Affiliates outside the US

I've inherited a bit of a problem and I was hoping someone here could shed some light on the subject for me:

When you have an applicant to your affiliate program who is from outside the U.S., how do you all determine what countries you will/won't allow in your programs?

I ask because in the few days since Andy Dill's passing, I've had some requests from applicants for woofcash, our affiliate program, from countries not on Andy's 'allowed' list (Poland in one case as example) and I wanted to try to understand where we should and shouldn't allow our affiliates to be from.

Do you all have any guidance in this area? Are there places where we should NEVER permit affiliates to sign up from?

Your help is greatly appreciated :confused:

Typically i wont allow any affiliates from the following countries...

Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kaliningrad, Kazakhstan, Korea (North and South), Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Moldova, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Trinidad, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia

However, i do make exceptions to that rule if an affiliate contacts me prior to joining and they are visible on the various industry boards (because that gives me a point of recourse above and beyond canning their acct).

Further, the only exception to making exceptions (if that makes sense) is Korea and China as they make up 99% of our terminated affiliates and they get terminated the second i notice them :)

What you might want to do is find out what site is being operated by the person/s that have contact you and see if in your opinion, they have a site that is built for 'sales' or a site that is built for 'joining' affiliate programs, there is a difference between the two :)

Hope that helps some.

Regards,

Lee

Typically affiliate programs don't accept affiliates from the same countries that ccbill or paycom doesn't accept memberships from. The rationale is that these countries have higher fraud rates or higher charge-back ratios.

It's not completely fair because a lot of the former eastern bloc countries are still on their even though their economies are doing alright. Like there's nothing particulary criminal about Slovenia, yet it's there on the list.

You may also want to have a chat with Brian at Pistol Media. He's had some problems with some European webmasters and might be able to shed some light on it for you.

I'd also talk to your processor and get the low-down on why you shouldn't be accepting affiliates from those countries, or how you allow them if you want to override the recommendation, and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, you can do that. But you could be opening your program up to more fraud.

As a personal note, I never promote any Russian-based programs because (a) the content is always dodgy (guys fucking their mothers, guys beating the shit out of one another and drawing blood, all kinds of borderline stuff; (b) I'm never sure I'm going to get paid, and (c) I've seen more than one documentary where Russian women are lured to some foreign country like Turkey at the hopes of working in a hotel and making lots of money, only to find out that they're jailed up and put to work as prostitutes and porn actresses. I'm never really sure how legit the Russian content is, so I just stay away from it.

Michael

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee

However, i do make exceptions to that rule if an affiliate contacts me prior to joining and they are visible on the various industry boards (because that gives me a point of recourse above and beyond canning their acct).

---

Thanks Lee. I was wondering if you had some examples of the kinds of industry boards you're talking about. I'm basically starting from scratch here- my background is in coding and not the affiliate management end of things- so any advice you've got WRT resources like that is greatly appreciated!

Mike

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mickeroo

Thanks Lee. I was wondering if you had some examples of the kinds of industry boards you're talking about. I'm basically starting from scratch here- my background is in coding and not the affiliate management end of things- so any advice you've got WRT resources like that is greatly appreciated!

Mike

---

Mike,

Any of the boards mentioned here are the ones i like to see potential 'exceptions' post on :)

As i say, it just gives me recourse should they defraud the program and it will alert others to their actions also.

Regards,

Lee

porn is illegal in china and korea. that's a good enough reason to me not to allow those countries. i believe porn is also illegal in arab countries.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

Typically affiliate programs don't accept affiliates from the same countries that ccbill or paycom doesn't accept memberships from.

---

CCbill allows you to choose to allow affiliates from banned countries. It's in their admin. But I think it's either off or on. You can't just allow one affiliate from a banned country... you have to allow all to signup. Of course , you can manually remove affiliates.

it's kind of an unwieldy beast. The filter point is yourself on the other end. In general we here at maleflixxx don't exclude countries per say, however we try to be very cautious about countries that have strict laws about pornography. Many E. European countries are much much more liberal in lifestyle and laws than typical western standards and are burgeoning goldmines for future affiliates, studios and consumers. Nearly every E. European country is or will be a part of the European Union - which is an instant legitimize and economic shot in the arm. The exceptions to that at the moment are some former Yugoslavian states, Russia, Belo-Russ and Ukraine.

Poland i might add has been part of the European Union for several years now.

I think in general we should not be afraid of the world unknown to us. There is money to be made in many places around the world that are not typical western countries - Latin America is another that springs to mind - especially Brazil, Argentina and Mexico - HUGE, HUGE markets.

Although we do maintain a list, I am willing to accept any webmaster that contacts me. However, because there is a higher risk, I do inform them that it will not be the normal relationship - specials terms will be applied, such as:
- earnings minimum is raised to $500, or $1000.
- only method of payment is cheque via letter mail
- all referrals are sent via recurring links ONLY (no flat rate refs), for a period of 3 to 6 months.
- any suspicious activity (queries or notices from Paycom etc) and the account will be closed and all unpaid earnings will be withheld!

Many webmasters have accepted the above, which tells me they are honest. Sure, a few flipped out, but I was and am not interested in them (odds are they were/are the scammers).