Forum Moderators: skibum
Of course the above assumes the Merchant/Network has some idea what we are talking about. I fear the reality is that they don’t even get this much so they must be considered a lost cause.
Now I must stress all of the above is with a short term view, the reality is that if you move commissions from the rightful affiliate to the spy ware company you will eventually lose the affiliate and then lose the original source of your traffic. i.e. a Net lose!
The battle as I see it, is to convince merchants/Networks of the long terms goals - and possibly forgo some short term profit.
(I don't think this will be very easy)
1) Principle. We believe in integrity and do unto others.
If we were affiliates in our programs, we would not want to have our efforts compromised or commissions stolen.
2) The Numbers. Yes the all important numbers. I believe if you know how to attract and keep all the good HONEST affiliate marketers that are out there, the numbers are better than caving into unethical marketers that steal honest affiliate's commissions.
Many of our programs were existing programs that we took over that had lots of parasites before we cleaned them out. Many of the parasites I have seen in programs drive a lot of traffic but sometimes don't even make that many sales. Some of them even are EPC killers. Once we have cleaned parasites out of programs I don't think we have seen a severe drop in sales, largely because we attract more honest affiliates and we almost always have dramatic INCREASES in sales, not a decrease.
Some say crime pays. I say honesty pays. ;-)
Linda
I can't *even* believe what I have been reading in this thread.
Most AM really don't fully understand the entire situation.
I guess my point is that convincing AMs to drop an affiliate who might be earning $10,000/month is not an easy thing to do - be it the right thing to do or not.
If a parasite subsists primarily on usurping links, how can it possibly increase your revenue? The click you get from the honest affiliate is just as good as the one you get when a thief steals that link. The thief does not increase your traffic, it only intercepts traffic that would otherwise come through honest clicks and substitutes it's own id.
In addition, affiliate webmasters are increasingly aware of the thiefware problem. I, for one, will not promote a merchant that deals with parasites. If a merchant is willing to cooperate with thieves, how can it be trusted to treat me fairly?
siteseo, one more point. A parasite will not ususally increase your traffic or your revenue. But if you use a network processor, you are paying the commission and the network service fee or commission. Therefore, the networks have little incentive to eliminate the parasites, because they get revenue even on links stolen from your ads or url's.
Most major affiliate programs have a HUGE spyware component. There are a couple of spyware/parasite vendors that can bring you 60,000+ uniques per hour.
If they do, then the extra network fees would be worth the cost. Both the merchant and the network make more money, and would be reluctant to dump the thief. There is no good way to combat this situation.
Some say crime pays. I say honesty pays. ;-)
Linda,
Hope I have the good fortune to join your affiliate team someday, if I haven't already :)
patient2all
