However while Davids article is definitely towards the negative end of the scale, I think he’s perfectly entitled to write something like this without it being accused of being link bait. There are enough reasoned (if a little biased) points of view to back this up.

BTW - As far as I can see, all Lee has done is link to the article to generate some debate on his blog and I think it would be disapointing if your comments made him change anything.

I meet and talk to great affiliates every day who make a point of sticking to the rules, so I know there’s plenty of good ones out there, you just have to do a little sifting for the gold to rise to the top.

First of all, thanks for reading my blog. Good or bad feedback is always appreciated. Second, I’d like to take a moment to respond to some of your comments (briefly, I may try to write more later on my blog).

1. “I can only assume it was wrote as link bait.” - I wish I knew how to write good link bait articles but alas I don’t. I truely just write about whatever is on my mind at the moment. And it so happened that I had just returned from the Search Engine Strategies conference where I had had a very enlightening conversation with the former head of one of the largest affiliate programs in the US (more on that later).

2. “brand name bidding isn’t really affiliate marketing, it used to be an easy way for affiliates to reap some low hanging fruit but thats all.” Low hanging fruit that would otherwise go directly to the merchant. Thus, the merchant is not making a positive ROI on this affiliate traffic and this creates a negative feeling about affliates. In my opinion, anything that creates “positive ROI” results in “positive results for the affiliate community.” Anything with “negative ROI” has the opposite effect.

3. “no self respecting affiliate has ever been involved in spyware. Yes maybe a very small handful of bad apples did once upon a time but again they are firmly in the minority.” So I sent my article to my friend the former head of a major affiliate program (and still a very prominent figure in a different capacity in the online marketing community), and here’s what he wrote: “Good post, although no doubt in my mind that those hijacking sites/programs
are still in affect - too many affiliate managers that are naïve and/or have
incentive to look the other way (the “top” affiliates are helping them make their
number - same conflict the networks have in policing, imo).” Not that this proves anything, but he and I both agree that there are one or two major affiliates in the US that get users to download their software, then do an instant re-direct whenever the user goes to a merchant with an affiliate program to capture the commission. The user has no idea that he is getting redirected, but the affiliate gets money at the merchant’s expense. Again, we are talking about year-after-year top ‘performers’ in the US.

4.”Google’s quality score updates have pushed out the arbitrage sites and the poor quality landing page sites. Well David, we true affiliates welcome these changes. We don’t want crap landing pages and arby sites in the sponsored results either. Knocking them out of the way leaves more room for us and our high quality sites that have no problem with Google’s landing page algorithm.” Google does not differentiate between “crap affiliates” and “true affiliates.” Trust me, over time Google will do everything it can to push out ALL affiliates. I sat down with Google last year and tried to persuade them that there were different types of affiliates (though I did not use the words “good” and “crap” ), and the message I basically got was “all affiliates” are not wanted on AdWords. So whether this impacts your site now or a year from now, I’m sorry to say that it will likely eventually happen. More on this concept here: http://blogation.blogspot.com/2006/11/more-on-google-quality-score-law-of.html

5. “David argues that as affiliate marketing becomes more popular it is less “novel” to merchants. Eh? So because it is more popular it isn’t as good? I just don’t follow this argument whatsoever.” The basic argument here is that the ‘coolness’ factor of affiliate marketing no longer exists, and it’s much easier to work with one or two major partners on a PPA basis than 5000 small affiliates. I suppose I would modify this to say that if you are a high-quality, high-volume affiliate, there’s a good chance a merchant would keep you on, but if you are generating $500 of revenue a month for a merchant, I believe most merchants will eventually decide that the risk of a ‘crap affiliate’ outweighs any benefit derivered from dealing with many small affiliates.

6. “What about all of the very high quality affiliate sites out there that don’t fit into any of the above categories?” Of course there are good affiliates, my point was and is that the bad affiliates are ruining your reputation.

7. “David’s views accurately reflect what man “oustsiders” think of our industry.” For the record, I worked at Adteractive for two years heading up their paid search team. Adteractive does not have a presence in the UK, but when I was there we did over $100 million a year - all from affiliate marketing. And in my current position, I am responsible for the affiliate program for a major US merchant. When I tightened the T&Cs on our program (no trademarked keyword buying, very few coupons, etc) the revenue from affiliate marketing went way down, but the revenue for the company was not impacted. It’s hard not to draw the conclusion from that data that our affiliates were not driving ‘positive ROI’ to our company.

Anyways, what was supposed to be a short response has now made me late for work. Thanks for the comments. - David