Consultants Can Fix Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

Consultants Can Fix Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins: "Consultants Can Fix Affiliate Marketing
June 20th, 2008 ·
Epic Advertising

Are affiliates a bunch of scumbags? That was the characterization of affiliates during a panel at the recent Internet Retailer 2008 Conference, according to a blog post today from Linda Buquet at 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs.

Around 400 merchants attended a session that was essentially “a 90 minute rant about what scum-bags affiliates are.” (See more choice quotes from the IRCE below) I haven’t seen any other AM blogs talk about this and almost decided not to share any more negativity. But sometimes we need to talk about these things if we ever hope to influence change and clean up our industry.

We all know that some rogue affiliates give our entire industry a really bad reputation and many people either misunderstand affiliate marketing or stereotype us all as “Scum-bag Cheaters.”

Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, live blogged the session, “Affiliate marketing: Why you can’t set it and forget it,” where he mentions “one of the panelists likened finding your ‘good affiliates’ like trying to find the good guys in prison.”

Panelist George Michie posted to the corporate blog for Rimm-Kaufman Group po"