736 – Get what you’re entitled to: Tom talks Affiliate Commissions

Episode 736 – Affiliate Commissions
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 736 of Screw the Commute podcast. You know what? I'm not really even happy about having to bring up this topic today. Just so you know, the online business and the business world is full of so many scumbags, idiots, corporate executives that are pencil pushers that couldn't care less about the actual user of the product. They just want to protect their cushy, pitiful jobs because they can't do anything on their own. I mean, that's the way I feel about a lot of these people. So this is kind of a negative thing that's here to protect you and give you some tips on how to handle these people, to get to at least attempt to get the best result. And we're talking about making sure you get your affiliate commissions. And I've got lots of episodes on affiliate stuff. I get enormous amounts of money from affiliate stuff. I love affiliate marketing as part of my business mix. But you got to be careful and protect yourself. So that's that's what we're going to talk about today. And make sure you get paid. All right. Hope you, too, miss. Episode 735. That was logical training because a lot of people asked me if I have a PhD in instructional design. No, I just come from a common sense background. So that's was how to create products quickly, logically, with very little returns and a lot of repeat business. So that's what episode 735 was about. Of course, any time you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com/ and then the episode number, that was 735.

[00:02:14] This is 736. Now make sure you write this down. Christina Hills Website Creation Masterclass or actually not the Masterclass, the actual workshop, the Ends registration tonight. So you got to jump on this right away. This is she's one of the best there is in the country, probably the world in teaching web creation. So that and even if you don't do it all yourself, you're going to know what needs to be done. And you're going to wonder why you paid 500 bucks for something that takes two minutes to do so. Go to Screwthecommute.com/websitecreationclass. Get signed up right away. All right. Make sure you follow me on TikTok at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire and grab a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:03:09] All right, let's get to the main event. So here's why I'm doing this episode right now, because I got other episodes on affiliate marketing. And as I said earlier, I truly love it. But you know what? I truly hate it if I don't get my fair pay. And I really hate it. And most people know me as really nice until I'm not, and then I can go the other direction on a on a dime. Not like some psychopath, only for people that deserve it. Okay. All right. So let me give you some back episodes on affiliate marketing, because again, I don't want to turn you off from it.

[00:03:48] I just want to protect you so you get paid. Episode 52 Episode 268. Episode 271 and Episode 518 are all on affiliate marketing. We'll of course have them in the show notes for you 52 to 60 8 to 71 and 5 to 18. All right. Here's the deal. It's important that you keep a close eye on your sales and don't do business with companies that don't have a legitimate tracking system in place so that you can keep an eye on things. Now, currently and again, the reason I just happened to decide to do this episode today is I've been in a three month dispute with a big company, about many thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions, and I was getting nowhere with the billing department. They just hide from me and they they don't respond to my complaints or they responded with ridiculous answers. That makes it look like they're kindergartners and can't read. Or in Baltimore, I guess high school kids, again, it's not really funny. You know, or answers that just don't make any sense just to put me off. So eventually got sick of it and I looked up the CEO, the CFO and the president of the company. This is a big company, $1 billion company, and I used three of my five LinkedIn messages. I got the premium account and I can send five direct messages to people that I'm not connected with. And and I wrote them a letter telling them how their support people and their support training was terrible.

[00:05:29] And I reminded them about the consequences of stealing affiliate commissions, which is one of the biggest no no's on earth. If the word gets out that you don't give your proper affiliate commissions, you lose affiliates like crazy and you get enormous bad press no matter how big or small your company is. And like I said, you lose affiliates by the thousands when affiliate problems are uncovered. So I was just reminded of them this I didn't threaten them or extort them. Okay? I just reminded them that this is a really bad thing. So I got a response from one of their underlings in a matter of hours. Of course, the executives are too good to deal with somebody that's only made them $11 million. Right. So they're too good. And, you know, this is a typical pencil pusher. They're going to hide from stuff. Here you go figure out what's going on because they're too busy pencil pushing or doing nothing. So anyway, I got this response from one of their underlings and I sent all my figures in, which is why I'm telling you about this. I saved all my numbers, even though the company had a login for me and other affiliates to check our stats. So if they are fraudulent, it wouldn't take much for them to just accidentally on purpose delete my account or change the numbers. So you got to keep track of your own stuff. Another tip I use for all my correspondence with companies, I mean, this really works well, so please pay attention and use this folks.

[00:07:08] I take copious notes and I'm not that organized or a great note taker. But on this, when I deal with companies that I know are full of scumbags and $2 an hour people that don't care what's going on and they know they're going to go home and it doesn't matter what happens to you. Typical cable companies, phone companies, those, you know, big companies like that. So I take copious notes. I get the name of the person I'm talking to. A lot of them won't give you their last name, but at least I get the first name and I put the exact and I'm saying exact folks, time of the call, not 2:00, around 2:00. No, 2 or 3 p.m. That's exact. And I write down everything they told me and I read it back to them before the call is over. And this might seem like a lot of trouble, but I'm going to give you an example of how that sounds. After I've done all this copious notes and I'm getting nowhere with these bunch of lowlifes. Or idiots or, you know, they're just one cog in a in a giant machine that does not care about you. When I have to go up to the higher ups to complain. And sometimes this isn't spoken, sometimes it's sent through email. But this is an example of what it might sound like. I just made all this up. This isn't the real thing. All right. Let's say Sally is the executive assistant from the CEO or something.

[00:08:42] Sally, I spoke to your rep, Joe, at 1:34 p.m. on Thursday, February 16th. See how exacting things are. Joe told me there was a mistake that he had to verify with the billing department and he would get back to me within a day. It is now April 18th, which is a full two months since my inquiry, and I've yet to hear from Joe, even though I left a voicemail. Wednesday, February 22nd at 2:12 p.m. and again at Tuesday, February 28th at 11:11 a.m.. I also emailed his email address at Joe at Xyz.com Thursday, March 9th at at 4:45 p.m. and Monday, March 20th at 9:10 a.m.. This is unacceptable and I expect to have this resolved today or I'll be forced to take actions neither of us want. I'll be glad to send you my figures right now. While we're on the phone to be sure you get it. And then, of course, Sally responds with some corporate bullshit, and then right before the call ends. Okay, Sally, I'm noting that I spoke to you today at four 1823 at 3:14 p.m. and I explained all the correspondence I've attempted with Joe. And you said and then I, you know, X, Y, Z, whatever she said. And then, Sally, is this a fair characterization of this call? Get her to say yes. Okay, thanks. Now, by what time will I hear from you? And how? All right. You see what I mean? I can tell you that that kind of exacting information virtually always gets results when they see how you carefully document everything.

[00:10:26] And that might show up on social media somewhere or, you know, nowadays, you know, in the old days, they would just blow you off. Screw you, what are you going to do, sue us? But when they know they could get 100,000 people seeing this stuff and it's going to hurt them, well, they have a tendency to respond and they can't claim they said this and that or did this and that because you got copious notes on every interaction. And like I said, this technique applies to all interactions you have with companies, and the bigger the company, the more important it is because they've got a million people that don't care about anything, care about you, and they just do. They're there five hours from home and then go do their laundry. And if you if you get screwed over, it just doesn't matter to them because you're not going to get them on the next call. So nobody cares. See, and I hate to be so negative about this, but you have to when you're in business, you have to face reality. And these companies, like I said, it's getting worse and worse. The generation coming up is all entitled, doesn't care about anything. Screw you, you old fart. That's that's what I get the feeling of a lot of times. And like I said, you never talk to the same person. They lie to you. They never call back. So when you have to go over their head, you want to have your ducks in a row or you're just going to get lost in the shuffle and lose your money.

[00:11:49] So. So let's get back to the affiliate stuff. When when people owe you money, you better keep track of it. Or they could just say one thing and you have nothing to refute what they're saying because you didn't keep track. And again, I mean this I know this is super negative type of episode, but I love affiliate marketing. I mean, 98.8% of the time, it's great. The money comes in, everybody's happy. You know, it's a good deal. But I hate not getting paid or having to chase money from people who are either highly disorganized and just messed up or they have no ethics and are happy to take advantage of you. So keep you know, that technique every time you talk to somebody in a company, write down the exact time, the exact date, exactly their name, what was said, confirm with them what was said. So it gets it puts it in their mind that you don't mess around and they're much less likely to try to take advantage of you or just mess up say so. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hey, make sure you you go to that screwthecommute.com/websitecreationclass. Let me check that link. Yep. It's only today that the cart closes today. This is your last chance to have this world class person helping you. So check it out. All right. Catch you on the next episode. See you later.