The ‘Affiliate Sham’ Saga Continued…
Written by Rosalind Gardner on April 28, 2007 · Comments (8)
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing ·
Back in January, I introduced you to a little white paper called The Great Affiliate Marketing Sham which the author offered as a product preview for his upcoming product. I later used the report as an example in a marketing lesson.
Although I wasn’t overly impressed with the author’s offensive approach and foul language, I summarized the report as being a “worthwhile read”, noted that “the point that he makes about how SMART Internet marketers use affiliate marketing channels is absolutely bang-on” and I looked forward to reviewing the final product for possible promotion.
The author however took great exception to my marketing lesson… greater than I realized until yesterday…
Yesterday I received an email from PayPal notifying me that Factor X Marketing, LLC had finally paid for leads that I generated for the report. Payment took almost FIVE months!!!
That isn’t the worst of it, however. When I tried to log in to my affiliate account to confirm that the correct amount had been paid, this is what I saw…
“Sorry, you can’t login because your account has been disabled”
Wow! So, of course, I checked my links and they no longer worked and were being redirected to a page on 1ShoppingCart.com.
Hmmm.. imagine what would happen to affiliate marketing if a merchant disabled affiliate accounts any time an affiliate had a less-than-favorable comment to make about their product.
Fortunately, this is a one-in-a-million occurence and can be attributed to the fact that this merchant is a liar, thief, scam artist and extraordinarily over-sensitive little boy who can’t take a lick of critical comment. Poor him.
What do we learn from this? That we shouldn’t make honest, un-biased product appraisals?
No.
What we should learn is:
- To regularly check our affiliate links to make sure that they are still working, and to remove links that no longer work immediately.
- Furthermore, when your gut tells you that the merchant may be a scam artist, don’t affiliate with them.
- Lastly, do whatever you can to alert other affiliates to the scam.
Any other suggestions? Please post your comment below.
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Comments
8 Responses to “The ‘Affiliate Sham’ Saga Continued…”
Nancy P Redford on May 1st, 2007 2:35 am
After reading how long you waited for payment it is
a surprise you got anything at all.
Who knows what secrets ae being held behind that login!
It’s always good practice to inform others of such a dilemma
to help them avoid the same.
Thanks for the heads up Ros,
Nancy
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Internet Marketing Campus » Archive » When Affiliate Programs Go Wrong on May 1st, 2007 16:26 pm
[…] Gardner talks candidly about a more than problematic merchant who apparently was not impressed with her critical review. After five months she finally received […]
Ruth on May 3rd, 2007 22:49 pm
Hey Ros,
I’m waiting on commission from a similar program that launched back in late February. I emailed him about my commission and he claimed they had database problems but they were correcting it. And this is suppose to be a well known marketer. Whatever! To date…still no commission.
It burns me up that we work hard for these jokers and they turn around and steal our money.
By the way, thanks for always delivering great content!
Ruth
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Dave on May 3rd, 2007 23:30 pm
Hi, Everyone!
I have been doing affiliate and associate programs for over 4 years now, And yes I have been scammed plenty of times from affiliate programs, Sure I would love to take the website owner out back and use him for target practice, but after months of figuring a way to get back at the website crooks, is to keep track of them and make a list of how they scammed me and how long it took before I realized I was being scammmed from being an affiliate for there website etc. And I can so far tell you this, I am going to get revenge on every website on the internet for scamming me and thousands other affiliates! they may think there big shots ripping off there affiliates they way they do, but what I have in store ffor them will make every affiliate out there the happiest marketers in the world! All I can say right now is in August I will have my New website up and running full board! and I will have quite a few of the Big boys backing my website! I will be Hiring at least 100,000 affiliates to help with closing of all scam, fraud websites on the internet! You website owners who feel it’s OK to rip your affiliates off, BE WARNED WE WILL BE COMING TO PUT YOU OUT OF BUSINESS!!!!
Thank you for your time! Dave! The next BIG Thing!
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Keith Bray on May 4th, 2007 0:13 am
Hi Rosalind and friends, wow this is an eye opener. I’m just starting out in affiliate marketing and am worrying that I’m taking too much time to get up and running. Research, research and more research is what seems to be taking the time, but there in lies the lesson I suppose. I like to thank you and congratulate you on the quality of your site and the NTP emails I get regularly are a god send. It would be so easy for an inexperienced starter like me to fall foul of unscrupulous marketers like the one cited and we wouldn’t have a cat’s chance in hell of getting them to hand over what’s due even after five months. It is undoubtedly your high profile and respect in the industry that has persuaded him to pay you your dues. I’d like to thank you for spreading the news and by doing so teaching newcomers like me and many others the hard lessons of internet life. You’re a diamond in the rough. Keep up the good work.
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Robert Lipscomb on May 4th, 2007 6:54 am
When I was a little boy, I wished I could live in the Wild West and be free to make my fortune my way…Well, I guess I got my wish because now I’m in the Wild West of internet affiliate world. Thanks again for your continuing insights and warnings about The Bad Lands of the affiliate Wild West.
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ConveniaCash.com on May 4th, 2007 15:35 pm
wow — thanks for the major heads up!
You bring up some excellent reminders and while acknowledgin now this guy is a major scammer — the truth is the big dogs engage repeatedly in small scams every day
For instance the way CJ treats affiliates: They and their merchants have their whole system set up to REGULARLY FREQUENTLY expire links so quickly and so often, so chaotically that affiliates are always getting ripped off and denied rightfully due commissions or referral fees. I def think that’s a pretty major way of scamming affiliates now that i think of it.
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Murray Johnson on May 14th, 2007 1:29 am
Hi Roz: As usual, you come through with just the right info. I would have been on the phone immediately with Paypal. I think you will find that they are fair, and well equiped to handle scammers. Keep up the good work. I have learned a lot by keeping up with your newsletters. It’s hard being a “newbie”.
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