I know that this isn’t going to go down well with lots of “affiliate marketers” .. hey I’ve been there and I know the game. But when Micheal Jackson died and every trending topic had bit.ly links in there and other url shorteners going to totally off topic and even to malware sites I knew a line had to be drawn somewhere in the sand as enough was enough.
Amazon have taken the brave step of stopping affiliate commisions on visits that have come via twitter & facebook .. which hasn’t gone down too well in some quarters. But the merchants that I deal with that run affiliate programs have already received advice on this months ago from me that they really should avoid affilaite commission on url shortners.
I appreciate that Social media is a major driver of traffic, but I just want the people that I follow to send me to places that I can trust and not that the fact that they are making a buck out of and dropping cookies on me. Sad but true. But more important than that I want my clients only paying commissions on qualified traffic.
As with anything that hits mainstream media you start to see it get abused and in the last few months I have been inundated with fake followers from fake accounts just ready to drop a link on me.
Excerpt from:
Mainstream Merchants Close Doors on Spammers
