would have found via Google or one of the other writing sites? I'm not THAT grateful. I just wish that there were some sort of a cap where after a certain dollar figure the affiliate thing expires. I'd rather CC get that extra 5% and use it to attract more customers than continue paying off a debt that will never go away. To be honest, I'd like that money for myself. I think $15,000+ is more than enough thanks for the hard work that went into that link. I wonder, where does it end?

It would be different if it were more like a MLM thing where the person above you gives you tips, advice, etc. What made me successful here on CC? My own skills, trial and error, CC and Ed's ongoing help and support, terrific customers, challenges from other writers, etc - not a link. Is there a chance I would never have found CC if it weren't for that link? Not at all. I was looking for "online writing opportunities" or something like that and found CC along with other sites such as AC where CC is regularly discussed. I'm sure I would have found CC one way or another. One guy just got lucky and happened to be the guy whose link I ended up clicking first.

Plus, from what I've seen of a lot of CC affiliate link promotions, a lot of the promoters aren't even people who have sold any articles, let had any approved. I see a lot of people tweeting CC links with incorrect information (sell your poetry/fiction/etc). I also enter some of their links into the CC widget so I can read their profiles and it's not unusual for the person to have 0 articles available/for sale.

I'd be less grumpy about it if: I knew who the person was, if there was an upper limit where the 5% reverts back to me, and if there were some sort of requirement for affiliates to actually know what they were talking about. For example, if it were Ed, Chris Ross (the original owner of CC), one of the other established writers here, etc who "sponsored" me, then I'd be happy because I'd know that that person deserves every penny and my gratitude. In fact, if it were Ed or Chris, I'd want them to earn that 5% for life because those two people have been invaluable. But since I don't know who it was, I just assume it's some random person on the Internet who doesn't have a clue. I could be completely wrong, but I have no way of knowing so it's much easier to begrudge some anonymous, clueless person

[jadedragon]

I like writing but I like marketing even more. Even more than that I love passive income. So when I find a great opportunity for other people that I can promote and hopefully earn some passive income from I will promote it. I've spent a lot of time advertising CC accurately (no you can submit poetry) and without spamming. I've bookmarked my articles, shared them in forums and interlinked them. If you search Constant Content Review you will find my work right up there in the SERPs.

The results? 22 recruited authors to date. Total 8 articles between them and no sales just yet. I have made $5 from selling one of Celeste's excellent books in the process. I'd make $$ faster from just writing and selling here but I'm taking a long term view that I can earn from acting as a recruiter for a great site like CC.

So yes it is a good thing to use your affiliate link, you might get lucky and find a Celeste, but unless you are going to put maximum effort into recruiting don't expect to get rich at it.

[Celeste Stewart]

I think you meant, "No, you can't submit poetry."

BTW, this isn't something that bugs me to no end. I rarely think about it and I'm certainly not walking around grumbling about some guy earning so much off of my hard work. When the topic came up, I put in my two cents worth on the subject.

I do think that affiliates have their place though I wonder if the program isn't due for an update to ensure that it still serves its purpose and serves it well. Seeing people tweet "Sell your books and poetry at CC" drives me nuts. They're not doing CC any favors by setting the wrong expectations of potential writers. It would be great if CC developed some guidelines for affiliates. It would also be great to include an "Earn 5% (up to $XXX lifetime per referred author)" clause. This clause wouldn't affect many affiliates, but it would make a huge difference to the higher earners who also contribute greatly to CC's success on an ongoing basis.

Like I said earlier, I'm cool with the 35% that CC takes out of each article that sells. I price my articles knowing full well that I'll get 65%. I'm super cool with CC's 30% as that goes to marketing, overhead, salary, etc. The 5% that goes to affiliates - I have mixed feelings about. I really think it should be capped at some point for the higher earners on the site. The more you earn here, the more you realize, "Hey, I can make more privately" (and yes, I make a lot more privately). The fact is, even for a huge CC advocate like me, one who's cool with the 35% cut, the percentage does have its influence and phasing out the affiliate percentage at a certain level could help keep higher earners around. CC loses a lot of good writers who move on. Retaining good writers should be as important as attracting new ones.

[jadedragon]

See it is little errors like that that frustrate Ed and myself. I agree there is some logic to a cap and turning the money over to the author instead. Done correctly it could motivate some writers to write and earn more to reach the bonus payout. It could also make some writers feel cheated out of the 5% initially.

The biggest problem is writers who come with good intentions but do not stick to it. It is not like they wander off to a better opportunity, they just don't take the time to write and submit. We've all have those days, some more than others. Ok, back to actually writing stuff to sell now.

[Celeste Stewart]

Yup, back to work. Oh wait, I didn't work today (Spring break is killing my productivity!)

My idea is mainly academic and not something I think CC would seriously consider. I did want to clarify a few points for Beaker though, which is why I elaborated my position. It's not that I'm randomly begrudging an affiliate marketer his fair share because I don't know him but that this marketer has already earned a more-than-generous chunk of change and it would be nice if CC would cap earnings for affiliates at some point. My idea isn't just so *I* can earn more money, but rather for future CC high earners to benefit as well. As far as I'm concerned, the affiliate link happened over four years ago. At some point, the "relationship" between my sponsor and me should expire if it's not maintained in some way. After all, if I don't take care of my clients, I don't get paid and the relationship expires.

Besides, this is different than affiliate product sales. With products, affiliates get paid based on individual sales of a product, not the performance of someone else. I guess it's similar to subscriptions, but even those have fixed dollar amounts you can earn. As it stands right now, the guy doesn't have to do any promoting of my work or CC for that matter, yet if I were to sell $10K worth of content this month, he'd get $500. All for one click that happened four years ago.

Anyhow, enough of this...

[4rumid]

I think the thing that bothers me about the affiliate relationship is that most people post a link somewhere and don't indicate that they stand to gain by your using it. I ended up signing up that way, and I was annoyed when I saw that I was someone's referral (and I no longer know who that is). It just strikes me as deliberately misleading. Whenever I send someone/post a link, I'm straightforward about what it is. Is it just me who's bothered by the issue?

As for a cap on affiliate earnings, I'm mixed about that. It does take time to get affiliates, and I certainly wouldn't take the time without the reward . . . would anybody? And the reward is pretty minimal for the effort, at least so far. On the other hand, one of my own affiliates started posting links without ever submitting any writing of his own, and that doesn't seem right. But the point is to get people writing for CC, so I'm sure CC itself doesn't much care how that happens.

Celeste, I definitely see your point -- you're bringing this person a fortune and you're more deserving of the money for your work. But . . . you're not making any less than you normally would, and the possibility of earning big bucks is what keeps people hunting for affiliates -- which is good for CC. I really don't know what's best here.

Just my 2 cents (minus 5% for the guy whose link I clicked).

[Amy W]

I know next to nothing about affiliate programs, so just ignore this post if it is completely moronic. But wouldn't it make more sense to pay 5% to people who recruit customers instead of authors? Example - for the Beyond the Rack affiliate program, I would get a $10 credit for every friend I invite who makes a purchase (or I would if I ever bothered with it). So shouldn't CC offer the 5% to every author who invites a customer to the site who makes a purchase? If I found the site through an affiliate (which I didn't), why should that person make 5% off of every sale I make? They didn't write the article, they didn't find the customer. They didn't contribute to CCs profit - they only added another article to the database. CC still has to go out and find the customers. But if the affiliate brings customers to the site, they deserve the 5%, since they've made money for the site.

Just my two cents - including the 5%

[Celeste Stewart]

4Rumid, that's just it, we're not making any less than we normally would - but at some point, wouldn't it be nice to make more for the work that we're doing now (rather than continually reward the work that someone else did a few years ago)? At what point have I paid off my debt to the marketer for pointing me to CC? At what point will you have paid yours? $10K? $20K? $80K?

I'm a huge CC fan and defender of the 35% cut. I regularly explain to other writers how to price articles with the cut in mind and not worry about it. That said, I don't like to spend money unwisely, especially when it adds up to larger amounts. I suppose it's not my business how CC chooses to spread that 35% around, but since I do know that 5% is set aside just for my sponsor, I have to question it at some point. Who knows, maybe this sponsor is actively landing new clients for CC regularly and deserves every penny and more? Could be, but I still question the program at this level. I don't think when CC originally created this program that it anticipated ever paying an affiliate over ten thousand dollars for a single writer's work on a perpetual basis.

That paragraph above - doesn't $10K to $80K to an affiliate marketer for your work in the future seem unimaginable? That's what I'm saying, I don't think anyone imagined these amounts or projected the "what if's" to this level. If they had, they probably would've put some sort of limit or threshold in place.

Amy, agreed! I do know that CC used to pay affiliates to bring in customers but did away with that program a few years ago. I don't know why, but there must have been reasons that they found that part of the program unsatisfactory. But yeah, it would make more sense to pay someone to bring in paying customers rather than to pay someone to bring in writers, especially when so many of us writers would willingly bring in our writing buddies for free because we love CC so much!

If we don't speak up, CC may never take a second look at the "recruit writers" part of the program and whether it remains relevant today. Sometimes it takes a little noise to show that the status quo may not be so great any more.

You may remember when CC paid us via PayPal the non- mass payments way. In those days, all writers had to pay PayPal a 3% fee just to get our money. Not a big deal when you make $100 a month. A much bigger deal when you were paying PayPal $100 to $200 a month just to get your CC money. After a while, I squawked about it. I do everything I can to avoid paying $3 a month in checking, yet I was forced to pay a couple hundred dollars a month to PayPal! CC immediately implemented a solution for high earners - wire transfers - and then eventually switched to mass PayPal payments which are now free to us writers. Maybe CC will take a look at this perspective, too.

[Debbi]

I question whether CC needs an affiliate program to generate new writers at all. Like you say, Celeste, we are all eager to get all our writing friends on here and writing, just because we love it. It seems like we're constantly getting new writers on here (not sure how many of them ever write anything or make the grade). I'm much more interested in getting more customers. I would much rather CC get that 5% after some initial payout to the referrer than the person who posted a link somewhere. Even if you spend some time actively marketing the link, I don't think you should get thousands of dollars that CC could be using to promote the writers here, attract more customers, and improve the website, perhaps even hire another full-time Ed. That 5% from Celeste probably could have done all those things over the years she's been here. Add in Word Gypsy, Dr. Krisite, beconrad, and all the other high earners and think of how many thousands and thousands of dollars CC could have used to grow the business. Put a $100 or even $1000 limit on it and be done with it.

[Celeste Stewart]

To be fair to CC, this is the first squawking that I know of on this particular topic and that the original affiliate program was set up long before current management came along. The CC team has done an awesome job of dealing with many other higher priorities. I do hope that this gets put on the agenda though. Just wanted to clarify that this isn't a mutiny or anything like that

[jadedragon]

It is interesting to see all the opinions from everyone. I did not mean to start a revolution, just find out of there is a best practices way to attract writers to this great site. Interesting to see I had 5 signups at the beginning of the thread and now tonight just added #23. Many of the people who have joined are those that follow my blog and/or got to know me elsewhere a little.

I just wish people would actually start writing more. The more writers active the more selection here and the more customers are attracted to find what they want to buy. Walmart gets traffic because you can buy a wide variety of things there. Constant Content needs to be the Walmart of writing.

[BarryDavidson]

All of the people I've invited here knew before that I stood to make a little off their sales, but I was careful to tell them that it comes out of CC's cut.

I have to agree with Celeste here. I'm sorry for those of you who clicked an outside link, and are not making someone else a nice chunk of change for ten seconds of them pasting a code somewhere. My wife found this site, and then told me to check it out.

I'll tell you where I'm coming from here though. I tried to get fired for over five years from one of my previous, and I finally wound up quitting. Why did I never succeed you ask? Because I had to do it honestly. I could not bring myself to steal, drive away customers on purpose, or do anything else dishonest - unless you count showing up to work when I hated it to be dishonest. I'm getting to the point here. To me, leaving random affiliate links all over the place is like Disney and Mattel. They're constantly raking in money off former employees, and they keep winning that money because they have the funds to pay for juries and politicians. The last part of that sentence is kind of off point, but I consider it the "something for nothing" syndrome which affects a large percentage of the populations of the "civilized" world.

Do I care one wit if CC gets 35% of my sales? Nope. I think it fair considering the time saved, materials not used, the headaches narrowly avoided, and convenience of using their service. I've done the "solo" thing before, and I don't recommend it. Imagine yourself spending hours of your day searching for companies to submit to, then tailoring your work to fit them (including formatting), then emailing those companies who allow it, and finally sending out snail mail to those who don't. I won't even go into the other steps associated with submitting novels and short fiction.

[Evelyn]

OK, I just have to chime in on this subject. I've recruited one author: my daughter. She promised me solemnly she'd made me a cool million dollars, and so far she's got $3 of that goal knocked off. She's on her way!

A solution that would satisfy everyone from jadedragon to Celeste would be to require the one who recruits authors to remain active. This could be requiring the recruiter to get four articles a month approved (or some other low number) just to keep his/her hat in the ring. If an author can get four articles approved then that person is an author, not a random link poster.

That goes against the passive income idea, because a person has to keep working at it, not just sit back on the beach with a laptop (or whatever the people who sell ebooks try to tell you about passive income). But in the real world, there is no such thing as "passive" income; all types of Internet marketing require some work--even if it's "only a few hours a week".

How would the CC management do this? I don't know how to run a site like this. If I did, I'd start one up for fiction, as was suggested in another forum. Could they flag authors who meet the goal somehow, then compare that to the PayPal list? Could they delete authors who aren't contributing, after asking them politely what they'd like to do? Do they delete authors whose work is banned? This would only be a requirement for those with affiliates, because I know several people have taken time off then come back.

Alternatively, it would be great to be able to delete one's own profile... that's something Internet writing sites NEVER do. Very irritating.

Someone at CC knows who is getting paid for Celeste's work. It's possible that person doesn't even exist on this site anymore. Personally, I get very excited when my daughter makes a sale, and when she gets stuff approved. I'd have brought her on board no matter what because someone has to pay her private university tuition. I'd be willing to continue my own work here, just to see what she does.

Tuppence! Just trying to find a compromise.

[Debbi]

Another option would be to gray out the affiliate link until an author had earned X number of dollars or had X number of articles aprpoved to show he or she is seriuos about writing at CC. This would be a lot easier than tracking them after the fact. Even in this case though, I still think a cap is a good idea with that 5% reverting back to CC after some specified time or amount.