Lately, many affiliates have been in a complete uproar with Google’s aggressive campaign to get merchants to adopt to using Google Checkout. It’s not that affiliates have anything against Google Checkout, but wouldn’t YOU be upset if Google was taking money from you?
Allow me to explain…
What’s happening is that a lot of very large merchants are starting to allow Google Checkout for their customers. Google is also offering $10 to consumers who use their service at participating merchants.
Now the main problem is that all of a sudden it seems that affiliate links are not tracking properly!
I guess the “semi-good” news here is that CJ is working on trying to find a solution to integrate with Google Checkout since many of their merchants are participating – but who knows if that solution will be out soon enough to catch most of the holiday shopping season (a BIG time for retail affiliates).
For a lot more information and more detailed post about this, read Linda Buquet’s post at 5 Star Affiliate Programs Blog…
[...] Good job explaining the whole Google shopping cart screws affiliates “again” boondoggle by Linda Buquet. A well thought out post and picked up by the other affiliates marketers as a result … this is why Linda deserves the Affiliate Marketing Advocate Award !!! http://blog.affiliateclassroom.com/2006/12/05/google-checkout-negatively-impacting-affiliates/ [...]
Interesting. Good to know, as I was about to employ the Google Checkout on one of my sites. Wonder how this one will pan out. :/
Google checkout is great only see the issue while calculate shipping with UPS and server call back time is only 3 sec.