I was just reading a post from Daniel M. Clark (Affiliate Marketing: Just Like Porn, Apparently) about how TubeMogul has split out their multi-site video submission service as OneLoad.com.
But that’s not the story. Rather, Daniel was pointing out how OneLoad was lumping affiliate marketing with a list of other things they consider to be unsavory when signing up for the service…
NOTE: By clicking “Sign Up”, you agree to our Terms of Service and verify that you will not upload any multi-level marketing, affiliate marketing, network marketing, home-based business, cash gifting, phishing, pornographic or copyrighted third-party content. Any users uploading videos that a reasonable person would consider to be a scam will be banned.
Daniel went on to remark, “Anyone who doesn’t think affiliate marketing has an image problem has their head in the sand.”
Yes, the dark cloud over affiliate marketing is a narrative for some, but it’s not the dominant narrative. Nor should it be, as the cheats and dirtbags are not representative of the majority of the industry.
There are so many positive stories about affiliate marketing enabling people to leave bad jobs, get off unemployment, work from home with their children, and more – all as legitimate affiliate marketers.
That’s the problem with broad brushes. They miss the details. It’s similar to looking at a company that distributes the same exact content to a bunch of different places and calling them spam enablers.
Anyhow, I’d say it’s the duty of any affiliate marketer on the good side of the industry to report any bad actors to their respective merchants and networks.
We have to clean house internally if we’re going to fix the jaundiced view some have of affiliate marketing.