5 Comments

Prohibited by law

May 12, 2005
by

We were recently contacted by an affiliated merchant about “Illegal” codes that had been posted on our forums.

This type of thing is not uncommon in our world, such is life when living in the chaos we call home.

The part that bothered me was the use of the word “illegal”. The primary definition is “Prohibited by law”. To make matters more interesting, we were contacted through our affiliate channels, rather than directly from the merchant.

This extra level of isolation may be desired by the merchant, but it simply gets in the way of a real resolution. An affiliate relationship does give the merchant an ear to talk to, but in cases like this, we don’t treat our affiliated merchants any differently than we would someone we’ve never heard of before.

As I write this, the links are still up on the site, and we’re still waiting for an official statment other than “the merchant says these are illegal, take them down”.

As I’ve said many times before…. the best an affiliated merchant can do is to be our #2 customer. Our #1 customer is our site visitor.

About Tim Storm

You can find Tim on Twitter: @timstorm.

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing
  • http://www.fatwallet.com Tim Storm

    UPDATE: This afternoon we received notice that we have been removed from the merchant's affiliate program.

    Ta-Ta!

  • http://www.partnercentric.com Linda Woods

    Tim, I find it appalling that there are companies out there with affiliate programs that think so little of you, their valued affiliate, that they can't even instigate a personal communication with you to figure the problem out. And then, to remove you again without personal contact is appallingly bad business.

    Sorry you had that experience – would never happen with our clients!

    Thanks,
    Linda Woods
    PartnerCentric

  • http://www.molanderassoc.com Jeff Molander

    Tim:
    I think what you see here is reflected in this post as well http://www.affiliatetip.com/blog/archives/doing_u…

    Question: Why is affiliate marketing such a "second class" marketing endeavor for so many marketers?

  • http://flamingoworld.com/ Connie Berg

    I can understand merchants not wanting certain coupons being posted. They might want to track the success of promotion through a certain channel.
    What gets me is how they have coupons for other channels but won't/don't give a comparative coupon to affiliates. That way our visitors get the same deal and their tracking isn't affected.
    I do get offended when someone emails me and is very insulting and nasty. All they have to say is "Hey, can you please not post this?" I then remove it.
    I also do not understand when they say they can't afford to do coupons with affiliates on top of paying commissions. When they send out coupons with their catalogs, they pay to print the catalogs, don't they? If they put an ad on tv or in a magazine with a coupon they have to pay, don't they?

  • http://www.anycoupons.com David Lewis

    I love when they put the coupon on their home page. They already have the consumers on their site and are training them to always expect a coupon.

    When consumers get a coupon from the merchant, they expect it always. When consumers get a coupon from an affiliate, they feel lucky.