When are you people going to learn, contest are scamming money from affiliates.
 

If you get 5 signups a week i am sure you love contests, you get a shot at winning an expensive prize.

For those affiliates who actually make a decent amount of money, do you get excited about contest too? If so why? all they are is a scam, costing you money.

I don't understand why bigger affiliates put up with this shit from these companies.

Someone explain this to me. please.

Explain how contests are scams.

yeh... me too, usually will your threads are good, but I dont understand this one

wow this is really intresting I would like to see more info as I follow all of theese things closely


see sig

Yeah I would like to know as well :(

explain more please

How exactly does the affiliate lose money? That's the only way a contest could be considered a scam.

yes please explain how contests and promos are scams

This is a slippery slope Will. Choose your words carefully.

PS: I agree when it comes to certain companies.

Contests are scams? I fail to see how.

A program have a payout structure. It may be per sign, it may be partnership. When you join a program to promote it, you are agreeing to these terms and payouts, you send your traffic and get paid. Done deal.

A contest is promo aimed at attracting new webmasters, old webmaster back to the fold, etc etc. This is advertising and a normal part of any business. They still receive the agreed upon payout terms and earn commission the same as any other affiliate.

I fail to see where the scam comes in? Everyone is agreeing, making money, where's the scam?

Contests, big prizes and shaving are standard practices to keep in business for many many companies if you read regularly here:2 cents:

How do you think these companies pay for these prizes ???

lets say you give away a free Hummer. roughly 60K.

1 affiliate wins 60K, all the other affiliates get jack shit. Regardless of who wins, you are going to have several superstar affiliates, the guys who are making you rich, be rewarded with nothing, but yet 1 guy gets rewarded with 60K??? why to take care of the people who take care of you.

Why not spread that 60K out in the form of higher payouts. If Companies were not running stupid contest and tieing up so much money with that, they could pay affiliates more per signup... = scam IMO. Basically taking money out of the pockets of the afiliates who make the site successfull to give it to one person. Why? to attract noobs to your program?

It's a win win for the sponsor. They attract a lot of noobs who want to take a chance to win something and they dont have to pay for it, their current affiliates foot the bill.

Who switches sponsors to try to win something? Are you here to make money or try to find the best contest ?

I believe what he's getting at is that the money to pay for contests has to come from somewhere, so generally the affiliates sending lots of traffic are the ones paying for the prizes, who are usually one by people sending a handful of joins a period or whoring up the posting contests.

you need to redefine scamming in your vocabulary, unless you are saint Mary :-)

You are never going to fool me what that shit, that is the standard BS PR reply...

BULLSHIT.... why not advertise that you just raised your payouts... hows that for advertising ? everyone wins not just one person.

Even if the larger affiliates are sending most of the traffic and sales which means most of the profit for the company, why should they care or be able to dictate how the company uses their share to advertise or grow their business?

Some companies do this. $50 payouts for a month and stuff like that. What you are failing to realise is that some of these contest stretch the limit for the company in that month and could not become standard operating procedure. It is a current expense against the long term expectation of more traffic for a long period of time. They are making an investment.

Oddly enough you are way to smart for this thread.

it is the case with all of them. Every penny that went to a contest could have gone to higher payouts.

i am not trying to pick one out, all of them are taking money out of your pocket when they run a contest. all of them.

So any money the compagny spends (advertising etc etc etc) is taken from your pockets ?

Where else are the surfers going to post?

Your arguments are flawed.

Several companies do contest EVERY month.
So you telling me paying more per signup will not realize more profits from getting more people to signup/ retaining them longer but contest do the trick??? :upsidedow

ahhhhh..a fellow critical thinker :thumbsup

I find it quite simple. Advertise a contest of $60k, it catches the eyes of many and boosts affiliate signups. Not that I don't agree with you, but I would have thought the idea behind these contests is straight forward.

Stupid thread.

As was said before, contests are just an advertising expense, much like skinning GFY, buying banners on webmaster resource sites, etc.

The aims of a contest are to draw in new affiliates, get existing but inactive affiliates to send traffic again, and to get existing, active affiliates to send more traffic. A good contest (from the point of view of the affiliate program involved) is one that eventually brings in profits that are higher than the costs. Therefore, it should not have a negative impact on affiliate payouts. Quite the contrary, actually, when you take into account that overhead as a percentage generally decreases with volume .

Of course, for affiliates, the best thing would be if other affiliates never even found the sponsor, so it would never get saturated. Then again, sponsors aren't here to please affiliates, they're here to make money - like all businesses.

But hey, you go right ahead and boycot the next sponsor to start a contest. And while you're at it, boycot Coca Cola and Pepsi the next time they're giving away game consoles or whatever, because let's face it, by spending money on advertising they're driving up their prices, thus screwing you, the drinker :disgust

Do THIS or I stop promoting:upsidedow :upsidedow

I don't understand the concept of competitions being scams at all. There is an agreed commission structure. You send joins, you earn money. Everyone is happy. A contest is completely separate, its a marketing strategy.

Will, I understand where you're coming from.

But it's their share of the revenue, not yours.

They don't dictate how you use your money, do they?

Vice versa it would be like them saying: What, you bought a car with your share? Fuck you, you are supposed to buy more traffic and send it to us!

Got it?

just my :2 cents:

His arguments aren't flawed, yours are.

Contests are a very effective way to attract new affiliates, and thus they are a great way for programs to attract more affiliates. Higher payouts might do the same in some cases, but in others they might not (especially when the program is relatively new).

Contests are expenses just like advertising, sales reps, affiliate reward points, etc.

Meanwhile, for a smart affiliate, what should matter is how much money a specific sponsor will earn him for a specific amount of traffic. Conversions and retention generally play the largest role in this.

I am currently offering NO CONTEST. now sign up and send me all your traffic

Whales are usually taken care of in other ways. Raised payouts based on volume, fringe benefits, they are taken care of. Or should be taken care of anyway.

I dunno if you can win this one...

60k could not sustain as a raised payout for a lot of companies. :) The bang is bigger for the buck in this case.

So I guess that you think of Pussy cash as a small program???

will76 ...its either an asshole, or boyscout thread from you, every fuckin time lol

If you didn't spend all your time promoting a company with 0 technical support, affiliate reps, or public relations managers Will76, you would know that almost all companies send random gifts, wordtrips, & bump up payouts on a regular basis for those whales.

If you didn't spend all your time promoting a company with 0 technical support, affiliate reps, or public relations managers Will76, you would know that almost all companies send random gifts, worldtrips, & bump up payouts on a regular basis for those whales.

Before you lable my thread " stupid" you might want to compare apples to apples.

Skinning GFY IS advertising.
Giving one sponsor 60K and all your other sponsors NOTHING is NOT advertising. GFY is not an affiliate of their site.

Coca Cola gives prizes to CUSTOMERS, so they will be more inclinded to by the product, I have no problem with this model. If sponsors want to give away prizes to members, fine by me, will make it easier to sell their sites :2 cents:

Everyone understands WHY the Affiliate Companies do it. HAVE I EVER DEBATED or ARGUED why they do it. I am just making a point on why I think it is hurting their other affiliates.


I would love to know how many of your are 2 or 3 signup a week webmasters or affiliate owners. I never expected you to understand where i am going with this.

How many affiliates who actually get 5 or more signups a day, would switch their traffic to win a program... come on one person, honestly, step up to the plate and admit it if you do it.

How many affiliates (that generate a lot of sales for a company) think it is a slap in the face that the company they made a ton of money for is throwing their money around and gives it to some joe blow who sent in 5 signups over the last month?

This is all in how you define "advertising".

Do you call taking 60K and giving it to an affiliate who made your company $100 .... Advertising ?

Pencil in on the spread sheet under advertising expense:

Jim Noob, $60,000 for sending 5 joins and winning our contest.

Now thats how I would like to see an affiliate company spend my money :upsidedow , Hell I would rather the owner of the company fucking keep it, smoke it, or blow it at the casino before they give it to someone who did 1/10000000th the work that I did for them.

Some companies need to start thinking more about taking care of the people who take care of them and less about trying to pull shit like this and call it " Advertising".

Sounds to me like sour grapes as your favourite company, I don't believe, has ever had a contest for affiliates.

maybe they should do like clickcash & do absolutely nothing for anyone :thumbsup

Well that can be said about anything, how much they spend for rent for their office, how much they spend on content etc... what they do with their money is fine with me. It is when they reward idiots for being lucky and shit on people who make them a lot of money, that is what bothers me. Bad business model IMO...

And don't think it is coming out of their "profit". Too many of them are way to quick to call it an advertising expense. If they want to "expense" the money why not do it to the people who make you a lot of money and not to 1 person who likely hasn't made you any money...


I would much rather work for a program that has a slogan, " we take care of the people who take care of us " vs. " one lucky bastard will make a lot of money this month for doing nothing"

Well in this case your referring to Pussycash, and if you take a look every month they do give prizes to the top dog affiliates to reward them regardless. Like last month 3 top Pussycash webmasters got $900 Gucci watches.

I think it is going along nicely :thumbsup

"Too many of them are way to quick to call it an advertising expense."

Running a contest giving anyone an equal oppurtunity at winning something is probably the best advertising expense there is.

I see where you're coming from though will. How about a different prize teir level all-together for the high-end traffic guys.

On a tiered system i am sure it could add up even for the bigger programs.

What kind of contests are most productive ?
Instead of giving out prizes / hard goods ,
do you think raising payouts is better ?

And how do you know i am not treated this way ? :winkwink:

So asshole or boyscout for this thread ?? :) Just trying to make you guys think... and looking to hear from those who do make a lot of signups, the replies from "webmasters" and site owners was expected.


This isn't for just for whales. If i sent 100 signups a month to a program i would like a little more per signup vs a chance at winning some crap.

Contests are an advertising expense. Period. I don't even see how that can be argued. A company can spend $25K on skinning GFY or they can spend $25K on a contest. I'd rather they spend it on a contest as I have a chance of winning something on top of the traffic I send.

The company chooses how to spend their money. There's no rule that says they need to increase payouts. And besides, most, if not all, companies offered tiered payouts based on the amount of joins you send or are willing to raise payouts for those who send more joins.

Cant follow the logic there. I think contest are stupid because they reduce how much the company can pay me. So.... i advertise for a company that spends ZERO in contest (or advertising for that matter ) and puts all that money back into the pay scale inabling people like me to make more each week.... how does this make my grapes sour ?


Two approaches here. Try to "advertise" your program by paying a little less to all of your affiliates and a LOT to 1 of them. OR you pay a little more to all of them and less on "advertising" and generate FREE word of mouth advertising about your program and retain affliates who feel apprecited/well compensaited.