Quote Originally Posted by Lee View Post
Mike,

Thats isnt really a 'program owner entitlement' or even an 'affiliate entitlement' issue though, its a trust issue, if you cant trust that a program owner isnt going to rip you off for no reason, you shouldnt be sending them traffic/sales.

Penny-pinching, to some extent is a good thing, for example a sponsor a couple of years back announced they were going to be adding a bunch of new upsells to their members areas, affiliates went crazy about this, until they realized that the sales to these new upsells were being split between the SPONSOR and the AFFILIATE.

Methods of generating additional income on paysites is something that everyone should be concerned about, program owners, affiliates, content providers, even designers, its when these new income generators become counter-productive that affiliates need to start worrying and again, in instances where that does happen, all the affiliate has to do is switch their traffic to someone else but what can the program owner do if they have un-productive affiliates, absolutely nothing it would seem.

Regards,

Lee

So the answer is maybe?

Traffic can be redirected, but it isn't free. I'm sure plenty of program owners see themselves as the hard workers and their affiliates as disposable dime-a-dozen, but I don't think owners are entitled to whimsically nix ethical affiliates and keep their active proceeds after having invested their own time/effort/money into the partnership. Yes, affiliates must definitely trust the program owner isn't greedily operating the program at their expense. And owners must trust affiliates aren't warez and CP shitbags, and the like. But greed isn't an entitlement in any dictionary I'm aware of, which is what the example I gave basically amounts to.

You kind of sound victimized to say, "What can PO's do? Apparently nothing," which is unfortunate. You had the luxury of choosing to work with affiliates. It's only reasonable to keep it fair and pay them what they ethically earned. If they aren't owed anything and aren't delivering traffic, purge to your database's content. But shaving them out of the system if they've done no wrong wouldn't strike me as fair entitlement, however.