Salesman, affiliate schemes, decisions...

Well, today a rare thing happened - I listened to a salesman...... Ok, so I get to listen to a lot of salesman, most days in fact but today I was drawn in. If truth be told, he was not even a particularly good salesman - his pitch was not only repetetive and stalling, but lacking a fair amount of knowledge on his chosen subject.

It relates to my main online gift shop. The guy was "selling" the opportunity to get my product catalogue listed on his companies website. Along the lines of Amazons marketplace.

Up until now, I have allways resisted the temptation of going down any affiliate type route. I know that on the plus side there could be a lot of extra sales generated but, working on a pretty tight margin means that to pay the kind of percentage that Amazon are asking would mean that, although I would be doing all the work, they would be recieving more rewards than myself - not really worth the extra work in my eyes.

Still, there is allways that nagging feeling of how many sales you could generate from such a scheme. Of course, as is the way with the internet, actual sales figures or even an indication are incredibly difficult to come by. What I could tell from this shopping portal is the Alexa rankings. They show that the site is pretty busy - alot busier than my site. Of course, this traffic has to be split between the 700 odd suppliers that have their products listed on the site. These suppliers range fom the minnows right up to a few of the more recognisable internet success stories - certainly a few well known names listed there, so I have no doubt that working out an average/best guess of traffic compared to suppliers sales would just not be proportional - I am sure that a few of the 700 suppliers are getting a lot of traffic and orders and an aweful lot of others would not be getting much of a look in. Which section I would fall into remains to be seen.

I wont reveal the name of the site as yet - as I dont really want to be a laughing stock if I get no orders out of it. The deal? Well, it not only involves me paying a percentage of every sale but there was also a pretty hefty setup/annual fee. This is the problem. This site is going to have to generate a fair few sales over the next 12 months just for me to break even.

So - have I been a muppet? Am I throwing money down the drain? Have I been duped? Only time will tell. Assuming I do get a couple of orders - I will reveal the name of the site and you can let me know what you would have done in my situation. Of course, if I dont recieve any orders, this will be the last you hear on the matter and I will erase it from my memory, along with all the other blurred bad descisions I may or may not have made in the past ;)

Cheers,
Rich