I wish the commission rates are a little bit more
Having been both Amazon and Overstock affiliate, I can tell that they both have completely different commission structure. Amazon’s is both category based and performance based. That is, for Electronics it’s 4% (and computers only up to $25) but for most others, it’s up to 8.5% based on how many items are sold in that month. A few other categories get as high as 10 and in some cases even 15% commission, but don’t be fooled by those (either the item prices are very low or it’s hard to sell those or Amazon want to really push those hard when heavily competing with competitors).
Unlike Amazon which has it’s own affiliate infrastructure, Overstock relies on Commission Junction’s tracking system. I am not sure if CJ has performance based tracking and calculations, but Overstock only provides category based. The reason that prompted me to write this post is, for the last few days I didn’t have any commission from Overstock and suddenly I saw today that I got $5.38. When I looked at the order amount, it’s $537 and few cents. That’s when I really paid attention to the rates and realized that Overstock only pays 1% for electronics, 3% below what Amazon does.
I know Amazon’s cookie lasts for 24 hrs. Now if only someone can tell me what’s the cookie time for Overstock.
