[surnames]

Does anyone know what is going on at Ancestry.co.uk with payments? I did not receive a payment last month (I am a major affiliate and get 4 figure commissions each month). I phoned CJ and found that they did not put sufficient funds in the account for me to be paid. They did put money in on the 29th, but it is not enough to cover both months.

The new affiliate Manager (since August 2009) J S , seems to be very out of touch with the UK genealogy world. January is traditionally the busiest month of the year and my sales for Ancestry.co.uk are very bad, they are declining each month since August.

The old affiliate manager, Andrew Burch was there for 2 years and my sales doubled with Ancestry.co.uk while he was there. This new guy is from EBay UK.

I am pulling all my ads off of over 1,000 pages if they don't catch up this month and pay for last month AND this month. I have 5 UK advertisers begging me to run their ads.

[Ancestry_Kelly]

Hi there, Kelly here. I’m the new Digital Marketing Manager at Ancestry.co.uk

Firstly, we’d like to offer our apologies for the delayed payment issue. The payment was late due to an invoicing technicality and despite being fast-tracked and covering both months, the payment deadline for Commission Junction was missed.

The Ancestry Affiliate Program has had its most successful year since it launched in 2005, so I suggest you get in touch with either myself here at Ancestry or CJ so that we can look at why your sales figures have dropped and identify opportunities to increase your conversions.

Commission Junction has confirmed that all payments are up-to-date and affiliates will be paid on the next payment cycle; 20th Jan 2010.

Kind regards
Kelly Godfrey

[surnames]

Hi Kelly, I would like to know:

1
why it took me posting to this forum for you to identify yourself as the affiliate manager.

2
Why Jonathon did not reply to my email back in December 2009 to explain why we were not going to be paid in that month.

3
If Ancestry.com (Ancestry.co.uk's parent company in the US) even have just a hiccup with the stats from CJ not coming out on time all we affiliates are shown the courtesy of getting an email to explain what is going on. Why do Ancestry.co.uk think they are above bothering to keep us informed of things that are important to us like:

NOT GETTING PAID.

I have 8 websites with over 6,500 pages to manage and am in the middle of building a new 3,000 page site.

I know my sales stats and I know that traditionally January is the best month in sales of the year for my genealogy sites. I have been doing this for 12 years. Its Ancestry.co.uk's responsibility to keep those sales happening and since Andrew's leaving its looking like crashing regardless of what you say here.

Even though Ancestry.co.uk will be bringing commissions up to date this month, I will be replacing around 50% of my Ancestry.co.uk ads with a competitor. I get an email each week with advertisers wanting me to link to them. I don't have time for advertisers with non communicative, late paying attitudes.

Ian

[Ancestry_Kelly]

Hi Ian,
I appreciate your frustration and as I mentioned in my previous posting, I suggest that you contact me directly so that we can resolve any outstanding issues you may have.
All the best,
Kelly

[surnames]

Originally Posted by Ancestry_Kelly

Hi Ian,
I appreciate your frustration and as I mentioned in my previous posting, I suggest that you contact me directly so that we can resolve any outstanding issues you may have.
All the best,
Kelly

Status Update:
Ancestry.co.uk did get payments to affiliates up to date in January, about 2 weeks after my initial post.

They also have become more communicative in sending out status update emails informing we affiliates about reporting problems and when they are solved, similar to Ancestry.com.

However, they seem to remain unresponsive to personal emails. I got no response to a query I lodged a few weeks ago about code error in a dynamic banner code posted out with an email about a month ago.

In the latest email sent out (about a week ago) to we affiliates was "exciting news" about a great new range of ads in the pipeline that would be out soon. Lets hope they are better than the last "great bunch of new ads" that Ancestry.co.uk launched back in early 2008.

The click thru rate on those new ads when I ran on my sites dropped from around 10% to 1-2%. Plus, they removed the old ads (which looked kinda old fashioned but performed incredibly in creating sales) so you had no choice but to run the new non-performing ads.

The ad sent out a month ago (that I mentioned above) looked like it would perform very well (it had similar chracteristics of one of the old ads they dropped in 2008), its just a shame that no-one checked the code before sending it out, and no-one at Ancestry.co.uk seems interested enough to send me the corrected code.

[sam_park]

All in all it looks like a very badly managed program.

[Chuck Hamrick]

surnames, glad you were able to use the forum to resolve this. A shame that it took a public forum to get well deserved attention but then again I managed the US program previously. I took over after the in-house team was dissolved but keep in touch with Crystal Cupak and Ryan Ewer. Also talk regularly with Paul Allen and Brad Pace over at WorldVitalRecords. Good luck with your new launch.

[surnames]

re:surnames, glad you were able to use the forum to resolve this.

Hi Chuck,

I remember your name from the Ancestry.com program, nice to hear from you.

Yes, this forum has been helpful in resolving issues about the Ancestry.co.uk affiliate program