The Love/Hate Relationship

So- this week I decide to visit one of the remote offices of Moss Affiliate Marketing in sunny San Diego. I thought it would be fun to drive- so I went to Expedia and within 5 minutes had the best deal on a rental car, saved $150/night off the Sheraton, and had a majorly discounted 3-for-1 pass for the wild animal park, zoo, and sea world. I love the internet!!

So- this week I went to the rental car company to pick up my car to head to San Diego. They were not familiar with my reservation- and subsequently spent the next 15 minutes trying to find it- to no avail. I figured out that my session timed out while placing the order- when refreshed, the cookie pulled my trip dates for my Arkansas trip a week later. Needless to say- I had all pre-paid reservations for the wrong dates. And, because I had such deep discounts- nothing was transferable without a 1.5 hour phone call!! I hate the internet!!

When I think about Advertiser’s view of Affiliates- it holds consistent with our love/hate relationship with internet/technology.

Advertisers want to love you, get very excited at your successes- but also proceed with such caution. They are guarded, because too many times an affiliate showed promise only to discover later there were issues- and they had to spend extensive time internally and externally fixing the problem. It is not easy to filter the good from the bad.

Sometimes advertisers come off as ‘holier than thou’… and it is a turn off to several good affiliates. Advertiser agreements are full of language top to bottom of what affiliates can not do. It seems it would be much more in the spirit of a partnership to give them encouragement and highlighting what they can do and the opportunity available.

We have to cut them a little slack- as several affiliates can be exceptionally rogue. Current overseas frauders are exceptionally savvy at tricking systems to generate revenue and fictitious customers. Some of these shysters are even hiring American actors to field the phone call from advertisers when they apply for a program. These actors have a script of what websites they ‘will be sending traffic from’, what their marketing efforts will be, etc. When really a bot will be generating all fake traffic/consumers. Outrageous. Knowing this helps you to understand where the Advertisers are coming from when they appear to be less than helpful. They deal with this behavior all day.

So, now I am sitting on my balcony in San Diego. The 11th floor view of Downtown San Diego, the harbor, the USS Ronald Reagan and Midway, planes landing to my left- beautiful. I would have never taken this trip on a whim without the internet. My relationship with technology is definitely love/hate… but far more love than hate. Affiliates- realize sometimes you are catching the Advertisers in a ‘hate’ moment. But ultimately there is far more love.

PS- this is the second draft of this article... when I went to paste it into my blog earlier- it disappeared into cyber space. Isn't it ironic- don't you think?