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How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

mtlynch.io

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Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#261

Post by account42 »

LukeShu wrote: post #25
detaro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

caret notation just maps all ASCII control characters to ^ + letter, many of which do not always have keys. "Backspace" is 0x08 = 8th letter is H = ^H it's also not just used as an input, but also what a terminal that can't do or doesn't understand a backspace as "delete character, step to the left" prints instead.

Not just letters! "^X" indicates "X, but with the control-bit flipped", where the control-bit is the left-most of ASCII's 7 bits. 1001000 ASCII 'H' 1000000 "ctrl bit" 0001000 ASCII backspace But like I said, it's not just letters, if you use `cat -v` to show all non-printable characters in this notation, you'll also see things like "^@" for the 0x00 null byte and "^[" for the ESC. All of the terminal color-code contr…

Huh I guess that explains why they chose [ as the second byte in the initiator for color control sequences: ESC [ = ^[ [

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#262

Post by badconvincer »

stickfigure wrote: post #42

Geez. This article was hard to follow but... it sounds like the merchant is really screwing up. My SaaS business gets most of our users via an affiliate program, and many years ago I worked in porn where nearly all of our users from an affiliate program. The #1 rule of affiliate programs is to treat affiliates like royalty. Or more accurately - business partners. Be clear about what you offer, be generous, and always…

I would love to get into the porn business, how do I go about this? To clarify, not as a performer or cameraman but I’m not sure what other roles are available.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#263

Post by 542354234235 »

momokoko wrote: post #207
danparsonson wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ethical and considerate _actions_ are important at all times Agree with that; > Actions have real life, often irreversible, effects on those around you agree with that also; > Many very dishonest people help themselves sleep at night by pretending that being polite excuses their actions I could believe this is true, although I suspect most habitually dishonest people don't even see themselves as dishonest or think…

> in my experience, the latter is more effective at getting the best outcome, regardless of who is nominally at fault. This is exactly my point. You are using politeness as a manipulative tactic to get your way. Instead, realize getting the wrong order at a restaurant is an incredibly insignificant issue. There was never anything to be upset about in the first place. Regardless the outcome. If someone messes up your…

> If you are a decent human being, you’ll realize the free meal probably comes out of the server’s paycheck so you don’t push for it.

In the US, servers cannot be charged for free meals given out to customers. In some states, they could be charged for food mistakes, only if the mistake was directly their fault due to negligence.

> in my experience, the latter is more effective at getting the best outcome, regardless of who is nominally at fault.

> This is exactly my point. You are using politeness as a manipulative tactic to get your way.

They didn’t say the best outcome for them, they said the best outcome. Being polite and showing basic respect for others generally leads to better outcomes for everyone. You sound like how a robot might look at human interactions, not understand that humans are hardwired to be social animals and social interactions are not a calculated tactic to gain advantage.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#264

Post by stickfigure »

account42 wrote: post #259
stickfigure wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Email them and ask. Keep in mind though that affiliate programs are not necessarily sleazy. By default nobody knows about your product. Some of our partners have been making tutorials in other languages and building API integrations into their products. They deserve the money we send them.

They may not be "sleazy" but they incentivize reviews/referrals/recommendations based on what the affiliate gets rather based on what product is the best. This pollutes the entired internet, making it significantly harder to find what you want as a consumer. On the whole, affiliate programs are a net negative for society and anyone taking part in them show reconsider their ethics.

You can say the exact same thing about all forms of marketing. By your logic, companies should never be allowed to advertise. Incumbents would love that.

Affiliate systems are the marketing equivalent of gig work. The quality of both product and affiliate are quite variable, but a good product and good affiliate are a strong net positive for society. Again, to use my case as an example, we have API integrations that we wouldn't have otherwise had and video tutorials in languages that we don't speak. Our customers love our product, I'm not ashamed to reward them for talking about it.

If you think every product should sell itself by 100% organic word of mouth... well, that's the rare exception, not the rule. If you're trying to build a business this way, you're in for a rough time.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#265

Post by Kalium »

0xfaded wrote: post #256
true_religion wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The affiliate fee is a payment for someone who did the work of marketing the product and finding new clients that would otherwise be inaccessible. You didn’t do any of that. You are just a customer at best and don’t provide any additional value on top of the money you pay for the product. Charging less then is just the company shorting itself for a single customer.

That's one view. But my view is that affiliate links have created a massive race to the bottom, polluting search results and creating a new style of prose optimized for inserting key words and links. I may not be able to stop that, but I certainly don't want to support it.

Yeah, one of the major issues with running an affiliate program is that there's a real risk that they wind up finding ways to claim your regular customers as theirs. You don't gain anything from such transactions, but they do.

The incentives of affiliates and principals aren't as fully aligned as might be hoped.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#267

Post by hnarn »

kebman wrote: post #169

I'd say this depends on the situation you're negotiating. If your only means of communication are e-mails, your best bet is to keep the line of communication open, and present data that builds a case that they cannot ignore without risking a (heavy) loss. If, however, you participate in face-to-face negotiations, you open up a whole slew of other possibilities of influence only limited by your personality and persona…

> a CEO friend of mine told me that he'd always make sure to get really drunk the day before an important negotiation

Extrapolating from my own capacity to think clearly while I'm hungover I would suspect this is a profoundly bad idea.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#268

Post by kebman »

hnarn wrote: post #267
kebman wrote: post #169

I'd say this depends on the situation you're negotiating. If your only means of communication are e-mails, your best bet is to keep the line of communication open, and present data that builds a case that they cannot ignore without risking a (heavy) loss. If, however, you participate in face-to-face negotiations, you open up a whole slew of other possibilities of influence only limited by your personality and persona…

> a CEO friend of mine told me that he'd always make sure to get really drunk the day before an important negotiation Extrapolating from my own capacity to think clearly while I'm hungover I would suspect this is a profoundly bad idea.

I guess that depends on just how drunk you get the day before. All I need to get grumpy, is to skip coffee in the morning lol.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#269

Post by [deleted] »

markdown wrote: post #69
glenstein wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they mentioned further down in the article, they later got access to data on how affiliate references were performing and used that to extrapolate over the 120 cases that were missing data.

> they later got access to data on how affiliate references That data also comes from the vendor, so it's only as correct as the vendor wants it to be. Affiliates are always at the mercy of their vendors.

[deleted]

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#270

Post by ad31mar »

kposehn wrote: post #229
nikodunk wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I just went through the exact same thing for https://Sunboxlabs.com - shareasale et al have high up-fronts or monthlies and their own integration cost. I know people are gonna tell me it’s not worth half a day of engineering/debugging, but this is what I did for a roll-your-own affiliate mvp: write a ten line script to check the search params and set them as local storage or cookie. On checkout pass that cookie…

Ok, just going to ask everyone on this comment thread: would you be willing to test a system I have that is a super lightweight affiliate platform for startups? I've been in the digital and affiliate space for well over a decade and have run programs from the tiny to the massive. Platforms like Impact, SAS and others are great, but if you're looking to get started and don't want to break the bank, let me know. It isn…

Sounds tempting. I was actually building one from scratch for my own business [0], but it's out of necessity rather than pleasure. Please get in touch!

[0] https://zlipa.com

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