I think I speak for most affiliate support people when I say ...

Very simple, 2 checkboxes when signing up

1. Receive important emergency related emails (downtime notification, payment problems, etc) - DEFAULT
2. Receive emails with updates on promo material, contests, etc - OPT IN

Well, it is probably part of their job to try to drum up more business. There are right ways and wrong ways to do that. I don't see an issue with taking a targeted approach and respectfully contacting somebody to find out how you can work more together. It is all in how it is done, how often and what research you have done before making contact.

With the emails, again..just filter.

If a sponsor is handing out content to be used doesn't is stand that they have the right to have valid contact details. If nothing else to deal with any abuse of those materials?

That isn't at all why I started this thread but I do think it is a valid point. If people want to use content provided by a sponsor I don't see why the sponsor shouldn't have the right to have proper contact information.

Paper checks still make up the vast majority of payments.

I would have no problem at all with that sort of system. However, it still requires the affiliate to keep their email address up to date in the system to get the emergency mails too.

I love this thread! Anyone that has been a rep or ran their own program knows how frustrating it gets when you are trying to get in contact with a active affiliate with no working info.

You don't want to get spammed with fhgs or other updates to said program then unsubscribe to the mailer or if it's a ccbill based program.. Log into your ccbill main account go into tools> find the program in the list> click Edit> and select "Yes" "No" for "accept webmaster emails".. Do that and the only emails you should get is if there is actually a problem with your account but to just not list a active correct contact email when you are promoting a sponsor?

For the people that have had real jobs in their lives outside of this industry, did you give out phoney phone numbers to your employers too?

well no one is saying otherwise, I was just giving you feedback on why webmasters tend to avoid contact with affiliate reps.

Perhaps this gives you a look into why some do what they do.

Simply enclose said rule in your TOS and you can do a you like.

But really, I have to get back to some things im working on. I have honestly limited myself to no more than 30 mins/day on gfy.

see you tomorrow and enjoy the rest of your day

I knew others that work this side of the desk would understand what I am talking about

I also agree with your point. Do people give fake SS numbers too when they are required and that is okay?

Lol..you are always fun to play with on here ..I mean that as a compliment.

I do get what you are saying. After all, I have been an affiliate for a long time too. I get all the stuff you get.

I always use my gmail when I reg new accounts, BUT some retarded sponsors require me to use one of my domains. I'm pretty sure all emails to ****@mydomain.com bounce since I don't use or check them.

You could make these messages accessible from their accounts when they sign in and even notify them when their email bounces. Problem solved at least for active accounts.

Addressed earlier in the thread. We do this but even some people sending sales don't check in to their stats that often and just sit back and get checks. We still need to talk to them if something is up with payment, etc.

That is a throw back to when people didn't take hotmail and yahoo accounts to signup as an affiliate because the majority of those were scammers. Gmail changed that a bit.

The problem is one of symmetry, or the lack of it. There are a zillion programs, and I only have so much time and attention. For every direct or emergency contact one of these programs send me, they send fifty or a hundred marketing messages. The result is, the signals get lost in the noise, and I lose my motivation to keep the channel open because nothing of value ever seems to come in via that route.

I don't think anybody that's professional would dispute that programs need a reliable way to contact affiliates.

And, although there are notorious exceptions who send daily spam, I think most of the communications I get from programs are perfectly reasonable from the perspective of the program owner -- meaning, if I owned the program, I'd think it was a perfectly reasonable communication to send.

What program owners and affiliate reps do not appear to understand is that it's completely impossible to keep track of "perfectly reasonable" emails from a couple of hundred different programs, which is probably a fair estimate of the number I've signed up with for one reason or another since 2002.

Sure, I'd "like" for each of those programs to be able to contact me when it's to my interest, but the work involved in keeping those emails up to date, filtering all the "here are your galleries for the week" messages, whitelisting the programs I trust, and somehow still getting the "real" messages that aren't automated mailings could easily add up to many unpaid hours spent every week. It's a matter of scale.

At the end of the day, there are maybe half a dozen affiliate managers that I keep in close contact with, and the rest have a shot (if they choose carefully their subject line) in getting noticed among all the program spam that I delete every day. I'd like to do better, but nobody's paying me and (as a rule) the programs are not careful enough about limiting their own spam, so it makes things very difficult to keep a clear channel of communication open without getting overwhelmed by spam.

Any *specific* affiliate manager who wants my attention can probably get it with enough persistence, and if they have value to offer sufficient to justify my effort in keeping the channel open and clear, they can probably keep it. But for all affiliate managers to expect me to keep those channels open and clear for all of them, just so they can abuse that trust by sending me daily and weekly gallery listings I could find on their website at need? Naw. Ain't gonna happen. I got better things to do.

Good points here. But how would the best way to communicate & filtering be in your point of view?

Require a valid email address / contact information in order to release payment?

I guess my point is that it's just not that simple. There is no "best way", because maintaining good communications -- whatever method you choose -- is *expensive*, in time and effort that might as well be money to the working affiliate.

Basically, each program out there wants -- you could even say "needs" -- a way to contact its affiliates. And they think "keeping your contact info current with us is a trivial thing, surely you should do that, it would be worth your while if you ever had a payment problem with us." But, it doesn't look quite the same to the affiliate who needs to keep contact info current (and working, despite spam filters and overloaded inboxes) with 199 other sponsors, at least half of whom are making the problem WAY harder than it needs to be by trying to shove trivial or stupid marketing info down the same channel that they "need" kept open for business exigencies.

You can't fix that; there's no one solution to it. Affiliate programs will do better when they make their contacts more rare and more useful; affiliates will do better when they want to hear from the programs, and worse when they don't.

Actually there is a solution to this... its called CID mailing, a term I developed a year or so ago.. curretnly still working on patents and how to market.. May or may not come to life depends on many things and many projects... I wrote a document ago for patent rights that I published, i will fish around for it.

I think you have some very valid points. Over the years, I have also signed up for many, many programs and I know it can be easy to forget. As you say though, it is reasonable to want to have valid contact information. I suppose, if you are getting payments from somebody then that should be a reminder to make sure your have up to date information.

I am not sure what the balance is other than perhaps the email filters such as earlier suggested so that the programs that send out daily mails all end up in the own boxes.

Interesting idea but then do we have to send out a mail prior to every payment and if it bounces not issue? I don't see that happening.