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.
