1) Court only large publishers, affiliates and partners who can drive demand and make you “the big bucks.”
2) Have “brand loyalty” to one particular network based on their payout structure and refuse to work with anyone else.
3) Ignore CJ, Zanox, ShareASale, Linkshare because you work in “the performance marketing side of things” and don’t care to sift through all the ads in those places.
4) Ignore Azoogle, Market Leverage, AdDrive, XY7, Hydra, or RocketProfits because they “work with spammers and emailers.”
5) Trade in your morals and ethics (and those are relative, of course) in exchange for short term profit. You’ll wreck your program, network or affiliate site if you do.
6) Don’t read blogs, listen to podcasts, read books or think deep thoughts because you are interested in “practical” tips rather than theoretical ones.
7) Read an e-book by a self-professed expert, think “I can do that too!” and set up an affiliate link farm to rake in the AdSense dollars.
8) Go to bed at 11pm and not wonder how your program, network, site or affiliate link did that day in terms fo revenue, reach and relevancy.
9) Tell people you work in affiliate marketing because you like to work from home.
10) Don’t attend conferences, participate on forums such as ABW, WickedFire or AffiliatePrograms, and don’t try to make friends because this is all about the money.
I should have added “blog about affiliate marketing for a living” to the list!
Great list there – I especially agree with #5. Morals and ethics seem to be quickly leaving the online marketing world.
Good article! Can you give us some examples of what is bad vs. good? How about some good examples? Thanks!
Sam, you contradict yourself with points 4 and 5 here. If one is adhereing to morals I think it’s critical not to support spam and other things that hurt the net and the overall reputation of online marketing.
Hi Rob-
Couldn’t agree more.
However, it’s not a black and white issue. CJ has supported some very nasty malware in the past and some would argue with a few of its current publishers. Linkshare is in a similar boat. However, the vast majority of publishers don’t mind doing business with them.
So, if you find CJ or Azoogle doing something you don’t agree with ethically or morally (relative terms as I said), then you shouldn’t do business with them… but you can’t ignore them because of past reputation.