In a recent forum thread, there was outrage about an affiliate program whose owner name-captured visitors (got them to subscribe to his email list) and then immediately started promoting 3rd-party offers to the list that the affiliates who sent him traffic wouldn’t earn commissions on.
Around 10 years ago, all of the “original” big-dog online affiliate programs competed with each other to win affiliates’ trust. It was a point of pride to brag about setting 2 year or longer cookie tracking (back when users didn’t routinely clear their cookies) and to back it up through other methods (ie, capturing the affiliate ID when they subscribe and using it in promotions, etc).
Off the top of my head, a few of the ones who stressed it the most and who ordinarily didn’t do any promotions that their affiliates wouldn’t profit from were:
* Cory Rudl
* Marlon Sanders
* SiteSell
* Me (I paid a hefty $200 commission and manually searched my subscribe logs to look for a commission if an order came in without one)
(There were others, I’m not trying to snub anybody.)
There was an entire section in the affiliate signup form that bragged about how well they would treat affiliates. Why? Because at the time, affiliates cared a lot about it. I always read up on how a program would track affiliates before ever considering to promote it.
When Clickbank came out with their affiliate program with a 60-day tracking cookie, it was a huge step down from what other affiliate program were doing at the time.
I’d never consider promoting a product that captured an email for a free report unless I’d looked over their selling process first (and gotten on their list, checked out what they were doing, etc).
Apparently this discussion is a wake-up call for a lot of affiliates who’d never considered these things, but it’s always been an affiliate’s responsibility to choose what to promote and what not to promote. If you haven’t been doing your due diligence first, you haven’t been doing your job.
It’s your job to:
- Only promote legitimate offers (so you subscribers/readers don’t get ripped off
- Make sure the affiliate programs don’t try to rip you off.
Promoting an offer on Clickbank without checking it out first is like buying a “Rolex” from the back of some guy’s van for $50 and then being outraged that it turned out to be fake.
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About Tim Gross Tim Gross is an online marketing consultant, direct response copywriter, author, and video training developer. For the latest free training videos, free advice, and additional resources, subscribe now at http://InternetMarketingCourse.com or at his blog http://TimGross.com |
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