Originally Posted by jayeff

"Scam" is definitely the wrong choice of word, but I go along with someone who wrote a few posts back that he is put off by sponsors who (regularly) offer big prizes.

The reason being that it's dumb.

Affiliates come in all sizes, from the brand new startup through to the guy capable of delivering thousands of surfers a day. From around the middle of the field on up are experienced webmasters who know how to raise traffic and convert it. And they have tuned their operations to work successfully with certain sponsors.

Even if any of the more productive affiliates are willing to switch some of their traffic to chase a prize, presumably they will switch it again once the competition is over to chase another prize. There will be exceptions, but I'm damn sure that any more than short-term affiliates that these competitions generate are almost all minnows.

Nothing wrong with that as such, some of those minnows may turn into useful affiliates over time. But is it the best use of the money? No. Just the easiest and least imaginative. Surely it would make more sense, instead of relying on luck that a competition will produce some productive long-term affiliate signups, for the money to be spent in ways much more likely to produce that outcome?

For example, instead of a $40K car, why not multiple prizes of scripts, tutoring/consultancy, design, traffic, etc. Why competitions at all, why not (easy-to-reach) targets which automatically trigger qualification for this or that productivity-related benefit?

Because right now the whole way of handling affiliates is a lot like those companies which hide behind PO Box numbers and advertise commission-only sales jobs: here's your sales kit, good luck. Which was okay when newbies were flooding into the market and a high percentage of them would make money. But that flow is slowing and will slow further still and far fewer newcomers are succeeding these days. These competitions have to be producing diminishing returns and yet still, I cannot think of a single sponsor who has a serious program for building affiliate value.