Why I Effectively Left Affiliate Marketing

Following on from John Lamberton's great post about why he hates affiliate marketing, I'd thought I post my thoughts.

Basically I agree with him. A couple of years ago the industry really started to piss me off! And here's why:

So Lonely - John's right in saying being an affiliate on your todd is lonely. I felt it at times. Luckily whilst doing all my affiliate sites I'd still have SEO clients, I just reduced the number and how much input they had. This kept my mental juices flowing on other challenging areas and kept me in contact with the good mates I built up there.

It is annoying that the only people you'd see during 8am-6pm would be the postie or the neighbours coming and going. So that's one reason I reduced my involvement with the industry.

No Set Hours - To be honest I liked this. For about 3 years I never set my alarm (except if I had an early flight). I love working early in the morning or late at night. I hate and I mean hate working in the afternoon! Affiliate marketing was the perfect way to maximise my working hours.

No-one understands you - Luckily my brother and father work(ed) in the IT industry. By brother's a kick-arse web designer. And my father was a fantastic IT project manager covering both public and private sectors. They fully understood what I did. My mother was pretty clued up too. Most of my mates work in the industry or in supporting industries. When it came to my girlfriends that wasn't as bad as perhaps it could be. All of them tried to help in one way or the other.

The funny thing is when you go and buy a house or have legal issues with ex-girlfriends, the solicitors just don't have a clue. I'd just say "internet marketing, I help companies sell more online" - and that'd solve it.

People think you’re grubby - That's true we all know the Nick Robinson comments. We're all tarred with the same brush. People say to me that SEO (as a tool for affiliate marketing) is a black art and that we're all geeky people that don't see the day of light. We also, apparently have no morals, which, at times is true! I agree with John when he said "Most of the full-time, professional affiliates are upstanding, hard-working people that bring a lot to the table. Quite often it’s the newbies looking for a quick buck that try things on, but it’s the rest of us who lose out." - Too true.

There’s no security - Very true. You have to make your own security, however. Save as much as you can to ride you through the rough times when Google kicks your sites out, or merchants don't pay. But it's that good 'ole "risk and reward" thing. We risk a lot (our time - opportunity cost of working for someone else for quite a bit of cash, in the expectation of earning substantially more).

The Goalposts are always moving - now this is the bit that made me pull back big time. Merchants think it's their right to break contracts and dictate the exact fashion in which we work. It's not right and it just breaks relationships.

Too many suits, Not enough substance - I agree totally. I reduced the number of G2G's I went to because they were too stuffy, filled with people that just wanted to harass me about programmes I had no interest in and prevent me from having a good time. This is why I generally only go to Affiliate Future G2G's because you're guaranteed to have a laugh and not be force fed merchant crap.

But here's some of my own:

Too many numpties - there are loads of plonkers in the industry that just try and screw everyone they can. They'll ride roughshod over merchant terms, deliver absolutely crap leads and give the industry a bad name. They know exactly who they are! It just pissed me off that merchants would be so anal and OTT with all affiliates because of the few that really did take the piss.

Lack of support from networks - There were a number of issues that caused me to get very angry. The first was when I was ppc'ing a credit card with OMG. Because the leads were batched I had no way of knowing that it was converting. The only problem was that the campaign stopped the end of the previous month and we were half way through the next month. No one from OMG contacted me to let me know the day before - even though the allegedly called everyone else. That cost me around £3k.

Another time, with Buy.at I would have expected so much more with the HMV Wii "sales" - in my mind they totally miss-managed the whole affair.

There are too many other instances like this, but I won't go into them now.

Merchants that just don't have a clue - There are far too many examples of merchants that don't understand how the internet works but still feel they have the ability to run an affiliate marketing campaign. Things like "you can't use our brand on your website or in ppc, but still promote us". WTF - are you having a laugh? Merchants do this all the time, but hey they'll end up wasting their time and budget.