Sponsor's - Too Big for their boots?
 

OK heres the question. I recently ran into my first hurdle with sponsors.

Without naming no names though my sig may give it away I was requested to change my whole site www.smithslookup.com or have my account closed.

Because I have a hub which helps people find adult Yahoo groups they want me to remove all mention of Yahoo Groups.

Now I have a site which works and people are coming, I promote my sig space on my site to other webmasters....

WTF is their problem? I have told them to close my account and settle up with me as I am not gonna change my site to suite them, is this comman practice from sponsors?

This doesnt sound right to me.... But...

If you had a site that was working and sending traffic... Why not make adjustments to meet the needs this way you could continue bringing in the $$$.....

I thought of this but the draw for surfers is to find adult groups, if I take that away then I have lost the plot :-)

Call them something different then... :thumbsup

Did they tell you why they don't want you promoting Yahoo's adult groups? It doesn't make sense to me that they would worry about that.

must be more to it

tell us the whole story not some one sideed half ass baked balony

thanks

They said that I can not promote their product within Yahoo Groups, I used to though not no more.

Their TOS state that you can not promote with Yahoo Groups though I though this was a little OTT.

Its quite frustrating as I took me bloody ages to find the right programme to suite my site - thats whats bugging me more - going back to square one with the old trial and error.

The mail between us and them has been fine they can see what I am doing and that I have been pushing their stuff for 6 months now.

I only run three programmes, CCBill, WegCash, Camcontacts everything else I'm still testing out to see if it works. WegCash were my top programme as they convert easily and the upsells are very realistic. On top of this their support was good Im just reluctant to allow my sponsor to tell me how to market to surfers
surely thats my call as the webmaster?

I use Yahoo groups to promote some of my pay sites and they work well :thumbsup

they are the best, I can get to 20K members on group in four weeks, once you have them as members you can just configure the group to market them.. sorry keep them updated

:1orglaugh
lmco

We appreciate to the highest degree all the webmasters, including you, that support our program. We work tirelessly to produce a product that sells, market to webmasters who can sell it, and support our clientel by whatever means nessecary.

That being said, we must also take precautions which are intended to protect our / client's bottom line. In this day and age, the slippery slope is one that has broadened and become a bit more complex. Our TOS prohibits the use of Yahoo groups, namely because Yahoo TOS does not "invite" those types of promotions to the groups.

In many cases, companies like ours also receive consumer based complaints. We must deal with the fallout on this type of behavior as well.

I am not calling you out personally, nor am I condemning anyone who uses the groups, I actually could care less. But when it comes to our program, we must create boundaries that are consistent with our goals of staying in business for the long haul and making webmasters and ourselves as much money as humanly possible.

We are in this for the long haul. Trust me, we, like many affiliate programs could loosen the clamps and make a whole lot of money over the next few months: somehow I doubt that is what any real business minded individuals would like to see.

Maybe not the answer you hoped for, but it is the best I can do in the way of offering an explanation in a direct manner.

Take Care,

Cory Hedgepeth.