[Zeus]

Do you have any information on what amazon.com is doing really?

As a long time associate I told them how I feel about their deal with scumware. I didn't get an answer. I have no problem with sites offering coupons or rebates, they can even give away their stuff for free but to steal the traffic from my web pages is an other matter.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Hello Associates:

I wanted to provide some clarification on this issue.

We still do not allow sites to reward visitors as our operating agreement states.

However, we are investigating this policy. As part of the investigation, we are running a test with ebates.com that permits them to offer a small rebate to their visitors. At this point in time, only ebates has been granted permission to offer this type of rebate via this test.

If we change our policy, we will make an announcement to all our Associates.

Note, our policy, as outlined in the operating
agreement, still stands, as well as the policies we've circulated re: use of coupon codes on affiliate web sites.

If you have questions about our coupon or rebate
policies, please email assoc-merch@amazon.com.

Thanks -Lisa
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

For a list of merchants associated with Ebates:
Ebates Merchants list (http://www.ebates.com/all_stores.go)

It's not the big that eat the small... it's the fast that eat the slow. Jennings & Haughton

[ecomcity]

Looking over the list of 400+ merchants giving eBates ( A Duperaffiliate), often more than double our own commission rates, I see we'll need some sledge hammers to negotiate a pay raise with these same merchants. So Amazon is restricting the violation of their own affiliate TOS with one test case. A damn "incent" Duper with 400+ merchants and a autofeed from all the networks. Why didn't they just let LS -BeFree and CJ direct feed product links and coupons into the Amazon e-catalog and be done with it rather than their brain child eBates.

Sprinkle in the TopMoxie parasite script and make sure eBates & Company skim off commissions from all the regular Amazon affiliates. If it works out good then Amazon can deal with only one enity for outside "incent" sales ..eBates.. and fire their normal affiliates. Sure glad I dropped Amazon in 1999 when I saw what a greedy bunch of idiots ran their program.

Do you guys & Gals see a pattern evolving. The networks preach they are changing to be more affiliate friendly and transparent. Yet they automate and monitize the e-mail Opt-out spammers, Incent Dupers and all the parasites. They eventually will only have to deal with, and pay, a few darkside players at this rate. Can we see the day when the networks unplug the autofeeds on the Dupers and parasites and install their own scumware scripts and spam servers and retire away from all the normal affiliates hassles?? Then it's down to 3-5 networks sucking off sales/lead commissions from the entire merchant pool of advertisers as they try to kill each other off....

The rest of us would be left serving up banners on a CPM basis for $0.05 per thousand impressions. Wake up merchants ..is this really what you want? A monopoly structure for online advertising.

WebMaster Mike

[ecomcity]

Sure be nice to get some feedback from Linkshare -CJ and the others supporting the eBates.com program. Sure would like to know how those 400+ merchants giving them double our commission rates can justify the ROI.

WebMaster Mike