Another one bites the dust…
Although it was one of the web’s longest-running online pharmacies — and so maybe deserving of at least a bit of grace time to get their act together — it looks like the Integra RX affiliate program is now history. The program never had been an especially high converter, because astronomical medication prices turned many customers away. Nonetheless, Integra had been relatively reliable for many years, and it was worthwhile keeping a few links active.
It was at the end of August that the affiliate manager Carissa Dunphy first reported problems in a forum post:
Over the last several months we’ve attempted to make several changes to IntegraRx at the recommendation of a certain regulatory agency. We have been unable to make the changes to our satisfaction. A planned upgrade of our servers has taken longer than expected, but we hope to have everything up by the end of this week. During this extended downtime we have been re-evaluating our role in the OP industry. We will be making an official announcement by the end of the week.
Unfortunately, that “official announcement” still hasn’t been made, and many affiliates are still waiting to be paid for commissions accumulated during the June-July-August period.
- The failure of yet another high-profile pharmacy affiliate program just reinforces the standard advice about defending your own interests as an advertiser/afiliate partner:
- Spread your risk between merchants: work with several, so you can smoothly transition your traffic away from failing merchants
- Plan in advance for the eventuality that all such programs will ultimately fail
- Track your commission accumulation, and avoid adding to high levels of unpaid commissions
- Be especially wary of programs which (like Integra) regularly pay one or more months in arrears (net 30 is far safer than net 90, for example)