Diorex

In response to some recent Twitter comments (@Diorex if you care to follow along at home…) about trying to disintermiediate networks and working directly with the advertiser I was surprised at the number or DMs, IMs and Emails that I received from people about how they are having a hard time finding contact information for the offer they are running.

This got me thinking… Advertisers are in the business of finding affiliates. If they are making it tough to find and contact them it really makes me question why?

If an advertiser is hiding behind a private whois, is unwilling to post an email or phone number for customer service or will not give a customer service call center a contact number for legitimate queries - what are they hiding from?

Sure lots of advertisers are afraid of the FTC because they are running offers of questionable legality - but the FTC can pierce these minor veils almost immediately if they want - going after payment processors or server hosting facilities or tracing credit cards or other financial transactions to the source. And if an advertiser is seriously worried about the FTC, then why aren’t you? You think if the FTC knocks on his door that you are gonna get paid?

Other advertisers try to keep a low profile because they don’t have a real business presence. Setting up an office, getting a phone and having someone to answer it are pretty basic principles of those serious about running a business. Some successful internet businesses are run out of garages and off cellphones, but not that many. I can see not being terribly proud of working out of your mom’s basement but as an affiliate why would you work with someone who is unwilling to make even the slightest investment in their business? What makes you think they care at all about yours?

The main reason I see advertisers hiding is because they are up to no good - they dont want people to know they are the same guys who skipped out on another network and owe hundreds of thousands. Just rebrand, relaunch and you are on your way again. Every successful affiliate I know of has been screwed at least once by an advertiser not paying a network and then the network not paying them.

In essence the real question in my mind is why would you even consider running traffic and spending money investing in someone elses business if they are hiding or making it hard to have a business conversation with them?

Maybe there is a very legitimate reason an advertiser has for staying in the shadows, but for the life of me I cannot figure it out.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Rants, affiliate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.