Hey DDF, Go Fuck Yourself!

A few days ago I contacted Paul with a private email searching solutions/suggestions to my situation (as private person and not company) and I have to admit he was very nice.

My point is that you were talking out your ass when you tried to be all superior and suggest that he was doing something illegal unless he "registered". When in fact you had no fucking idea if that was true or not.

.............it needs a much better explanation

lol what the fuck?!

I have been issuing invoices for a decade and nobody ever wanted them. I just filed them and that was it. THAT is considered normal. I never understood how that fuck can you even do business without having an invoice from the party you are paying for services provided to you. Nonetheless US companies (or were they offshore?) simply paid and cared less. Some asked for WBEN form. Ok. I provided. So DDF asking for an invoice is just how business should be run. The only difference is that they provide a darn sort of form to upload the invoice so we can send it over.

You go to any European accountant and they'll be shocked that companies in online adult don't want invoices and sometimes won't even tell you their business details.

I have no comment on what's going on here other than to say that Mr. Forkbeard is one damn articulate, intelligent, reasonable, clear-minded and patient affiliate and ANY Program would be honored to have him promote their shit.

Excellent posts Forkbeard!

Most long time affiliates have 100's or 1000's of sponsors they promote. I actively promote probably 200, hows that for wasted time, spending all day for few days just sending out invoices. Imagine that! Sounds terrible.

Why thank you! It seems to have fallen on willfully deaf ears, though. Oh well...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You're welcome (and thanks for signing up to my Program). The problem here is with Europeans and their arrogance. I see it all the time, it's quite passive-aggressive.

The tax laws are quite different between the EU and the US. Requiring Invoices is not a problem per se but it's HOW the company requires it is the issue I think. Want an invoice? OK - make it easy for me, have a template ready, or just require an email with the Invoice sent. It's not a huge issue - BUT the arrogance and nastiness coming from Europeans regarding this issue has to stop.

Hey DDF (and all other European Programs): want US/Canada/UK traffic and sales? These are the highest-converting countries with the best traffic and sales that everyone wants most, right? Then try NOT to be arrogant DICKS about your new VAT requirements and we may just play along. But if not guess what??? We will survive just fine by not promoting your shit.

But I'm sure Euro companies will be happy with Hungarian, Romanian and Chinese traffic only eh?

I was expecting a bit more from you but ok

i believe this is needed for VAT reasons, i have a few affiliates that require us to issue invoices with affiliate payouts

we're probably going to be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing as tax law catches up with the internet

DDF is good people

Actually, if one really wanted to issue an invoice to DDF, they would need to follow legal accounting requirements and include DDF's VAT number on that invoice. Since DDF didn't publish their VAT number inside their latest email, it is impossible to issue a proper invoice to them in the first place. Why don't they know that?

Because he's American running a company in a tax haven? So much for compliance..

Actually, if one really wanted to issue an invoice to DDF, they would need to follow legal accounting requirements and include DDF's VAT number on that invoice. Since DDF didn't publish their VAT number inside their latest email, it is impossible to issue a proper invoice to them in the first place. Why don't they know that?

Holland is a tax haven ??

Because he's American running a company in a tax haven? So much for compliance..

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.

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.

The Netherlands are known internationally, since at least the 1970s, as a tax haven. As of 2013, the country harbors holding companies for various multinationals, participates in more than a hundred bilateral tax treaties, and the various exemptions facilitate tax avoidance by corporations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpor...he_Netherlands

Actually, if one really wanted to issue an invoice to DDF, they would need to follow legal accounting requirements and include DDF's VAT number on that invoice. Since DDF didn't publish their VAT number inside their latest email, it is impossible to issue a proper invoice to them in the first place. Why don't they know that?

And then we get to the invoicing:

Most long time affiliates have 100's or 1000's of sponsors they promote. I actively promote probably 200, hows that for wasted time, spending all day for few days just sending out invoices. Imagine that! Sounds terrible.

But it clearly isn't an absolute requirement of EU tax law,

Yes it is, and you will see more companies putting their house in order.

i am slightly concerned on how the americans are going to handle this, and what they will require

Actually, if one really wanted to issue an invoice to DDF, they would need to follow legal accounting requirements and include DDF's VAT number on that invoice. Since DDF didn't publish their VAT number inside their latest email, it is impossible to issue a proper invoice to them in the first place. Why don't they know that?

Actually, if one really wanted to issue an invoice to DDF, they would need to follow legal accounting requirements and include DDF's VAT number on that invoice. Since DDF didn't publish their VAT number inside their latest email, it is impossible to issue a proper invoice to them in the first place. Why don't they know that?

Unless the purpose is counting on affiliates to forget to invoice them...

I finally invoiced them, and got no payment but an email about this invlice shit again, a week after I submitted mine.. It seems that they are also sending out DMCAs to content that does not belong to them at all. crappp