First Post!

Well this is my first post since jumping on the blog bandwagon. I've never been one for keeping diaries but something about having your own blog on the web appealed to me. I must admit I knew nothing about blogging really until the weekend just gone whereby I happened to stumble across this blog from Russell Beattie, a guy from the US who works for Yahoo! I found it really interesting and from there found some more blogs until I decided enough was enough and I just had to create my own! So here I am, of course I can't guarantee my blog will be as interesting as Russell's but I'll do my best :-)

Something occurred today which unfortunately happens all too often in the world of affiliate marketing. I received an email from one of the large London agencies who represent a major credit card here in the UK. Basically the email was telling me that my information regarding the consumer offer (APR, cashback rate etc.) was out of date. Fair enough. But what got me was the way that they worded it: "Can you please update this asap and we would appreciate if you would regularly check the information so that your details always remain updated." Hmm, now that wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't the fact that this was the first ever communication I received from the merchant in question or the agency representing them. What makes it worse in my book is that they never emailed me to inform me that the credit card had changed their consumer offer in the first place. I work with literally hundreds of merchants and I would expect to be informed of any major changes to the consumer offering so that I could better represent this to the public via my sites. Or am I being unreasonable? All I expect really is to be treated as a partner and a legitimate route to market. This isn't happening at the moment with a majority of affiliate merchants but maybe they would get better results and create longer lasting partnerships if it did?

What I'm listening to right now: John Legend - Get Lifted (album)