History repeats itself, affiliate naughtiness and twitter spam

Posted on | April 15, 2009 | View Comments

Looking at the updates to How to Sell Your Soul on Twitter and Who’s Buying – ReadWriteWeb, it looks like all the “funding” for BeAMagpie is drying up. Box.net and StubHub have booted BeAMagpie from their affialiate programs, and I suspect the rest of the companies will too, once it gets on their PR radar screen.

Why? Because these are not direct transactions with the company being mentioned, but through 3rd party affiliate programs, and there’s nothing an affiliate network hates more than losing big companies as customers. Most affiliate networks have specific provisions on not just spamming, but where and the manner in which you are allowed to provide a link to your affiliate network–if the referal did not come from a website you specified, you may be subject to termination.

While I am in awe of BeAMagpie’s gall to use referal links without direct advertiser approval, I’m not surprised that they did not ask. What reputable company would say yes? You’d be left with the realm of advertisers who advertise on warez, lyrics, tab, and free lottery sites. Very few of those advertisers have solid business models.

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