Which Is Best For Affiliates, Instant or Long Term Payments? – Part 1

Instant VS Long Term Payments For Affiliates

There are so many different things you can promote as an affiliate. It’s exciting and freeing, really.

You’re always looking for ways to maximize your earnings. You want to make sure you’re promoting high quality products that your customers will really love. But, beyond that, you want to earn as much as you can, with as little effort as you can.

One of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether you prefer to have an instant payment as an affiliate or if you are okay with promotions that don’t pay you instantly.

There are pluses and drawbacks to either method.

In this post we will cover instant payments. Part two will pick up with long term recurring payments.

You might be thinking that the obvious best option is to have an instant payment. We all want things instantly. The sooner the better, right?

Maybe…

The Benefit of Being Paid Instantly

You do a promotion because you want to earn for it. Should you really have to wait for that payment? You’ve heard horror stories of it taking weeks or months or longer to be paid for an affiliate promotion. Sometimes, it’s the fault of the product creator or person paying you.

When you’re paid instantly, that problem melts away. The money goes directly into your PayPal account (or wherever it’s going). You get instant satisfaction and instant access to your cash. You don’t have to wait. Awesome!

Also, you might notice that merchants paying instantly (via JV Zoo or Warrior Plus, for example), will often pay you 100% commissions… that really sounds enticing, right? It is, and then again it isn’t always, as we’ll discuss in just a moment.

The Drawback of Being Paid Instantly

Not so fast—this isn’t always a perfect scenario. For one thing, many great products aren’t available for instant payment at all. That can be really frustrating. And you wouldn’t want to bypass a product that will be a great fit for your buyers just because you wouldn’t be paid instantly on it—that’s not smart business.

You also have to factor in that you have to consider refunds. Some people will likely refund the product you’re promoting, no matter how great it is. That’s okay and it’s to be expected. But, getting paid instantly can lead to you counting your chickens before they’re hatched.

You have to refund people who ask for it, depending on the guidelines of the seller. In some cases, the seller or payment processor initiates the refund, taking the money straight back out of your account. This is a huge problem if you’ve already transferred or spent the money. Just because the money is in your account doesn’t mean you can necessarily rest easily with it.

The other drawback, to follow up on the 100% commission possibility, is that the merchant is only paying you a commission for the sale of the one product. They’re getting the email address of a buyer added to their email list. When they promote their other products to that buyer, or when they promote as an affiliate themselves, you get nothing.

Tomorrow we will continue with part two.