Affiliate site looking like a Merchant

[restless]

When a visitor comes to an affiliate shopping mall type site, find the product they want then click Buy or More Info they are then taken to the actual merchants site which can often look completely different in design. I often wonder if this is confusing or even off putting to alot of visitors, such as thinking something dodgy is going on and then leave. See they think they are on the merchants site already then all of a sudden they are on another site, thinking how come they couldn't buy from the first site?

I undersand that if the affiliate site makes it clear they are not the merchant, like stating they are just a comparison site and you will be taken to the merchants account then this shouldn' be a problem. But alot of affiliates make their sites look like they are the merchant. Does anyone think visitors/sales are lost because of this? Or do you think most do not care, they just wanna buy from anyone

[Beagle]

I don't know about all affiliate programs, but ones I've been involved with are pretty clear in their operating agreements that the affiliate is required to differentiate between themselves and the merchant. The merchant doesn't want any misunderstandings, or any questions about, for example, whose privacy policy is active at each step.

If the merchant is well known, I think it works to the benefit of the affiliate to make the difference clear. Someone's more likely to buy from amazon, or even from "xyz.com, the largest source of xyz widgets on the web," than from my site. But they come to my site for the content and sometimes (hopefully!) the content is interesting enough that they want to buy something about it - so I give them an easy way to do that by providing affiliate links. I don't want anyone to think they're buying from me - I want the merchant to handle all the customer service stuff and get all the complaints about shipping, not me!

So, yes, I make it clear from the get-go that an affiliate link is exactly that. And I make sure the customer knows exactly where he or she is going before clicking on the link. It just makes sense. And I think that holds true even for a site that's more product-oriented, such as a shopping comparison site. Purposely confusing someone doesn't get you a repeat customer - or even a repeat site visitor. And mimicking the merchant's site can get you into other kinds of trouble.

[Edited because I didn't realize what I originally used as the fake "niche" would get removed by the language filter. 8-O ]

[edited by: Beagle at 12:44 am (utc) on Dec. 14, 2006]

[gkgk11]

There is a video on youtube about this guy who did that exact thing..

He was making $11,000 a month until froogle removed him from the database for being a affiliate (affiliate merchants aren't allowed in froogle).

I doubt it would be very suspicious since most website's redirect to a third party site for payment.

[Marcia]

There are actually some "merchants" who pose as merchants, and then do a bait and switch and their sites are full of their own affiliate links - which *their* affiliates (who got duped) don't get paid for.