Affiliate ethics

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BlueYonder

BlueYonder

Flaming panties
Aug 13, 2008
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Do you let your conscience or ethics (if you have any of either) get in the way of what offers you use? For example, if you had a site that helps people get out of debt, would you run an ad for an online casino that had a huge payout, knowing your audience is vulnerable?

This isn't a n00b or veterans' question to me. It's about your personal approach to the business. I don't intend to judge people either way, but curious about people's views.
 


Ethics? Not in this game. If you have them you will lose.

That being said, you don't *have* to be a jackass to get paid... :P
 
What if you promote an offer that turns out to be a swindle? Are you liable?

I agree with you people and your "lack" of ethics - just make the money and let people make their own decisions. My father worked on Madison Avenue as a commercial artist, and earned megabucks freelancing for cigarette sponsors. A righteous friend of mine said that working for the cigarette companies was unethical and she would decline the work. Prissy missy made about $9 an hour in an office, and my father made six figures (and this was the 1980s).

OTOH, it is better for your site and veracity to appear to be ethical, and not run a casino ad at a site that purports "help" for the indebted. You can't be totally greedy and keep your franchise afloat.
 
milk them for all they're worth. you're teaching them a valuable life lesson: don't be an idiot with your money.
 
gotta love the wickedfire responses. I have a feeling this thread is only gonna get better.
 
I find the more I hang around here, the less seems ethically suspect to me. It's bleeding into other areas of my life too. It's not entirely unpleasant, but an emotionally distant part of me keeps telling me I should be repulsed, that I should get out now and go back to being the nicer person I was, circa January.
I think -Skittles- thread was the straw on this particular camel :love-smiley-085:

Liability is a difficult one.
If you're just PPCing to a site, then I don't think there's anywhere you could be held liable.
If you've made an LP of your own to pre-sell the affiliate product/service, then you're complicit to the sale of it, and there may be legal repercussions if it does go that far.
On the other side, the biggest issue with liability in an online world is jurisdiction. If you're in country A, promoting offers that may be originating from country B that are being promoted to country C, it gets rather confusing.

Hyperion: I don't see how ethics and porn can't mix.
Certainly, in the hardcore niches and harder-corer sub-niches it gets difficult.
But for things like cam-girl style sites, where the girls are the ones that opted in, and it's not exploitative (i.e. Liz Vicious, Tiffany Teen, AbbeyWinters, etc), I don't see how it's unethical.
And it's only immoral from a religious context.
 
It is your duty as a affiliate marketer and person in a capitalistic and free democracy to make as much money as possible. Especially if you are a true patriotic American.

Think of it this way, the more money you make, the more taxes you have to pay. It is those taxes that help support public schools. It is those taxes that pay for libraries. It is those taxes that will help educate the future generation of this world. Maybe that little education you helped provide them will lead to the discovery of a true cure for cancer. Maybe that little more education you help provide will lead to solving global warming.

It is the taxes you pay to the US government which in turns pays for aid for thousands of individuals in starving nations. It is those taxes that pay to help stop the spread of Aids and malaria in Africa. It is those taxes which are help paying support for the many left homeless right now in Georgia after the Russian attack.

It is those taxes which help sponsor the recent stimilus checks that many low income families gravely needed. If not for those check, than many families would be straving.

So the question is, are you against educating children. Do you not want a cure for cancer to be found? Do you not want to end global warming? Do you want Aids and malaria to spread even more in Africa? Do you want families left homeless to not be aided? Do you want families to starve?

If not, then with your duty as a person and an affiliate marketer, you will monetize your traffic in any way possible.


:bowdown:
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Okay, that was all bullshit. But really ethical and legal aren't the same thing. Some want to be ethical, some are okay with things as long as its legal. Others don't care about either.
 
nickycakes said:
i wont promote payday loans because they truly ruin people's lives.

most everything else i will do.
Click to expand...
I wont promote bizopp. Anything else that's considered "kind of" scammy, like ringtones or rebilling diet products has the price there in big ass bold text when they order. That's just a "too lazy to read" tax.
But there's no warning on any of those bizopp products. They are all true scams in that they simply don't deliver what they say.
Also perhaps I know way too many people that did not have the money to spare and lost big on these.
 
I will promote anything that does what it says it will. For example, anything that auto-ships. It's there on the sales page in plain site (if it's not, I wouldn't promote it). It's a fair deal. Like shady said with biz opps, I think most of them are full of shit. Anything that's hope in a box is hard to swallow.

Most people let their need to play nanny to everyone else get in their own way. My parents were revolted when I decided to sell cars when I was offered a sales position at a dealership. My dad actually asked me if I thought it was ethical "roping people into financing rapidly depreciating assets." Why the fuck not? I'm not their dad, and what they're getting in exchange for the loan payments is a (maybe) brand new automobile. If they didn't do a good job haggling for a better deal, or they didn't budget themselves correctly before they signed the dotted line, that's their own damned fault.

I guess you can tell how I feel about people who "fell victim to predatory lending practices." It was all there in black and white. People who are victim to that are victim to their own ignorance. I'm not interested in paying for their mistakes.

So yeah, ring tones, auto-ship diet products, payday loans. I'm all for it.
 
what most people forget is that traditional sales/retail is just as bad as anything online- or actually i'd argue much worse.

Take for example the outside sales rep for a big computer company. He walks into a client after 18 months and tells them it's critical to upgrade all of their employees computers, their servers, printers, routers, etc to the tune of $100k.

He is now face to face (or on the phone) selling ('strategically lying') to a person who's too ignorant and feels pressure b/c human nature is to not disappoint. And in truth? Their 18 month hardware is perfectly fine the salesman just needs an extra bump for some end of quarter toy purchases. Or how about the pressure filled isles of high end stores (think Barney's) slanging $350 magic creams to my wife? I think this is MUCH worse than presenting something that a consumer finds online- which instead of a human being putting pressure on them the consumer decides whether or not to analyze/purchase the product themselves from the comfort of their own home.

If they decide to get in over their heads or don't read the fine print not my problem. Look at how many idiots making $60k/year thought they could afford a home in Southern CA for $750k in a 1.9% neg-am loan. They either didn't care or didn't bother to educate themselves and that isn't the fault of loan officers, real estate agents, appraisers, banks, etc- it's the fault of idiots.


The ONLY limit you'll have in the affiliate marketing space is underestimating the average person's stupidity- it's something that has been going on since the beginning of time.
 
I seperate ethics honestly. My ethics in offers being promoted honestly I don't really think about. However ethics within the industry I think are very important. I've always made sure the advertisers have made money on my traffic and it wasn't fraudulent. I've always made sure I didn't share things people told me. But when it comes down to sending out links to rank better and posting a "hey nice blog" on someones comments that's never really bothered me. As far as offers and consumers i'm a big advocate of buyer be ware. Honestly believe it or not people actually want to pay for ringtones, I never would but people really do. The same as with most things. Diet people are buying hope, has their ever been some magic pill you take and get skinny? Oh hell no but it gets sold because people want a short cut to a better life. It's always comes down to diet and exercise everyone knows that.
 
Sonny Forelli said:
what most people forget is that traditional sales/retail is just as bad as anything online- or actually i'd argue much worse.

Take for example the outside sales rep for a big computer company. He walks into a client after 18 months and tells them it's critical to upgrade all of their employees computers, their servers, printers, routers, etc to the tune of $100k.

He is now face to face (or on the phone) selling ('strategically lying') to a person who's too ignorant and feels pressure b/c human nature is to not disappoint. And in truth? Their 18 month hardware is perfectly fine the salesman just needs an extra bump for some end of quarter toy purchases. Or how about the pressure filled isles of high end stores (think Barney's) slanging $350 magic creams to my wife? I think this is MUCH worse than presenting something that a consumer finds online- which instead of a human being putting pressure on them the consumer decides whether or not to analyze/purchase the product themselves from the comfort of their own home.
Click to expand...

The majority of people are so ignorant when it comes to technology. In your example, the salesman probably knows about as much about computers as he needs to in order to sell them. He probably believes there is such a need as the critical update he's pitching.

What it really comes down to is caveat emptor. I'm not down for outright scams, but I'm not responsible if people don't read the fine print, or if they buy with money they don't have.

I also second what Smaxor wrote about ethics within the industry. That's extremely important.
 
As a marketer, it's not my problem what shit people get into because they didn't do their research before they buy. But I don't promote scams like 'work from home solutions' in general because I have no intention of making money for the dipshit scammers that create those products.
 
Sonny Forelli said:
Take for example the outside sales rep for a big computer company.
Click to expand...
A few years back, fresh out of Uni and waiting on results, I went for a job at a Telstra store (the other Aussies know what I'm talking about here). I was rejected for knowing too much about the phone models. I asked the HR guy why that would be a problem and he said I was likely to attempt to sell people phones that would be practical, as opposed to the phones that were attached to larger monthly plans...
The subtext of that is him saying that the whole job was based around bullshitting customers.

To me, that's a lot more unethical, especially as phone plans ARE a form of recurring billing that you can't get away from (default, and you still have to pay out the contract here)
 
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