It seems affiliates have lost their spunk. It’s all doom and gloom, and even events that are positive get negative press these days because affiliates seem to have gotten mired in a rut of negativity.
In the old days, if a program screwed us in any way, we’d band together and wouldn’t let up until things were corrected.
When that happens today, you find a few comments about the program being a thief and doesn’t that show again how rotten things are, and that’s it.
No one cares to fix things anymore. People have apparently resigned themselves to being powerless.
The comeradery is missing. The cohesiveness in getting something fixed is missing.
I am not surprised the programs don’t show up anymore – when something bad happens , there are no people reaching out to discuss and fix, all there is are insults and voices of resignation.
The old CAP spring breaks were great ways to get to know one another and to form bonds with each other and also aff managers. There was plenty of time for individual get – togethers and on that basis it was a lot easier to be cohesive and to have aff managers who would stand up for us when the owners wanted to change things in a bad way.
All this is lost. I quit going to conferences alltogether, why fly all over the world and spend hours and hours in planes just to go to dinner with a group of 30 or party in a club? There is no professional advantage to it any more, it doesn’t really serve the cause of affiliates. It’s just a meat market for managers to recruit new affs. Feed affs for an evening, or let them get drunk one eve, and come home with a bunch of new affs and better name recognition. That’s the whole purpose of these things now. The only attraction for me anymore is to meet up with old friends…
A lot of us old timers have withdrawn from message boards and conferences. Who needs all that negativity? CAP is doing a nice job calling out rogue programs these days, and also by providing a lot of interesting info about SEO and the like. But I sure miss the cohesiveness and positive efforts put out by the community itself.
There is a little voice in the back of my head that says:”oh yeah, you don’t like it? Fix it!”
But I don’t know how unless we all pull together again and do something about things.
So, I miss the spunk and cohesiveness in the community as a whole. I miss the resolve we used to have to get things fixed. And we sure did get things fixed. Today, some of the T&Cs programs come up with are just ridiculous. But they get away with it, no one cares anymore. And so I see the gambling affiliate niche going to hell in a hand basket.
It’s not just UIGEA and domain and bank seizures, it’s the apathy of the community too.
It’s never too late to turn things around, but without a strong sense of togetherness and cooperation it won’t work.