owners that compete with their affiliates
 

whats your opinion on this?

i've noticed a trend.

I start sending sales, the owners see where the traffic is coming from, and then decide to do it on their own.

Fair or not fair. I've personally drawn up a policy that I will not compete with a program owner.. once they start doing shit that competes in line with me, I drop them, end of story.

What do you think?

So easy.

Use a redirecting script to send the traffic.

Looks like a smart fix to the problem. Then you dont have to worry one way or the other about it.

True, i have a solution without a script. The thing is, its pure bullshit. Some may call it fair and square, but its too much of a coincidence if im buying traffic at a place and then a few months down the road I see the owner buying traffic there..

id consider it fair if i can see where all the traffic they get is coming from so I could take advantage of it too.

i agree with biggy here, in essence you are taking all the risks.
a) purchasing advertising without a known roi
b) purchasing galleries from designers and or byot style pages ect
c) testing layouts for optimal conversion ratios
d) testing and repeating

if the sponsor knew how t0 convert before hand it would be different but the affilliates job is to create sales, anything the sponsor does that competes directly with that webmaster is stupid i think.

that webmaster will just change programs because he wont be able to make the same amount of sales of his traditional methods