For well over a year I was a supremely happy Liberator.com affiliate.

I was happy not only because my readers seemed to enjoy — judging by the number of purchases– Liberator’s affiliate banners, but also because I have adored every one of their products that I’ve tried. The Zeppelin? Heavenly. The Esse? Brilliant. And the Throe? If possible, I’ll take it to my grave.

So it was with extreme pleasure that I watched the dollars add up. Every time I logged into my affiliate account I imagined how much fun the items’ new owners were having and a happy jolt passed from brain to cunt.

Um. Surely I’m not the only one who gets slightly excited by this sort of thing?

Eventually enough dollars accumulated that I reached Liberator’s very high pay-out amount. Some affiliate programs issue payments at $50 or $100; Liberator requires $200 before they’ll pay. Is this because the products tend to be pretty pricey? Or because they figure that few will stick with the program long enough to earn that much? I don’t know, but since I’d reached the level without undue fuss I didn’t much worry. I gleefully clicked Liberator’s “Pay Me Now” button and waited for my miniature windfall.

Almost immediately I began to hear murmurings that all was not well in the land of water-resistant sex positioning furniture. “They’re delaying payments,” one rumor went. “The whole program is frozen,” said another, and my previous confidence began slipping. I fired off an email to the company requesting information. It went unanswered. More rumors reached my ears. Am I ever going to get paid, I wondered, realizing that by then it had been many more days than one might reasonably expect for a check to wing its way from Atlanta to the Upper Midwest. Does anyone have a number for their main office, I asked via Twitter, and Twitter once again proved itself to be capable of answering my every question.

Reader, I called them. Immediately I was connected to someone who was not, by her own admission, in charge of the program. She was, however, quite chatty. “We’re a couple months behind,” she told me frankly. “We’re paying the big guys — the ones we owe hundreds or thousands of dollars to — first. The little guys like you are seeing their payments delayed.”

Well that’s hardly fair, quoth I.

“Not much I can do about it,” she said, and that’s when I asked to speak to her boss. Of course she wasn’t around; I was encouraged to email her (I already have, I pointed out to no avail), and the conversation was over. Imagine my surprise when not even five minutes later my phone rang and on the other end I found the head of the affiliate program herself.

“Problems? In our program? Delays in payments? Of course not,” she said, and went on to explain fourteen ways to Sunday how they were just transitioning over to a new program and while payments might seem ever so slightly delayed in my perception, in reality everything was perfectly, glowingly fine. Just fine. In fact things were so fine that they’d decided to lower the pay-out amount from $200 to just $100.

Hm, I said. So might I have my check?

“Of course!” she gushed. “We’ll put it in the mail today!”

And the check did indeed arrive in the exact number of days one might expect for a missive sent from Liberator corporate headquarters. Only one problem. The check was not for two-hundred-plus dollars. Instead it was for roughly 70% of that amount.

What gives? I asked in an email to the head of the program. I earned twice the amount of your current payout, you promised to pay me, and this is what you send?

“You are so very wrong!” she said. “You earned over $200 but not all of that was eligible to be paid! You need to sell more in order to get your $200, you silly girl you!” And she continued on with an explanation I hardly heard due to a massive case of annoyance.

While I love Liberator products, I don’t love having to wonder if I’m going to get paid. Not even a little tiny bit. So how do I express my love without supporting an affiliate program which has (shall we say) issues? Here’s how:  I’m sending you to Amazon, which is the best of both worlds. You get fabulous Liberator products (if you so desire) and I get paid.

Doesn’t get much better than that.

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Sending a big wet kiss and my thanks to Bacchus from ErosBlog who provided invaluable advice on the topic of affiliate programs and their foibles.

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