{"id":595,"date":"2007-04-28T07:35:44","date_gmt":"2007-04-28T17:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rosalindgardner.com\/blog\/the-affiliate-sham-saga-continued\/"},"modified":"2019-02-13T07:37:53","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T15:37:53","slug":"the-affiliate-sham-saga-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosalindgardner.com\/blog\/the-affiliate-sham-saga-continued\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Affiliate Sham’ Saga Continued…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in January, I introduced you to a little white paper called The Great Affiliate Marketing Sham<\/a><\/em> which the author offered as a product preview for his upcoming product. I later used the report as an example in a marketing lesson<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n

Although I wasn't overly impressed with the author's offensive approach and foul language, I summarized the report as being a “worthwhile read”, noted that “the point that he makes about how SMART Internet marketers use affiliate marketing channels is absolutely bang-on” and I looked forward to reviewing the final product for possible promotion. <\/p>\n

The author however took great exception to my marketing lesson… greater than I realized until yesterday…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yesterday I received an email from PayPal notifying me that Factor X Marketing, LLC had finally<\/em> paid for leads that I generated for the report. Payment took almost FIVE months!!!<\/p>\n

That isn't the worst of it, however. When I tried to log in to my affiliate account to confirm that the correct amount had been paid, this is what I saw…<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

“Sorry, you can't login because your account has been disabled”<\/p>\n

Wow! So, of course, I checked my links and they no longer worked and were being redirected to a page on 1ShoppingCart.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hmmm.. imagine what would happen to affiliate marketing if a merchant disabled affiliate accounts any time an affiliate had a less-than-favorable comment to make about their product.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, this is a one-in-a-million occurrence and can be attributed to the fact that this merchant is a liar, thief, scam artist and extraordinarily over-sensitive little boy who can't take a lick of critical comment. Poor him.<\/p>\n

What do we learn from this? That we shouldn't make honest, un-biased product appraisals? <\/p>\n

No. <\/p>\n

What we should learn is:<\/p>\n