Aweber has been our choice for autoresponder going on 4-years now, it’s been one of the most reliable and most effective internet marketing tools we have in our aresenal. 

Many of you are already aweber affiliates, for you they announced some updates to their affiliate program, some good, some not so good. 

The details of the affiliate program changes are here.

Here’s a quick summary:

1. Higher commissions on first tier.  Moving from 20% to 30% on first-tier commissions is a nice bonus for affiliates – this is the best part of their planned enhancements as the added commission can really add up in the months and years that affiliate referrals stay active.  Another side announcement is that they are doing away with 2-tier commissions – not a big surprise.  These changes come into place April 8 of this year.

2. More payout options.  Previously, the only payout options for US or non-US customers was check which takes time to get, comes with the risk of being lost in the mail and costs money in service charges to cash.  Very soon (though they haven’t given a date) Paypal will be an optional payment method.

3. Payout once per month with $30 threshold for US affiliates and $50 threshold for everyone else.  Don’t like this one much, most affiliate programs have gone past once-per-month payouts to at least bi-weekly, but I’m sure most affiliates will be able to live with it.  Also don’t really see the point of making the threshold for non-US affiliates at $50 for Paypal payments since the level of effort and costs are exactly the same?

4. First cookie for one-year which means that if you cookie a referral and someone else later refers them (within the next year), you will get credit for the sale.  This will be the most controversial decision – not because it’s a bad one, just because the issue of tagging referrals with cookies whether it be the first or last cookie method is controversial.  For example, you could go to a great deal of cost and effort to drive traffic to your affiliate URL and not get the sales because they were previously tagged by another affiliate.  On the other hand, there is something overwhelmingly fair about giving the sale to the first one who referred the customer to the site.  Let the debate begin.

Overall, the affiliate overhaul looks good and should help all Aweber affiliates put more money in their pocket.

Jeff