How to join Snapdeal affiliate program and make money: Affiliate program review
Snapdeal, one of the leading deals website in India has announced an affiliate program. Read this review to learn more about the snapdeal affiliate programs for online publishers.
Snapdeal recently announced their affiliate program for bloggers and website owners in India, giving more choices for Indian publishers to make money online. Even though they have been offering some sort of commission based referral programs in the past, their full fledged affiliate program is quite new and is probably bit late in the market. However, better late than never. Their program is well placed to compete with their rivals like Amazon affiliate program and Flipkart affiliate program.
How to join
To join Snapdeal affiliate, visit this link: http://affiliate.snapdeal.com/signup.
You have to provide some basic information about you and your business. Once you submit the details, your affiliate account, you will get immediate access to the affiliate dashboard.
The dashboard is pretty standard, giving you access to important reporting information.
Few glitches:
I found a couple of small issues with their affiliate program:
1. There was no email confirmation required to join the affiliate program. This means, anybody can abuse someone else's email id and register for this program using other email ids.
2. They emailed me my password in plain text. This means my password is not really secure with them. Any of their employees who have access to their database can read my passwords. A secure system will store the passwords properly hashed so that people working with the data and backend will not be able to see confidential information like passwords.
3. It was hard to figure out how to generate affiliate links. There is no online help or tips on how to use the dashboard to generate affiliate links. I emailed them asking how to generate affiliate links and they responded with clear instructions, after about 2 weeks.
Commission structure of snapdeal affiliate program
Currently, snapdeal.com is offering a flat commission of 10% for all products. There is a max limit of Rs 400 per product.
10% commission is pretty standard in the affiliate marketing world. For most categories, both Amazon and Flipkart offers the same commission. However, the main limitation of Snapdeal is, they have an upper limit of Rs 400 per product. This means, even if you sell a Rs 50,000 product, you will get only Rs 400 instead of the expected Rs 5,000 commission.
For any items above Rs 4,000, you will get only Rs 400 commission at Snapdeal. But since most other affiliate programs offer 4-5% commission, Snapdeal will be still better for products up to Rs 10,000. Your best option is to calculate the commission from other programs and if it is more than Rs 400, then you may want to use the other programs.
IMPORTANT: The Rs 400 limit is not per product, but it is per transaction. If your referred customer purchases several items, the maximum commission you can from that transaction is Rs 400. Here is the statement from their terms and conditions:
In the event a customer places orders for multiple products in a single session then the 10% of the total value of the orders placed shall be taken as Fee subject to maximum of Rs 400/- (Rupees Four Hundred Only).
Remember an important factor in making money from affiliate programs is not the amount of commission per product, but, it is the conversion rate. You could make much more money by promoting products with good deals for the customers. Your customers are going to compare the prices in various websites and will buy the one with the best price for them. So, wisely choose the products to promote, so that you will get good conversions and make money.
Review of Snapdeal affiliate program
Considering it is a popular deals website in India, there are higher chances of conversion, thus giving higher revenue potential for publishers. However, since they have a max limit of Rs 400 per transaction, you may be able to make more money by promoting products from other affiliate programs like Amazon and Flipkart.
I am not much impressed by their whole affiliate management and the process. The customer support for affiliates are also pretty poor. I sent several emails to them asking for clarifications on their programs and it took a lot of time to get any response.
Very short cookie tracking period
The Snapdeal dashboard looks simple but provides little help on how to use it. I had to mail them several times to get help on even basic tasks like generating affiliate links.
The cookie period of Snapdeal affiliate program is probably one of the lowest in the industry. Flipkart & Amazon give 24 hours cookie period and Amazon offers 89 days for actual purchase, if the product is added to the shopping cart by the customer.
If you are looking for more options, read this comparison of Amazon and Flipkart affiliate programs.
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Hey Tony,
By any chance would you have information on what Snapdeal's affiliate marketing strucutre was before they adopted flat 10% capped at Rs. 400.
I have been trying to get this information for a personal project, but to no avail. Any information will be appreciated.
Thanks in Advance,
Rocky