Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

venturebeat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 123 posts

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#91

Post by antr »

johnward wrote: post #83
antr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to ask the same question. The post comes across as if those $200k were on top of baseline revenues.

Right. He made it seems like he got an additional 200k in revenue and then proceeded to reduce commissions to zero. Some might call this scamming the affiliate. After the affiliate has put the work in to drive the traffic to your site then you fuck them over on commissions. To be honest there is a lot more fraud on the advertiser side of the deal. Conversion shaving, reducing commission on high performing affiliates,…

I don't think this is "scamming the affiliate", but simply testing the price elasticity of demand. Nothing wrong with that.

By simply testing different pricing models the author observed this demand anomaly, which leads him to uncover the platform's modus operandi.

I just wanted to point out that that part of the story is not that clear/well explained.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#92

Post by cruise02 »

ScottWhigham wrote: post #74
megfitz wrote: post #39

The major red flag for me in this article was the line "He couldn’t really answer the questions, but I agreed to run a small trial. Based on our results, that marketing consultant is no longer with us." It really colored the rest of the article for me - making me incredibly skeptical of the manager and his instinct, opinions and judgement. It was no surprise then when the reason he was "scammed" was because his check…

The major red flag for me in this article was the line "He couldn’t really answer the questions, but I agreed to run a small trial. Based on our results, that marketing consultant is no longer with us." It really colored the rest of the article for me - making me incredibly skeptical of the manager and his instinct, opinions and judgement. That's interesting. Here's an article by someone you don't know and, within th…

> ...file it away for verification/thinking as we read the article, then revisit that after we've been presented much more of the article.

That's exactly what skeptical means.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#95

Post by bendtheblock »

iopq wrote: post #12

You 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.

What we do as an e-commerce provider is use the label 'Gift Voucher'. This reduces the drop off considerably as customers assume that this is something that would have been sent to them already.

Our clients just have to mention in their marketing material to their customers 'gift voucher code' rather than 'coupon code'.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#96

Post by aestra »

brorfred wrote: post #82
martin-adams wrote: post #49

"So basically, the affiliates are claiming commission on a sale that was going to happen anyway" You have someone in your checkout process. Why on earth would you give them a reason to leave that process and go search for a discount code if you know they won't find any? Assuming they will come back doesn't feel right. What if their search for a discount code didn't prove there wasn't one, but did prove a competitor w…

isn't having a form field for discount codes at checkout a very common approach? I'd say that 90-95% of the websites I normally buy stuff from use it. Amazon does...

But the author clearly states that they "rarely have any publicly available discount codes active on our site."

Why have a checkout process where you are going to send a non insignificant percent of your users on a wild goose chase, possibly annoying them and/or distracting them when they were about to buy a product. Then blame your affiliates for "scamming" you. It doesn't make much sense.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#97

Post by IanDrake »

epoxyhockey wrote: post #4

I was expecting to read about click fraud, but it was just a newbie's experience with running an affiliate program. Kogan had some wild expectation that the majority of affiliate traffic would be first-time visitors to his site. When he uses google analytics to estimate that only 1.6% of referrals were new customers, he trashes affiliate marketing as a business. Unfortunately, he spent no time thinking about how to o…

Yeah, he seems to be painting a very broad picture based on an affiliate system that captures referrals at the wrong point in time.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#98

Post by winstonian »

He doesn't know how to manage affiliate networks properly, IMO. For starters, make the affiliates apply to advertise with you, and if using search require them to use a negative keyword list that you send them (e.g. "Kogan discount codes")

Affiliates put their own cash (and ass) on the line for companies. At least have the decency to tell them what you allow and don't allow.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#99

Post by martin-adams »

brorfred wrote: post #82
martin-adams wrote: post #49

"So basically, the affiliates are claiming commission on a sale that was going to happen anyway" You have someone in your checkout process. Why on earth would you give them a reason to leave that process and go search for a discount code if you know they won't find any? Assuming they will come back doesn't feel right. What if their search for a discount code didn't prove there wasn't one, but did prove a competitor w…

isn't having a form field for discount codes at checkout a very common approach? I'd say that 90-95% of the websites I normally buy stuff from use it. Amazon does...

Also note that discount codes are different to voucher codes, such as gift vouchers, which I believe is what Amazon does.

For a client of mine we added a discount code box to the checkout and got a surge of calls from people asking how to get a discount code. It was actually intended for some multi-channel marketing.

We now don't have discount codes in the checkout process.

Re: The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam

#100

Post by Amadou »

throwaway1979 wrote: post #71
liquidcool wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: when you go to a grocery or department store and they ask if you have any coupons or a rewards card, do you feel like you're getting ripped off? I may feel like I've missed out, but never "ripped off." When I've reached the checkout page it implies this was the best deal I could find. I do appreciate discounts, but don't feel entitled to them, especially if I'm a first time customer (or opted out of…

The equivalent is when you go to a new store (or one you go to infrequently) and they ask you for a rewards card to get the discounted price. One or two times, I've signed up for one. More than half a dozen times, the cashier is nice enough to use their card for you. At one store, I got grief from the cashier saying you have to sign up for the card at the customer service desk, and that he/she couldn't use theirs. Gu…

FWIW I do my best to completely avoid stores that have loyalty cards. I consider it unfair to expect people to give up their privacy for normal pricing - the rich people get to keep their privacy and the poor people don't have a choice.

And yes I deliberately said normal pricing, the only study that has been done of before and after pricing once loyalty cards were introduced showed that prices are just inflated such that the loyalty card brings them back into line. Best to just shop somewhere without loyalty cards at all.

Post reply on HN