The Future of the Finance Vertical Forum

[Matthew Wood]

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This is a very busy forum on affiliates4u however I'm concerned with its direction and the conduct of a select number of newcomers.

So we can keep this forum on topic can I ask for your help in suggesting some gentlemanly rules that you would like to see for this specific forum.

We can then place these within a sticky to be read before posting!

Thanks,
Matthew.

[Michael_Anthony]

Excellent suggestion Matt. Here's my 2p worth..

"This forum is for the discussion of internet generated finance business only, and not that of call centres or any other similar offline businesses. Please restrict your posts to issues that directly relate to the conduct of finance related business and online affiliate marketing.

Posts promoting the services of offline sources will be removed and members will be removed for persisent offences."

[tomj]

edit:...not a value add

[russell cpanuk]

My thoughts

Members who are in the finance industry should be welcomed to the forum with open arms. However at times, I personally find in difficult to distinguish between Call Centres, Data Suppliers, Affiliates or Merchants.

Internet generated applications are worlds apart in quality from call centre leads, but equally have a place, as long as the reader can distinguish which they are.

The more common theme on these threads is that some members do not know the rules within their own industry. They seem to think that can advertise leads, data or services that fall outside the guidelines set down by the OFT, FSA etc.

Sort this out and you have cracked it.

[jatin_7]

hi matthew,
what i think is that this forum is to share information on finance market which further help companies or individuals to grow or to take good or bad decisions for their business.
finance is a wide term,internet generated leads and database generated leads or any other source are very well a part of this business so all members should have freedom to put their thoughts.
so posts which aren"t related to finance or contains abusive words should be stopped.

jatin

[123debtsolutions]

Wp Matt and thanks, hope no offence was taken.

You have my views and opinions. Thanks.

[JayFCF]

The more common theme on these threads is that some members do not know the rules within their own industry. They seem to think that can advertise leads, data or services that fall outside the guidelines set down by the OFT, FSA etc.

Sort this out and you have cracked it.

I am totally with you on this, far too often people are on this thread buying and selling leads without even having the correct compliance in place.

Can we make it standard for merchants and affiliates to display DP numbers CCL numbers and FSA numbers where applicable?

[drivetowin]

Why not make it that you cannot post that you have leads for sale or want to buy leads until you have posted at least 10 posts in the rest of the forum which have been accepted as 'quality posts' which have added value to the forum, i.e. not just "My name is Fred and I'm an alcoholic".

That way we would remove all of the fly by nights who use this as a marketplace but in reality add nothing of value..

[russell cpanuk]

6631 posts and you can still manage witty replies. Not very practical but still amusing.

[abc]

I agree with Michael, Russell, Jayfcf and all about all this. I am a newcomer but have been lurking for a while and recently have been sucked into some of these data sellers and Indian call centers postings etc and at the end of the day we all trying to run business but this is meant to be about finance affiliates through internet lead/traffic generation and not data sellers or hot keyed leads..

Sorry for being sarcastic with some threads

Rick

[drivetowin]

OK, accepted it would be hard to police but not impossible - at the very least make it so you have to have a post count of 10 before you can post in this forum - my understanding is that the software used makes that relatively simple to set up (I've seen it done on other forums) - that way spam merchants who are only interested in a quick buck could be filtered out as they could have their accounts terminated before they even get to 10 posts.

If you only want to sell leads, or buy leads, then buy some advertising on the forum and help the community that way.

[Michael_Anthony]

I'm not so sure about that last suggestion - we have been in business for over four years, have an excellent and well established reputation and are recognised as the market leaders in the markets in which we operate. In all sectors in which we operate, we pay higher CPA's and generate more volume than any other network. We have all the relevant licenses and offer free and highly relevant advice to both affiliates AND merchants based on our considerable experience.

Despite all of this, we have offered to pay to have our own forum section as a network and have been refused several times.

I'm not sure of the logic in this decision, but Matt & co. have decided against it and we have accepted and lived with it.

If the Indian call centres and hot key garbage producers could simply pay to effectively legitimise their offerings by buying advertising, I don't really see how that brings any policing of quality to these forums and it certainly would not solve the current problems which Matt has highlighted by creating this thread.

Perhaps the answer is pre-moderation of posts, but I know from my own experience of running a forum that this just means more work for the mods and an unnecessary and time consuming headache.

What's really going on here is simple - low quality offshore call centres posing as genuine affiliates are fleecing inexperienced affiliates and merchants by buying and selling rubbish with this forum as their marketplace.

What's the solution? Buyer beware, as they say in the advertising world. If you are stupid enough to entrust an unknown individual or business with many thousands of pounds of potential business then to an extent you deserve everything you get.

A new poster, who can't string an English sentence together and whose site has almost no traffic, and whose business nobody has ever heard of, is quite obviously NOT someone to trust to deliver on their promises.

I don't think it falls to Matt, his moderators, or anyone else at A4U to help you avoid this sort of rubbish - your business and your money are YOUR responsibility. Perhaps the very people who have been conned by these scammers are at this very moment waiting for their share of the unclaimed $20 million from the estate of a deposed Nigerian oil minister who they just happened across by a one in a million chance email opportunity that came their way too

My conclusion is simply this - if you want to stop such rubbish make certain sectors of the forum members only. Perhaps offering membership to regular "trusted members" rather than by paid subscription. This is the approach we have taken with our own forum and it has not suffered one jot.

The drawback of running a free for all forum is that you will always have a system that is open to abuse - the only way to control it is to limit access.

[crisscross]

I have been a lurker on this forum for some time. As an affiliate who is trying to break into Finance Vertical, I would like this forum to help me understand the UK financial market, provide marketing tips, best performing categories, affiliate programs that I can trust etc. Majority of the threads dont meet this criteria.

My 2 pence on this - I think having a moderator to review posts might be a way of cleaning up this forum, I'm not suggesting pre-moderation as it would be too much work. New threads or posts that dont meet a criteria should be deleted and poster banned after a couple of violations. This can be done either at the moderator's discretion or based on genuine users voting against threads or posts that violate forum criteria. This would significantly reduce the noise in this forums. Many forums do this successfully and I dont see any reason why we can't replicate that here.

Thoughts?

[ashish]

Hello Matthew,

Nice to see your posting in forum this is a fantastic opportunity which have provide to all of us to share our thoughts. As per my personal view every single person who belong to finance industry should discuss about their services and project. This forum mean all professionals can do discuss about their business. What I would like to suggest you is every single person who is using or posting over this forum should be very very professional I have saw there are few posting where product seller and buyer are posted unprofessinal emails for example, "some body do this with me and I have lost my money " business mean risk in the market you should have risk factor with your company well management system good product delivery even sometimes there are lots of risk in the market but we should we not do comment over any perticular person. Before investing money with company every professional should have idea about their CRM system. If we have good CRM experience management team as well as risk factor with us then we will not have any problem.

It was just a small brief about the marketing factor however, I would like to advice that this is a good forum where every professional can share his thoughts with diffrent companys and affilliates. This will help to find partners and long term business relations.

Any suggestion on this matter will very much appreciate

Regards,

Ashish

[johnd]

Hi,

As much as everyone's suggestions are interesting to read, i think what Matt said at the beginning was to have some ground rules on a sticky post at the top; so the idea is already there we just need to provide those ground rules.

I think limiting certain people or having minimum posting just means that you will have certain parties spamming the other forums to make their 10 posts.

Hence, as Matt said at the start, we just need some guide lines so people know how to behave. If posts don't meet those guidelines they will be removed (that can be one of the guidelines so it is upfront and transparent).

I believe that many affiliates actually want to be sold to. They want to see what is available and unlike advertising which just sits there looking shiny, there is an opportunity to paint a more realistic picture. For example experienced affiliates can quickly set the record straight with a overstated claim in a way that they can't with a banner ad.

Yes there will still be mess and yes we will still have people who feel the need to reply to every post with an 'i can do that better' post.

So perhaps i will suggest a ground rule that i try to follow myself: Competitors should stay away from each other's threads. for example if LeadYAWN posts about their appalling prices i resist the urge to explain in that context how much better ours are. If they really are better then our affiliates should tell everyone.

Finally i don't think we should prejudice ourselves against particular genres of marketing. There are gulfs between the best and worst example of each and therefore it is not always the type of marketing that is to blame; i include call centres here.