We got an email for the Affiliate Summit affiliate program that I initially thought was a joke.
One of our affiliates sent along the following…
Hello Missy,
My name is [redacted], I am one of your Sharasale.com affiliates ([redacted]). We have recently launched our new website and would like to request that you place a reciprocal link to our website on your website. Our site relies heavily on search engine traffic to support all of our affiliates. We have sent this same request to all of our affiliates in efforts to strengthen all of our search engine ranks by inter-linking.
Below you will find the links we would like you to add somewhere on your website. These are links to where your company and website appear on our website.
[redacted]
Also, if you would like to help us improve your listings, we would greatly appreciate you replying to this email with a full 1-2 paragraph description of your website/business so we can update it on our site.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me directly at [redacted].
He was joking, right?
When affiliates refer sales to us, I love paying them. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.
But our agreement doesn’t say anything about trying to help affiliate “search engine ranks by inter-linking”.