If sites A, B, C and D all use this same forum… would the owners of the sites B, C and D have the details of a member who registers to the forum from site A?
excellent question.
IMHO what would be fair for the person running the forum, therefore paying the hosting etc, and fair for the other webmasters would be something like what was mentioned using frames (which I don’t know shit about but I think I understand them enough to say this) which keeps all advertising exclusive to the webmaster who sent the surfer; but the owner of the forum would get to have the database emails used during signup to the forum; and then make it understood to the surfers that their email addresses will occaisonally receive offers from ONLY one other source aside the webmaster that sent them: and that they’d only recieve …. a set number of these offers per month (to be decided upon what would not be annoying to the players or be done so often that it would appear the sender is doing his/her best to take all that player’s trade and leave nothing for anybody else.
In other words, I’d probably say okay to the above if I knew my players were only going to recieve an email offer sent by the owner of the forums say … once a month. I could live with that…. I think.
Lets face it; nobody wants to give up players, but that is exactly your risk anytime you expose them to another affiliate, whether by means of email or website.
and in order to sign up for the forum, somebody else aside from you are going to be privy to the email addresses. Namely the owner of the forum. Even the best intentions are going to be subject to the temptation of this information. And I believe that it is seldom the temptation doesn’t win out in the long run. So why not face the inevitable right up front and try and agree to a working solution that will satisfy both parties? Thus my idea about the once a month email offer.
what it boils down to for me; is that I give up minimum exposure to competitors as possible; as I’m sure others will agree. Tell me a working solution for that and I’d be interested for certain.