The Good VS. The Bad. All Affiliates Must Read!

Thanks Zach. Being able to sleep well at night is so underrated in our society.

Read the whole post and than look for the bold word "Solution".

Zach

I PM'ed you, bro.

What would be great is to find out what RFT's people like Mike Hill make, he's super legit.

So than you can feel good about what your promoting and his shit converts big time.

But than if he gives away all his landing pages people will just ripe them off.

So there's no real solution except for testing yourself, over the next few months as I go through more I may make a list.

You are right in that I would've had no idea people were so un happy with the colon cleanse RFT. I just assumed everyone loved it, which of course wasn't true in the end.

BUT here's the thing. Hustling is good and fine I know this whole MMO thing seems impossible sometimes, but if you make 10 grand from one offer and 10 grand from another but ones 100% legit than why not promote the legit one?

And your are right again that if we don't start taking what we do seriously and start thinking about what we promote RFT's will be dead in the up coming years. (Will take awhile though, a suckers born every minute.)

Zach

Zach:

An interesting wake-up call...I think this ties in with a lot of your recent posts, most notably about Yahoo not allowing these offers.

Free trials with rebilling have been around since before the internet and it
is definitely a legitimate business model.

If I recall correctly (haven't read it in a while) free trials are mentioned in 'Scientific Advertising' which was written in 1920s. Credit cards and rebilling did not exist, but the concept of try before you buy is something that has proven effective for companies with legitimate products.

Unfortunately, any time a certain product becomes 'hot' like ****, and now
Colon Cleanse, the scammers come out in full force. It is not difficult to have your
own 'brand' created to enter in the market.

I am huge believer in consumer responsibility. Consumers have to take a certain degree of responsibility for what they sign up for.

However, in most of these cases that are causing all the consumer complaints, there is an intent to deceive from the outset. I don't think the issue is that people are not aware that they are signing up for a free trial...the problem is that they are not getting their trials until after the trial period expires, and beyond that these companies make it impossible to cancel. And even after consumers jump through the advertiser's 'cancellation hoops' they still continue to rebill. In all likelihood, these companies are selling inferior diluted products as well, but admittedly, this is just my guess.

That is why you probably saw a huge discrepancy from your promotions. One was a legitimate company and the other one of the bottom feeders.

I personally had this 'impossible to cancel' issue twice myself, although not with health products, and ultimately I decided to stop hitting my head against the wall, and just took it up with American Express. In one case, where after I initiated the online cancellation process, I continually came to an error page at the next step, I remember having the most ludicrous conversation on the phone with the advertiser whose employee told me that he could see that I tried to cancel 7 times, but since I did not get to next step (the error page) it was TS on me. Then he told me I could go back and try it again...they don't let you cancel by phone. Called AmEx and told them what happened, and I got my money back. From what I understand, people who use debit cards are most likely to get screwed the worst.

It really is too bad, because legitimate companies who are truly looking for new customers to try their products because they are good products that people will voluntarily buy again and again are going to be hurt in the end.

I mentioned in another thread that affiliates should be concerned with these scams
because whenever consumers are hurt on a continuing basis, the government usually
steps in and over-regulates in a way that screws legitimate business. The scammers who have zero interest in following rules and have no morals continue to make money, while legitimate businesses suffer.

I mentioned your Yahoo thread, because without doubt this new rule arises from the
proliferation of consumer complaints. When consumers complain to government about a fraudulent offer, they are asked where they saw the ad. Whether it is a magazine or on a search engine, whoever is hosting the ad becomes a part of any investigation, disclaimers not withstanding.

Before I choose to promote an offer I will check to see if there are huge numbers of complaints. Unfortunately, that is not a fail proof method. As a practical matter what happens is that when complaints get to a certain point as to affect profitability, the scammers simply start a new company with a new name, and start over.

In my opinion, if the affiliate networks were smart, and looked into the long term future instead of only worrying about bigger profits today, they would begin doing their own due diligence, and would refuse to deal with advertisers who make a habit of screwing
consumers.

There are plenty of good products to promote with the recurring billing model, and
hopefully if the networks (who are in a better position to determine legitimacy before putting an offer out to affiliates) start regulating themselves, we won't see more restrictions on the whole model from advertising networks or the government.

One last thing...if you promote a fraudulent offer, you can be held accountable. If you are a minor player, in all likelihood you won't be a target, but any affiliates who are raking in profits from the promotion of scam rebill offers are taking a huge risk. When the government starts cracking down "I didn't know it was a scam" won't cut it.

Robyn

I don't think we(affiliates) are even teaching them a lesson, I'm willing to bet the same people will opt into several rebills during there lifetime. I don't think it's necessarily right, but the best thing I think you can do is educate yourself and people around you to read the fine print on everything!

If rebills bothers you as a marketer - there are tons of other products you can promote. You could even try turning the traffic you used to rebill around and try promoting other health care products.

Zach, I do think that most consumers are aware that there is a continuity aspect to most free trials...but they expect and deserve a fair opportunity to try the product and cancel if they don't like it. I mentioned one of my personal cancellation challenges above...my second one, every time I called they gave an option press 2 if you are calling to cancel, and I would be on hold for 40 minutes to an hour and then when a person came on the line, we magically got disconnected. Did this twice not counting times I got tired of holding and hung up(and I work from home...imagine dealing with this when you have a job) I then tried to talk to a salesperson by not pressing 2. When I said I wanted to cancel, salesperson was rude and told me I had to use the special cancellation line...(where apparently the training consists of pressing the disconnect button) again I opted to call AmEx instead. This kind of BS is what makes consumers mad...the FTC too. And it is simply not right.

As to your other point on lost profits:

Well when it comes to the government grant offers, I'm not sure how many, if any, were legitimate...I looked at a few and while I admit I was tempted because of the buzz, my gut feeling was that it would not be a good Karma move. But with a lot of these health offers I wonder whether the networks and even affiliates are making a considerable amount of money more by dealing with the scammy companies, as opposed to simply promoting legit. companies.

Take **** as an example. There are many legitimate companies selling **** based products, but because of the handful of companies who engaged in shady tactics, there is now a reluctance by many consumers who are afraid of being ripped off. **** is still selling, but how much better would it be selling without the consumer scandals? How much more money, if any, was made by promoting the scammers, as opposed to just promoting legitimate advertisers who give consumers a fair trial and allow people to cancel in a reasonable manner.

There are many legitimate companies who use free trials who are being hurt because of the proliferation of the scammers. Not just because consumers are becoming more wary, but because of restrictions on advertising like what just happened with Yahoo, which I think will only increase.

Unhappy consumers are a lot louder than happy consumers.

I have to say I find it somewhat disturbing that there are people here who seem okay with scamming people as long as they are making money in the process, and they are out of reach of FTC. I guess nobody ever taught them: do unto others.

As you have pointed out Zach, there are many legitimate recurring trials that people can make money with and still sleep at night. Hopefully those opportunities will remain available and won't be lost as the result of the BS.

Robyn