interesting question about minimum payouts
 

Most affiliates have a minimum payout of $50 per month, some even have minimum payouts of $100 a month. How much do you think this benefits the company?

I've tried new sponsors where I sent them 10,000 hits with 2 sales and have only acquired $40 when i the minimum payout is $50. I'm sure many of you have had this happen before.
I have my usual affiliate program where I convert 1 in 400 (tgp traffic) consecutively, so it wasn't worth continuing when I only converted 1 in 5000 with a new sponsor. I just realized that this has to be the 8th or 9th sponsor I tried and havent made the minimum payout to get paid, and just dropped their links.

How well does this benefit a company that process their own bills and do thier own payouts. I mean that $40 dollars here is no big deal, but after I've done this 8 or 9 times, that means there is a good $500 bucks of my money sitting out there which I will probably never receive. ($500 is not much, but it could cover my car insurance for 2 months.)

It is my money I did work for it... So are minimum payouts just for convienience (less mailings of checks) or the fact that they realize that making a minimum payout rate will just bring them in more revenue.

(This thread wasn't meant towards any particular sponsor, I'm not looking to bash anyone, I was just curious as for the reasons of having minimum payouts)
~AA

[QUOTE]Originally posted by allamerican2003


Of course they know this. :1orglaugh

I think it's fair to say that you might be new to this right ? :)
If you are then I can understand why you would ponder this. The sponsors of course realize that they can make a buck or two on totally new webmasters who get lucky sending one or two members but they don't give it a second thought I betcha. No, the main reason is of course that there HAS to be a minimum payout. I don't know how it works in other countries, but here if I want to cash a check it costs me $10 (see we've already set a minimum). Some pay out as low as $20 and several per sign up programs even bother to send you a $30 check. However the bottom line is there has to be a minimum and the fact that a lot (most) make it $50 just makes good sense in my book because then I would get out $40 of that and that would almost make it worth a trip to the bank?........

you must have a really shitty car dude.

Yeah dude, this is the ultimate form of shaving but you agree to it when you sign up.

Lots of companies are cool about sending out smallish checks. ARS comes to mind. I think Lightspeed is too.

Some though, heh, good luck ever hitting that minimum.

you make a good point, didnt realize about how you have to pay to cash a check where you are from. Im an affiliate for a few main stream sites, most don't have minimum payouts. (I've received checks for under $2 dollars before) But i guess the bottom line is that it will make the sponsor some extra money.

It's not shitty :)
My insurance costs $248 a month, a little under $3k a year. (Few points here and there, couple accidents, but I swear it was their fault :winkwink:

this is not interesting, you lied.

For our programs, it's simply a matter of cost that we have imposed minimum payments ($50 in our case). If we had to issue cheque (or Paypal) payments for a few bucks, it would cost us a fortune. For example, it costs us almost $2 per check for the envelope, cheque and postage.

The amount of money that we have outstanding in "below min pay" accounts is only about 5% of our monthly payouts, and most of this will eventually be paid out.

We also offer any affilate that wants to close their account payment in full, as long as the amount owing is at least $10.