FreeOnes Response to Cross-Sales
 

With today?s changing economy, businesses are changing their practices in order to turn a profit. Some businesses are doing whatever it takes to make a buck, even if it means hurting the consumer. This is where we, Freeones.com, has decided to draw a line and say no to unethical business practices, such as (hidden) cross-sales on join forms.

In order to combat shady practices, we made a new tool which will alert the surfer to the threat level of a particular website. There will be 3 different threat levels, ranging from minor to sever, in the form of an icon. If the surfer clicks on the icon, they will be taken to an area where they will receive more information about the threat. To start with, this icon will show up next to the link description in babe sections and will later be added to pay site reviews.

http://www.hostones.com/temp/board/warninglevel1.gif http://www.hostones.com/temp/board/warninglevel2.gif http://www.hostones.com/temp/board/warninglevel3.gif
- Pre-Checked Cross-Sale Below the Join Button
- Pre-Checked Cross-Sale Underneath the Join Button
- Hidden Cross-Sales or Charges

Here is a babe section to see the system in action: http://www.freeones.com/html/h_links/Heidi_Brooks/

By adding this new tool to the site, FreeOnes hopes that companies will stop stealing from the customer, aim for a no threat status, and generally treat the customer how they themselves would like to be treated.

If you are being flagged by our warning system and don't agree with it than please contact us at [email protected]

Interesting addition. This is a nice little system and I'm confident you'll get a positive response from both consumers and programs.

is there any kind of reward for sites that dont have cross sales at all? like a tick or anything?

Go get 'em boy!

Very cool feature ! congrats :thumbsup

Interesting, but... by presenting such warnings, you're making your surfers much more likely to uncheck the prechecked cross sales and avoid hidden charges (well, I know, this IS your intention) and that means that the sponsor will earn on average (much) less from your traffic than from other affiliates...

True, but if that sponsor was making most of its money from the cross sales alone the product would probably not be that good to start with.

PS, the green icon would mean:
- Pre-Checked Cross-Sale Above the Join Button (NOT below)

:thumbsup

So true. I notice a lot of review sites mention cross-sales now too, looks like people have caught on that the surfer wouldn't like them. Good to see :thumbsup

we do not have cross sales HighDefRiches.com

:winkwink:

Nice .........

nice feature. :thumbsup

noooo way! you got to be shitting me.

I wonder what kind of thinking goes into alerting surfers to a "threat level" in regards to adult sites?

"dear surfer, the sites we associate with are a risk to you. while we don't have the integrity to simply not take their money, we do want to warn you that clicking links on our site pose a threat to you"


I need to take more business classes I guess. :winkwink:

Cool! The only thing I would add to the line of icons is an "ok" icon, i am afraid that the "negative" icons get more attention now...

Nice move guys. But what about the programs that don't do any cross sales? Because I agree with Marie, the eye automatically is attracted to the additional icon and a lot of people I doubt will bother to find out what the icon means.

You think an average Joe Doe will have any idea WTF you are talking about?


ha ha ha

interesting...

Nice move anyways!

good luck

I just wanted to give an "attaboy" to Roald. This guy saw an issue that he is concerned about, took a stand, and did something about it. Way to go my friend. Whether you agree with him or not on that issue, you gotta give him props for taking action.

At least we try to make sure the average Joe doesn't get raped :2 cents:

Lets give it a bit to see how this works out, stats will tell soon enough.

Interesting idea, I wonder how many surfers really know what a cross sale is? I also wonder if this really hurts the sales of the sites with any of those icons attached to the link. You'd have to think it does right?

If I were a surfer and I saw some sort of warning icon I probably might not even click the link.

I'm still on the fence of what I think about this idea. It seems like a great idea but we won't really know how good it is on the sponsor side until a few months have passed.

Rewarding sponsors with no prechecked cross-sales (or no cross sales whatsoever) should be considered. ;)

Well lets educate them a bit and see how it works out.

You mean those who found more creative ways to fuck the webmasters out of their share of the sale? :Graucho

As for the FreeOnes announcement, while I commend the initiative, I feel it's gonna be about as useful as massaging a wooden leg. Any publicity is good publicity, so as long as you're still linking to the sites someone will get fucked over, warnings or no warnings. Would be much more efficient to just stop linking to those sites. Which to me translates as this being a simple PR move, showing people that you care, but at the same time not willing to kick the crooked sponsors in their balls, out of fear of possible repercussions.

Regardless, hopefully the message hits home and more follow suit.

I think in theory the idea is a good one, as it provides incentive to sponsors to be more upfront with their business practices. However, I think the tone of the listings now appears more negative. I think a more proactive, positive approach would have been to have a sponsor "FreeOnes Seal of Approval" icon on the listings. I believe this would send a more positive message to your surfing customer base, versus the more negative one in place now.

At first glance, the ones with the icons stand out more than the ones that don't. At that point, the warnings rely on a surfer to actually mouse over the icon to see anything about it, or catch the small icon legend at top of the listings.

Just my $0.02... but I think you might want to consider accenting the positive, versus the negative. Other than that, I do like the idea of giving sponsors incentive to be "FreeOnes Approved".

Way to go Roald and Maurice.
Proud to be dutch!

I think that is a good idea, in order to try to protect the customer. Its good that you keep in mind that without them we are nothing, lets not piss them off, or scare them with crazy charges. Lets hope its gonna work well!!

I think the color coding is confusing. Green gives me the idea it's good and clean, also the light blue. Pick colors that people relate to disease such as orange, yellow, red and mixtures of those.

It's a good move...at least sponsors will be called on the issue and the surfer becomes aware of the problem before they join.

Just a quick question, how are you going to handle sponsors that do the pre-checked crosssales below the join, but offer the option of having it removed? In essence causing the problem that the FHGs you might use would be clean, but the submitted galleries you get might have the disreputable practice. Do they still get the blue/red warning sign?

Roald, I think you guys should do it the other way around, give a "trusted" partners award to the ones not doing anythign shady and explain bottom of pages what the other ones are doing. Nice to see other people in this industry going in the same direction :) No cross sales in VirtuaGirl :)

http://cbanners.virtuagirlhd.com/cus...banner/526.gif

Good job Freeones, yet anotehr reason why ya'll are the leader in affiliate marketing :thumbsup

Yea, you do since you're the biggest fucking advocate of creating a threat the the consumers of Pichunter and Free Ones. :error


Hrm, I wonder if I hide $80 of billing, if I will earn strong customer loyalty, and increase consumer confidence.... Fuck it, it's $80 extra you pussies, fucking hide that shit and bill em... :helpme

No shit, Sherlock.

Welcome to the internets :1orglaugh

Obviously, I give this full support. Question though, what's the difference between these two?

- Pre-Checked Cross-Sale Below the Join Button
- Pre-Checked Cross-Sale Underneath the Join Button


Below = Underneath

Perhaps your wording was lost in translation?


Also, I concur, that changing the colors to Green Yellow Red might be more clear to people, think traffic signals. Also... What about

Gold Star, Green, Orange/Yellow, Red