I know that having a big group of affiliates promoting your product can really help boost your sales, but can they also have a negative effect?

I see lots of products online that are marketed so heavily that they really lose some of their worth and credibility. Also, you have the affiliates who may be spamming your ad or associating it with something less desirable.

Does anybody here have this issue with their products? Or does the increase in sales cancel out the small negatives associated with affiliates?

Thanks,
Matthew

I can't answer your other questions, but I think that if you're getting the kinds of negatives that you described, no amount of increase in sales is worth trashing your credibility and reputation.

Ken S.

I agree- letting just anyone go out and trash your product is always a bad thing. A screening process should be in place. While it won't catch 100% of the scum, it will cut down on the problems.

Yeah, what you both said definitely makes sense.

Also, in case you misunderstood, this is more of a rhetorical question about the disadvantages people may face with affiliates. It's actually the first time I've looked at getting affiliates to promote my products.

So are the problems that I mentioned very common?

Or is it a matter of trying the affiliates and cancelling them if anything gets out of control?

Matthew,
I know you're on a budget, but if you can swing $50.00 and you have an info product to sell, you might want to consider using Clickbank as your affiliate processor.

This way if you get a bunch of low-life spammer's, clickbank will deal with them... they will take responsibility for the spammers since the products will be coming through their servers and not yours.

In other words, if there are any spam complaints, your ISP and web host won't get slammed.

Just something you may want to consider.

Thanks Steve,

I was actually thinking of using clickbank as the affiliate processer, but I didn't realise they dealt with bad affiliates for you.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Hey,
You have no choice on who you choose as affiliates with Clickbank.

Anyone can sign up and get an affiliate user ID on Clickbank... anyone.

I could go to clickbank right now without any of the sellers permission and send out a spam email to thousands...

Do you know what happens next?... I would not only get my affiliate user ID cancelled by clickbank, but I'm willing to bet I might get brought up on charges.

Did it have anything to do with you as the seller... nope... not at all!

I didn't discredit you... I discredited Clickbank.

Think about it. It has nothing to do with "you" as the seller... it's on their servers.

If I'm wrong... please, someone correct me on this.

Very good point Stephen!

Unfortunately that isn't always the case, especially if the ISP, web host, or
worse the domain registrar simply shuts down your account without bothering
to investigate. It's not that frequent, but it does happen.

Something like that happened to Mike Filsaime and Instantbuzz.com:

http://www.mikefilsaime.com/mikefils...erJune2005.pdf

DNG, I appreciate your input and the PDF...

So are you telling me that if a punk-ass spammer decided to go out and take 100 clickbank products and pump them out all over the net, he could actually cause everyone of these marketers to get shut down?

I dunno... I find that hard to believe.

Do you have any other proof other than what Filsaime sent you?

Thanks... just would like to get to the bottom of this.