You’re doing great business as an affiliate. You’re channeling tons of leads to your casino programs and your numbers are great. Then you receive your payment and you know something isn’t right.
Operators can mess up account stats for completely legitimate reasons, such as technical errors; i.e. disabled cookies that don’t correctly record transactions. If you’ve been the victim of incorrect stats once or twice, it happens, and the best thing you can do is to contact your partner and set the record straight.
However, if you are being consistently shaved on your account, here are a few things you can do to handle this.
Check Your Stats Yourself
To ensure that your visitor clicks are being registered, ask a trusted user to notify you when they click on your banners and see if your stats change. As stated, problems with stats are often a technical issue; i.e. this may be bad tracking code. Contact your partner and inform them of the problem. If you don’t receive a response from your affiliate manager with suggestions or solutions, you’re likely being shaved and should cut ties with this program.
Do you want your credit card processors, PPC search engines and affiliate programs all in one place? As most casino affiliates know, StatsRemote is a software application that allows users to check all of their statistics without having to log in to different locations.
Find out more here.
Get A Tracking System
Invest in a good tracking system that can accurately count what you’re owed. An independent service you pay for can pay for itself by preventing the loss of commissions. Having a professional system in place is also good when you need to resolve disputes—a system is not likely to work in your favor, as if you might if you were tracking everything manually.
Egass is a multi-language and multi-currency affiliate management software for online gaming operators, suppliers and multi-brand networks. This system is great for affiliates wanting to build, manage and accurately monitor their accounts.
Read Your Contract Thoroughly
Shaving isn’t wrong if it’s specified in your contract; i.e. a decrease in commission if a certain percentage isn’t met, etc. Take the time to thoroughly read the fine print in your contract terms and conditions (which you should have done in the first place). If your contract is hurting your commissions more than it is helping them, it might be time to move on to another program that won’t carry such penalties.
Work With Honest Programs
Do your homework and you will find many online forums and review sites that provide information about gaming affiliate programs—these are the best places to find out who is shaving and who is playing on a level field. Work with companies that have a reputation for paying their affiliates and operating fairly. You can shave your chances of being shaved just by doing business with reputable programs in the first place.
Have you had problems with shaving? How have you handled incorrect stats from your affiliate partners? Let us know in the comments below.