Heads-up for Domain Name Affiliates

The New Zealand Domain Name Commission is reducing the .nz wholesale doman registration fee by 14% in July 2007.

This is going to take a lot of work by the domain registrars who are at the cheap registration end of the market to get their new pricing structures sorted out. Althought, as mentioned in the announcement below there is no direct pressure from the commission for the retail prices to drop;


.nz Domain Name Fee Reduction Announced - 29 Mar 2007 09:15

InternetNZ (The Internet Society of New Zealand) is reducing by 14% the wholesale domain name fee charged to authorised .nz registrars by .nz Registry Services (NZRS).

Colin Jackson, InternetNZ President, says “The InternetNZ Council is pleased to confirm that the wholesale domain name fee will reduce to $1.50 per domain name per month, down from $1.75 per domain name per month.” These figures are exclusive of GST.

The new wholesale fee will apply from 1 July 2007. “We trust that early notification of the lower fee will assist registrars in their planning,” says Jackson.

The decision to reduce the fee is the outcome of a joint recommendation from the .nz Oversight Committee (NZOC) and NZRS to the InternetNZ Council.

Dr Frank March, Chair of the NZOC, says he hopes that the lower fee will encourage the continuation of a healthy growth rate in the registration of new domain names. However he cautions “There is no obligation on registrars to pass on any savings they make in a reduction of the wholesale fee.”

Dr March continues “The .nz market is a competitive environment and I hope that the range of authorised registrars will encourage some to reduce the retail price.”

The reduction in the wholesale domain name fee is the second drop since NZRS took over running the .nz domain name register in October 2002.

NZRS Chair, Anne Urlwin, says “The result of the fee review is a successful outcome for everyone. We take our responsibilities in managing the .nz register seriously, and are pleased that we’ve achieved efficiencies in our systems that enable this decrease in the fee to registrars.”

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HYPERmedia program

I’ve recently had another affiliate program sent through for a New Zealand web development company who specialise in SME’s.

hyperaffiliate.co.nz appears to be a good offer with three separate steps in comission payments from $200 (NZD) through to $400 (NZD) per referral depending on the sales level.

The site is reasonably obscure about which sales level you would fit into with the first level being described as;

Occasional orders, mainly part time. (e.g one off friend referals)

and the second sales level as;

Steady stream of orders, mainly network referals (e.g through a job)

As an affiliate, coming across this level of ambiguity in the commission structure should make you question exactly who makes the decision on where one level stops and the other starts.

The program does appear to be a good offer so it’s the type of situation where you’d be best to sort out how many clients you are going to need to send through before you jump up to the next level. That way there are no chances of sending clients with the mistaken belief on which level of commission you’re on.

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Over-zealous affiliate terms

Having a read through some of the terms and conditions on NZ affiliate sites (e.g. the NZ Duty Free affiliate program) is like walking into a brick wall of legal jargon saying what needs to be said in approximately three times as long as required.

I’m all for careful contract construction but I also have a very strong belief that plain English in 99% of situations will cover the company (yes, I do know currently practicing lawyers who agree with this). Often in this situation you have a company who is pitching to webmasters who don’t really want to read through pages and pages of legal jargon just to find out what the % rev share is for the program. It took me five minutes of looking through this contract just to find out what the program is offering. How does that sell the affiliate program to the prospective affiliate?

There appears to be (especially in New Zealand) an initial impression from the e-commerce site that the affiliate is going to try to do anything they can to defraud the company. Therefore the company is attempting to protect itself at the expense of facilitating a quick setup of the relationship.

Most of the power in an affiliate relationship is held by the e-commerce site owner as they hold and faciliate the payments therefore the affiliate program needs to do everything it can to help establish the affiliates’ belief that their marketing for the company will be fairly rewarded.

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Affiliate software and a new program

If you’re specifically looking for affiliate software which you can plug into your New Zealand based site one option is the iDevAffiliate software package. While I do not have direct experience with this package, it is implemented as the Find It Online Affiliate Program which I have just signed up for and have to say it seems very user-friendly. Sign-up was simple, the information I wanted quickly (link code and payment levels) were available without fuss and the site appears to have plenty of good functionality. At $99 (USD) this affiliate software is well priced assuming it completes all that is says it does. I’ll be using the software on the Find It Online program and will report back on it’s features after more use.

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