Referring back to the original post, in history of the industry, there used to be trust. It was based on the direct, personal knowledge many affiliates had of the programs, their employees, and each other.
It was a small circle of people. No program had 200,000 affiliates. The first conference had maybe 30 affiliates and as many aff managers. It wasn’t all that hard to find out what everyone was up to.
The industry grew and most people chose one message board or another to hang out and get info and exchange experiences. It wasn’t all that hard to stand one for all and all for one, while there may have been no immediate knowledge of everyone in the industry, there were plenty of industry people we did know and trust.
Today, this business is as risky as they come. You can’t trust anyone you don’t know, really. So there can’t be automatic trust.
Some of the programs that used to be best have now a murky reputation. There are countless newcomers, some fail, some stick around, and they each have a different modus operandi. There is no industry norm anymore. Nothing is transparent, mostly thanks to the murky legal situation.
It used to be that player reputation was essential for both the casinos and the affiliates. There was a finite number of affiliate sites online. Now there are millions. And the owners of these millions, for the most part, have never even heard of the message boards. They don’t care about the message boards. They care about getting an online business off the ground.
They have no idea whether players are being treated well. They have no idea whether the program they advertise is honest or not, or whether their sites don’t convert for other reasons.
It’s everyone for him/herself anymore. Since there is no way to communicate with everyone, there is no way to cooperate for everyone. Like Judy said, in this forum our voices are loud, but in the world of gambling affiliates, they are but a muffled whisper.
Programs know this and capitalize on it. Some try to get as many affiliates as possible to cushion themselves. Some concentrate on fewer affiliates they can build personal relationships with. Some are a mix. Some have affiliate managers befriending affiliates on a personal level to gain top exposure. When that is achieved, and more profitable sites pop up, all of a sudden deals and friendships are forgotten and the affiliate is left out in the cold.
It’s a quagmire. Then you have programs that treat affiliates well and mess with players, and ones that treat players well and mess with affiliates.
And of course, there are both players and affiliates who commit fraud. It’s not a one sided situation, there are just a ton of individuals doing whatever they deem profitable.
You have thousands of people with grudges, some quiet, some loud.
So how to deal with all of that anymore?
If you can’t trust anyone but yourself, you can’t rely on any judgement but your own.