The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly... Affiliates

Hi everybody,

I started this group as I'm sure that many of us, at some point or another, are going to be trying out different affiliates and finding out about the good, the bad, and the ugly!

I'm still on a steep learning curve myself with all this but thought we could all help each other by sharing our experiences. If we can save ourselves time by avoiding the baddies we all win and grow at the same time.

In my own case, I originally tried HotelClub as the provider for my hotel bookings. I chose them because I've used them for years for my private bookings and was happy with the service I'd received. However, as an affiliate, they tried to tell me that I hadn't earned anything over a period of 3 months despite me seeing click throughs that should definitely converted at some point along that timeline. It's a long time ago now (a year or so) so I can't remember the exact figures (sorry) but I wondered if anyone had a similar/different experience to share.

For the past year I've been with HotelsCombined and have been very happy with regular and consistent visitor to lead conversions. In the past 2 weeks this has dropped dramatically and I have been in touch with their customer service a couple of times now. I know they have recently changed their algorithm and have been told this testing will be over by December 8 when results should be in and conversions should stabilize again. They have already checked my referrals for the quality of my visitors and have confirmed that my traffic is solid targeted traffic (not sure how they do that but I knew it to be the case anyway - I don't try any spam tricks). If this situation doesn't improve then I will have to change again - not that I want to but if I'm sending the visitors I want to also earn for the work I'm doing!

Does anyone have experience with a hotel booking affiliate that they would like to recommend or, conversely, an affiliate that we should be wary of?

I would really like this group to develop in a way that we support each other so we can avoid some of the nasties that are out there.

Looking forward to hearing about other people's experiences.

All the best,

Honor