Quote:
Originally Posted by The Demon
these idiots don't get it. They're under the illusion that programs would rather cater to the affiliates rather than make money. You're ALL here to make money, so if they found a more efficient way, then you're fucked.
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No-one is under any illusions.
If there were a better, long-term alternative to affiliates, it would be entirely reasonable for sponsors to choose it. But scumware isn't that alternative: it depends on
exactly the same webmasters to promote its installs.
- Every promo spot on every affiliate site which is now allocated to Zango and the like, would otherwise have been promoting someone else. Affiliates, if at all, won't earn extra for long and the sponsors whose promos have been dropped, lose out from day one.
- All the scumware people are doing is inserting themselves between the affiliate and the sponsor, taking their own cut (from both) in the process.
- That might not be a bad thing if they were adding value in exchange for that cut. But their impact is positively damaging: immediately to sponsors and to affiliates attempting to promote anything but scumware and in the long run to the affiliates promoting scumware as well.
- The impact on "legitimate" affiliates is obvious: an increasing percentage of their traffic never reaches its intended destination. The impact on sponsors is that if they or their affiliates don't pay the price necessary to buy the traffic from the scumware merchants, they will lose traffic. When it comes right down to it, scumware is a protection racket. At best it shaves a percentage right off the bottom line. At worst, if you don't pay and no-one pays on your behalf, an even bigger bite it taken.
This isn't a more efficient way to make money, for anyone but the scumware merchants themselves and anyone who isn't actively opposed to their existence is a fool. Simple as that.