There are times when I seriously wonder about this industry and whether it will ever throw off its wild west image and gain the legitimacy that so many of us want. At the moment our image is so poor that many adult webmasters are too embarrassed to admit to their family and friends where they earn their income.
Legitimacy will come eventually but we have a lot of growing up to do before that can happen. One of the biggest problems that we need to overcome is the widely held perception that every sponsor shaves.
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"...webmasters are not blameless ... but they are entitled to be treated fairly." |
Hardly a week goes by without a thread starting on some message board somewhere about a sponsor shaving sign-ups from their affiliates. Whether there actually is some form of stats shaving or not is extremely hard to prove. Hits counted by affiliates can be totally different to what the sponsor counts. A quick glance at the figures published by The Statistician show an incredible variation.
While variations like that are probably more accounted for by simple software problems they do nothing to instil confidence in the affiliates who are battling to get surfers to sign-up with their sponsors.
Nor is the situation helped when software developers post on webmaster message boards offering new stats tracking programs for sponsors and those programs clearly offer the purchaser the ability to include a shave percentage.
At the moment affiliates really are at the mercy of the sponsors. We have no way of proving that we are not having sales shaved and so it is only to be expected that there will be public complaints. Some people are content to live with the situation as long as the bottom line on their checks is sufficient to meet their needs but others are not.
The problem will be resolved just as soon as there is some transparency in the industry and sponsors are prepared to have their books audited. Of course there is resistance to that suggestion but it just may be that if a sponsor can be guaranteed to be completely ethical then they will attract a much better standard of affiliate.
The way in which sponsors deal with their affiliates also needs to be examined. Obviously cheating by webmasters does occur. False sign-ups with sponsors who operate pay-per-signup programs are not uncommon. Hit-bot generated hits targeting pay-per-click sponsors has just about driven that business model right off the map.
So webmasters are not blameless here but they are entitled to be treated fairly. Some sponsors certainly do treat webmasters fairly but others you just have to wonder about. I have no problem with sponsors who drop affiliates when they are caught cheating; that is entirely fair and reasonable.
However there are some who are prepared to drop affiliates for reasons that are not so obvious. Take an example I came across the other day. A webmaster I know had been sending a sponsor 100% AVS traffic and was getting a few sign-ups.
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He was expecting a check for just $80.00 and when it didn't arrive he contacted the sponsor. To his amazement he was told that his account had been terminated because of fraud. When he asked for details he was told that they would not give him any further information... but they would let him sign up for a new affiliate account.
What are outsiders to think of an industry that does business in this manner? I'm sure that they could be forgiven for thinking that we were all no better than the carpet-baggers of the old west.
If we really are a genuine industry that operates on sound business principles then I guess that it is time that we started acting like one. Is there any other industry where competitors and affiliates attack each other in public with such ferocity?
When was the last time you saw Coke and Pepsi attack one another in the way that occurs in this industry?
In some ways the industry message boards are doing us no favours by allowing sponsors to attack one another and make savage allegations about each other's business practices. Certainly insiders can get some good laughs at the expense of others but at the same time the image that such behaviour presents to the outside world does no good for any of us.
Is it time for some form of independent arbitration within the industry to handle disputes between affiliates and sponsors? Something along those lines might remove the never-ending flow of shaving and cheating allegations from the message boards where they do so much damage to the industry's image.
Of course not every sponsor or affiliate would be happy to accept such arbitration but webmasters would undoubtedly feel much more comfortable working with sponsors if both parties knew that there was an independent umpire that could rule on any matters of dispute.
If we want to ensure that our industry is given the legitimacy that it deserves then we all have to work towards making it look more like an industry rather than a bunch of squabbling no-hopers.