Hi Curtis,Originally Posted by Curtis Ng
Hey Ben,
I'd be real careful about taking the "scam" approach. Lots of product owners get really pissed when their affiliates do that because it tarnishes their rep. Some of them will actually say on their affiliate or JV pages that going the "scam" approach is not allowed, so you might want to check up on that.
Curtis
You bring up a good point - something I will watch out for.
While I can understand their point, the reason why this seems to work is because so many of us have been scammed before and are gun shy. I tend to search "product name" and then search for "scam" within results quite often. And quite often I find complaints. Sometimes they are legitimate and sometimes not. Like it or not, this question is always in the back of the buyers' mind.
The reason I would avoid this approach in most cases is I think it is getting overused. Frankly, I WANT to find the downside of these products and it is tiresome for me to find so many using this tactic to draw traffic.
That said, if I were Ben, I'd have done the very same thing - as long as I could get the domain name, I would do it.
For those of you launching products, I for one, will urge you NOT to forbid using the scam tactic. Discourage it? Yes. Forbid it? No. Why? Overused as it is, people are going to wonder so my take on it is more damage could be done by forbidding it than not.
Ask yourself this: what if you have a problem with a customer and they get vengeful? You've forbidden the use of the "scam" gambit with your affiliates. So what's to stop this customer from buying a domain name and smearing you? Maybe they have a point, maybe not, but wouldn't you rather have him compete against a bunch of your affilates all saying good things about you? Just a thought.
Andy
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