Quote:
Originally Posted by DannyCox
Ten years ago, back in 2000, JoeE from CEN was in Montreal seeing a girl he met at the WebExpo show in 1999. We'd get together for dinner whenever he came into town. Even back then he saw the writing on the wall and that what they were doing wasn't sustainable in the long run. He also thought it was funny that there were webmasters who didn't think there was shaving and other shady tactics going on, in order to cover those ridiculously high pay-outs! And remember, this was all 10 years ago.
He even talked about how he wished they never got into their dick swinging competitions with CE and RJB and the rest, and that the majority of their money was just going right back out to cover affiliates. That was before the really dirty tactics even started!
The only problem will be getting the average webmaster to support the smaller programs. The vast majority are just followers, always have been, and just follow the GFY trend of the moment. It's still all "Bros", and I really don't see that changing. These people would rather get a free beer at a show than make some real money with a proper program. It's the way it i now, and the way it has always been.
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The only difference I think is that some programs got incredibly greed not against their affiliates but against the customers. Rather than just being satisified to shave 30% of the signups and pay 30% more per signup (marketing), they turned around and learned ways to much more income from every signup than they were paying out. So even as they swing the $100 per signup dicks around, they still had another $100 or more in their pockets from the signup, so it wasn't an issue.
But a few things have happened in short order that have changed things. The Brazzers "offshore" money issue with the feds in the US is not to my knowledge resolved but pretty much put everyone else on notice. The offshore Visa providers started getting hit with issues and fines because of excessive chargebacks, which made them less interested in playing the game. Finally, Visa outrightly changed the rules for cross sales, making them pretty much impossible to pull off. So there is no real simple way to make it work anymore, and the US government is looking very closely at the money coming in. It pretty much shuts things down.
I for one would be happy to get back to plenty of smaller programs with reasonably fresh content that actually want to get promoted, respect their affiliates, and pay a reasonable amount flat or percentage to make it all work out.