David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

If there's one big noticeable change in affiliate marketing on the horizon this year, it has to be split commissions. This is the concept where if more than one affiliate is responsible for a transaction then they are all rewarded rather than on the 'last click wins' basis.

Today MoreNiche are launching the ability for their merchants to reward multiple referrers. Merchants can choose whether to pay on first referrer, last referrer, everyone in the middle or a combination of all three.

Initially they are working with Proactol who will continue to offer the same commission for the last referrer (currently 30% commission) but also offer a bonus £3.50 for the first referrer as a thank you for introducing them to the brand. In the case of Proactol, 39.46% of all sales have more than one referrer in the buying chain. The longest chain they've seen consisted of a colossal 15 affiliates, of which only one affiliate takes credit under the current 'last referrer wins' system.

So how does this new Split Commissions system affect affiliates?
 
To me, it sounds good. As a content affiliate, I should see some reward for the effort that I put into generating a sale. For example if I write a post about blue widgets and on the back of that visitors decide to buy from ABC merchant, I could lose all commissions if that visitor uses a voucher code or cashback intermediary.

Under the new system (assuming I promoted Proactol in the above example), I would see £3.50 where as before I would see nothing.

Obviously this will impact cashback and voucher code sites in some shape or form and not everyone will be happy if the end result is that existing commissions will be split, rather than appended to as with the Proactol/MoreNiche concept.

Time will tell how successful this is but it's definitely an innovation in the affiliate arena. This comes from the company that also offers the chance to win a boat! For every $5 (USD) equivalent earned in commissions over the lifetime of your network membership, you earn one MoreNiche point. Bank these and you can choose which prizes you claim. This year they've already given away an iPhone and two digital cameras although the 2 Week All Inclusive Premium Cruise sounds like the ideal prize in my books :-)

This is a great concept especially for us freebie-loving affiliates and one I hope catches on. As for Split Commissions, I've seen a few individual merchants work on this but I've yet to see another network to roll this out but again, this will undoubtedly catch on.

MoreNiche also have further developments in the pipeline so this is only just the beginning of a series of affiliate network innovations. Find out more at MoreNiche.