4 Comments

My Affiliate Program to Change Pricing Structure

Jun 6, 2007
by

Last week My Affiliate Program sent out a notice that it would increase its pricing with the July billing period. I held off this post until I had a chance to speak with a couple people at Kowabunga, including Rachel Honaway, who is now working at parent company Think Partnership.
The gist of the change: MyAP will now charge 30% of commissions paid to affiliates with a minimum fee of $500 per month. The integration fee is a couple thousand dollars. The new monthly fee structure makes them squarely competitive with Commission Junction.

  • This marks a dramatic departure for the company that had a “Sympathy for CJ” promotion years ago to recruit Commission Junction’s clients when they raised their prices. (This was 2001 or 2002). It’s not unprecedented, however; MyAP raised then lowered their prices following the Think Partnership acquisition. It seems the market wasn’t ready at the time but presumably is now. Since then they raised the monthly fee to $149, then $500.
  • It is a strong statement of faith in the affiliate marketplace: that they believe there will be more money and bigger players to service.
  • I always used to regard Direct Response’s Direct Track as MyAP’s principle competitor and am interested to see if they change their pricing in the future. I now think of DT as the backbone of most CPA networks so perhaps it might be fair to say they have already moved in a different, separate direction.
  • Direct Track aside, this pricing change will be a boon to the lower cost networks such as ShareASale.com. Kowabunga has about 800 clients right now. If 10% of them leave in the face of higher costs and half of them start new programs there will be 40 clients up for grabs.

The word to associate with the My Affiliate Program – and their competitive advantage – is “customization.” According to sources inside the company, this is how they won Microsoft’s business. At the same time, their competitive disadvantage is being outside a network affiliates frequent looking for new programs and updated links.
MyAP has been around a long time and has a good reputation so I figure they’ll do well. I think this is a positive sign for the industry.

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing
  • http://www.affiliate-software-review.com Peter Koning

    Hi Brook – good to know. That probably explains why one of the MyAP exec's was recently over at our site helping get their listing updated with the new features too.

    MyAP has some competition from MPA3 (adult vertical) but MPA3 doesn't have a network available like MyAP has with Kolimbo.

  • http://schaafco.com Brook Schaaf

    Several months from now there may be another tracking solution that most people haven’t heard of (Peter obviously excepted) that’s moved into MyAP’s old space and gained recognition.

  • http://Revenueallies.com Gregory Santore

    We just received our notification. And I can state, unequivocally, that if this payment structure is indeed their intent, we will be off their platform without hesitation.

  • Mike D

    We've been a Kowabunga customer for many years and were definitely taken back by the new pricing. However, I can say without doubt or hesitation and with 100% certainty that the new V9 version is worth every penny. The new features are awsome…simply awsome.