Dirty little secrets of affiliates ...
 

Fair is fair! In response to this thread, lets do "Dirty little secrets of affiliates" here.

Do you know of a dirty little secret that one or more affiliates use that results in decreased sponsor income? If so, post it here, no company names needed. I'll start with ones that have always bugged me and is done by TOO MANY affiliates.


- How about the guy that signs up his "brother", "mother", "uncle", "sister", "neighbor" and his dog under HIS OWN REFFERAL, just to send his own traffic and get the 10% referral fee on top of his payout?

- How about the guy that registers domains like TAWNEESTONESOFFICIALSITE.com to confuse surfers?

- Another pet peeve is affiliates that remove our watermarks from content we provide, then add THEIR OWN. or use our exclusive content to promote a competing sponsor.

Others?

This is good

Misspells have definitely cost me some cash in the past. You spend money at the shows promoting your porn site domain name for branding and they go and buy a misspell of your site and capitalise on all the type in traffic of surfers who don't know how to spell the word "amateur".

G

so you don't allow people to register domains with "Tawnee stone" in it?

or just not the "confusing ones" ?

Lots of great ideas in this thread.

Thanks for sharing :thumbsup

Another --- creating a message board or community where they encourage users to post stolen content, but only with watermarks removed. Or encourage users to post whole SITE RIPS!

How about the ones who constantly send you message like "Hi" at 3:00a.m. every other morning as if you are supposed to know who they are or what they want? Then when you ignore them or don't see the message until you get to work the next day they have already run and bitched about how you never answer your ICQ.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Webmasters that run password sites and ask you for members area passwords to 'grab content for galleries' :upsidedow

hahah...

This is why I dont have a WM Ref program.

How about affiliates that run large multi-page link lists, then publish their ratios as if every single sponsor was given the same quality traffic as the first 10 on the first page of the list?

some affiliates do suck.

They should be "fired" or sued.

Doesn't mean other affiliates should be stolen from.

How about PPS affiliates that give instructions to their surfers how to cancel trials?

How about use your free hosting to promote other programs?

That resulted in the termination of that option.

Affiliates who load up hitbots or send Iframe traffic to your PPC program.

I like this one. Sounds fucking familiar to me :(

Affiliates who let their friends, family and or relatives signup to your sites.

I completely agree. I'm just trying to make a point, that "dirty little secrets" runs in both directions.

For some reason I had to laugh at this.

And, as a small-time affiliate, I feel bad for some sponsor program owners that work hard at being legit.

Really. All ass-kissing aside, as I need to kiss no ass, it's a sad game in many respects. It's like a fucked up pyramid scheme; you've got a few sponsors and bazillion affiliates trying to rape the hand that feeds them.

And while I'm ranting in a grumpy mood, what the fuck happend to the internet being so easy to publish on? Blogs, rss, shitty templates, TGP / MGP / Sponsor sites look like every other site. What the fuck people?

Like this http://www.imgshare.net/?a=showimage...e-stone-09.jpg ?
There are more Lightspeed stuff on there.

How about review sites that penalize for softcore? Or let reviewers who don't even understand a niche review a site in that niche?

How about the affiliates that show up at your party ... drink all your booze... fu*k all you paid prostitutes.... and never plan on sending even one click !

one question that comes to mind, you posted like 6 months ago that LightspeedCash is "from now on - invite only", now I took a look and it seems like it isnt like that anymore, which would suggest that you realized, affiliates are still a good thing to have :)

yes but you can term accounts and not pay that pull this kind of crap. the only power an affiliate has to do anything about the 'dirty secrets' of programs is tell people.

I love threads like this. People get sooo pissy.

Damn.
Loving ONE woman is getting more and more difficult with shit like that happening. :(

I got one better. How about review sites that rate you based on what special deals you offer them. Like discounted memberships for thier surfers and not on the site itself.

Doo ppl do that? Damm!

About 18 month ago I found a site with pics. of a sweet girl, it was my GF, and I'm the only one who got the release contract and all rights to them, so the person (asshole, you know me, and will never forget me!) stole those pics. from my site!

hey steve can you answer polish_aristocrat's 2 questions? im interested too...

what about affiliates who have little traffic and lots of free time to sit on icq and chat

Sorry bro, I just thought you'd be my friend.

Nail on the head there!

No sh*t.... I am sure their are a ton of webmasters that shown up to a LightSpeed sponsored party .... drank his booze.... ate his food....tried to feel up his models......

Maybe gave him a pat on the back or shook his hand thanking him.... and never even bothered to send him even one click !

I think there should be boxing match where affiliates and program owners can beat the shit out of each other.

on the ohter hand, what was I thinking - boxing match? yeah right, we're webmasters, probably pillow fight will be more appropriate

I agree totally with everything except the register domain thingy

Either we have to 1) trademark the brand (and put time on sueing) 2) Be better at SEO than the confusing domain 3) Buy all the confusing domains (within reasonable range)

If its a top money making brand, some if it may be worth the trouble
hmmm
Also if an affiliate decides to buy a similiar domain and the intention to promote the site I see mostly positive things

Some may believe im wrong on some parts, but this is how I feel it

Good for you Steve..........thanks for pointing out the other side of the coin! Too many times the affiliate is bitching for every little thing, for no reason other than he can, in the process making the program owner out to be some kind of scamming monster!!!!! Remember Affiliates , DONT KILL THE GOOSE THAT LAID THE GOLDEN EGG:2 cents:

That's what happens to cocky, dick waving program owners.

haha. nice steve. im tired of the program bashing as well. its a two way street and everyone needs each other. scammer radar needs to be reset.

I made $30 with Lightspeed last year (didn't even reach minimum pay-out, hehe). Steve if you don't want me coming to your parties anymore just say the word and I'd understand!

Where yopu being sarcasitc in this and the last post?