Correct affiliate behavior?

[DavidO]

I have a product on Clickbank but I've never been an affiliate myself. I was doing some research today and I found one of my articles in Google docs but under someone else's name. It had originated from PRLog.org.

It provided an email contact form and I wrote the guy a pretty harsh cease and desist order.

Then I did some more research and discovered 6 more of my articles on PRLog. These submissions have also been bookmarked in lots of places. In PRLog, instead of "author" they have "submitted by" and the same guy did all six. Turns out he's an affiliate of mine and the original PRLog submissions have links to my Clickbank page in the Resource Box.

Now I fell kind of bad, but not completely. The guy didn't ask permission to use my work and, whether intentional or not, it makes him look like the author in many cases.

I wouldn't have a problem with this (it's mutual promotion) but I think I should have been asked to avoid just this kind of situation.

What do you affiliates think? Is this guy going about it the wrong way?

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by DavidO

What do you affiliates think? Is this guy going about it the wrong way?

Yes, he is. Unless you offered your articles for use as PLR by your affiliates (or anyone else for that matter), he doesn't have the right to use them that way.

There's the possibility that someone else offered your content as PLR (it happens) and your affiliate got a hold of that. However, that would seem too much a coincidence in this case so, while possible, it may not be likely.

Now, if you say on your site that people may use your content to promote your work, then it's possible there's a misunderstanding here, that the affiliate may have thought that included using your content as though it were PLR.

But, if you haven't done anything of the sort, your affiliate doesn't have the right to go ahead and take your work and use it that way. Borrowing from the sales page is understandable, but grabbing your articles is not.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by DavidO

What do you affiliates think? Is this guy going about it the wrong way?

Yes, of course he is.

He should have asked you. Maybe expecting you (in the circumstances) to say "yes" as you probably would have done, but clearly he should have asked you and was able to contact you to do so, had he chosen to.

So, if/when he replies to your angry C&D, you can always explain to him that at the time you wrote it you hadn't realised he was an affiliate, a situation he could have avoided simply by asking in the first place.

[ctutt]

They're right! He should have asked.