happypoon
October 20th, 2002, 08:27 PM
As an affiliate, I've been following this issue intently and have been trying to alert merchants to the hazards of doing business with parasitic applications.
For merchants who are considering keeping or dropping relationships with parasites, thanks for dropping in. I've tried to list in summary the main resanons why you should drop them.
1) Parasites re-direct commisions from affiliates who promote your products into their pockets by an assortment of ways including overwriting actual links on a web page, issuing popups which when clicked on, changing cookies with no intervention or popups, enticing a user to leave a store and make a purchase by a visual clue on a toolbar or system tray.
Allowing affiliates and parasites in your programs undermines the basic agreement you make with your affiliates which state you will give them a commission for visitors they send to your site that makes a purchase. The parasites can and do redirect commissions from affiliates and this is well known.
2) Parasites re-direct non commissionable sales from a merchant and turn them into commissionable sales.
Parasites undermine you the merchant too. The same actions taken against affiliates to divert commsissions are enacted against merchants when a user.
*) Goes to your site by typing in a url
*) Does a search from a search engine and selects your site.
*) Goes to your site from a bookmark.
*) Reponds to an email ad you've sent existing customers or users signed up for email promotions.
Considering that each of your already established customers likely returns over and over, it's very likely a great deal of money you are paying out in commissions that would never have been commissionable if your company had a no parasite policy.
3) With the above information, consider the amount of machines that are infected with parasitic software. As of today, here are the number of downloads done by some applications (just on cnet) by users:
Kazaa - 136,635,258
BearShare - 17,731,538
Morpheus Internet Accelerator - 190,068
Morpheus 2.0 - 104,050,607
Morpheus and KaZaA-Hancers 1.2 80,808
4) If you want to see how morpheus and other parasites have overwritten links, Click Here (http://www.affiliatemarketing.co.uk/morpheusvideos.htm).
5) So ask yourself - Do you want to pay commisions on sales you wouldn't have had to?
Well, you have been and will continue to as long as you allow parasites into your program. Given the number of pure number of downloads that have been done and the amount of pre-existing customers you have and considering that very
likely, existing customers make repeat sales over and over, the amount of non commisionable sales that are being made commissionable is likely a large amount.
6) I encouarge all merchants to consider these facts very closely. I tried to find a post I saw from Andy of Tiger Direct where he outlined analysis of reporting on existing customers that were being turned into commissionable sales and this was at least a part of why they dropped Morpheus. I couln't find it but the basic information ought to be able to be used by you in any case.
7) I'd like you to drop parasites due to the unethical nature of their diversions, and in some case how they are downloaded without a users permission, but If you wont drop parasites for that reason then do some research on the above consdierations. There is a great deal of money you are paying commsssions on that is not needed that could be going into your own companies
pockets and further improving your bottom line rather than lining the pockets of companies with
questionable tatics.
For merchants who are considering keeping or dropping relationships with parasites, thanks for dropping in. I've tried to list in summary the main resanons why you should drop them.
1) Parasites re-direct commisions from affiliates who promote your products into their pockets by an assortment of ways including overwriting actual links on a web page, issuing popups which when clicked on, changing cookies with no intervention or popups, enticing a user to leave a store and make a purchase by a visual clue on a toolbar or system tray.
Allowing affiliates and parasites in your programs undermines the basic agreement you make with your affiliates which state you will give them a commission for visitors they send to your site that makes a purchase. The parasites can and do redirect commissions from affiliates and this is well known.
2) Parasites re-direct non commissionable sales from a merchant and turn them into commissionable sales.
Parasites undermine you the merchant too. The same actions taken against affiliates to divert commsissions are enacted against merchants when a user.
*) Goes to your site by typing in a url
*) Does a search from a search engine and selects your site.
*) Goes to your site from a bookmark.
*) Reponds to an email ad you've sent existing customers or users signed up for email promotions.
Considering that each of your already established customers likely returns over and over, it's very likely a great deal of money you are paying out in commissions that would never have been commissionable if your company had a no parasite policy.
3) With the above information, consider the amount of machines that are infected with parasitic software. As of today, here are the number of downloads done by some applications (just on cnet) by users:
Kazaa - 136,635,258
BearShare - 17,731,538
Morpheus Internet Accelerator - 190,068
Morpheus 2.0 - 104,050,607
Morpheus and KaZaA-Hancers 1.2 80,808
4) If you want to see how morpheus and other parasites have overwritten links, Click Here (http://www.affiliatemarketing.co.uk/morpheusvideos.htm).
5) So ask yourself - Do you want to pay commisions on sales you wouldn't have had to?
Well, you have been and will continue to as long as you allow parasites into your program. Given the number of pure number of downloads that have been done and the amount of pre-existing customers you have and considering that very
likely, existing customers make repeat sales over and over, the amount of non commisionable sales that are being made commissionable is likely a large amount.
6) I encouarge all merchants to consider these facts very closely. I tried to find a post I saw from Andy of Tiger Direct where he outlined analysis of reporting on existing customers that were being turned into commissionable sales and this was at least a part of why they dropped Morpheus. I couln't find it but the basic information ought to be able to be used by you in any case.
7) I'd like you to drop parasites due to the unethical nature of their diversions, and in some case how they are downloaded without a users permission, but If you wont drop parasites for that reason then do some research on the above consdierations. There is a great deal of money you are paying commsssions on that is not needed that could be going into your own companies
pockets and further improving your bottom line rather than lining the pockets of companies with
questionable tatics.
