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We just recently wrapped up Affiliate Summit 2008 West in Las Vegas and the keynote speaker was Jason Calacanis.
One thing that Jason touched on was that there are two groups in affiliate marketing. We’ve got the white hat folks, who are doing things right. And then there are the black hat affiliates, “thin affiliates”, people that are scamming and giving the industry a bad name.
Jason mentioned in his speech that the affiliate networks deserve some of the blame in this situation, and I’d love to see them address it.
Here is an excerpt of the keynote from Jason Calacanis (listen to the complete keynote audio at WebmasterRadio.FM):
“The affiliate companies have some culpability here.
The affiliate companies are creating the infrastructure that allows people to make the profit while poisoning the well and polluting the river.
And the affiliate companies have blinders on. They don’t police stuff.”
My thought is that we certainly need to do something here. One thing I was thinking about was how the affiliate networks might adapt something that a UK affiliate network, Affiliate Window, does to fight fraud.
A few years back, Affiliate Window began requiring affiliates to pay a fee of £5 to apply to the network, and this amount would be added into the affiliate’s account upon acceptance to the network.
Initially, I wasn’t too high on this method, but in reflection I think it could be quite useful in qualifying affiliates and cutting out some of the junk.
Perhaps affiliate networks could start using this strategy to identify affiliates and certify them to a degree as legitimate, white hat affiliates.
This wouldn’t screen out all of the scammers, but it could be a start. The important thing is to get some more ideas on the table and fix what is broken about affiliate marketing.
What do you think?
20 responses so far ↓
1 Royal Radande // Mar 4, 2008 at 6:47 am
Nice impersonation of Jason!
I don’t think that charging publishers to apply would solve the problem. Because once approved, blackhaters would continue to do what they do. Plus, legit affiliate who sign up for a program and get denied will end up losing their application fee, whether it’s $5 or $100.
2 Shawn Collins // Mar 4, 2008 at 8:59 am
I think charging via credit card would have an impact, because it would confirm the mailing address of the applicant and combat affiliates creating multiple accounts (unless they have credit cards at multiple addresses).
As far as affiliates losing the application fee if they are denied, I would suggest only denying them if they apply with a site that is offensive, illegal, etc. or it’s an application from an address that was previously found to be a cheat.
3 Tom Beaton // Mar 4, 2008 at 9:28 am
It is about accountability. Do we want people to be held accountable for their actions?
Some people do, I do, but many consider it to be in breach of their rights to privacy, freedom of expression or whatever else. Big Brother society maybe but you should not be afraid of verifying your address when doing a business deal.
4 45n5 // Mar 4, 2008 at 10:17 am
I don’t think charging 5$ will help.
I pay $5, I get accepted, that still doesn’t stop me from:
scraping the entire world and building junk sites with the affiliate links
building thin affiliate sites with the datafeeds
loading up social sites with the affiliate links
comment spamming the world with the affiliate links.
—-
On the other hand, if the companies (or a spam clearinghouse) simply had a reporting policy where if someone could report the spam to the affilaite company and provide the affiliate url, that would slow me WAY down cause i wouldn’t want to lose the account.
Getting the account is no biggie, regardless of a $5 fee, it’s losing the accounts, or streams of income, that hurts.
Of course, if an affiliate company curbs spamming with their affiliate links then it loses money for the affiliate company, the reason I believe, you don’t see policing of affiliate spam.
I also didn’t get the impression that the industry wanted to change.
5 Shawn Collins // Mar 4, 2008 at 10:54 am
Hey Mark -
It’s not as much about the amount as the fact that it would validate the address of the affiliate by requiring a credit card.
So if an affiliate were caught, they would be booted and their address would be on a blacklist.
> I also didn’t get the impression that the industry wanted to change.
The email folks didn’t want to change either, and so the FTC came along with CAN-SPAM.
It didn’t seem to curb spam, at least for my inbox, but it made it more difficult for legitimate marketers to send email.
6 Kellie // Mar 4, 2008 at 11:01 am
I think it would have very little impact in deterring “black hat” activities or as Jason would say the pollution in the industry.
I would guess that the scammers pretty much laugh at the notation of it because it’s something that, for people who think in terms of scamming, is something very easy to get around. I can think of several ways of getting around it. And networks already have some degree of “verification” using financial data because they are the ones who are sending out the payments after all. I can state without any hesitation that repeat offenders are circumventing pretty easily. And I’m talking about folks the Networks really *are* trying to keep out and for good. Credit card verification would not assist with those guys at all.
The answers don’t lie in a feel good solution like credit card verification. The answers are more involved and not so easy. IMHO, no truly meaningful solutions will arise until true mentality shift, not just with networks. The first step is to move from it just being “compliance” towards “quality assurance”. There is a world of difference in those two terms and an approach that goes with them. We need to think and act in terms of the quality of the product and not in terms of it being PR/marketing for the product. We need quality assurance programs as are implemented within most other industries.
7 Shawn Collins // Mar 4, 2008 at 11:15 am
Thanks for your feedback, Kellie.
I didn’t imagine credit card verification would fix everything, but that it would be something in the right direction.
I’d love to see some quality assurance, and hopefully some networks take the lead, rather than sit on our hands and wait for the federal government to step in.
8 45n5 // Mar 4, 2008 at 11:58 am
“So if an affiliate were caught, they would be booted and their address would be on a blacklist.”
I understand completely. My point however is the affiliate will never get caught.
It’s like saying the getaway driver is going to turn in the bank robber.
The spamming, pollution makes the affiliate company money. They for sure won’t do the catching.
Who does the catching? I think it should come from the people getting spammed. then we can put pressure on the companies responsible to start policing.
Besides, what is “caught”? People can’t even decide what affiliate spam is. Am I caught if I don’t disclose affiliate links? or caught by a thin affiliate site? etc.
“The email folks didn’t want to change either, and so the FTC came along with CAN-SPAM.”
I understand. I just get the impression that people would rather wait for that to happen as long as they keep eating real good and taking stretch limos to parties when everything is paid for by fraudulent cpa offers
(not a summit slight, a cpa company slight)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m on the side of cleaning things up a bit, however I think the solution of getting people in the door is only a start, it’s getting the bad ones out of the door and making sure they don’t get back in.
someone needs to determine what is bad and then get that nonsense out of the systems. Then your higher barrier to entry might make more sense.
I reckon I agree your solution is good, just not complete.
For a perfect example, adsense requires publishers to jump through hoops and use a PIN etc. to join them. However they don’t kick out the nonsense, and because it’s profitable, the web is polluted with mfa.
9 Stephanie Agresta // Mar 4, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Shawn - I agree completely that this is a NETWORK issue. The affiliate networks are failing on many fronts right now (some worse than others), but this is an age-old issue. I had two incidents in the last week where affiliates were acting inappropriately with regard to trademark bidding on PPC. Let me tell you - the networks can figure out who is white hat and who is black hat with one simple report. The fact is, they are not looking.
I for one am very sick of their failures!
10 Kellie // Mar 4, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I have to disagree that it is a network issue. It’s an issue for EVERYONE in the industry. The roles to make the industry better will just be different if you are a network, merchant, opm, or affiliate (or whatever other name someone may want to give themselves).
I think it’s also helpful in such discussions to make distinctions about what is meant by “black hat”. That could mean a lot of different things. Blackhat in the SEO sense like site scraping, comment spam, etc. Then there are questionable revenue tactics such as browser hijacking, poaching of the merchant’s shopping cart, etc. Then the really nasty stuff involving botnets, phishing and credit card fraud (something I just had to unfortunately discuss with a merchant the other day).
All issues to be addressed, but for me, warrant different levels of concern and importance. Addressing the issues will not lie soley with the networks.
I wish I couldn’t count the number of times a network did boot a bad player, only to recieve complaints from merchants that a top producing affiliate had been terminated. Or have had a merchant tell me “I don’t like what the affiliate is doing but they are bringing in revenue, so I can’t drop them.” Affiliates and merchants will continue to work with companies known to put out fraudulent cpa offers because they are making money with them. How different is that really from the network’s “blind eye”? It supports and perpetuates the bad stuff.
We all have a voice in this industry. The voice collectively needs to be saying *unequivocally* NO to certain practices. And understand that our actions can facilitate bad behavior even if we aren’t engaging in it directly.
11 Stephanie Agresta // Mar 4, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Good points Kellie. I will clarify to say that it’s time that the networks took a more pro-active role. They react by terminating, but how are they leading? I for one deal with this almost every day. I know most of my colleagues do. I’m just saying there is a lack of leadership on behalf of the networks - which in my mind is also an opportunity for them. Differentiate, take a stand! I know many that would appreciate it!
Thanks,
Stephanie
12 Shawn Collins // Mar 4, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Hi Kellie -
Yes, it is certainly an issue for all parties in the industry, but I figured the networks could be a start, since they are the front door.
As far as black hat, it is probably so generic at this point that it means everything and nothing.
I was using it to refer to the players mentioned in the keynote - sploggers and others that don’t bring anything to the game.
13 Jason Calacanis Keynote at Affiliate Summit: Feathers Fly // Mar 4, 2008 at 1:40 pm
[...] “good guys” that have been collected on Jason’s site. I agree with Shawn Collins that it’s time for the NETWORKS to step up to the challenge of being better [...]
14 Brian // Mar 4, 2008 at 4:12 pm
As long as there is a system, there will be people that try to manipulate that system. It’s always the system’s fault for allowing a manipulation to go on.
In this case, the affiliate networks would be the system and it is their fault for not putting an end to the crazy.
There are tons of things the networks can do and could have been doing to stop the spammers.
Here’s the reality. Most companies are fine with ethics. Right up until ethics cut into the pocketbook.
Nothing will change until the spammers start hurting the pocketbook of the network. Right now all they are doing is selling and more sales = more money for the networks and advertisers.
How do you do that????
Well, one company has to step up and develop a network that eliminates the spammers. Essentially create the end all be all network.
Then, all of us that are doing affiliate marketing right would exclusively use that company and drop all these other networks until they revamp their system.
Think of it as an semi affiliate marketer strike!
See we win because we are still getting paid.
The advertiser wins because they are still selling.
The only ones that lose are the networks that allow spam.
Just a thought…
15 Mike 11|15 Media // Mar 4, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I’ve been thinking about this for a while as well. I think some kind of standard disclosure that can be tracked by the affiliate networks may work. For example, a few years ago children sites, such as Cartoon Network, needed to insert a splash page when ads were clicked that made it clear the user clicked an advertisement and is now leaving the site. A tracking pixel was used to record the click and splash page impression. It would then redirect to the advertiser after 7 seconds.
16 Paul Avila // Mar 4, 2008 at 7:29 pm
One thing nobody has mentioned is prosecution. If the scammers are violating your terms then change the terms to promote “you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” and then do it. Take a few of your best fraudsters and go after them legally. I know the networks are aware of the scammers, they’re sending them checks so it shouldn’t be too hard to find these clowns and make an example out of a few of them.
17 Anik Singal // Mar 4, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Hold your horses Shawn! We’re working on it
Anik Singal
ACCertified.com
18 Shawn Collins // Mar 5, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Horses being held.
19 Jesse // Mar 6, 2008 at 2:56 pm
It is up to the networks and individual affiliate managers (outsourced or not) to make the right choices. I understand that there is a sales pressure for most (shall I terminate an affiliate making lots of sales using black hat techniques?…. or shall I look the other way - I am so close to my bonus, don’t want to miss it…) but my own belief is that in the long run you can benefit more from a “clean” program and can count on your affiliates much better than when having an “infested” program. Unfortunately there are too many making the wrong choices…
Anik, we are watching ACCertified!
20 Affiliates Talk About Quality Too : // Mar 10, 2008 at 11:47 am
[...] Shawn Johnson [...]
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