I have been finding trademark poachers in several of the Team Loxly managed merchants, and both Viator and I police for trademark poachers in their program. Apparently one or two have slipped through by deceptive practices, so their commissions are being reversed throughout the day today.

Many of you have helped through the years by emailing me or PMing me information on trademark poachers, which I have always appreciated. I thank each of you for alerting me to the fact that there have been some affiliates that slipped by me. Since “Team Viator” (Team Loxly + Viator) has people working on the program literally around the world (New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Australia) we will be stepping up our efforts to catch and find affiliates that break the rules. We have enough “clean” affiliates that we want to protect them and their income from our program.

Viator has a very clear PPC and Direct to Merchant policy, we don’t allow it and if you are caught you lose the commissions you earned. No second chances. It is the responsibility of the PPC affiliates to know the rules for each of the merchants they promote, and the rules for Viator are not hidden or hard to understand. Here is a page where the rules are clearly defined.

{ 0 comments }

Thanks to all of our affiliates Viator is having a great summer season! Most of you are doing great and we appreciate all your hard work. However, in the past couple of weeks we are getting reports of exclusive coupon codes and expired coupons showing up on sites and affiliate run forums. It is important for our affiliates to understand our coupon policy and adhere to the rules, as this causes problems with our customer service and causes issues with your site visitors when a coupon code they got from your site doesn’t work.

The rules are simple, do not post any coupon code that was not personally assigned to your site. If you allow your site visitors to post codes: remove them! Customer coupon codes are not allowed to be posted on coupon sites or on any sites forums.

Viator has taken the position that offering great deals and savings through the Shareasale deals database is a much more efficient and cost effective way to provide savings and deals to your site’s visitors. The deals in the deals database are updated frequently, have start and end dates so you can manage them, and are converting much better than coupons.

Log into your Shareasale account and click the link below to be taken directly to the current links in the Viator Deals Database. These links are *not* in the regular product catalog since they are usually short term.

http://www.shareasale.com/a-dealscurrent.cfm?merchantID=18208

We will be checking all sites for compliance with our coupon policy, not limited to coupon specific sites, so if you have a forum on your site please check it for user submitted Viator codes and remove them promptly.

We look forward to continuing to work with you, and wish you much success.

Debbie, Vinny, and Liz
Viator Affiliate Team
http://teamloxly.com/viator

{ 0 comments }

Do you have a family oriented blog that talks about your family trips? Do you tell stories about your friends trips? The Viator travel and tours affiliate program allows you to make money by including links to the tours you are already talking about, or to tours that you would include in your dream vacation. You make a commission when people click your link and book that, or any other tour, on the Viator site. Viator is all about what you do when you get someplace, not about how to get there. So if you have a blog about a specific city, we probably have tours you can feature right for that city.

If you are familiar with affiliate marketing you already know what I mean about creating links and making a commission. To get started, join the Viator affiliate program at the Shareasale Network. We review websites and approve manually, so please note in the “Additional Information” text box what sites you are going to feature Viator ads on, and if you came over from MomBlogs please note that also.

If you are unclear what I am talking about, let me explain. On your blog you may already link out to resources about your blog topic. Maybe your blog is about being a Work at Home Mom and you have a dream vacation you would like to take. In your sidebar you can place a button to the Viator site that is coded with a special tracking code just for you, or in your blog text you can link using a text link. If one of your site visitors clicks that button and decides to book a tour at Viator, either the tour you linked to or any of our other 5000+ tours, you earn 4% commission on what they book! You get paid by the Shareasale network, who does the tracking for Viator, when your commission balance is over $50. We also have a wide variety of text links and banners for you to use to add to your posts.

The best converting links are our deals that are posted in a special section on Shareasale called the Deals Database. If you like to recommend specials and deals to your site visitors this is a great place to find links to feature. Log into your Shareasale account and click here to go right to the Viator deals. These are mostly limited time deals and aren’t included in our regular product catalog. You can also get links to our entire product catalog (excluding the deals) by downloading a file here.

To get started, join the program and if you have any questions email me directly at deborah @ viator.com

Can’t wait to hear from you!

{ 0 comments }