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Have some of you on the moral high ground ever considered the ethics of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars of investor money, promising a huge payout, and

by il 17y ago

Have some of you on the moral high ground ever considered the ethics of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars of investor money, promising a huge payout, and then squandering it? No? That's what hundreds of angel-backed startups do every year. Affiliates create value and jobs for their customers and contribute in a positive way to the economy. How much value has your zero-revenue startup created for anyone?

potatolicious 17y ago
Defensive much? I think it's laughable to try and compare the morals of a lot of shady affiliate mechanisms (rebill, anyone?) to the morals of taking investor cash. For one thing, nobody has promised a huge payout. Investors have evaluated the risk of your company before making their investment, and unless you do something stupid with the money (e.g., send everyone on vacation) there's really no ethical issue with it. If you gave it your all and fail, there's no way you can twist this into some sort of ethical issue. Doing so IMHO is dishonest and self-deluding. The "jobs and economy" defense is also pretty flimsy. Spam also creates jobs, value for their clients, and contributes to the economy, are we going to start defending that now? There's no question that a large portion of affiliate marketing falls on the wrong side of morals/ethics, if not the law. The bulk of what I've seen out of that corner of the intertubes is scams that prey on unsuspecting consumers... to compare this with legitimate web startups is really puzzling. This isn't just holier-than-thou posturing, honestly. I've done shady things in the past for a quick buck, but at least I've never deluded myself into thinking what I was doing was good. [edit] Poster below has a point, saying "bulk of" to describe the entire affiliate industry is unfair.
- chaosmachine 17y ago
  "There's no question that the bulk of affiliate marketing falls on the wrong side of morals/ethics" I'll question it. Do you have any sources or statistics to back that up? Amazon claims they run "the most popular and successful" affiliate program on the web, for example, and they're about as clean as you can get.
- encoderer 17y ago
  +1 on the fact that investors weighed risks. But, as I see it, many customers sign up for rebill trial offers because they think they can a) game the system and get something for free or b) are truy gaming the system, signing up for offers to get cash as part of so-called "incentivized traffic" I'm sure there are some unsuspecting consumers who just want to try something and shouldn't have a hard time cancelling. The problem here isn't the affiliate networks, or the affiliates. It's the advertisers. They are the companies responsible for customer service and providing an ethical experience.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    I agree that the bulk of fault lies with the advertisers themselves, but that's also the same argument spammers make - don't shoot the messenger and the such. The reality is that it's plainly obvious to the marketer if their offers are legitimate or scams, and when this awareness is so clear it's hard to ride the moral high ground and claim innocence. It's like giving someone a bag of candy where you know a large portion is poisonous - sure, you didn't poison the candies yourself, but to say that you're faultless IMHO is disingenuous.
- ericd 17y ago
  There's probably a lot more affiliate marketing out there than you realize, it's just the obvious (and scammy) ones that you and most others view as being "affiliate marketing". There's plenty of legitimate affiliate marketing out there, though. How many blogs have you seen with an Amazon widget? Chances are, if a reader buys something from Amazon after clicking that widget, they get a percentage kickback from that. It's just performance based advertising rather than click or view based. Then on the other side of the spectrum, you have the people making shell sites with sales pitches and shady offers crowding up the Google results, and forums of people trying to figure out how to make a quick buck without adding anything of value. But you get that with adsense and other types of advertising as well.
- il 17y ago
  I agree that there are some offers/advertisers that are scams that have no place in the industry. But a continuity offer that clearly discloses its terms (think Netflix) is really not unethical in any way, and your blanket dismissal of affiliate marketing is ridiculous. I've seen people say on here that ALL advertising is shady and unethical because it makes people spend money on things they don't need. Statements like this are the reason you aren't making any money online.

by il 17y ago

potatolicious 17y ago

Defensive much? I think it's laughable to try and compare the morals of a lot of shady affiliate mechanisms (rebill, anyone?) to the morals of taking investor cash. For one thing, nobody has promised a huge payout. Investors have evaluated the risk of your company before making their investment, and unless you do something stupid with the money (e.g., send everyone on vacation) there's really no ethical issue with it. If you gave it your all and fail, there's no way you can twist this into some sort of ethical issue. Doing so IMHO is dishonest and self-deluding. The "jobs and economy" defense is also pretty flimsy. Spam also creates jobs, value for their clients, and contributes to the economy, are we going to start defending that now? There's no question that a large portion of affiliate marketing falls on the wrong side of morals/ethics, if not the law. The bulk of what I've seen out of that corner of the intertubes is scams that prey on unsuspecting consumers... to compare this with legitimate web startups is really puzzling. This isn't just holier-than-thou posturing, honestly. I've done shady things in the past for a quick buck, but at least I've never deluded myself into thinking what I was doing was good. [edit] Poster below has a point, saying "bulk of" to describe the entire affiliate industry is unfair.

chaosmachine 17y ago
"There's no question that the bulk of affiliate marketing falls on the wrong side of morals/ethics" I'll question it. Do you have any sources or statistics to back that up? Amazon claims they run "the most popular and successful" affiliate program on the web, for example, and they're about as clean as you can get.
encoderer 17y ago
+1 on the fact that investors weighed risks. But, as I see it, many customers sign up for rebill trial offers because they think they can a) game the system and get something for free or b) are truy gaming the system, signing up for offers to get cash as part of so-called "incentivized traffic" I'm sure there are some unsuspecting consumers who just want to try something and shouldn't have a hard time cancelling. The problem here isn't the affiliate networks, or the affiliates. It's the advertisers. They are the companies responsible for customer service and providing an ethical experience.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  I agree that the bulk of fault lies with the advertisers themselves, but that's also the same argument spammers make - don't shoot the messenger and the such. The reality is that it's plainly obvious to the marketer if their offers are legitimate or scams, and when this awareness is so clear it's hard to ride the moral high ground and claim innocence. It's like giving someone a bag of candy where you know a large portion is poisonous - sure, you didn't poison the candies yourself, but to say that you're faultless IMHO is disingenuous.
ericd 17y ago
There's probably a lot more affiliate marketing out there than you realize, it's just the obvious (and scammy) ones that you and most others view as being "affiliate marketing". There's plenty of legitimate affiliate marketing out there, though. How many blogs have you seen with an Amazon widget? Chances are, if a reader buys something from Amazon after clicking that widget, they get a percentage kickback from that. It's just performance based advertising rather than click or view based. Then on the other side of the spectrum, you have the people making shell sites with sales pitches and shady offers crowding up the Google results, and forums of people trying to figure out how to make a quick buck without adding anything of value. But you get that with adsense and other types of advertising as well.
il 17y ago
I agree that there are some offers/advertisers that are scams that have no place in the industry. But a continuity offer that clearly discloses its terms (think Netflix) is really not unethical in any way, and your blanket dismissal of affiliate marketing is ridiculous. I've seen people say on here that ALL advertising is shady and unethical because it makes people spend money on things they don't need. Statements like this are the reason you aren't making any money online.