Liberator Affiliate Program

March 6th, 2010

Let me preface this review by saying I believe Liberator will be moving to different software for its affiliate program and pay outs are currently frozen. In the near future, this review may no longer be relevant but, in the mean time, feel free to check out AAG’s post about not being paid.

Liberator’s affiliate program is one of the few manufacturer affiliate programs to which I have applied. Part of the reason for this is because no other retailer sells all of Liberator’s products. It is difficult to do so without marking up the prices ridiculously because of shipping costs, which I understand. Of course, Liberator has also been kind enough to allow me to review one of their products.

Liberator’s currently affiliate program can be accessed by a link in the footer of Liberator’s homepage. This page gives a bit of information to potential affiliates, including that earnings are from 10% – 15%. From there you can sign up or sign in, if you are a current affiliate. There is no direct URL which is easy to access (for this page or the affiliate program, period) even though the affiliate control panel mentions LiberatorAffiliates.com. Unfortunately, this domain redirects to Liberator.com and not even the affiliate page. In fact, links from this section redirect to the Liberator home page and the sign up page does not have a field for referrer so it appears that affiliates cannot refer others and earn commissions from their sales. Although I can live without referring others, it certainly is a nice incentive and it doesn’t bode well for a program when the provided links are useless.

That is essentially my biggest bone to pick with the Liberator affiliate program: the links are provided and there are no ways to create links to different landing pages. Not every program has a link creator or a built in affiliate dashboard when browsing the site but I don’t even know if I can add my affiliate code to the end of URLs to bring visitors in on specific product, review or guide pages. It’s not a problem if you want to link to big named products by Liberator or even other manufacturers like Lelo but not even every Liberator product has a link in the affiliate control panel and I like my links to be relevant. Another downfall to this is that I do not know how frequently the links are updated as new products are added. I find that when my options as an affiliate are limited, I am much less likely to use affiliate links at all which doesn’t help me earn commissions or help the company make sales.

There are, however, quite a few banner options including a group of banners featuring Catalina, a blogger (and model?) of some infamy but with whom not everyone would be familiar. Also, her blog seems to be down and since I am not a follower, I do not even know if these banners are still relevant. Most of these banners are located on one page and are not divided by size (although, most of the standard sizes appear to be available) so they are not as easy to browse as they could be. It would be easier to navigate if the banners were further divided by size, even if they were all on the same page; just add internal links. As you can guess, these banners mostly focus on Liberator shapes with some highlighting their lingerie.

Aside from links and banners, basic account info is readily available on the first page, after sign in. This includes sales and commissions. For more in depth information, affiliates can view monthly reports which are broken down by sales and commissions. Users can also edit their account information, contact Liberator and choose to redeem commissions (over $200). All of these options are easy to find but the control panel is definitely on the basic side. It’s okay if you just want the pertinent information at a moment’s notice but definitely lacking compared to other affiliate control panels.

One noticeably lacking feature is that of payment flexibility. The only option I can see is to be paid by check and, I’ll be honest, a $200 check would be awesome but it could take years for me to get to that point. It would be great to have the option to be paid by Paypal and a lower payout as well. Because I have yet to make commissions, I cannot speak in depth about the payment process.

Overall, the Liberator Affiliate program lacks the flexibility and ability to customize in a way that really attracts and keeps affiliates. With programs like these, I am likely to forget I am even an affiliate after I add banners to my site. Instead, I focus my energy on other retailers which offer more alluring features and allow me to link the pages I want to specifically link. The result is that I make more from other affiliate programs simply because it is easier to do so.

In addition to this, Liberator has not done much to really draw attention to the affiliate site on their main page or to make the two mesh (relatively) seamlessly. I don’t mind separate affiliate sites at all but without even on a logo to distinguish it, the Liberator affiliate program is forgettable.

With that said, it will be interesting to see the new Liberator affiliate program when it is operational. I also hope that the folks at Liberator will take the time to inform their affiliates of these changes because there has not been a lot of communication going on thus far. This will definitely be a chance for them to improve their program so that affiliates will actually want to use it.

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Categories: internet, Reviews

Babeland Affiliate Program

January 29th, 2010

Babeland Affiliate Program

Babeland Affiliate Program

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.

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Categories: internet, Reviews

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