Sphinn - Merchants and bribery in the affiliate business

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Merchants and bribery in the affiliate business

Went Hot: April 8, 2008 - 5:58 am
Posted By: dougs123 226 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.asapventures.co.uk)
Category: Affiliate Marketing

Are companies paying affiliates to change links?

7 Comments

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Comments

from tiesto.guy 226 days ago #

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Excellent article... Tough position for merchants to put themselves in...

from chrisgarrett 226 days ago #

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Interesting thought, but it isn't unheard of for a merchant to stop using an aff network. Haven't ebay just dropped CJ? Is that different?

from simo 226 days ago #

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Yes, it's different. EBay made it public, which makes it a business choice, while those who just bypass affiliate networks which helped them grow that big are not honest. Bribing those top 10 affiliates to work directly with them looks like stealing clients from your partner. I think the partners have the right to know.

from Haysie 226 days ago #

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Interesting topic - Always difficult being the middleman in any business - margins are under pressure and cost of sale is under review. Harsh reality is that some will take this path and as always those in the middle with have to be ahead of the game to keep as much of their business "secure" as possible

from iBrian 226 days ago #

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Bribery? Doesn't it make good business sense to deal with a client directly if the need suits both rather than through a middleman, just to suit the middleman?

from boorishamerican 226 days ago #

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This isn’t bribery and this happens all the time in the affiliate world. Many affiliate networks will put circumvent agreements in place also to ensure that this does not happen...yet it still does.

Brokering affiliate deals through networks is basically the next level up from dealing drugs. The guys at the top know who is getting their deals through the networks and a lot of times they will put down the hammer and tell the network to cut off any particular affiliate if they are sending garbage traffic.

The real difficultly comes from managing an entire affiliate network. It is really very painful/terrible job to have…that is probably why the guys at the top just go to the the networks and say "hey hydra/bl/valueclick/whoeever can you take care of this for me?"