Chocolate Merchant Leaves Bad Affiliate Taste
Posted under: Today we received a submission for a competition being run Hotel Chocolat. The competition comes via a PR company. As we’re an affiliate and a competition promotion site, the first instinct is “let’s get some links on and drive some traffic” – it’s a seasonally good time for this merchant, it could generate some sales and give users a good prod in the right direction. Nice prize too, so worthy of newsletter promo..
Tried to do a link… 500 server error!
Contact the affiliate manager – oh that’s not for affiliates, that’s a promotion to try a new bloggy marketing thing (when was Loquax a blog then?) and we want to study what happens. No “let’s sort out a link” or even a “what can we do to help”.
I know we’re a free listing directory, but heck if you’ve got an affiliate program and send in a link (direct or via a PR company who can’t distinguish a blog from a website), the least you’d expect us to was stick an affiliate link on it….
Surely once this link is out – other freebie/competition affiliates will want to promote it? Surely if a link is submitted to something that is not a blog that completely shafts your “study”? Why do merchants put links out that can’t be “affiilated” too – surely any idiot realises that offers/promos propagate around the web pretty rapidly?
And surely it’s possible to study traffic from affiliate/non-affiliate links. I do think some affiliate managers think their job title is to “manage how to avoid using affiliates” as opposed to using them to promote the merchants they work for!
Yes, we have the option to not promote this “free” link (and we’re not going too) – but what I’m most annoyed about is that I still can’t figure out why using non-affiliate links or affiliate links would make any difference to this promotion (except the merchant might have to pay for any sales – all entrants are being offered free delivery on purchases so that might be the reason).