Hey DDF, Go Fuck Yourself!

that is what they want

Agreed. If they insist on invoices, they should make it as easy as possible for the affiliate.

Wow....we got Terrorists ravaging our World and I wake up to this. Ridiculous. All it takes is for a webmaster to contact us, and you will have your answers once we get to your email. Thank you to all webmasters who are understanding of what's happening here. I appreciate your intelligible words.

We know it's a fairly new way of doing things, but we are not the only Program now requiring an invoice. This was a heads up. We are not controlling, or reporting anyone here, that's not our job, but we need to be in compliance with current accounting regulations and know who we are doing business with. What you submit is up to you, but if you are operating in a legal manner, you should be submitting proper company, name and address information to our Program. I can't tell you how many affiliate Profiles I see with country as USA or Europe and address as timbuktu.

The invoicing will become more streamlined and you'll receive messages and an easy upload center for submitting invoices is coming. No one mentioned anything about a paper invoice. Invoices can easily be generated on various online outlets for Free. Here is one example :

create.onlineinvoices.com/invoices-generator/create/3

To make things a bit clearer, this is not required for our December payout period, but for anything afterwards, it will be required. You don't have to submit an invoice every month, just when you want to get paid out. If you prefer to submit an invoice every 3 or 6 months, that is no problem. Were not looking to keep anyone's payments and if you wanna drop us for being compliant, well we probably don't need you promoting us anyway.

If you haven't noticed already, things are changing rapidly in the landscape, and being accountable will be the norm, so don't put us up on a cross and ding us as an "Evil" program for doing the right thing. If you have anymore bitches or complaints, feel free to email Paul directly at [email protected].

I have no problem with it, a bit inconvenience maybe, if there was an automated msg emailing me that my payment is ready and I just need to submit an invoice thats %100 fine.

Paul who are the other programs who are doing it? I haven't received neither your email about this issue or anyone elses.
First time I hear about it is this thread. Thread title could have been different though.

yup

Make this more user friendly. Please.

Oh, what the hell, Paul, why not? There's no money left in porn and I didn't feel like working this morning anyway. Why shouldn't I waste an hour breaking this down and explaining to DDF Cash exactly WHY that affiliate email and Paul's butthurt responses here make DDF look shady and dangerous for affiliates to do business with?

Maybe it's all just a misunderstanding based on "English as a second language" and cultural differences across oceanic distances. Maybe the scales will fall from Paul's eyes, maybe he'll actually be grateful that somebody explained just how badly DDF is screwing up, hell, maybe DDF will send me a fat Christmas basket full of Dutch chocolate as an expression of their enormous gratitude. Sure, and maybe my dog will start shitting gold coins.

I send emails when I have a specific problem that demands a specific solution. When I got your email I didn't have "questions", I had a visceral reaction of "shit, there goes another program down the tubes." What's the point of emailing when that happens? The forums are a better place for this kind of discussion, because it helps other people too. I've never convinced a program to stop going down the tubes by emailing them. I have convinced a few to back-pedal on affiliate-hostile policies by posting on forums, though.

Now let's get down in the mud and go line by line from the perspective of a US affiliate. I know I'm being harsh here, but Paul, I'm doing this in a helpful spirit, even if the "tough love" is pretty tough. It's clear you don't get just how horribly bad and shady that email makes you look to English-speaking US affiliates. I really do hope this will help you understand.

In US English, "documents on hand" means paper documents, or at least electronic copies of paper documents. It doesn't mean information. The strong implication here is that you will be demanding copies of paperwork, such as identity documents or business papers. A paragraph like that pretty much promises the next paragraph will identify precisely which documents will satisfy the new requirements. But there's already a pit of dread developing in my stomach, because:

1) No affiliate program since 2002 has asked me for "documentation". This is the sort of demand one gets from banks and payment processors and people who are responsible for complying with "know your customer" anti-money-laundering rules. I am reluctant enough to give this stuff to an outfit like Paxum, I'm sure not giving it to random pornographers. You don't need it, and it's a security risk to give it to you.

2) There are no accounting laws in the US requiring "documentation" for this sort of business relationship, and if there were some in Europe, all the other European programs would be contacting me too. Which they aren't. So this is obviously some kind of bullshit. Unless you want us to think that DDF Cash is at the cutting edge of compliance with European accounting rules? That seems... unlikely.

3) You say you need "documents on hand" by December 15. You emailed me on November 13. Even if your demands were crystal clear and I had certified copies laying on my desk, there's no reliable way to get paper documents mailed across the Atlantic into your hands at that street address in the Netherlands in 32 days. If you don't believe me, just ask the ten thousand people on GFY who have been told by Paxum that six weeks was not too long to wait for a paper check or for their replacement debit card if they didn't pay $132 or whatever for international express shipping. Conclusion: Most likely, DDF Cash isn't seriously trying to design a process that will work for its overseas affiliates.

OK, so what "documents on hand" does DDF Cash want? Next lines from the email:

Those aren't "documents", that's just information. And, hey, isn't every last bit of that information already in my Account Details in the DDFCash NATS? Yup, EVERY DAMNED ITEM on that list is already in my account details.

So, WTF? I can only assume that the first paragraph wasn't bullshitting; DDF must want documents verifying this stuff. But they don't say what documents.

If DDF just wanted affiliates to to "please check over your account details and make sure that the following information is complete and accurate" surely Paul would have said that, right?

Up until this point, though, I'm still thinking "affiliate manager who is not good with how things look and sound, maybe English is a second language, big cultural barriers between US and Europe, but they're good guys, I'm sure we can sort this out with an email or two. Or maybe I can just ignore this, since my info is all filled out already and they don't seem to have any particular documents in mind."

And then we get to the invoicing:

{I'm up against the GFY post character limit. Continued in the next post.}

And then we get to the invoicing:

I have a few fundamental rules that I follow when deciding which affiliate programs I trust enough to send traffic to. The single most important criterion I use is: "Does this program sound like it wants to pay me? Are they making every effort to sound reassuring about the idea that I will get my money no matter what?"

The email FAILS to meet that criterion. It fails hard enough to set off alarm bells, warning sirens, and bright red flashing lights. This does NOT sound like someone who is making "getting every affiliate paid on time every time without making them beg for it" a top priority.

1) The default rule for any program is that they must pay without demand. I promote hundreds of programs. Some of them pay me, on average, no more often than every two years or so. A blog post from five years ago generates a $13 sale that recurs for many months, it can take a long time to get to a $500 bank wire minimum. It shouldn't matter. I shouldn't have to worry. The program should pay me without demand when the minimum is reached. These are the irreducible basics of the affiliate/program relationships. If I have to notice that I've reached a payment minimum and make a payment demand, the company goes on my list as potentially shady and not to be trusted for future promotion. An affiliate-driven invoice process (with no payments until the affiliate sends an invoice) is unheard of in this business. Trust me, DDF Cash, you do not want to be the innovator in this space. If Euro accounting rules require an invoice, do what everybody else does: generate an invoice, display it in the affiliate interface, and send an email inviting the affiliate to "send it" by return email confirmation.

With respect, if the back end systems aren't in place to handle your new requirement, it's too soon to communicate those requirements to your affiliates. Meanwhile, the email says:

You're not ready.

2) The email also says:

Unless you have some fancy new technology that lets me send an email to a physical street address, this strongly implies that you want paper invoices sent by actual postal mail. Which you are demanding, on November 13, for payments due as soon as December 1. Once again, that's going to be an impossibility for overseas affiliates, which creates the strong impression that you aren't really concerned about getting affiliates paid on time, every time. (It doesn't affect me; you only owe me like $13 at the moment. But it sure doesn't give me a warm fuzzy about earning another $500 with you. Because you really aren't sounding like you are 100% committed to paying me out when that happy day comes.

Paul writes in this thread:

That's not "clearer", it directly contradicts the email you sent.

Have you really been running an affiliate program for all these years without understanding that it's your obligation to pay affiliates without making them demand payment first? I want to get paid out when I reach the minimum in NATS, that why I didn't set a higher minimum. It's shady programs that don't pay up until the affiliate writes and demands payment. If you're not a shady program, you don't want to look or sound like a shady program. This makes you look and sound like a shady program. And whether you are "looking to keep" anyone's payments or not, you damned well know and understand that there will be affiliates who never invoice you. You will pocket that money. You are not among the angels here.

That's genuinely offensive. If you truly are looking at new financial compliance requirements, how hard would it have been to drop a specific sentence about what the requirements are? If you did that, it would give you a believable excuse for walking away from your obligation to pay without demand. But you didn't do that.

Nobody wants to drop you for "being compliant". If anybody drops you it's going to be because you sent a LOUD signal that paying your affiliates is not a top priority.

You could have said:

But you didn't say that. You sent a bunch of word salad that boils down to "Fuck you, we're not paying you any more unless you guess which documents we want, guess where and how we want to receive them, and start generating invoices whenever you want to get paid."

Then you responded to criticism about that by going "you should have emailed with your questions." Not "Oh my god, you're right, that email was a confusing disaster, we are so sorry, we're furiously working on that now, please look for another email tomorrow that will clear everything up."

It makes you look bad. It makes you look VERY bad. Because it makes you look less than committed to getting affiliates paid on time, every time, without demand. It makes you look like you really aren't concerned about doing that.

If you want to get all huffy, call this "ridiculous" and insinuate that anybody with a problem with it is against "being compliant", well, that's your right. But it just makes you look worse and confirms the initial bad impression.

If you want affiliates, they need to trust you to pay them. Appearances matter. The way you communicate your requirements? It it matters. The impression you give, the amount of zealousness you display, about making sure affiliates get paid? It all matters. And you have screwed this up, big time. You screwed it up in the email and you screwed it up worse by coming here and sneering at the affiliates who complained about your first screwup.

Free business advice, take it or leave it. I promise I won't be invoicing you for it. There's still plenty of time to fix the damage you've done, but not without losing the bad attitude first.

If you earn money, it's a business and you need to register as a self-empoyed person in your country. Otherwise, you are doing it illegally

Well I think that may vary country to country.

Btw the "bill to" address mentioned above... I think it's clear that it's their info that you have to put in the Bill To field of the invoice. It's not for sending them postal mail.

Marco's profile says he is in Italy. Do you actually know the legal requirements for carrying on a hobby business in Italy? Or are you just talking out your ass?

It would have been "clear" if they said they needed an invoice "via email to [email protected]" or said "the invoice should show the following billing address". In the email they actually wrote, they said "we need an invoice" and then provided a physical address for it.

That's true. Hopefully they will clear it up.

hobby business?

..and tax free..

eat shit creampie