SnapNames.com quietly started an in-house affiliate program around November 2008. I personally was contacted directly by Monte as were many other domain name bloggers about the program. The affiliate program worked very well for the affiliates and SnapNames was getting a lot of love on some of the most popular domain name blogs in the industry.
Special posts were done on specific domain names, extensive coverage was done on domain name auctions, lot’s of banner ads, tweets and special tools were built to focus on advertising domain name auctions at SnapNames.
It was a win/win. Affiliates were being compensated nicely with a 20% cut of the net proceeds from the auctions that affiliates directed buyers to. As an affiliate, it was one of those GREAT programs that actually worked!
For unknown reasons to me, SnapNames decided to outsource it’s affiliate program starting November 2009 and went with a little known affiliate provider Essociates.com .
At first I thought maybe this switch would be good, as reporting and tools provided by SnapNames were not that great and Essociates would be providing more tools to it’s affiliates and better reporting of clicks and sales. To say the least, IMO the switch has been about the worst one could imagine for an affiliate!
I tested the new program before the switch in November 2009. I was using the very same tactics I was using with the original program that worked great, but simply changed the affiliate code to the new program. Technically, I should of seen no difference in sales or the commission because everything worked just fine before and all I did was change the affiliate code to work with the new program… a short test resulted in:
- Raws 8,395
- Uniques 1,752
- Sales $0.00
The traffic was in place but the sales simply were not converting. Something was WRONG!!!! Drastically wrong!
Well, still to this day…. even though Essoicates stated they had a reporting issue, I have never seen a sale out of those numbers stated above. Even though my system was working 100% before simply changing the affiliate links to the new system. Once I changed links back to the SnapNames in-house system, my sales were showing up again and I was getting paid.
Double Trouble
Come late November 2009 when everything switched over from the in-house SnapNames affiliate program to the Essociates program, the sales numbers have been down right horrible and continued to mirror my test results! There was a drastic change in the pay scale, going from a single tier pay system of 20% of net proceeds to a two tier system that paid 20% net proceeds on "new customers" but the new customers were only new for 90 days. If the buyer already had a SnapNames account, they would be considered "existing" and the affiliate pay would be 5% of net proceeds. This was a 75% cut in pay to the affiliate, but keep in mind, all the sales I was having before, simply dried up with no clear explanation as to why with the new Essoicate program!
Not only did SnapNames cut it’s pay system by 75% when switching to the new Essociates affiliate program, I still think Essoicates is having a hard time tracking some of it’s sales because my sales number plummeted. It just doesn’t make sense to me that my sales would of simply stopped showing up by changing link structures to fit with the new program. I wasn’t alone, as I spoke with many others that were using the new program.
Add in the bidding scandal that became public with the Halvarez insider bidding around November and this has killed the SnapNames affiliate program! I pulled nearly all ads and tools at that time. I have since given Essoicate, SnapNames affiliate program a try from time to time to see if things change but have had very little luck.
How bad is the new program?
Let’s just happen to say if you DO get a sale using the new Snapnames affiliate program, what can you expect to get paid?
Yes, that is my commission on a sale of a 3 letter .com domain name! $2.77 ! Well it could be a CCC domain as well, but it’s hard to tell. I do not know the exact domain or the exact sales price of the domain. Now my affiliate commission comes on the Net Proceeds which clearly can be a little deceiving as well since the "20%" or "5%" may come across as the amount you get on the Price Paid , so keep that in mind….
Either way, transparency is not happening. I have no clue what the net proceeds really were. It could of been an LLL.com sale or it could of been a CCC.com sale.
The fact for me is, I rarely get any sales. That sale above was the first for me this year! I use to get nearly 80-100 a month with the in-house program. Nothing like I did before the switch over to Essoicates and I keep telling myself, your wasting your time, getting robbed or somebody else is eating steak dinners on you! I personally would not suggest using the SnapNames affiliate program through Essoicates. You will likely put in a lot of effort promoting domains with very little if any return in commissions. I do question the reporting and if it is correct! I clearly can see how many affiliate clicks are driven off of my site, but when I compare the amount of clicks with the affiliate programs, they do not always match up. This isn’t just for the SnapNames program, it happens on a lot of affiliate programs. Transparency is near nonexistent with most programs.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
