There’s been a fair bit of debate recently about More Niche‘s decision to introduce “Split Commissions” on their weight loss pill product Proactol, the idea being to reward not only the last referrer as pretty much every other affiliate program does, but to also award the first referrer with a flat CPA (currently £3.50). Now there are several arguments for/against this:

1. This will create a “land-grab” scenario where affiliates try to drop the first cookie
2. Last click works – “if it ain’t broke..”
3. Where will this lead? First referrers getting more than the last referrer? second, third or fourth getting a cut? All of which could confuse affiliates

Lammo’s take on this..
1. There’s already a “land-grab” to drop cookies – it’s called voucher codes and cashback sites. People who look to drop cookies will continue to do so, looking to be the last referrer.. they’re no more/less likely to try and be the first referrer IMO.

2. Last click does work, and has served us well thus far. However does that mean we shouldn’t look at different ways of working? As a pure content affiliate, I get as annoyed as anyone else when I close a sale only for Mr Shopper to go hunting for a voucher code and I get nothing. With the MoreNiche model I’d at least get some compensation for this, whilst the voucher code site still gets the main slice of the pie.

3. Of course some merchants will be thinking “great”, I can set twenty different commission amounts for different typers of traffic etc, but all that will do is confuse affiliates as to what they will earn (hint: that’s that’s the main thing affiliates really care about) – using More Niche’s example, pre-split commisions I’d earn from the sales I referred as long as they didn’t go sniffing around other affiliates sites before hitting “checkout”. Now, I’d also earn a little CPA on those sales too.

This isn’t going to make a huge amount of difference to the bottom line of most affiliates, but what it can do is motivate affiliates – It’s a little something extra (such as 999 day cookies, lifetime commissions, PI cookies etc) that merchants can have at their disposal to make their program more attractive to the right type of affiliate – If content affiliates are moaning that VC/Cashback sites are stealing their commissions, then offering split commissions such as MoreNiche have done could well help placate them.

It could well fall flat on its face, but I for one applaud MoreNiche for at least having the balls to try it out – Otherwise we’d all be sat here ten years time still talking about last click attribution and whether there might be a better way…

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