John Chow, Affiliate Neanderthal
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I was just reading John Chow’s blog, where he steered a whole bunch of affiliates in the wrong direction.
In the post, “Evil Affiliate Marketing Trick Of The day,” John expresses a frustration he has with affiliate marketing…
The concept of affiliate marketing is pretty straight forward: send a reader to the reseller site with your affiliate ID and earn a cut of the resulting sales. The problem is sometimes a reader won’t click on the affiliate link right away. However, instead of coming back to your blog to find the affiliate link, they just directly enter the URL of the reseller and buy the product. The reseller made a sale but you just lost an affiliate commission.
His solution to this problem? Embedding his affiliate cookies via an iframe. An iframe is an inline frame that contains another document – in this case, an affiliate cookie, so visitors to his site are automatically cookied by him, regardless of whether they click on his affiliate link. This is known as cookie stuffing and it’s a worst practice in affiliate marketing.
John boasts in the post that he has cookied all who are reading his blog with his AuctionAds cookie. I hope ShoeMoney keeps every cent of the purloined commissions generated by Chow.
Hey John – there’s nothing novel about that method of cheating. As an affiliate manager, I’ve been on the lookout for it since I heard about it from some casino affiliates at AffiliateFORCE 2001.
Evil tricks do not make for a sustainable business model.
For more information on cookie stuffing, have a look at Ben Edelman’s overview: Cookie-Stuffing Targeting Major Affiliate Merchants.
- Posted in Affiliate News, Affiliate Opinions
9 Comments
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On April 5 @ 2:08 am posted[...] Shawn Collins covers a post by John Chow about bad affiliate marketing tips. [...]
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On April 6 @ 11:49 am posted
[...] Chow the scandalous affiliate, covered by Shawn Collins and then later by Scott Jangro talks about John’s post on some underhanded affiliate [...]
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On April 11 @ 3:37 am posted
[...] I have and actually been considering to advertise on JohnChow.com. It’s one of my favorite blogs – although I do not agree with everything that he writes. [...]
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On June 4 @ 11:50 am posted
[...] label their doings as evil tricks, grey hat, etc. All sorts of cute little names for lying, cheating, and [...]
neɪ.ændə(ɚ)tɒl,]), (Homo neanderthalensis). Yep, that word pretty much sums it up!
I just got done reading this on Scotts blog too. What a great history lesson Jon wrote over there. LOL!
reply to this commentThat’s the first dirty trick I came across back in.. yeah, same time as you did, around 2001. If John Chow would have taken the time to read at least one affiliate agreement with any of the networks, he might have noticed that this is a very serious violation of the agreement.
Reversed commission will be the least that you can expect to see happen with your account, if caught.
Geee. First the kid from Wikedfire (or ex-Kid), now this. I know that the music industry recycles their junk, but they wait at least 15-20 years or so before they resell the old stuff as new and hip.
Maybe John (Wikedfire) is right. May be its coming from those ebooks that promise fortunes and “great secrets”. Maybe they should all burn (okay, delete will do too
).
reply to this commentI stumbled across your blog, while researching affiliate marketing. I have a seemingly dumb question. I’m very new to affiliate marketing, and I’m wondering if it’s ethical to post about your affiliates to try to get people to buy the product. I know this is very unethical in click-generated income. My blog is not really for profit, and I have 1 affiliate (my readers aren’t used to it), so I don’t want to turn people off. What’s your rule of thumb?
reply to this commentHi Sarah -
When trying to advertise an affiliate program, buy advertising.
reply to this commentHi Shawn, I am not sure if the question is a different one. Sarah does not seem to be an online retailer with an affiliate program and affiliates who promote her products for her, right Sarah?
Sarah, are you talking about using affiliate links on your blog to generate some income from your blog?
Cheers!
reply to this commentCarsten