There are over 600 sites purporting to offer "Improvely coupon codes" despite there never being any kind of coupon code box on my signup form. It's a bit ridiculous, especially since none of these sites are being paid an affiliate commission for their fake coupons.
The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
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Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
#12You have a discount code at your checkout? So basically instead of capturing the sale you're ASKING the buyer to google for discount codes.
Think of a sneakier way to give people discount codes that doesn't show it RIGHT THERE ON THE FORM. It makes me feel like I'm getting ripped off when I see discount code and I don't have one.
Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
#13No shit. This is why you create a page on your site called "Discount Codes". You put in an email signup and offer a small discount coupon. You get the email address in case they abandon and you can re-market to them, and the discount so that they won't abandon, because they found what they were looking for and will complete the transaction. Google will rank you high because its your page and you catch at least some o…
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Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
#14There are over 600 sites purporting to offer "Improvely coupon codes" despite there never being any kind of coupon code box on my signup form. It's a bit ridiculous, especially since none of these sites are being paid an affiliate commission for their fake coupons.
My guess is that they auto-generate pages based on keyword scraping from Google trends, news sites and so on.
Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
#15There are over 600 sites purporting to offer "Improvely coupon codes" despite there never being any kind of coupon code box on my signup form. It's a bit ridiculous, especially since none of these sites are being paid an affiliate commission for their fake coupons.
For their fake coupons to your site, that is. If someone ultimately clicks through to another site, the affiliate may still get their commission.
Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
#16No shit. This is why you create a page on your site called "Discount Codes". You put in an email signup and offer a small discount coupon. You get the email address in case they abandon and you can re-market to them, and the discount so that they won't abandon, because they found what they were looking for and will complete the transaction. Google will rank you high because its your page and you catch at least some o…
Which is exactly what Kogan did and it's now the #2 result when you search for Kogan coupons
www.kogan.com/au/kogan-discount-codes/
> Regular customers of Kogan know that our products are ALWAYS discounted. Very rarely do we release a Kogan Discount Code or a Kogan Discount Coupon
The #1 result? A scammy looking site but don't worry because "59 people have used this today!" (unsuccessfully of course)
Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
#17So it sounds like there's an opportunity for someone here. If you read to the end of the article, you'll note that the actual scam is in spinning up discount code sites. We need a Rapgenius for online discount codes. Right now, it's full of scummy, crappy sites (just like lyric sites), but could be easily improved with a simple interface, minimal advertising, and collaboratively sourced content.
We recently launched (http://www.robotoatmeal.com/pages/about/) to address this. We're addressing the scam coupon issue by surfacing real time usage data. We also try to validate the coupon before it's published on the site.
While I think we can definitely do better (the data is pretty sparse in some areas), I believe the collaborative / real time validation approach will lead to a better experience for shoppers.
Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
#18You have a discount code at your checkout? So basically instead of capturing the sale you're ASKING the buyer to google for discount codes. Think of a sneakier way to give people discount codes that doesn't show it RIGHT THERE ON THE FORM. It makes me feel like I'm getting ripped off when I see discount code and I don't have one.
Exactly. The customers are clearly feeling cheated when they don't have a coupon code. Enough to leave the site and start googling around in the hope of not being a sucker. As it is now, even when customers do come back and place a sale, they will never know if they paid a premium because they couldn't find that coupon. Not a good way to treat a customer, I think.
Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
#19What about limiting affiliates with advertising a Kogan related keywords and even some traffic sources? I've seen such limitations for many of brands represented in the affiliate networks.
If managed properly affiliate marketing definitely works and yes, it's worth expanding to.
Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam
#20We're working on a solution to allow merchants to get users to unlock coupon codes directly on their site (without having to go via an affiliate).
Seeing stellar results so far with plenty of feedback for improvement (we're in beta). If anyone is interested in helping us test the concept further, hit me up!