What's the deal with this?

Lucky84 · 03-07-08

Hi guys,

So I got a new affiliate last week and they have copied our site in about 20 different languages???

Is this common practice? When they signed up it looked perfectly normal, and when you look at their site now you wouldn't think twice but then when we checked our inbound link tracking we found their counterfit sites.

Have any other affiliate managers found a similar thing and if you did what did you do about it?

Any advice would be great.

Cheers,

Vikki

Crown Bingo

Jackpotjasper · 03-07-08

Haven't come across this myself but I would boot them off the program right away, so they can't make any money of their practices.

Lucky84 · 03-07-08

Cheers Jasper,

Yeah turned them off as soon as I was made aware of it. Gotta say 10 out of 10 for effort on this scam but I'm glad I caught them when I did!

UKSeBiz · 03-07-08

I am not sure exactly what is wrong with this practice? If you dont have your site in these languages, how does this hurt?

Lucky84 · 04-07-08

I suppose the main issue would be if we did want to have sites in these languages.

As the bingo market opens in Europe we could find that we need a spanish, french or dutch site.

So that said I suppose it's fine in the short term but long term its probably bad for us.

Lawcom · 04-07-08

Other than multiple sites in different languages, what is the problem ?

Their commission is based on sales ? from what you have given I would have thought that was an excellent idea..

Bud · 04-07-08

OK, I can kind of understand the that 'copying' your site may be unwelcome but as for putting it into many languages, haven't they done you a service?

Seems a little harsh to turn them off straight away. Maybe it would have been better for all to open a dialogue with them.

Isn't creative marketing what you want from affiliates?

A little confused...

UKSeBiz · 05-07-08

Totally agree... I am still not sure what the problem is?

Casino_Man · 10-07-08

seems a bit of a slack way to cash in on the programme, and can totally see why it would annoy you. However if they are creating traffic from those languages i would be tempted to use it until i had those languages on my site.......then turn them off! But be up front about it so as not to put any affiliate noses out of joint.

PitBoss · 11-07-08

I guess if (as an affiliate manager) you have never seen this method before then you may not understand what was going on and it would be easy to assume it was some kind of scam.

It sounds like the affiliate went to a lot of effort on behalf of the merchant but didn't stop to think how the merchant would feel about it and check that it was ok.

I would try and contact the affiliate and find out what they were up to and consider reactivating them for a test period to evaluate the results.