In my second installment of affiliate program reviews, I’d like to introduce you to Babeland Affiliates. When browsing Babeland’s site for affiliate information, visitors can find this affiliate FAQ which, while generally helpful, isn’t amazing. For instance, if you’re wondering when you’ll be paid, the page indicates to look at a list of dates that doesn’t exist. Furthermore, interested bloggers and website owners (who are 21+) can sign up via a form which is embedded into Babeland’s shop site; however, once approved affiliates must log into a different site – BabelandAffiliates.com – to manage their states. This really is my biggest complaint about the content of the affiliate program at Babeland – it’s confusingly spread on two different sites.
While affiliates can link to pretty much any page on Babeland’s site including individual products, guides and specials via the link creator on the Babeland site, the affiliate site only offers premade links to specific products and pages. There is no link creator at all within the affiliate site. And if there is a way to link to the affiliate site with an affiliate link, I do not know how. Furthermore, sometimes Babeland no longer sells products and I believe visitors are redirected to the main page without notice of why this is happening.
It’s also great to see seasonal banners from Babeland and they are conveniently displayed below the link creator but guess what? There are also banners in the affiliate control panel and they are not always in sync. As long as I’ve been an affiliate, it seems like seasonal banners are quickly removed from the link creator page on Babeland.com but there’s no real indication in the affiliate control panel about the status of certain banners. If that weren’t confusing enough, there is actually a third page with more banners on the Babeland site. Sure, affiliates have lots of options but they also have to exert a lot of effort to find the tools available to them. Now, I have nothing against having to use an external site for affiliates as long as that external site is all encompassing which is not the case for Babeland.
Banner and linking issues aside, the commercial software they used to track impressions, clicks, orders and commissions is easy enough to use (and set my date). Affiliates can also view The “View Reports” page does not have as much in depth information as the EdenFantasys affiliate program but it’s easy to see that I am owed some commissions. However, I’m not entirely sure when I will paid (remember, the Affiliate FAQs weren’t so helpful in that area) and the “Training Center” link in the affiliate control panel is a broken link. I do believe I will be paid next month because I have over $25 in commissions this month. It would be great if that question could be answered in the control panel, however.
The specific software BabelandAffiliates uses does have some interesting, tools. For instance, there is a page entitled “Marketing Material” which shows the banners I have in use along with their impressions, clicks, click-thru ratios, number of sales and commissions. Ironically, all of my commissions are via text links and not banner clicks. (= This affiiate setup also allows users to create Sub-IDS which are defined thusly:
Sub-IDs are a tool that will allow you to track specific placements of our links and view the performance of each. For example if you have a website and an email newsletter, you can create a sub-ID for each like site and news. You can then view the reports below to determine how your site and your news links are performing.
Although I don’t personally have use for this feature, I can see how it would be useful, especially for networked sites.
It’s also to see previous payments. Because of the $25/month commissions rule, it’s been some time since I got one but it’s still listed which is nice. This is helpful if you move because Babeland only pays out by check and sometimes moving or mail issues can prevent that money from reaching your hands.
I briefly touched on the limited links which are available through this control panel. There are only a handful of text links available, one of which points to G-spot toys, one to the Babeland store and one to the SaSi product listing. It’s pretty meager and having the link creator here would be awesome, am I right? There are more options with banners (and these are separated into categories by size or promotion) but, as I mentioned before, some of the banners are “time-sensitive” and no longer useful to affiliates because the promotion has ended or, in the case of the 2008 election, is completely irrelevant now.
Affiliates can easily change their personal information in the dashboard, thankfully, and that wraps up the control panel. It’s doesn’t include everything and the kitchen sink, like the control panel for EdenFantasys affiliates but it does meet all basic needs and then some. It would just be that much more useful if the powers that be focused on the control panel instead of spreading affiliate content across several sites and pages. As it is, it’s more than a little frustrating because the goal is so clearly within reach.
I’m not entirely who the powers that be are anymore. I believe that both the the affiliate program and the reviewer program fall under the same management (and the review newsletter includes affiliate information also) but there have been some changes recently. While I understand employees come and go, I am not the only person who is thoroughly confused as to whom to contact. Even when I thought I knew whom to contact, replies were very inconsistent. Some folks were constantly getting e-mail and phone calls replies in a timely manner whereas others, like myself, have heard absolutely nothing back. I don’t pretend to understand the kind of stress that these folks are under and I also know I’d concentrate on improving the customers experience before worrying about affiliates so I don’t like to make a big deal out of things. However, I do know that it’s easy to set up an automatic reply to the extent of:
So and so, the affiliate manage at Babeland has received your message but due to an influx in correspondence will only be replying to e-mails which require a reply.
And we’d really be happy with that. In addition, since affiliate newsletters go out on a weekly basis anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to add a little blurb “Hi, my name is Bob and I will be taking over correspondence with affiliates.” To be fair, I was told that someone would be taking over affiliate correspondence which I absolutely appreciate but I don’t think this message was spread consistently to all affiliates.
With a little tweaking around the edges, I think the Babeland Affiliate program would be quite formidable but it is currently quite clumsy.
I’ve never received any commissions 🙁 Makes me sad. Wonderful review though, I think you’ve touched on a lot of good points, especially about the lack of replies back and banner issues.
The truth about commissions is.. you have to work for it. You have to get your links out there, on Twitter, in reviews, in communities (whether or not they are related) and, if you expect your blog to be the biggest source of commissions, then you have to work to get hits and be known.
With that said, there are a lot of blogs that are more higher ranked and more frequently visited than mine which make much more in commissions. I have strayed from saying how much I owe simply because it’s so little. d=
Hi,
It’s Mae and I can’t tell you how important this feedback is for sites that offer affiliate programs. I’m currently rebuilding Good Vibrations affiliate program – we have a lot more features and higher commission than other affiliate programs. We’d be honored to hear your feedback.
http://www.goodvibes.com/content.jhtml?id=Good-Vibrations-Affiliate-Program
-Mae