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Avatar Went Hot: March 19, 2008 - 5:44 am
Posted By: DoshDosh 154 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.copybrighter.com)
Category: Other Social Media
Running an affiliate program is incredibly dangerous for those concerned about their online reputation.By paying people to promote your product, you are giving your affiliates (and their competitors) direct incentive to create content about you and your brand. And you have very little, if any, control over what they say about you.
8 Comments     

Comments

from cenacle 154 days ago #
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Or, you can include a way to ban any affiliates who may be affecting your rep. Simply stating this may be emough to prevent abuse. Word.

from BrettFromTibet 154 days ago #
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Cenacle,

The problem is, you can ban your own affiliates, but you can't ban affiliate competitors. They can bash you all they want.

from SlightlyShadySEO 154 days ago #
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@Brett: But they can do that without you running an affiliate program.

from BrettFromTibet 154 days ago #
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@SlightlyShady,

True enough, but affiliate marketing has developed a particularly vicious culture of negative marketing. Attacks and casting doubt aren't just reserved for people who deserve it, they are dished out as a matter of course. There is no other online "scene" I know of where you need to be more defensive about your reputation.

from cenacle 154 days ago #
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Trying to control the uncontrolable. Difficult task. Better make sure it really is affecting your rep/bottomline. Guess it depends on the situation. Take a real hard look at your metrics.

from everett 154 days ago #
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I don't think the Rich Jerk is a good example. That guy practically begs for bad publicity.

Brett you give some VERY good advice there about what to put in your terms for affiliates, registering your trademark, and nabbing up the major social networking profiles before launching the program.

IMHO, NOT having an affiliate program is WAY more dangerous to your reputation than having one. At least with an affiliate program you are giving affiliates an incentive to say your product is better than your competitor's product. And thanks for linking to my blog post about that, by the way. You have a great memory. ;-)

Secondly, unless you're working in an industry where the products or service isn't trusted (i.e. ebooks, marketing, pyramid scams, penis enlargement, porn, etc...) you don't have nearly as much to worry about. I doubt anyone is going to create a google PPC campaign with the title: "The Dirty Truth About #2 Pencils".

Great blog entry, by the way Brett. Reading what you and Mike Belasco write these days makes me really miss blogging about SEO and online marketing. But when you're not taking clients... what's the point? Can't wait to catch up with you tonight. You've come A LONG way since the last time we met over lunch. But I knew you would. And so did you. ;-)

from BrettFromTibet 154 days ago #
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Everett,

The Rich Jerk DOES beg for bad publicity, and he's the guru of teaching his n00b affiliates how to use anti-marketing to get attention. I think he started it all.

From what I've seen, affiliates now say bad stuff - as a matter of course - about a wide variety of quality information products and premium content, not just sleaze. It has to do with competition and being desperate for clicks.

from HawaiiSEO 154 days ago #
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I call it “Scare Tactic Marketing”.

You don’t need to spell everything out in the Terms & Conditions… All you need is some sort of boilerplate statement where "Affiliates are forbidden from representing [company name] and/or products in a negative manor." Then… Follow up and police your network, especially any new top performers

However… If scare tactics work… and… you don’t care about the brand equity of your get-rich-quick e-book, sugar pill or whatever… Why not be like the Rich Jerk and encourage your affiliates to use scare tactics?



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