For example, where they get traffic from, what type of content they use, whether they are 2257 compliant etc?
I know we hear a lot of accusations and stuff about stolen content, shaving and crappy affiliate reps but im wondering how often you folks think about what is happening behind the scenes of the sponsors you promote?
Do you think every program you are promoting right now is on the up and up, in terms of rules, regulations and laws they have to follow?
Regards,
Lee
10+ years in, this is still an unregulated unchecked business based on trust.
Whether they should or shouldn't, webmasters have to trust they are getting all their clicks and signips counted just like they trust that 6 minute long distance phone call isn't being charged at 11 minutes by the phone company.
Truth is there's obviously no checks and balances and no good house keeping seal of approval.
Someone that can convince site owners and webmasters that they can BE THAT will have a great business model on their hands ;)
Problem is, program owners aren't going to hand over their data and open up their processes to a third party like that, IMHO. Too much room for shananigans.
$.02
Jonathon you are right, although i do seem to recall 5 or 6 years back there was a company that did the checks and balances thing for programs like ARS, APM etc.
I totally forget the name of it but there was something like that out there and it just kind of faded away for whatever reason, probably because programs no longer wanted to share that type of data.
Regards,
Lee
AuditedSponsor was the name of that program that is no more which used to track several programs.
Im pretty sure thats how Toolz got his start at ARS too ;)
Regards,
Lee
I think that was what TMM/NATS was trying to do with the marketing of their product... basically offering a compiled code product that sponsors can't easily mess with to alter sales numbers. Ditto the CCBill affiliate management system.
It's not perfect, you hear occasional stories about anomalities or this or that, and like any program, a shady sponsor could probably figure out a way to rip off an affiliate, but I think it's probably one of the only things we have that's close to third-party verification at this point.