

Affiliating the Affiliates: Why Your Company Must Tier Your Affiliate Program - jeffepp
http://blog.zferral.com/post/750257678/affiliating-the-affiliates

======
michael_dorfman
Ouch. Affiliate programs can be good things, but multi-level-marketing quickly
tends towards the skeezy.

~~~
jeffepp
Michael, I think there is a pretty big misconception about affiliate programs
and MLMs. MLMs can definitely be super shady; especially when there are
startup costs and stupid fees.

In the context which I am discussing (mainly for bloggers) I believe it is a
good strategy and should be used in most circumstances.

~~~
michael_dorfman
I can only use myself as a point of reference-- I'm in the early stages of
setting up some referral programs for my business (and am interested in
zferral), and where the idea of having people refer business to my site for an
affiliate fee sounds fine, the idea of those same people trying to round up
other affiliates for me, well, skeeves me out.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to keep the incentives clear and close. But
maybe that's just me.

~~~
jeffepp
First of all, no worries -- you are more than entitled to your own opinion. I
agree in many respects, maybe I am naive to think that the company should
proactively manage some aspects to ensure the affiliates are ethical and
upstanding "referrers."

At some point there must either be: (1) such an awesome product I will shout
it from the rooftops; or (2) big enough incentive to tell people to try it
(still should be a good product)

Dropbox did such a great job because they managed to create the 2nd scenario
without a cash outlay.

Appreciate the discussion! Good luck with your programs, whatever you decide
to do

~~~
michael_dorfman
Dropbox is a good case in point. I use their service, and happily refer my
friends to it-- the "affiliate fee" from Dropbox, in the form of extra
storage) is a nice bonus. If my friends refer _their_ friends, that's none of
my concern-- and if Dropbox made it my concern (via some incentive), that
would feel very uncomfortable for me. I don't want to be that involved in
Dropbox's business, and I don't want to start thinking about who I can refer
that can refer a lot of other people, or how I can push my friends to refer
others, etc.

Similarly, if I have some books I want to recommend on a blog, I have no
problem using an Amazon affiliate link. For me to put up a link trying to sign
up more affiliates for Amazon, on the other hand, feels wrong-- I've crossed
the line from "recommending" to "shilling."

I'm not saying that it is impossible to do multi-tier affiliate systems well;
I'm sure there are people that are doing it properly, somewhere. But I'd
certainly not make a blanket recommendation that everyone should attempt it,
or even that it is appropriate in the majority of cases.

