Go Daddy.com sent out a press release today announcing the broad opening of an an Affiliate program that pays commissions of 20% to any Godaddy customer that has a “shopper account”.
An affiliate, can choose from more than 100 Go Daddy banner or text ads to post on your existing Web site, blog, or Facebook.
Affiliates earn commissions not only on domain name purchases, but on all “upsells”, all Godaddy products, such as hosting services, or SSL certificates.
Go Daddy will track affiliate link referrals, awarding commissions on orders placed up to 45 days after the initial click basically placing a cookie on the users site.
Commissions are paid out monthly to affiliates either through direct deposit, PayPal or check.
Affiliates can track their commissions online at Go Daddy.
To learn more about terms and what it takes to become a Go Daddy Affiliate, click here
Ironic that the Ts&Cs forbid web sites containing “tasteless images”.
Kevin
But think of their standards of what would be considered tasteless
Nice catch
I love companies that run their affiliate programs in-house.
This is great news and the first I’ve seen of it, thanks for the tip!
“I love companies that run their affiliate programs in-house.”
Are you being sarcastic or prefer in-house programs?
Isn’t an affiliate program like Godaddy’s similar to what we experience in the ppc category – blind trust.
I wonder if the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (tax collector) will accept whatever amount I decide to send them without any option of audit?
Will the IRS just take the money and be thankful they got it like domainers?
The domain industry is one of the few industries without ‘checks and balances’ within the revenue stream.
Trust Me
The whole domain industry operates this way.
From Google who pays you what they want, based on a quality score they won’t tell you, from the parking companies who pay you what they want.
Its all business about trust and hope that your getting a fair shake.
@Trust Me, it looks like they offer the option of in-house or to participate through CJ. i can tell you this though, if there is any funny business at all the affiliate community are quick with the torches and pitchforks
I can already see one big mistake GD are making off the bat though is not to provide the name and contact info for the Affiliate Manager up front. the best affiliates won’t promote for a program if they dont have a direct line to the AM
Mike, your comment is exactly what I’ve been complaining about
for 5-6 yrs.
Isn’t it interesting that some of the most successful companies in our industry are ppc companies?
(ie, DomainSponsor, Trafficz, NameDrive, NameMedia, Parked.)
And, yes I still use them. A necessary evil.
That is why I’m cautious about entering into another revenue category
that is based on blind ‘Trust Me’.
My soapbox speech for today.
🙂
i think its more of an issue with the ppc/parking co’s since you dont know what % you are getting. with an affiliate program you should now exactly what % commission, length of tracking cookie, and everything else. all this info should be readily available though. you pretty much know what you’re getting, they can’t raise and lower your commission at whim like the way ppc fluctuates, there is no mysterious ‘quality score’ etc. integrity is key, with program policies, payments, reversals, etc.
The weakest link in using affiliates is how many of the transactions are being credited to you.
For example, my spywire and virus prevention software (2 different programs) purge my computer of cookies a couple times a day.
In most cases immediately.
Therefore, if I don’t buy immediately, the perspective customer is not assigned to you. And, it becomes a house account.
I’m using ppc and affiliate programs but I don’t consider either one a sustainable revenue source. Other than pointing a domain or placing a banner, I’m powerless if I continue this direction.
I like Eric Rice’s cartoon about the ppc companies.
Unfortunately, I believe it is/was true.
http://www.dncartoons.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/comic-2.jpg
I like in house too. I agree about you are blindly trusting, but I have heard many complain about CJ not paying them for clicks and transactions they know took place from their affiliate programs. So its kind of like who do you trust ?
Let’s be honest Google does not care, and I doubt they will ever give in to a domainer request for more transparency. I mean don’t they tell Governments to get lost on certain requests ? I don’t think they will tell % or quality score. This may be because they know, where are you going to go ? Some may yell but they still come back to using a Google advertising product. They are not dumb they know they are the biggest game in town. Again IMO
Not sure how much I would trust them on paying up for every sale.
UPDATE:
The affiliate program works!
Yesterday I transferred 16 domains to godaddy because I want to list them for sale in the Premium listings at GoDaddy. The cost was discounted to $6.99 per domain in the shopping cart.
I also bought a domain in the Auctions for $7 with a $10.87 reg fee.
The order was for $125.42.
The commission showing in the affiliate report is $23.11.
I did a little math and realized that the $0.18 ICANN fee did not have the 20% discount nor did the $7.00 auction purchase.
So, I’m happy to say that my net cost for a transfer into GoDaddy was $5.60.
Since I think this is less than GoDaddy pays to ICANN, I don’t see how they can continue to offer the 20% discount for very long but I like it while it lasts.
PS…
The affiliate program is VERY easy to sign up for and VERY easy to put code on your site. I signed up, put the code on my site, then went to GoDaddy later in the day in the above order.
I confirmed with my GoDaddy rep that it is okay to click on my own affiliate code (as is usually the case with affiliate programs) and he verified that it was acceptable practice.
FYI, get set up with Ebay Partner Network and Amazon and other affiliates then click on your own affiliate link to get the discount. If you are going to buy a an expensive item online, be sure to sign up for an affiliate program THEN place the order AFTER you click on your affiliate code.
@ Rob, you are saying that the orders were discounted up front, AND you got credited commission for them? that sounds awfully strange. I’ve never heard of any affiliate program that operates that way, its doesnt sound right. also, i wouldnt be surprised if the commissions were reversed. you might want to check w/ their terms but i also dont know of any APs that allow you to earn commission on your own order. otherwise everyone and their mum would sign up as an affiliate for no other reason.
Mike,
Transfers had the “unit price” of $7.99 and “today’s price” of $6.99. Just a GoDaddy site wide discount, no affiliate commission related.
All affiliate programs that I have ever run in the past five years let you click on your own affiliate link and get commissions. Go sign up at Amazon, put the code on a site then click on that code then go place an order Amazon. Check the report the next day and you’ll see your order in the report.
Which affiliate programs do you know of that DO NOT give you credit for clicking on your own link or have a TOS saying that you cannot click on your own link?
maybe attitudes have changed, i used to manage a program and we never allowed it. it was high ticket software and you’d get people sign up with no intention to ever promote your product just to give away 30% margin, don’t make sense to me. i’m not saying you should never reward affiliates with product discounts but affiliates are those who actually promote or intend to promote your product. To be honest i’ve never thought to try with Amazon as i just assumed it wouldnt fly. probably any programs that are set to auto approve affiliates they are just run on autopilot and they’ll never bother to look. but for example, with any CPL programs for distance learning, you wouldnt be able to go around signing up for info at various schools and getting yourself paid as a qualified lead. probably not the best example as you are most likely wanting an example of product related programs. if i’m not mistaken most/all of the products on the MoreNiche platform will not allow this. to be honest you may be right though a lot of programs may allow this that i wasnt aware. but as you were correct to point out, how can Godaddy sustain it, for example if hundreds of domainers with hundreds of thousands or millions of domains were to begin doing this, it would seriously cut into their margin on domains. they can give up margin on domains for end-users where its all about the up-selling on other products/services, but for domainers with large portfolios who only buy domains and no upsell I dont know how it makes much sense. cheers. Mike
Thanks for your posting; I really appreciate your ideas. Hope you can keep going
http://www.lvlkk.com/
Thanks for that recommendation; it is really helpful for me to say!
This is a really great website, and I really like your essay. Thanks for your sharing.
What about the clause in their Ts&Cs the they reserve the right to terminate the program at any time for any reason AND destroy your content off of their server if you are one of their customers and they have done so. That sound like bullshit to me and scares me away from this program…. why would they do something like that?
If you read the TOS of just about every agreement in our industry, it includes the clause to cancel the agreement for whatever reason they want. (ppc, registrars, hosting, paypal, ebay, amazon, etc)
If you speak to GD, I’m sure they will say –
“even though it says that trust me we wouldn’t do that.”
🙂
Sure… and they’d add “and have a nice day” to that, but I think they got a cheek to reserve the right to terminate the hosting plan of a customer who has been booted from the affiliate program. The 2 should be mutually exclusive don’t you?
I have been using the GoDaddy affiliate program for a number of years now and have been very impressed overall. As always make sure you cover the fundamentals for example be certain that you use up to date code when implementing the banners on your website and always set the code up properly inside the banner code maker. Also make sure that your browser accepts cookies.