Feel Unique, my 3rd most popular merchant on the Webgains network, are the latest merchant to pull a popular 5% Exclusive code.

This follows Flowers Direct, my 3rd most popular merchant on Affiliate Window, pulling the 10% Exclusive code that was so popular people actively searched for the code word.

If merchants can’t afford to offer codes and pay an affiliate commission then don’t offer codes. If paying out 12.5% per sale, 5% code and 7.5% commission is untenable then make it tenable from the start. Change the code to ‘£5 Off £30′ spend and offer 5% commission.

The Feel Unique case though is in itself unique as not all affiliates are having Exclusive codes removed.

It appears that because ShopCodes ranks highly in the Google organic search engines, I have to go as it is “their own customers” and brand-aware customers that are utilising the code.

That is true (see below) – but that is exactly what I optimise the pages for.

ShopCodes traffic is on the up and sales for the above merchants and more is on the up. This is the first signs that if you rank well in Google then merchants are going to get shifty and start to think about why they are paying out to you.

For me, it is a simple fact. If I don’t rank well in Google then I don’t generate enough sales to make decent commission. If all merchants were to go down the above route though then I’d have to un-optimise my pages and make them spammy in Google. My pages are the way they are to improve visitor numbers and improve click-through-rates. This is obviously too much for some.

With merchants making it even harder to make commissions (ala Figleaves) no wonder affiliates have to think outside of the box and utilise methods such as ‘click-to-reveal’ to at least have the potential to earn something. A practice I don’t do, so even though people have landed on my pages, it is of their own hands that they’ve clicked through to the merchant for the reward of a 5% discount.

Feel Unique bluntly said ‘this is not negotiable’. I’m not negotiating with anybody. You’re removed from ShopCodes and the simple fact is another merchant will become my 3rd top merchant.

Keyword searches that included ‘unique’:

• feel unique discount code
• feel unique voucher
• feel unique voucher code
• feel unique code
• feelunique voucher
• feelunique voucher code
• feel unique voucher codes
• feel unique codes
• feelunique discount code
• feel unique discount voucher

Feel Unique potential customers wanted voucher codes and they found them on a site that plays within the rules. How much would the merchant have paid out if another site was in my place with ‘click-to-reveal’ functionality. If anything I’ve probably saved them money.

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JD Williams has recently relaunched on the dgmPro network and all sales that bring in new customers will be rewarded with a potential £8 commission, no matter the value of the sale. This initially tracks as £4.

If the sale is for an existing customer the affiliate receives 1%. However, considering that JD Williams pulled out of the affiliate marketing area earlier this year this is still good news, especially as they’re back before Christmas, with a clear remit to attract new users.

If the affiliate generates a new customer sale though and the customer later goes off to Google and clicks a JD Williams pay-per-click advert, then they’ll not get paid the full £8 commission but the original £4.

I can already see that I have signed up over a dozen first time customers by promoting the selection of JD Williams Incentive Codes. This is from a total of 48 sales. Not bad, one in every four of my referred customers is brand new. That’s good business. In fact considering I’m having a poor month, I’m very impressed that I’ve generated almost 50 sales for just one merchant.

See voucher codes do generate incremental new business. Just ask Alpharooms Affiliate Manager Dan Morley.

“Things actually look good in favour of voucher sites. Sales coming in, using the vouchers are mostly new customers.”

What will be interesting to see is what proportion of those sales turn into the golden nugget of £8. It may paint a general picture of how content and code sites are losing commission to pay-per-click brand bidders. We shall see.

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Sep 15
You have have been suspended from the SkinStore affiliate programme. Please do not respond to this automated email. In the meantime we strongly advise that you temporarily remove any of this merchant’s links.

OK, quick check of stats. No recent sales. Links removed same day.

Sep 25
SkinStore have taken the decision to stop all activity with voucher code sites and will therefore not be offering any discount promotions to affiliates. For this reason, a number of voucher code sites including yourself, have been suspended from the programme.

Then 6 days ago …

Oct 20
SkinStore is pleased to provide you with a 10% storewide discount code which is valid until the 7th of November 2008.  Please ask your customers to enter coupon code AFF10 at checkout.

Sorry SkinStore, I won’t ask my customers as I’ve already pulled the plug. I was strongly advised to remove your links. I could have put the content back up in the time it took me to write this post but the moment has gone. Maybe next time.

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In a recent television interview at the a4uExpo Manchester roadshow, Hero discusses the role of voucher codes in marketing.

“Recently because of all the credit crunch fears and the financial downturn there’s a lot more people now looking for vouchers looking for the best prices out there.”

That’s good news for me and my ShopCodes but with the impression that it is ‘easy money’ there does seem to be a lot of new voucher code sites appearing. Hero validly points out that it’s not just a case of shotting up some codes and that maintaining such a code site is really hard work.

“It is not an easy thing. A lot of people think ‘Ooh I can hook up some codes and put them up there’. But it is a lot of work and a lot of attention to detail to make sure you are representing the merchant correctly. It actually creates lots of problems to the customer service for the merchant if it’s not accurate, so you need to be aware of it as an affiliate.”

Hero will be on a panel at the forthcoming a4uexpo (London 14-15 October) with affiliate Chris Frost, Richard Clark, Marketing Manager of the Dixons group and Martin from the agency Equator.

They will talk about voucher site implementation, how you can resolve and raise issues and showcase how they can be addressed.

“This is a very powerful tool. Merchants shouldn’t be scared of it, provided it is well planned and well executed.”

You can watch the full interview from Chris at affiliates4u.tv.

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Some merchants are particularly good at running several discount code promotions at the same time. There are some that do overlapping promotions with different end dates. For a discount code site like mine that means that merchant is always featured.

For those 39 merchants that have a code expiring on the last day of the month, why haven’t you already announced next months promotional code? Devoted to Sport and Historic Newspapers have already sent out details of their 10% discount code starting 1st October.

By leaving it until your existing code has already expired, you run the risk of losing your placement on key promotional pages. I’ve had lots of visitors on my site searching for Debenhams codes but that was sadly during the two week window that there wasn’t any code to promote.

After this weekend I’ll be doing mild or no updates to my Shop Codes site for two weeks. I’m taking my laptop with me on my Hong Kong holiday but only to deal with emergencies and I’ve had plenty of them this September.

This week I have pro-actively emailed over 20 merchants and affiliate managers for extensions to my existing Exclusive codes. That has proved very successful with 17 already extending the code either by one month, to the end of the year and some are now even valid well into 2008.

So merchants, if you’re saving sending out your promotional emails and codes until October. Just send it now and I can continue to promote you. You can always send another in a weeks time.

Personally I’d like to see merchants providing rolling codes so that I can provide a seamless service. i.e. at the start of the month announce a code that lasts four weeks and then mid-month, provide another code that lasts four weeks.

Some merchants are providing the mid-month codes as I can testify with this busy week. However, they’re sticking to the non-imaginative expiry date of 30th/31st of the month.

My thanks go to those 17 merchants. These are the ones I’ll be pushing on my Shop Codes home page, while I take a break and shoppers will be searching for discounts.

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I’ve looked at my top 20 performing merchants to see whether a lack of codes generally or lack of Exclusive codes will make an impact on my profits. The answer is a clear YES.

• 35% of the top 20 merchants have kindly provided an exclusive voucher code.
• 20% of merchants offer a discount voucher to new customers, which all affiliates can promote.
• 20% of the merchants have not offered a code recently or do not have a code facility.
• 15% of the merchants have discount codes available to all affiliates.
• 10% of the merchants currently have no code but have had one just expired.

In October 2006, I wrote “Exclusive Discount Codes Wanted” on Affiliates4u. I had 22 Exclusive codes at the time. Today, it’s that number plus another 100.

Exclusive codes are a staple diet of Shop Codes and they’re often the only merchants who you’ll see on my most visited page.

As I reported in my last post, September is going to be a strong month for Shop Codes as I’ve got a 400% increase in traffic. I’m happy for merchants to take advantage of that uplift.

This post is not a plug for more exclusive codes though. I just want to see more merchant codes made available to all affiliates. Only four days ago I had at least 60 more on my site to promote.

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As running a code site is my number one project today, I am concerned about the policies introduced from this and other major High Street brands from May 2007 about ‘code’ sites publishing codes. If Mothercare and Tesco have issues with codes, then other merchants are certainly following their concerns. Two are below.

I engage with merchants every other week about Exclusive codes and I discuss the issues …

- My exclusive code was used but not via your site
- You’re only delivering existing customers

I can disprove the latter with my clickthrough analytics, easily. In fact Webgains statistics also include referrer history.

Whilst code issues occur, I also agree to have a substantially reduced commission, so my visitors can have the discount instead. Where is that mentioned in all the anti-affiliate blog posts (1) (2) being posted this week?

There’s lots to address with promotional codes and it’s good to have an open debate so we can be clear on the official and unofficial rules that we should work to.

My site isn’t going away and the 13p commission made from Tesco this month is appreciated. Maybe. After all. Every little helps.

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Don’t you know if you’re more creative with your expiry dates you’ll receive more exposure? Many code sites, including my own promote highest the codes that are expiring soon. These are often popular as customers love to bag a bargain before it disappears.

My statistics show that I sometimes generate more sales for a merchant where the code is about to expire. The reasoning is simple, those merchants are promoted above the fold on the home page and across the site. I typically will put a merchant in this slot up to three days before the promotion is to end.

So, if you want say free three days promotion over-and-above what you’re getting already then just stop making your code expire the last day of the month.

My newer site Voucher Diary will concentrate on expiring codes so it will pay even more to stand out and not have a code expire on the same day as 40 other merchants do. I’m not currently updating that site much but as it’s returning on page one on Google SERPs I’m under pressure to start populating it quickly.

The dates below list the number of merchants with codes expiring on that date.

• 14/08 (2)
• 15/08 (5)
• 16/08 (1)
• 17/08 (1)
• 19/08 (1)
• 20/08 (3)
• 21/08 (1)
• 22/08 (1)
• 23/08 (1)
• 24/08 (1)
• 25/08 (1)
• 28/08 (1)
• 29/08 (3)
• 30/08 (1)
• 31/08 (42)

Now, who wants to have their code expire 27th August instead?

Please note that I wouldn’t want you to take this to the extreme and do what Waterstone’s do and that is have a code that is valid from 2pm for only 24 hours. I don’t work to those time frames yet.

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The sale was for Yes Asia on the Webgains network and the user had searched for “yes asia coupons”. I can see from StatCounter that the user was from Singapore and was using Google Singapore.

The reason the page was removed was because I put some draft copy on for the first two days of its soft launch. I then disabled the WordPress posts as I changed the tone of the copy being posted.

Voucher Diary currently only includes a dozen posts but I am impressed with its position in Google already for some decent search terms. One of the pages is number one for a search phrase that I’d love my other site Shop Codes to be in. As it is, it’s for a merchant where the code has just expired.

I’ve not yet thought of the best approach to handle these expired posts/pages. The nature of Voucher Diary is that the posts will expire as soon as the codes do. That’s the whole objective – highlight expiring voucher codes. So I’ll have a play with that over the weekend.

Good to see that a sale was made from abroad too and maybe Voucher Diary has opportunity to promote other International merchants.

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Shop Codes does not rely on advertising via Pay-Per-Click to generate traffic. Of the eighteen months, the site has been advertised on either Google or Yahoo for parts of nine of those months. The last PPC activity was two months ago on 5th June 2007.
Number one keyword

1. Feb-Mar 06 – discount codes
2. Apr-July 06 – tesco+voucher+codes
3. Aug-Oct 06 – discount codes
4. Nov-Dec 06 – merchant brand name X
5. Jan-Mar 07 – discount codes
6. Apr 07 – voucher codes
7. May 07- merchant brand name Z
8. June-Aug 07- voucher codes