Affiliate Program Morgue

[Drastic]

With all the current affiliate program closings and failures, and things getting worse before better, I think this forum deserves an Affiliate Program Morgue.

I'll kick it off with the death of one of the most popular affiliate programs: AllAdvantage

Their home page [alladvantage.com] says it all.

internetnews story [internetnews.com]

I am actually surpised they hung in there as long as they did.

Please add your failure findings here.

[Drastic]

Igive/Voice5 has discontinued their program at CJ. Mid-January they dropped payout from 3$/lead to $1.80, and are now closing their program effective Monday, Feb 5.

This is a "sister" program of netsetter, which is also being scaled back. Past revised restrictions eliminated any qualified signups for non-US users or users not staying with the program for at least 15 days. Now, the user must provide an AOL email addy, or be signing up from work, in addition to the above restrictions.

This is not looking good. Netsetter has notoriously been a good performer. I would not be surprised to see the restrictions tighten even more or this program to hit the morgue soon.

[chiyo]

And a bit of ancient history..

About Search... down from 4c to 3c to nuttin' over 12 months

Google Search down from 3c to 1c to nothing over 12 months

AV.. down from 3c to 1c

Affinia closed last year

And there was the other affiliate program where tiy could sell everthing from mag subs to kitchen ware, flowers, books, chocolates, gifts etc that closed down mid 2000.. quite big but name escapes me...

[sean orourke]

news from AV:

"AltaVista is restructuring our Affiliate program as of 12:00 am February 9, 2001. Please note that after this date you will no longer be earning commissions for clickthroughs that are generated by AltaVista links. However, if you find benefit in having the AltaVista search functionality on your site, please feel free to continue to use our links."

[CyberSpaced]

Food.com - Closed their program...
Nascar.com - Closed their shop after Christmas...
pets.com - Who could forget that stupid sock-puppet...
Excite - Went from 2 cents to Bye-Bye two weeks ago...
OurPool.com - Was broke when I joined... Although they did look at my site to make sure I qualified...
Brainstorm.com - Kicked me out for having Playboy.com on my site... The bastages....
Replaytv.com - Kicked the bucket in January...
There's more, but those are some of the major ones I found...

[mike]

There are too many to list since affiliate programs have been closing like crazy the last few months. Since Linkshare added their "Merchant Status Update" a few months ago to notify affiliates when programs are being discotinued, I seem to get a message every couple of days to "check your merchant status update."

In fact on Linkshare I've had 59 affiliate programs that have been discontinued in the last few months. Even though I have joined quite a few affiliate programs, that still represents 1/3 of the programs I have joined on Linkshare.

Of those 59, a couple switched their program to CJ, but about 40% of them are sites that went out of business. The rest of them just cancelled the affiliate program.

[rcjordan]

>The rest of them just cancelled the affiliate program.

Or reduced it to the point of oblivion. NBCi just reduced theirs to .01 CPC, down from .04 about 6 weeks ago.

[Drastic]

Another one that is not dead yet, but headed downhill fast - Wonderclick through CJ.

Used to be a good performer at $1/lead. They have whittled down payment over the past month or two at various times, now down to $.15/lead.

[Drastic]

PartnershipPlus/VoiceFive, another netsetter sister program at CJ, gets a toe tag this week.

Netsetter conversions have also taken a nosedive since the last round of program changes.

[JamesR]

Partnership Plus had the big disadvantage of telling people they were tracking where they were going on the web for such a small benefit (increased browser speed?). At least iGive had more of the appearance of innocence.

[msgraph]

Nooooooooooooooooo!! Mp3.com is finished with their program :(

I guess it's from their new lawsuit coming up.

Affiliate Program Update

Effective March 13, 2001, at 12 a.m. (PST), the MP3.com
Affiliate Program will be terminated until further notice.

You will be paid any commissions and bounties earned by you
through 11:59 p.m. on March 12, 2001, provided such
commissions and bounties have met all conditions for payment
pursuant to the MP3.com Affiliate Program Agreement.

[JamesR]

MP3.com has failed miserably in their business plan and wasted the enormous amount of traffic they have received. Now that is a domain I would like to take over...but anyway, msgraph, I feel your pain.

[rcjordan]

(There is great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the demise of MP3's affiliate program.)

Mailbits (TAF and Trivia affiliate programs) needs a body bag.

[msgraph]

I have a feeling they will make a comeback at a later time and I'll be waiting.

The ability to create custom text links was their greatest feature.

If other affiliate programs would follow that path I believe they would generate more sales. It sure as h*ll draws more quality traffic than some banner+text link displaying something for the price of $*.99

[rcjordan]

Dear Affiliates,

This letter is to inform you that the Move.com affiliate program has ended. Please remove any and all Move.com affiliate links from your site immediately. All affiliates will be paid in full for traffic delivered as long as they have met the minimum traffic levels outlined in the program.

darn, there goes my lunch money -it's back to baloney sandwiches.

[gmiller]

Heh, this reminds me of a ClickZ column I saw a while back which suggested that any company so risk-averse that they have to go for pay-for-"performance" deals probably has a shaky business model to begin with.

[msgraph]

Excite's temporary death. My guess is the next version will offer new full-size window Flash ads you can add to your site as a pop-up.

Thank you for your interest in the Excite Affiliates Program. We are sorry, but the program is currently closed. However, we are currently developing a new Excite Affiliates program. Be sure to look out for this program in the coming weeks. You are welcome to resubmit your application at that time.

Best Regards,

Excite Affiliates Team
[e-mail]

[rcjordan]

Dear Participant:

Digital City, Inc. ("DCI") has decided to cancel the Digital City Affiliate Program. Accordingly, we are providing you with the required five (5) days notice under the Digital City Affiliate Agreement that DCI is terminating the Agreement, effective April 4th (the "Termination Date"). Within 30 days from April 5 DCI shall be sending you a final payment for your participation in the Digital City Affiliate Program up to the Termination Date.

[Drastic]

19 March 2001

Dear PhoneFree.com Affiliates:

The PhoneFree.com program has been a long-running success. As you know, the
current business environment is quite volatile and has put pressure on many
companies in the Internet sector. As a result, effective 28 February 2001,
the PhoneFree.com affiliate program has been terminated.

In the best interests of PhoneFree.com and its affiliates, we have
determined to immediately pay 75% of all outstanding invoices for the 4th
quarter of 2000 through February 2001, regardless of whether the $50 payment
threshold was reached. Therefore, if your outstanding commission is $100,
you will receive $75. This solution allows the vast majority of funds to be
paid quickly, thereby removing any financial risk for our affiliates.

We appreciate the work that you have done for the PhoneFree.com affiliate
program. It has generated considerable revenue for our affiliates and
resulted in tremendous growth for PhoneFree.

Sincerely,

PhoneFree.com
___________________________

Interesting - email dated 3-19, created 3-21, program cancelled effective 2-28.

[rcjordan]

>Therefore, if your outstanding commission is $100, you will receive $75. This solution allows the vast majority of funds to be paid quickly, thereby removing any financial risk for our affiliates.

More like:
This solution allows PhoneFree to write off 25% of it's liability, and -oh, we forgot to tell you (a minor detail)- we quit adding to our affiliate advertising bill 3 weeks ago.

[gmiller]

PhoneFree's not associated with eFront, is it? ;)

[Drastic]

Couple more slabs taken -
FreeWebCall at CJ was once an excellent perfomer.
SearchFuel in-house search program - killed by losing its goto partnership.

[Drastic]

I know we haven't put all the dead programs in here, we don't want a 67-thread continuation, but do like to list ones that meant something...

Searchbucks recently bit the dust, bought out and combined with searchreferral. Had more revenue with SB than any of the other programs I tried, including searchreferral. Easy few bucks a day, great support, paid twice a month, on time every time. Super nice people. Glad to see they got out through a purchase rather than shutdown.

Search program revenue seems to have dropped quite a bit lately, and code/prefills have to be changed around an awful lot. Think I won't worry with them any more. Besides, the quality of the SERPs was actually starting to weigh in on my conscience.

[djankit82]

mann i am telling u the banner network websites are nothing but frowd and bezicly to cheat with people like us. i am not saying that there are no programs that will pay u but there are very few. i joined to cj i joined to clickex some site like that but what they say that they will pay me when i reches my accout blenzz at 50$ well their sys will never gona do that far casue even if i put 20 banner of pay per click about 0.05$ than it i will be like 1 year after i get 50$ at that time i don't know what i been doing and i don't even remember the site so i guess there is not such banner network which work bests. there is way to exchange the bannner.

[Drastic]

Another iBoost company bites the dust. (surprise)

Sponsorships.net, a decent CPC/lead network, is now listed at the "DotCom DeadPool", and has sent an email to some affiliates about shutting down.

They recently changed to paying affiliates once the advertiser paid them - a huge red flag.