Affiliate Trust

This is going to be a quite cynical treatise addressing the feasibility of an affiliate marketing industry organization. It will probably make some people angry, including Affiliate Trust members. They may ask, “what motivated you to post such a rant?”. Observation, experience, and realization have led to the conclusions expressed here.

In my year at the ABW (A Best Web) forum I contributed a great deal of time and comment toward becoming a member of the community. I was asked by Haiko, the forum administrator, to serve as a moderator, which I gladly agreed to. That was quite a revealing, and sometimes entertaining vantage point for observing the inner works of affiliate marketing.

In November, the One Cause/LinkShare debacle surfaced. Many ABW members ranted and raved about the inequities of the merchant/network/affiliate relationship and the unfairness of some marketing methods. Ideas were thrown around, frustration was expressed, anger led to insult, people were banned, and the sources of the controversy became silent… a typical ABW experience. It seemed like an ideal time to gather all this disdain into a viable force to attack some of the inequities that affiliates find themselves on the short end of. So I approached Haiko about firing up the Affiliate Voice organization that he had birthed. By then there was an AV logo and a false store front but no substance. He refused my suggestion and my offer to help.

Since all Haiko wanted to do was rant, and still feeling like something could be done to support and strengthen the affiliate dimension of affiliate marketing, I started fielding some ideas on the forum. There were a lot of members who agreed and would be willing to support the cause. So Affiliate Trust was born.

The premise was to base our entire organization on communication and education. It would be geared toward influencing merchants having affiliate marketing programs. We began working on compiling a database of contact information for distributing multimedia presentations about profitable and unprofitable marketing methods. The parasite methods of ones like One Cause would be exposed as commission sucking techniques to avoid. We had several different projects in progress simultaneously that included video examples of detrimental marketing methods.

We needed contributing members to accomplish the AT goals. The contributions were not monetary, but time and expertise. So the membership drive began. Posts at ABW asking for help in achieving the AT goals were met with positive comments and a few volunteers were garnished. Haiko was supportive as expressed in private communications with me.

Here’s the kicker… the very outspoken ones who seemed so supportive during the One Cause explosion in November were more or less absent from the roster of volunteers when the time came to put action to their words. What’s more, some who went so far as to join AT went no further than posting once that “I’m here to help”, and then disappearing.

To add insult to injury, when trying to recruit those same people who openly expressed their disdain for the One Cause scheme, I was apparently perceived as a threat to the sovereignty of ABW, and viciously tarred and feathered and dragged through ABestWeb like a rapist and run out of town on a rail. This speaks of a double standard practiced by the ABW administration and some members. I still haven’t gathered the courage and donned enough armor to take a look at the text of that tar and feathering. I’m advised that I should delete it and never look.

So here’s the conclusion I’ve come to. Affiliate marketing is made up of individual, independent, small business people who have loosely bound contracts with merchants to provide Internet advertising services. They, for the most part, have no relation with peer affiliates and operate independently to maximize their profits and advance their own businesses. They make business decisions based on profit and return on investment. They don’t seem to be interested in the time and effort required in banning together with other affiliates in attempts to accomplish a goal, that based on this assumption, is extracurricular. Deep down, they probably know that no self composed affiliate bill of rights, best practices, seal of approval, or any other device, can be imposed on the industry in general, or particularly on other facets of an industry where the merchants [and networks] they affiliate with are as independent as they. I highly doubt that free coffee mugs or t-shirt slogan contests will be any motivation in persuading potential members to fork over their hard earned money or time.

So I begin to wonder if other organizations are seeing more success in attracting members than Affiliate Trust. If so, I would think the numbers would be touted and displayed for all to see. What are the Performance Marketing Alliance numbers? What are the Affiliate Voice Numbers. What are the Affiliate Trust numbers? If Affiliate Trust had thousands, you can bet they’d be prominently displayed on our site. I even removed the Affiliate Trust member count from public view. It represented a dismal expression of the true desire of affiliate marketers to contribute in any appreciable way to the health and welfare of the industry.

So as the parade turns the corner and only the fading beat of the throbbing bass drum remains, affiliate marketers will turn back to their monitors and return in step to the beat of their own drum.

AffililateTrust.org
Forum.AffiliateTrust.org