Internet Business Blog

One simple reason…  It works!

One of my websites offers an information product using the 7 Dollars script and anyone can promote it without needing to sign up to anything.  All they need to do is to append their PayPal email onto a special version of the website URL and then they receive the proceeds of any sales from their referrals.

One particular affiliate decided it would be a good idea to spam a large number of people with his affiliate link. Judging by my website stats, if only a single-digit percentage of people actually followed his affiliate link then at least tens of thousands of people would have received his spam email.

Of course, this kind of action goes hand in hand with being reported to blacklist controllers such as SpamCop and eventually my host came knocking on my door asking me to deactivate the affiliate’s link.  This, I duely did.  Anyone following his link was then greeted with a message informing them of the situation, but also giving them an unaffiliated link to the products sales page just in case they were interested in it.

This resulted in a number of sales of which the proceeds went into my pocket instead of the (spamming) affiliate!

As his emails had been reported, I got to read a copy and was surprised that anyone would actually click through and buy, but they did.

So, there you have it.  Spam pays.  Period.