Here's an interesting scenario that's just come up for me. I've done some quite good work with an independent program over the past couple of months, and it's been a nice, unexpected success. That same independent program has just joined one of the major networks. I guess they would do this in order to reach out to new affiliates etc.

Now, it will be more convenient for me if I just switch my links over to the new networks links, and have the earnings paid to me along with other network earnings without the need to create invoices, which I currently do for the independent program.

The commission is the same on both programs, so I can't see any downside from me switching to the network program. The only downside, as far as I can tell, is for the merchant themselves who were able to pay me direct and would now have to pay me through a network, and therefore, have to pay the network too.

So it seems to me, it's in the merchant's interest for me to stay working direct and they should really incentivise me staying with them through giving me a better commission rate. But do I have the cheek to actually asking them for a bit more? Should I ? Would you ? If you would ask them for more money, how would you put it without looking excessively greedy?

I suppose one option is to just switch over and do what suits me best. If I am significant enough for it to be noticeable (quite possibly that won't even be the case), they may contact me to get me back on the independent program and make their own offer of an incentive. Another way that could play out is they could kick me off the network program and tell me it's direct or nothing, since we already had a relationship which I guess would be understandable too!

Labels: affiliate network, independent

Do you think an affiliate network's job is strictly as a facilitator, connecting merchants with products to promote, with affiliates that have sites or mechanisms that allow them to promote said products?

Or do you think that affiliate networks should actually be helping affiliates to earn more. Of course it could be said they do already help affiliates. All of their innovations and widgets etc are there to help the affiliate earn more I guess, but I like to think how they could go even further and what maybe I would do if I woke up tomorrow and found myself in charge of an affiliate network.

One of the things that an affiliate network could do is to link to its affiliates sites. Affiliate Network homepages often have a decent Google Pagerank and could be considered authority domains. Affiliates often have new sites which need the helping hand of incoming links. So how about affiliate networks giving their affiliates a little boost with a plain text link.

Now, how would this work. There's loads of affiliates, and many of them, like me, have loads of websites. They surely wouldn't all deserve a link but how about if you could nominate one quality site which you wanted to receive some link love, after being approved by a moderator from the network. Even then, there might be hundreds of links and a page with that many outbound links might not be helpful anyway, so a page on the network site could perhaps just show a randomised selection of 50 sites from their database of affiliate nominated sites. Another option would be to break them down into categories and create a directory.

Most affiliate networks, I think, tell you which merchants they work with. Why not be open and proud about the good quality affiliate content based sites they have on their books.

One consideration from the network's point of view would be, why should it link to your affiliate site when you might be promoting merchants on other networks at the same time or instead of the original links and I think that would be a fair point to make. I'm not even sure if there's an answer to that, except maybe you would qualify for the incoming link (and possibly other perks, such as better commissions) by committing that site to work exclusively with the merchants of that network?

Or is this idea fatally flawed? Let me know if you think this could never work in practice.

Another idea I had, which I can't remember if I mentioned before, would be for affiliate networks to operate private noticeboards within their control panels where affiliates could post up messages finding in context links from other affiliates. Affiliates understand what other affiliates need in terms of links and if you help them in their linking strategies, that could be good for all.

What do you think - is there anything you've thought of that an affiliate network could do, beyond what it already does, to actually help you make a success of your affiliate business?

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network, ideas

I've written a couple of posts before about large product feeds and how to deal with them, most recently with a quick run through on how to use MS Query to extract only the info you want from a large product feed.

What I didn't realise is that Buy.at already offer in-built functionality to only download part of a product feed by editing the download URL.

So for instance, I wanted to download the HMV feed and only get the videogame information. Previously I had downloaded the whole thing and run an Excel macro to get what I wanted. But what I can do instead is grab the download link from within Buy.at (rather than click on it download, right click and copy URL) and then edit it to include "&LEVEL1=GAMES". Then when I access that link, it only returns the results from the product feed which match my criteria.

I found about this on a thread on Affiliates4u, and having read it, I'm not at all sure it works for all merchants, or if it does work for all merchants but you might to need to open it up first to find out what field you need, but it works fine for my purpose - getting games from the HMV feed. So, thanks Buy.at, that's a cool feature!

Now, I can't publish this unremittingly positive post without adding in a small hint of a moan. I looked in the Buy.at help pages under product feeds and saw no mention of this functionality. As I mentioned, I only found out about it when I saw it on the Affiliates4u forum. From what I can see, some merchant feeds might require you to use a category name and some might need a category ID. If you have a good feature, don't hide your light under a bushel - let every one know and document it nicely in your help pages. Obviously some people did know about it since it was discussed on the forum, but I've been faffing around for ages and could have saved time if I had known earlier.

And in other news...

John Lamerton's excellent post on comparing affiliate marketing to eating an elephant has been well publicised in the affiliate blogosphere. But it kind of got me thinking, what's it actually like to eat an elephant. I found this useful recipe - Elephant Soup from the Congo Cookbook

Labels: affiliate network, product feeds

When an affiliate sale goes through, there's one thing that I'd always like to know: what was the referring page that caused that sale.

With that simple piece of knowledge about the referring URL, I would be able to see what pages work, what ones don't, and make more of the pages that do. I could give more prominence to well converting pages and make sure more traffic goes there.

But why is it that most affiliate networks, as far as I can tell, don't tell you this? Why don't Amazon share this info with their Associates?

It's possible to see the referring URLs of your clicks in Buy.at's interface, but I can't then also see which of those clicks is linked to a sale.

Most networks do offer some form of link tracking which lets you add in an identifier so you can track the source of your sales. And if you want to get quite clever about it, you can dynamically generate those Link IDs on your site which enables you to fully track your users and see what they're up to. But I'd consider than quite an advanced method, and simply knowing the referring URL of a sale would be useful for newbies and experienced marketers alike.

So what possible reason could there be for networks not sharing this information with affiliates, or for not collecting it if they don't already.

But maybe I've been missing something obvious and some networks do tell you that. If you use a network which tells you the referring URL which led to your sales, please let me know in the comments section.

Labels: affiliate network

This eye catching affiliate incentive just dropped into my inbox and I thought it was worth sharing.

PC Tools - makers of Spyware Doctor and Registry Mechanic - are offering $20,000 worth of prize money to its top affiliates between September 1st and November 30th. The winning affiliates, determined by total sales, will receive the following prizes:

1st: $10,000
2nd: $6,000
3rd: $4,000

Should make a nice Xmas present for somebody!

You can promote PC Tools through OneNetwork. You can sign up here and promote them, alongside other programs like Symantec, Uniblue, Sega Games, Dragon Naturally Speaking and more. I read somewhere that a head honcho from OneNetwork is speaking at A4uExpo (or was it affiliate summit london?) by the way.

That sign up link was an affiliate link, I might add. I throw it in with the vain hope someone might use it one day but I've come to the realisation that it's fairly unlikely.

Actually when I started this blog, under the domain affilate-schemes.info, I intended to promote lots of multi tier schemes and make a fortune that way. I soon realised that just simply wasn't going to happen and that pot of easy money was going to remain elusive. I did refer one signup to an independent program once but the guy was useless and has never made me a penny. In fact, so sure was I that I had been barking up the wrong tree with that strategy that I later reviewed a network without any aff link and then someone posted a comment saying "shame there was no affiliate link, I'd have signed up through you". I think that can be filed under sod's law.

Labels: affiliate network, incentives, onenetwork

I find that sometimes when blogging, the easiest thing to come up with for a post is a moan or a rant so I thought I'd come over all Pollyanna and try to be positive for a change and make a list of the things I like most about the affiliate networks I've signed up to.

TradeDoubler (sign up)

Detailed reports
Tradedoubler offers some cool reporting and allows me to quickly see from what site a sale has come, the time of the click and the time of the event/sale, and very often details of the actual purchase made i.e what products have been bought.

Easy to use "pools"
It's very easy with TradeDoubler to create a rotating advert pool. Once the pool has been defined, you can easily add new banners into it and adjust the weighting to determine frequency of impressions.

Affiliate Window (sign up)

Notifier Application
I love the little ker-ching when a sale comes through. I wish I heard it more often though, and it would be nice if it told me the merchant that was involved in the sale rather than just giving the figures.

Emails with affiliate links in
Others have already pointed out the usefulness of it - emails on behalf of AW merchants that contain details of current promotions and best sellers, with the affiliate link already built in so you can quickly copy and paste them.

Paid On Results (sign up)

Deep Link Generator
I love this. You add a javascript button to your favourites, then browse the merchant site - when you find a page you want to link to, just select the Deep Link Generator from your favourites and it will come up with a link for the page you were on. Magic.

Content Units
I've not really used these yet but I've seen the demos and POR's next generation content units look great.

Buy.at (sign up)
Hmm... I like Buy.at but am struggling to think of one outstanding feature but I'm sure there is one! I like the graphs in the new interface and the way you can quickly see how you're doing this month compared to last month. I guess I like the way if you contact support, you do get a confirmation email which contains a unique reference identifier in the message subject. I guess they're using some ticket system to manage them, which at least lets you know they've received the email.

Regnow (sign up)

Custom Coupons
I mentioned before how cool it is that I can create vouchers for specific products or for a merchant as a whole and determine how much they are worth by adjusting the value, which is taken out of my commission. With software sales, commissions are usually decent percentages which gives you quite a bit to play around with.

Emails when I get a sale
Like the Affiliate Window notifier, I want to know when a sale comes through. With Regnow, I get an email. It helps me keep track of how it's performing without me needing to log in frequently.

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network

Sometimes emails come through or announcements are made from merchants or networks that really make me raise an eyebrow and wonder if this is really how professionals should be acting.

A few weeks ago, mobile phone network 3 seemingly extracted email addresses of their affiliates through Buy.at, and advised them directly that they will shortly be leaving Buy.at and give info on how to sign up to them directly.

I don't have any issue with them starting an independent program or leaving Buy.at if that's what their contract allows, but to hear this directly from 3 and not via Buy.at seemed questionable to say the least. Should 3 really be emailing Buy.at affiliates and asking them to join their in-house scheme? As it happens, Buy.at still haven't confirmed 3 are leaving and are actively promoting new 3 deals, so I'd assume they may be trying to persuade them to stay but they may already have lost affiliates to the in-house scheme.

More recently, it's been announced on Affiliate Window that Heal's - one of my favourite shops, by the way - has "exclusively" launched on their platform.

That puzzled me because I'm already an affiliate of Heal's on TradeDoubler, and I've had no communication to say that this program is ending. Awin even ask TD affiliates to email them directly for info on changing TD links to Awin ones. Until I hear otherwise from TradeDoubler (unless I've missed an email announcing it?), I consider the Heal's to be a live program and find it odd that another network is calling it an Exclusive and offering to help me change links.

Not massive issues really but small things that make me question the level of professionalism - especially in communications with affiliates - in affiliate marketing.

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network

I've recently been working on a new mobile phone website, which has got off to a very nice start thank you very much, and had to research data feeds to find the right one that would make my life easier in giving me the information I wanted.

I found varying levels of quality and usefulness in the feeds provided by merchants and thought I'd share with you, dear reader, the results of my findings. The site I was making was just going to be using the CSV as a data source and I was looking for good product data and details of tariffs I could simply pull out and display on the page. I was also only looking at merchants who provide phones from a selection of networks (so didn't look at the feeds provided directly by network operator programs)

Carphone Warehouse (Buy.at)
Decent description field giving all required information but lacking column names telling me individually the tariff name, the inclusive minutes, the inclusive texts which would make it easier to show in a tabulated form. Availability column is useful.

e2Save (Affiliate Window)
Not many products in this one - only a shade over 400 - and doesn't include separate columns for inclusive minutes or texts. Decent description field. It's not been updated since Dec, but the feed is marked "Contact merchant for update", so maybe there's a better one available directly.

Rainbow Mobiles (Affiliate Future)
Easy to download from merchant site direct, has separate columns for minutes, texts and contract length. Unhelpful header row with field names that contain spaces and special characters. No individual handset columns but the info is contained in a product name field (which contains tariff name too).

Dial A Phone (Buy.at)
Great feed, separate columns for contract length, inclusive minutes, inclusive texts, handset, free gift. This data feed has it all and is a joy to work with, and with payouts of £40 for validated signup, quite a healthy commission too.

So Dial A Phone would be my favourite, except Dial A Phone has been DISQUALIFIED because their feed is hardly ever available on Buy.at due to ongoing and recurring technical issues that have yet to be resolved because of lack of resource at the merchant end, and last time I looked, the buy.at short links in the feed weren't working properly.

This is really frustrating because the feed was so useful but if all I have is a data file that is weeks out of date and no sign of a new one, then it's no good to me.

So my preferred Mobile Phone Product Feed award goes to Rainbow Mobiles on Affiliate Future.


What I'm Playing Right Now: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 - Nintendo Wii

Labels: affiliate network, affiliate tools, mobile phone, product feeds

The affiliate blogosphere is still buzzing with the news that Google is going to open its beta cost-per-action platform to content publishers and Adwords advertisers.

It seems to me that that Adsense has an awfully big reach and there's a lot of small time website owners out there who will be happy to add these CPA ads to their websites and will effectively be entering the affiliate marketing tent - albeit at the blunt end of how we understand affiliate marketing at the moment, and lacking the nuanced, relationship based approach that many are used to.

Publishers will be able to select relevant products and services from a base of Adwords advertisers and put related adverts on their site. We don't know yet which form the adverts will take, but looking at Adsense Referrals, they started with banners and moved onto text ads (albeit still Javascript generated) to meet publisher demands.

Assuming it's a success - and I'll assume for now it will be - and more people will be taking notice of the pay per performance model, what will follow?

Sure, I don't see this in anyway killing off (all of) the current affiliate networks - although maybe it will cause some consolidation. It will lack the human networking factor that allows new partnerships to develop and flourish. It will be lacking, to begin with I'm sure, the more advanced tools like data feeds (unless they go the whole hog and bring out web services and an API). Super affiliates, and those aiming to be so, and technically advanced affiliates will surely demand more than Google is likely to be offering and I imagine that's where the affiliate networks should position themselves.

But if enough publishers and advertisers take up with Google's offering, maybe the centre of gravity in the CPA space will shift in that direction and the alternative networks should be looking at sharpening their technical lead to make sure they have a sufficiently advanced offering to keep the interest of publishers. This might be the kick up the backside they need to offer better tools to publishers and the clever ones may even benefit from gaining new publishers who have had their appetite whetted by what Google has offered, and now want to take it to the next level.

Whatever happens, it's sure to be an interesting. As I alluded to yesterday, my best success online has been with Adsense Referrals and I'll certainly be excited to see the platform expand to include more products and services.

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network, google

A few weeks ago, I received this email from an account manager at a major network:

I hope you are well – I’ve been looking into your account and due to the success you’ve previously experienced with the XXX programme I thought you may be interested in an excellent new programme which has recently launched on XXX.

Now, this struck me as flannel immediately because my "success" on the X'd out programme was limited to one sale. But putting that aside, I thought I'd sign up with this new programme anyway and give them a go across of a few related websites. I even got to work on a content page based around their product feed. I soon realised two problems with the feed: none of the deep links worked and there was a duplicate header row which was a nuisance.

I promptly emailed these findings back to the account manager, expecting the same breathless enthusiasm as I found in his first email as he promptly dealt with the problem and we could then get on and maybe make some sales. But no, what did I get back? Nothing. Not a sausage. If it was a programme I was more attached to, I'd have followed it with up him but I decided to leave it and move on.

I'm sure they're all mostly great people doing their best, but from an affiliate point of view, I've never been left short of disappointments with all the major UK affiliate networks for really the most basic kind of things. Is it really that hard to get right?

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network

It's always great when a merchant operates a discount code so you can promote them to your users with that extra angle of "use this code to get your discount" etc.

But my much preferred method of discount codes is the one available on Regnow.com for all the software available to buy through their merchants.

Say the commission on a piece of software is 40%. That 40% is yours to do with whatever you like. If you want to login and create a 20% discount code to offer your users, that's up to you. Heck, if you're feeling charitable you could give the whole commission amount back as a discount. You put your own characters into the discount code generated to make it "fit" the site you're promoting it from. And there's loads of useful option: offer the discount on an entire range from a merchant, or just one item. Or even make it available if they buy another item at full price.

It's really a useful system and one of the reasons I really like using Regnow (aff link)

Labels: affiliate network, affiliate tools, regnow

Buy.at launched its redesigned management area back in December and has been running it alongside the older interface. The previous management pages were obviously primitive and frankly didn't look very good, but to be honest, I've carried on using it rather than the new one because I'm a creature of habit. But I was reading that when we do things differently from our routine, we create new neural pathways in our brain, and I'm all for that, so today I checked out Buy.at Management Area Version 3.



First of, you have to say it looks great. It has a nice clean design with plenty of use of white space and it just looks modern and a vast improvement.

Upon logging in, the first thing you see is your monthly overview which you can change to other time periods using the drop down. Personally I'd prefer it to default to an overview of the day's activity rather than the month - or at least give me the option as to which I want as my default.

Drilling down into the reports, I clicked on my sales total. It listed the transactions made but didn't tell me the URL referrer, which I think is pretty useful to know. When I click into the clicks total, it does tell me the URL referrer so the info is there but doesn't seem to be displayed in the sales reports. Drill down further into the clicks and it shows you at a glance which banners and adverts people clicked on which is handy.

Getting hold of banners and creatives is easily done. I wanted to download some product feeds and this was easily achieved too, with the product feed page telling me how many items there are in the feed and the age of the feed. The feed could be downloaded, as before I think, in CSV, XML, Pipe Delimited and Simple CSV.

I grabbed some banners and subjected to them the accessibility test, which I did on most of the UK networks recently. Unfortunately the banner code created still doesn't use the alt attribute on the image, failing one of the most basic accessibility tests.

I took a look at Buy.at's introduction to the interface and these are the new features then say the new management area benefits from:

Faster reporting and data extraction
Increased access to more relevant data and statistics
Customisable and saveable reports
Improved account analysis functions
Printable and downloadable reports
Sub accounts
Web services
Intuitive navigation
Easy to use help function

So, what can I say in summary: It definitely looks better and I believe it is better. It hasn't blown me away in terms of function but I want to find out more about he web services and I want some better information about the referring url which led to the click which led to the sale - but that may well be there and I might have just overlooked it. Having had a play, I'll be sticking with it and ignoring version 2 from now on.

P.S. I hope once they have fully migrated to v 3.0, the login page won't do that annoying thing in Firefox of saying "you have been logged out" when I login into the site, making me log in twice unless I specifically remember to log out when I leave the site.

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network, buy.at

There was a report a few weeks ago which said that most websites are still failing disabled web users by not conforming to the most basic accessibility standards.

I try, as much as I can, to follow some of the basic rules. I don't always manage it but it's usually there in the back of my mind when I'm making a site. But as an affiliate, not all of the code on my site has come from me - I have to rely on the code provided to me by the affiliate network.

I thought it would be useful to conduct a quick survey of the code provided by affiliate networks for image banner links to see which followed probably the single most basic, and easy to implement, accessibility recommendation - the alt attribute on an image.

Often you will get the choice of a Javascript or HTML link - for this survey I will look at the HTML code produced for banners, since Javascript has issues of its own which mean its often not suitable at all for disabled users.

Affiliate Future
No Alt Attribute

Affiliate Window
No Alt Attribute

TradeDoubler
No Alt Attribute

Buy.At
No Alt Attribute

Paid On Results
Alt Attribute Provided!!!

Commission Junction
No Alt Attribute

Webgains
Alt Attribute Provided!!!

LinkShare
Alt Attribute Provided!!!

So in the survey, it's well done to Linkshare, Webgains and Paid On Results. And a disappointing result from the other networks.

Seems to me that it would be very easy to create functionality to automatically add in the alt attribute to banner codes ("advertising banner for merchant name") when they generate the link code if the networks were interested in providing accessible code to their affiliates.

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network, web accessibility

I noticed that a fair number of people link to Buy.at using what looks one of their affiliate style links, but takes you to Buy.at itself. The link is in the form http://joinbuy.at/username

When I saw that, I assumed there must be some programme for referring new affiliates to Buy.at, like lots of other networks run. But I asked them and they said they have no such scheme.

So why do some people link to Buy.at with that link? Is it some legacy thing? Or is there some private referral scheme going on?

Answers on a postcard please.

Speaking of Buy.at, I'm finally starting to see a regular trickle of sales come in. In fact, looking across most networks, seems like sales are definitely picking up. I hope it stays like that all the way to Christmas!

Labels: affiliate network, buy.at

Commission Junction gets a bit of stick for not making product feeds as easily available as other networks such as Affiliate Window and Buy.At.

But could they turn around affiliate opinion with their launch of web services and their own API?

We are pleased to announce the launch of Commission Junction's Web Services. These services have been tested in beta for the past several months and because of their success are now being made available to a wider audience.

Web Services are made for tech-savvy publishers who are looking to increase their ability to promote their advertisers and shape their network environment. With Web Services, you can create innovative applications to extend the power of your affiliate program through enhanced Product Catalogue functionality and advertiser searches. Use Web Services to connect directly to Commission Junction's technology and create custom applications to access the specific data that matters most to your visitors.

This is the first in a series of Web Services releases and includes the following Application Programming Interfaces (APIs):

• Product Catalogue Access – This API offers real-time access to the Product Catalogue database. Using it, you can find a product or group of products to display on your site since the API enables keyword searches as well as item specific searches by UPC, manufacturer, model number, advertiser, SKU and more.
  
• Link Search Functionality – Publishers can use this API to search for links through a SOAP interface using a set of parameters to return link results that include information like their relationship status and link code that can be used to capture publisher referrals. In addition, you can find the perfect link for display on your site using search options that are very similar to those available via the CJ Account Manager™, including searching by link type and size, advertiser, language and other link attributes.
  
• Advertiser Search Functionality – This API allows publishers to search for advertisers through a SOAP interface using a set of parameters to return advertiser results that include information such as their relationship status and program terms with the advertiser.

As part of this launch, we are also unveiling our new Web Services developer site, located at http://webservices.cj.com. This site contains helpful news, resources, sample code and forums. Use this site to get information on how to use Web Services and share your best practices.

Use Web Services to boost your revenue and develop applications today! Let the innovation begin!

Labels: affiliate network, affiliate tools, commission junction

OK, so this isn't new news. In fact, its verging on old news. But I didn't mention it at the time so thought I'd throw it in now anyway.

Affiliate Window has changed its name to Digital Window, "due to the launch of new products and services", apparently. I'm not sure if their range of new services will extend as far as dealing with existing support tickets and answering emails, but we can only hope so, eh.

Labels: affiliate network, affiliate window

Buy.At is a UK based affiliate network, boasting over 150 programs from leading merchants such as:

• 3 Mobile
• Carphone Warehouse
• Euroffice
• John Lewis
• La Senza
• Marks & Spencer
• MBNA
  

The user interface is straight forward and easy to navigate. It perhaps seems a little primitive compared to some of the offerings from other affiliate networks but it does what's required of it. It makes it very easy to access product feeds in CSV or XML format, which is a very useful feature.

Another cool thing which I've not seen elsewhere is that they have come up with a cool system to generate short affiliate links. They seem to register a domain name for each of their merchants, and combine that with your user id to create a much shorter affiliate url than other networks provide. Not sure how useful that is, but it's a nice touch.

One limitation is that it seems to allow you to register only one website, which means that if you have plenty of websites, it's not immediately clear to the merchant how you can serve them because you can't tell them the website in particular you want to use their program on. I came up against this problem once, and the support team were quick and efficient in sorting it out for me.

I think payment is only available by cheque at the moment, which is another limitation.

All in all, a decent network with merchants you would want to promote and a useful support team. Find out more by visiting Buy.At

Labels: affiliate network, buy.at, network review

I recently started a website called Problem Exchange, which is a place people can post their problems and get advice from anyone that cares to reply.

Some of the problems posted have taken on a rather personal bent because of some keyword advertising I did, which marketed it as an agony aunt website.

Two of the problems posted seemed to have aroused the ire of TradeDoubler. One problem, labelled Dogging, was from a bloke who was thinking of going Dogging and another was from someone who suspected their partner had been looking at "teen porn" - with the almost unananimous response being she should goto the police. Fairly responsible stuff you might have thought.

Not so according to TradeDoubler who took the rather extreme action of "permanently deleting" my account and withdrawing the commission that is currently outstanding. I wonder if they will be returning their commission to the merchants.

Their email was as follows:

Hi Rob,

After conducting a checks of affiliate sites on the TradeDoubler system, we have identified that your site as a cause for concern. Your site http://www.problemexchange.com/ is of great concern to us due to the nature of the uncensored content in the forum.

Uncensored forums such as "Dogging" and "Teen Porn" are unacceptable content for our merchants and we can therefore no longer allow you to remain on the network.

We have permanently suspended your account and removed the commissions earned as a result of our investigation into this.

I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused, but we were left with no option other than to take the course of action we have done.

Regards,

Publisher Support.

It seems their "investigation" was rather shoddy as it came up with a completely flawed conclusion. They say "uncensored" forums are unacceptable, yet this is a moderated forum with posts routinely being deleted and IP addresses being banned. Users of the site also have the opportunity to report inappropriate comments. They never contacted me to enquire about the "censorship" or moderation on the site, so I really have no idea as to what form their investigation took.

Obviously the posts they mentioned are risque, so maybe they just don't like adult themed discussions? This would be believable if they hadn't been pumping out a product feed to my sites from one of their merchants offering products like "Pussy Rub", "Edible Cock Ring" and a variety of dildos and sex toys. Maybe they didn't know what "Pussy Rub" was? Someone should tell them that isn't for cats.

So where does that leave things: TradeDoubler, for no plausible or explained reason and without any warning or meaningful investigation, has permanently deleted an account and are withholding money earned from legitimate sales that would not have occured for their merchants without the hard work of an affiliate. As well as that, they have disabled my logon so I don't even have access to previous invoices etc.

I've asked TradeDoubler to elaborate on their actions but no further information has yet been forthcoming.

UPDATE

I just received this reply from TradeDoubler:

Many of our merchants would see this content as unacceptable for their brands and as such, this is the reason why your account had to be permanently ended. To be honest, many of our merchants do not like working with sites that use forums as there is always the potential for somebody to submit a posting that could be offensive and not in the interests of the merchant to be associated with it.

...

Under your original account, you broke the terms of the publisher agreement. However, you can create a new account (excluding your site http://www.problemexchange.com/ from that site) if you wish and start again as this would be a new publisher agreement.

So, the conclusion seems to be: my site was so bad it warranted the permanent suspension of my account and the loss of all outstanding commissions (none of which was earned from the site in question)... but if I want to reapply, then that's just fine and dandy. All this despite the fact that my site was no more risque than the ads that TradeDoubler itself publish on their AdFeed?

What kind of crackpot operation is this?

Labels: affiliate network, tradedoubler