Weathering the Dot-Com Bomb
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> Industry Trends
by
Donna Schwartz Mills
'In
the last year, I would estimate that about 10 - 15% of the online stores have
fallen," says Internet entrepreneur Dennis Sutter.
As
webmaster of two online malls (The
Shoppers Dream and Pros Salon Supply),
Dennis is a member of over 500 different affiliate programs. He says the continuing
stream of dot-com downsizing forces him to spend
hours each week removing dead
affiliate links... and has definitely affected his bottom line.
'Some
of the merchants have just outright ended their affiliate programs and totally
ignored the fact that they still owe commissions to their affiliates,' he says.
'They know that the average affiliate does not have the means to sue them for
breach of contract.'
Not all companies with money problems
have dropped out of the affiliate game. Many continue to hang in by reducing commissions,
a strategy Dennis feels is shortsighted.
'The reduction in
payout rates has made some merchants too costly to carry as they insist that when
a visitor clicks on their link, that they totally leave my site. To lose a visitor
for a payout of 1 or 2 cents is absurd!' he says.
But Dennis
and is still optimistic about the Internet's potential to earn even small players
a solid income. So are the experts at TechWeb, who note that ad impressions reached
an all-time high last month despite the soft market (a total of $65 billion).
