Hoseasons Affiliate Manager, Marcel Ellis, Breaking the Rules?

That is interesting. What can merchants do to prevent this from happening technically, since rules don't seem to be good enough? Maybe we should have a bounty system to reward these detectives

Hmm, I don't think merchants should allow their affiliate managers to earn commissions through their affiliate program.

I am not surprised about that it happened, but that there are not more incidents like that that become public.

Adam: Yes and No. It's a tricky thing. It is beneficial for the management of the program if the affiliate manager learns how it is to be an affiliate. Better would be of course if it would be done via affiliations with advertisers of a different industry. There are also the real cases where existing affiliate of a program take over the management of the program as well.

It all boils down to trust. There are so much different ways AMs and affiliates can screw each other that it is virtually impossible to KNOW with absolute certainty, that the other party is not doing something to harm you.

Without at least a certain level of trust is the relationship a very unhealthy one and will cause severe issues time and again.

I think affiliate managers who have at least a little experience as an affiliate – tend to be better affiliate managers. It makes sense that an AM would want to experiment as an affiliate…but this situation seems like a total conflict of interest.

Let me play Devil's advocate for just a moment. When I read the blog that Adam linked to, my initial thought was this: It looks like Hoseasons wants to be able to make the claim that they are this great Affiliate friendly merchant that does Affiliates a huge service by not even bidding on their own trademarks. Perhaps Hoseasons is using Mr. Ellis to get around that claim. If they want to get the benefit of bidding on their own trademark, but still want to be able to say that they won't do it, instant solution – just add in house Affiliate.

We only know that he's the Affiliate Manager of the program and that he's using his personal Affiliate account to bid on his own program's trademarks. What we don't know is if he's getting paid to do it. If he's not getting paid, then you could presume that Hoseasons knows that he's doing it, and that opens up a whole different discussion.

Which is worse – If he's doing it for profit or if Hoseasons is having him do it to game their own system?

I think there is a fine line between an affiliate manager using his own affiliate sites to gain experience/understanding and a manager who uses it to "game the system" and reap personal profit.

There are plenty of other ways affiliate managers can gain experience that would not conflict with their responsibilities to their employer and their affiliates.

I wonder if Hoseasons has endorsed this practice. Perhaps they like having another search spot taken up by an internal employee to better control the space…what if Marcel is not even profiting personally but doing this at the instruction of his employer. Probably not the case but certainly an interesting spin on this story if it were true.

"It's a tricky thing. It is beneficial for the management of the program if the affiliate manager learns how it is to be an affiliate. Better would be of course if it would be done via affiliations with advertisers of a different industry."

Carsten —

Your post shocked me! It is NEVER a good idea for an affiliate manager to be earning money via his company's affiliate program, whether it's for learning purposes or not. I am privy to much more information than my affiliates in regards to the Blair.com program and would be at an unfair advantange.

If an affiliate manager wants to learn what affiliate marketing is like on the other side, he should do so outside his company's program and in most cases, outside his company's market and competitors' programs, too.

Temptation aside the appearance of impropriety, and questions of ethics will always be at the forefront. It's no different than betting on your favorite team when you play on the team your betting on.

Someone is always trying to state they are the exception to the rule, but there are thousands and thousands of affiliate based opportunities so an AM does not have to join their own program to make money.

Affiliate Manager should not be allowed to be an affiliate in the program they are running. [PERIOD]

Chris – I agree with you 100%, while it's beneficial to understand affiliate marketing, there is too much chance of a conflict of interest to have an affiliate manager participating actively as an affiliate of the program they are managing or their competitors.

That being said, I do think it would be smart to become affiliates of all the competitors to make sure you get all the latest information and affiliate communications, but if you are going to actively promote them, especially in the highly competitive search space, than there is just too much chance for conflict.

I know when I was working at Network Solutions and actively promoting their program (with their permission) even though I was in a different department than the affiliate team there were sometimes appearances of conflicts.

Additionally, there have been reports of companies customer service reps clicking on one of their affiliate links so that all the orders they process that day get credited to them.

So I think the bottom line is that employers with affiliate programs have to look long and hard at if they should allow any employees to participate in their affiliate program.

Adam

Another thing to consider, I know several companies I have spoken with they have setup a 0% commission account and have used the affiliate network platform for tracking purpose of internal search campaigns and other online marketing efforts…

So what might appear as an affilaite manager's account, might infact be the company's internal program utilizing the affiliate network to track results of specific campaigns.

Why pay for an additional tracking system when you already have one in place?

Adam

We use our in-house tracking when we are paid by the client to do their SEM. The accounts are clearly marked DO NOT pay as we bill separately.

I have contacted Marcel and challenged him to comment here to explain!!

Just look in CJ, there are many merchants advertising for their competition. Easy and cheap business intelligence, also a nice way to monetize your competitors traffic.

I don'like that, but it happens. Extra bonus: makes your EPC go through the roof, and control your competitor's EPC. CJ does not want to react on this when asked if this is OK to do…..

BTW, My company does not want our AM to take part in discussions like this so you guessed, my name is not James….

I completely agree with Chris, this is wrong in every way. It is a conflict of interest pure and simple.

If there had been any reasonable explanation (internal tracking etc) then the guy would still be in his job but that's not the case so it's clear there has been a serious abuse of trust here.

I'm particularly annoyed about this one as I helped Marcel learn how to track down brand bidding affiliates when he didn't know how to identify them!

I hear that 31 Media is hiring. Sounds like a perfect fit to me. Or perhaps CJ although he’s a little late as they frown on that now. Maybe he can use his wife’s maiden name.