Man, I love this.
John Reese (Traffic Secrets) just sent his affiliates an email with the subject line “WARNING: Some TS Affiliates Are About To Be Terminated” which starts off by saying that “there's a really good chance that this email will not apply to you. It's only aimed at a small number of people“. The message then goes on to say in part…
It's completely against the TOS for our Affiliate Program to use *misleading* advertising of any kind.
Well, there are several of our affiliates currently using misleading advertising — especially with Google AdWords.
Anyone that's using ‘controversial' and/or misleading headlines or ads will be immediately terminated from the affiliate program if they don't stop running these ads right away.
Stuff like, “John Reese Ripped Me Off” or “Traffic Secrets Lies” etc. etc. Then of course the ad simply redirects to someone's affiliate link or a review page with their affiliate link.
Are you running misleading, negative ads like this? If you are, you have only a matter of hours to kill all of these ads or you will be terminated from the affiliate program.
We are working very hard to maintain the INTEGRITY of our business and we're not about to condone this type of misleading marketing.
WAY TO GO, JOHN!!!
In all the years that I've been an affiliate marketer, and for all the rubbish, b.s. and bogus advertising that I've seen – particularly within the Internet marketing niche – I've never seen a manager or product merchant come down so hard or so quick to curb those affiliates who use these misleading tactics.
Now, I bet you can guess who is going to change her own affiliate agreement post-haste. 🙂