forex.earninternet.com presents Forex Affiliate Conference

White, Grey, Black Hat Forex Affiliate Marketing

I discovered an interesting thread were an affiliate manager expressed concern about a presentation that was basically an affiliate bashing session.

The site was recommended to me as a great resource for affiliate marketing and for research for my presentation next week at a Forex Affiliate Conference. Here is the post I made in response to that thread.

It’s unfortunate that such a presentation to place. First I can understand the problem and issues that affiliates, and affiliate managers have. The simple fact of the matter is that ever since marketing took off on the Internet in about 1994 there has been white hat, gray hat, and black hat marketing tactics. Affiliate marketing very quickly became the lead form of marketing on the Internet. A more balanced presentation however would have benefited all as opposed to just slamming affiliate marketing in general. What should have been pointed out is that when company has product that they are promoting, and putting out it out to an affiliate marketing program than they are in fact in competition with their affiliates. They need to understand and accept this. They have every right to cancel or terminate any account that violates their TOS or takes part in black Marketing (illegal activites as in spam, copywrite vilotation and such), however to penalize EFFECTIVE marketing makes no sense.

However if I as an affiliate am doing guerrilla marketing, as in gray hat, not violating their TOS, not doing anything illegal but basically doing more effective marketing then they are then they should be happy. Instead some resent the fact that I’m better at marketing their product then them and figure I am taking away direct sales.

So you see there are two sides to this coin. I have had companies and affiliate managers in the past try very hard to figure out what my marketing techniques were. I unfortunately had to start covering my tracks because in the past companies took my marketing efforts and implemented themselves bypassing me and sometimes passing on strategies to their other affiliates.

Ever since marketing took off on the Internet one of the biggest challenges has been dealing with fraud and black Marketing of affiliates, and affiliates having to deal with the fraud in reporting and the theft of their traffic by producers.

So the simple fact the matter is both parties to be aware of underhanded operations and protect themselves against that.

I took part in affiliate marketing back in 1995 then later developed my own product and opened it up to affiliate marketers. This resulted in huge success and I retired in 1999. I assure you one of my biggest tasks as an affiliate, then as a business owner utilizing affiliates was fraud detection.

After being away from doing business on the Internet for several years I decided earlier this year to investigate the opportunities and new ways of doing business and intend to play with it on a part-time basis. What I’ve discovered over last four or five months is that nothing has changed, yet everything has changed. That is to say the same strategies will work however the tactics are different.

I came across abestweb about a month ago however I could not post as my IP was being blocked. I think it may have been due to the fact that I live in Mexico, I’m not sure. However e-mail seems to have resolved that situation. The reason I mention this was I was told that this was a great source for the research that I needed to do in this thread provided some great insight.

I will be speaking at forexaffiliateconference.com next week in Vegas and ofter an open invitation to anyone wants to hook up.

Barry Zolten
forex.earninternet.com

UPDATE — My post has been removed and I am banned at abestweb. It seems you are not allowed to put URLs in your posts. Now talk about retarded. Well I will not be putting any input there, will just USE any info posted there.