Toys R Us affiliate program now sucks even more
I didn’t think it could get any worse, but the Toys R Us affiliate program has as of today.
Not only do they have ridiculous “we haven’t got a clue” ppc rules but they also only offer 3% commission on sales. Most other toy retailers offer between 5% and 10%.
So…if those 2 reasons weren’t enough for you not to promote Toys R Us then how about this announcement today?
Update to the Toys R Us Affiliate programme
It is with regret that I am to inform you that as of Thursday 22nd November (6 p.m) Toys R Us will no longer offer commission on video games console sales.
This is only for sales on the consoles or bundles/offers containing consoles, and does not include the games and accessories sold separately.
The limited stock volumes and zero margins on these products mean that a loss is made for each of these sales, and unfortunately this cannot be sustained.
Toys R Us had left this as long as possible for affiliates to promote, and would like to apologise for any inconvenience this causes.
They value all the hard work you do for the programme, and look forward to a strong 2008!
You have 3 days to amend your sites, we felt this would be a suitable time period.
I really can’t believe I was reading this. To say that they are making a loss on games consoles is just so untrue its laughable. I find this even harder to swallow when they talking about games console bundles too. I mean these sometimes sell for over £500, and they are telling is there is no profit in them? Yeah and my name is Santa Claus!
So what are we going to do about it? Well I for one have removed Toys R Us from the product feed on my toy site. Some people may say this is daft considering we are now entering the busiest period of the whole year but I can not hand on heart promote a merchant who treats affiliates with little or no respect like Toys R Us do. So as of now they have been removed from the product feed and by tomorrow they will be 100% removed from the static pages too.
I really don’t like removing merchants from my sites, especially big brands who actually convert well. But at the end of the day if we all did this then Toys R Us (and others) would have to sit up and take notice. If we don’t then they’ll continue to walk all over us.
What does everyone else think of this program?
What I’m listening to right now: Justin Timberlake Feat 50 Cent - “Sexy Lady” (Remix)
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Affiliate Programs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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[...] as charismatic Kieron fairly pointed out in his blog, Toys R Us have gone one step further and reduced commissions on [...]
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
They obviously want to keep as much money for themselves over the christmas period.
However, as you quite rightly say their actions are incredible (but not in a good way), and they should note who drives them sales outside the 4-6 weeks in the run-up to christmas.
I was shocked when i got this message, and immediately went about removing all Toy’s R Us links from my sites (2 hours i will never get back!. I then set about replacing them with another merchant which makes around the same amount of money but this is only because they offer higher commisions, pity because if Toys R Us offered the same commision level as others i would be raking it in!
Toys R Us are talking out of their bottoms if they believe their own statement. I know how much the consoles cost wholesale and bulk order and I can tell you that seeing almost all retail firms pay for them in $ and despite some consoles being region locked, the markup for each console is considerable.
There are additional region costs for specific regions but that is down to a combination of greed, copyright pricing, tax and the fact they can get away with it.
This does seem to be a recurring theme in the leadup to Christmas as companies decide they’re doing fine by themselves and dump us affiliates. This may work for them now but I think they’ll be surprised at how many won’t be returning to them.
Im also going to remove Toys R us this week from my pages.
The bit that made me mad was… You have 3 days to amend your sites, we felt this would be a suitable time period.
Seems we get this alot. Just because we are affiliates does not mean we have time to drop what we are doing and rush off to remove content from our sites!
P.S. Love the new Christmas header
It is very frustrating. I run some console sites and it seems like we are being attacked from every merchant at the moment. I also don;t believe that they can be making any loss on each sale. Not when some merchants can pay up to 10% per transaction.
I think you’re absolutely right to remove them, it’s exactly what I’d do.
I’d like to give the opinion of a merchant and say that the margin on consoles is actually very little. Most retailers who are dealing in quantities of say 1- 100 wouldn’t get that much of a bulk discount. When we first bought PS3 when they launched, the cost inc vat to us was £406 and the RRP was £424.99. As a standard commission we offer 6% on our products which means we were actually making a loss on these via affiliates added to the commission we pay to the networks it gets worse. However, i do think Toys r Us have made a mistake offering 0%. They should definitely have the margin to offer atleast 2-3%.
I agree, Toys R Us commissions are very low which, as they’re my best converting merchant on thetransformers.net I have to live with it.
As for the Video Consoles bit, all of the merchants are doing that now. One by one I’ve had emails from merchants stopping any payment on consoles, including Play.com and GAME.co.uk. I won’t blame Toys R Us for that, they’ve left it longer than most.
It’s true as well that there are no margins on consoles. GAME don’t sell them solus on their website. Bundles yes, individual consoles no.
There have been a few emails floating about recently from different networks on Wii’s, maybe worth checking them out too. Firstly like you Kieron we use Shop Window. Affiliate Window have to immediately take all Toys R Us products from the feed. Also there must be something contractually where they are breaking, firstly with inadequate notice & secondly not honouring the cookie period. This month we have sent near on 33,000 visitors to Toys R Us, and most of that is Video Game Related so where is this 30 day cookie. No doubt Affiliate Window are not happy, but they must stand strong obo of affiliates for this one. It’s at times like this, ie the Christmas Shopping season, when you know which merchants your friends are.
So merchants are now selectively removing commission from hot items, how nice of them.
selective zero commission items.. oo the newest idea to scoop more profit eh.
if they make nothing they why do they sell them eh. .or is it cause they know they’ll bring in buyers who buy other things..
is the name of the game with loss leaders and undercutting.. Toys R Us should deal with it.. take the hit on consoles, stop selling them or close their scheme !
they can not seriously expect affiliates to send traffic to a site where they may not get paid for sales on hundreds of pounds of sale value !?
ok why not ad 2% commission on to everything else you do make a profit on then ? .. ooo wait no.. that’d be a trade off, something verging on a fair deal eh.. can’t have that can we.
yet another merchant consigned to the “we only want to play with a loaded deck of cards” brigade
hey ho they’ve made their bed let em lie in it http://www.mooseontheloose.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/toysrus468.jpg
bin em.. bin em fast.. and tell the network why you binned em !
Their PPC policy has no doubt cost them millions in sales already, now they do this? Wow. I’ve got a toy store and never used them in the first place because of low payouts and their crazy ppc policy, but this just takes the cake.
Again, good job on calling them out on this, louder voices need to be heard.
I actually got a phone call from them before they pulled the commission. I think the main problem is that they don’t have commission groups and cannot reduce the hardware commission to reflect the smaller margin.
However considering the huge markup on software there’s no way any retailer is making a loss on these £300+ bundles even with the affiliate/network commission. They make more on the software than they do the console itself, which has been the business model the games industry has been using for years.
I think your all moaning about this far too much. Removing ToysRus from your sites seems to be cutting off your nose to spite your face. The likes of Dixons pay 0% on many products and a crapy 0.5% on others (like Digital SLRs) - what you need to do is work closer with merchants not drop them in some childish fashion in an attempt to teach them a lesson.
You would think that after all the trouble with lead paint and Chinese imports (at least here in the US) that companies, especially toy companies, would be bending over backwards to reward affiliates for sticking with them.
I also find their timing a bit shady…the midst of the holiday rush. I applaud you Kieron. Yes, you won’t make the money from the sales, but at least Santa knows what list to put you on (even after your ogling of Fiona and the girls)