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The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

venturebeat.com

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Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#51

Post by rwhitman »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #36
rwhitman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have paper promos and rewards cards floating around it complicates the usability of the alternatives a bit. You end up with asking people to go to custom URLs etc which results in user confusion

Discount codes shouldn't be highly usable. edit: downvoted, sigh. ok. I'll elaborate. When you give me a discount code field on your checkout page, I automatically open up a new tab and Google around for "your site name discount code". If I can find one that works, you're just losing money for absolutely no good reason. I would've happily checked out without ever thinking of saving 5% on my $50 purchase. (c'mon, $2.5…

I take it you've never taken a customer service call with an irate customer who couldn't figure out how to use their discount code correctly. If anything, they need to be the most usable part of the checkout experience, believe me

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#52

Post by aaronbrethorst »

rwhitman wrote: post #51
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discount codes shouldn't be highly usable. edit: downvoted, sigh. ok. I'll elaborate. When you give me a discount code field on your checkout page, I automatically open up a new tab and Google around for "your site name discount code". If I can find one that works, you're just losing money for absolutely no good reason. I would've happily checked out without ever thinking of saving 5% on my $50 purchase. (c'mon, $2.5…

I take it you've never taken a customer service call with an irate customer who couldn't figure out how to use their discount code correctly. If anything, they need to be the most usable part of the checkout experience, believe me

So don't have a field. Problem solved.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#53

Post by martin-adams »

dangrossman wrote: post #43
joosters wrote: post #40

If you visit the site, put stuff in your cart and get all the way to the checkout page, you must know by that point who sent them to your site. If the customer then goes away and googles for voucher codes, it shouldn't change the source. When (if?) they return, you should know they are the same person, from the same original source. How did the affiliates manage to steal these customers? It seems to me like your refe…

Affiliate networks require you put their code on the "thank you" page shown after checkout. Conditionally removing that code would be seen as an attempt to scam the network and get out of paying commissions owed. What you're proposing doesn't work anyway -- you don't know that they didn't come through an affiliate link a week prior; the cookie isn't on your domain, but you owe a commission for that referral.

"you don't know that they didn't come through an affiliate link a week prior"

Does that mean you have to fully trust the affiliate with how many referrals they claim to have made?

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#54

Post by martin-adams »

rgbrgb wrote: post #25
eps wrote: post #21

I don't follow. Where did the extra $200K in sales come from and why is he not happy about it? It sounds like there is a pool of customers that will not finish the purchase unless they can google "kogan coupon" and hit few coupon sites beforehand (even if to leave these sites emptyhanded). So the affiliates appear to help convincing on-the-fence visitors and push sales to completion. If anything, it's a clever hack.…

I can't speak to what is actually happening but I can correct your misunderstanding. The author thinks that the users who had visited affiliates' fake discount code sites (and not found discount codes) would have completed their transaction anyway if those sites had not existed.

I got the same impression. I believe the true value of these particular affiliate marketing partners are down to this very point. Do they help convert lost sales, or do they claim ownership of sales that would have completed?

The article does not explain this. What evidence suggests that those customers would have completed anyway, and has this only displaced revenue rather than increased it.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#55

Post by trg2 »

While the OP did run into some interesting problems that many of us in Internet Marketing face, I was very thrown off by the direction this post took. There was a pretty substantial lack of understanding of cookie tracking and first-click/last-click attribution.

The affiliates didn't do anything wrong here, which was ironic, because I've met affiliate marketers at conferences in Vegas, and there's PLENTY of shady stuff that some of them do. That said, none of that is taking place here.

Ranking for "name of company I'm an affiliate for" discount code is practically step 1 on the affiliate SEO checklist. This post was almost comically misleading, to be candid.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#56

Post by toble »

joosters wrote: post #40

If you visit the site, put stuff in your cart and get all the way to the checkout page, you must know by that point who sent them to your site. If the customer then goes away and googles for voucher codes, it shouldn't change the source. When (if?) they return, you should know they are the same person, from the same original source. How did the affiliates manage to steal these customers? It seems to me like your refe…

It's not so much stealing the customer as it is rescuing the order. It may not be the most ethical of techniques but they are claiming a bounty for converting abandoned carts.

Like someone else said earlier, the order process is broken by encouraging users to leave the website and potentially forget the order.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#57

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rwhitman wrote: post #51
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discount codes shouldn't be highly usable. edit: downvoted, sigh. ok. I'll elaborate. When you give me a discount code field on your checkout page, I automatically open up a new tab and Google around for "your site name discount code". If I can find one that works, you're just losing money for absolutely no good reason. I would've happily checked out without ever thinking of saving 5% on my $50 purchase. (c'mon, $2.5…

I take it you've never taken a customer service call with an irate customer who couldn't figure out how to use their discount code correctly. If anything, they need to be the most usable part of the checkout experience, believe me

What entitlement does the customer have to the discount - surely as long as it's possible to redeem it simply no one customer has a privilege to acquire it?

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#58

Post by ZoFreX »

rwhitman wrote: post #5

No 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…

Pizza Hut UK are a good example of this. They have a vouchers page on their website which (obviously) ranks very highly for "Pizza Hut vouchers". It isn't reachable from any page on their site (that I know of), but it means any price-conscious consumers that spend two minutes googling end up with a decent voucher rather than spyware installed on their machine.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#59

Post by Maxious »

chmars wrote: post #48
Maxious wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

http://www.kogan.com/au/kogan-discount-codes/ doesn't exist (anymore?): 'Sorry, we can't find the page you're looking for' Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/LSvh9Av.jpg You get, however, annoying pop-up window if you access this URL …

Remove the trailing slash (which reappears when the page loads - 304?). I guess there's multiple URLs and some rewrite magic to get to this page for maximum SEO.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#60

Post by robryan »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #57
rwhitman wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you've never taken a customer service call with an irate customer who couldn't figure out how to use their discount code correctly. If anything, they need to be the most usable part of the checkout experience, believe me

What entitlement does the customer have to the discount - surely as long as it's possible to redeem it simply no one customer has a privilege to acquire it?

You can take that view, often though that will mean the customer will just find a competitor that will work with them.
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