First, the entire premise of the question, and therefore all replies, is totally nonsensical
if you think about it. It's what's called a "false dichotomy".
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2) A competing site promotes Ashley Madison but I don't feel right promoting infidelity on my site. I'm probably losing money.
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Your choice isn't between promoting cheating or giving up money. Your choices are a) do you
promote SOMETHING, or go without that money, and b) what do you choose to promote.
While some other guy is promoting cheating you could be making more money promoting
information, tools, and supplies to be a great lover and "put the fire back in your marriage".
There's a multi-billion dollar industry around keeping the spark alive in a marriage. See the
magazine rack at any store for proof of how many people want this. That is of course just
one example of literally millions of different things you can promote. You don't want to promote
"have an affair - discreet dating". OK, you know there's a shitload more money in helping
singles find the right one. Ashley Madison advertises by a few bucks for a referral.
Match.com pays millions for TV ads. Where is the real cash flow here?
So OK, we've established there's a ton of choices of what to promote. What are you
going to choose? I believe in "find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life."
Also read "Do what you love and the money will follow".
In my thirteen years in this business and with my previous companies I've always done
only work I could be proud of. Those couple of times that I've made exceptions to that,
I've wished I hadn't. I'm a security guy. I could hack into systems, or I could protect systems.
I protect systems, and feel good when a webmaster tells us we saved his ass in one way
or another. I've had offers from people wanting to spend some money to have me do something
wrong, to damage someone's system, or steal information. For a moment, it might seem like
I could make more money doing that, trading my self respect for a few dollars. In truth, though,
I've learned that not only is my self respect worth more than a few dollars, but also the money is only better
on the dark side until you get caught, spend all your money on a lawyer, then go to jail.
So I don't hack into systems, and I'm sure over my career I've made more money doing things I can be proud of.
So often we also forget the obvious fact that people who do bad things do bad things.
For example, if a business is based on getting people to cheat on their spouse, you would
be crazy to think those people wouldn't cheat their affiliates. It's almost guaranteed that
company will eventually get caught screwing people over big time, because you know they
have no sense of ethics or morals - their business is based on trying to destroy families.
They won't think twice about destroying your business. I've seen this over and over again,
from Xpics in 1997-1998 on. Webmasters sign up with companies who screw over the
customer, because the company is making (stealing) pretty good money for a while.
Then the company stops paying affiliates, even reversing payments. The webmasters whine.
Each time I'm sitting there thinking "you KNEW they were thieves. You signed up to help
scam people, and now you're crying because guy you knew was a scammer has scammed you!?!
Of course he scammed you, dumbass, he's a scammer!"
So anyway I'd do what you know is right. You end up leaving the office each day feeling good
about who you are and what you do. More than that, you know that you are operating on
principles that have been proven to work in the long term.
After all, guidelines like "do not covet thy neighbor's wife" aren't made up randomly.
They are based on the experience that if you spend all your time trying to screw your
neighbors wife, first you'll totally miss out on enjoying what you have, then eventually
you'll end up getting shot by your neighbor or some shit. The 'right thing" is "right" because
it gets right results in the long run.