Commission Explosion

CityDeals, a daily deal Groupon type company located in Salt Lake City Utah suddenly and abruptly closed its doors on Wednesday leaving customers and merchants in the dark.

Customers were briefly being redirected to the DealsThatMatter.com website but customers were not able to access their accounts or to print certificates from their CityDeals.com accounts. A check of number 800-970-8824 is currently a non-working number.

Some local merchants are still honoring the certificates, other merchants who were never paid are not sure they can afford the loss of giving away services or products. Customers are advised to call-ahead.

Owners of Deals That Matter have said they have no affiliation with City Deals however they were apparently in-talks at one point about acquiring CityDeals.com but withdrew from the deal for an undisclosed reason.

A few reviews sited on Google from early August and none are positive. One says it all from the merchants perspective: “Still waiting to get paid for this company on product they sold for me over two months ago. Fortunately, we only ran our ad for two months. When we sign a contract, we expect each party to hold up it’s end.”

Is this possibly an area that the state legislatures needs to look at a bit closer, maybe requiring daily deal sites to maintain a bond or guaranty? I am all for free enterprise but the fast cash in this business model leaves little room for insuring the public trust. Without it, the entire daily deal industry could suffer greatly and or even disappear.

+Nick J. West

Another major retailer is migrating away from GAN. Click here to apply to be a Timberland affiliate.

With Timberland’s move comes more questions about the Google Affiliate Networks high costs, the expense of maintaining a program via GAN and the entry requirements preventing many smaller operators from entering the affiliate field through GAN.

With the resources at their fingertips I am still surprised that Google isn’t doing as much to bring more small businesses into the fold with an affiliate program mechanism. AdWords are being presented as the best option for small businesses when an affiliate program can bring the business owner conversions at a much lower cost and with a shorter learning curve to get a program going.

Fold3 (formerly footnote) is migrating from Linkshare to CJ. The big news is that the commission for early adopters is 40%. Get your links active now to take advantage of this offer. Click here to apply for the program.