The Hollow Man of Affiliate Marketing

Back in January of this year, Return on Affiliate, launched with a good bit of fanfare in the affiliate marketing space.

It was a novel idea – a social network for affiliate marketers – and many folks in the industry supported the effort. The site had something of a meteoric rise in registered members and traffic.

Then one day I got an IM from Kellie Stevens, President of Affiliate Fairplay, to notify me that Return on Affiliate was running pop-up ads through MyGeek.com that targeted AffiliateSummit.com and a laundry list of other affiliate marketing sites. Bad word of mouth started spreading.

This was all chronicled by Lisa Picarille, Editor in Chief of Revenue Magazine in her blog.

Anyhow, Richard Lewis, the founder of Return on Affiliate, was very active with his community and the affiliate marketing industry in general for the first few months of the year.

But shortly after the story came out, he seems to have dropped off the face of the industry. Out of curiosity, I took a look at his community for the first time in a while, and his news section, which had been getting updated a number of times per week, has been dormant since April.

It’s a shame really. I thought this social network was poised to play a positive role in the future of affiliate marketing. Who is the next one to give this concept a shot?

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

—T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” (1925)

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3. ClubMom: Social Networks, Blogs and Affiliate Marketing
4. New Social Network for Internet Marketers
5. Tim Storm Honored with the Wayne Porter Affiliate Marketing Legend Award