176 New Posts Today

[TI Master]

Ok, so I registered on their site a few days ago, went through MY CJ link, put some things in my cart but never checked out.

I should note that they have a 45 day cookie.

So today (less than a week later), I get an email from them, reminding me that I still have items in my cart, and tossing in a free shipping on $50 link.

So I test the link with the wget command. The link runs through an encrypted CJ link and lands me on their site.

So if I read what happened correctly, I effectively just lost my 45 day cookie in less than a week.

Anyone have any suggestions? (other than booting said merchant?)

Here is the link that was in the email... note that it isn't a CJ link, but it redirects through one.

Free shipping on orders over $50

[webworker]

Here's the company being used, they offer shopping cart abandonment solutions to merchants.

http://www.secondbitesolutions.com/

It'll be interesting to figure out how they work.

Added: Yes, they're washing the cookies. Talk about point of sale attack dogs, this one takes the cake.

[Rhea]

I had a bad experience with them as a customer, a few years ago. I won't go into the details because frankly they're fuzzy now but I do know that I will never, ever do business with them again.

They did something VERY naughty with my credit card.

[ecomcity]

The parent company is http://www.thinkpartnership.com/ and this Point of Sale attackdog makes the BHO's and couponers look like pikers. Like the other Super Affiliate MetaRewards they completely violate all fair play network TOS agreements by embeding themselves within the merchant's shopping cart program. Basically a hard wired cookie stuffing piece of crap cherry picking all affiliate referral sales.....

Second Bite approaches the problem by addressing the behavioral triggers displayed by consumers during the shopping process. Second Bite sends a series of personalized e-mail messages that gives the shopper the opportunity to review an order left in their shopping cart and reinitiate the check-out process from within the e-mail message. As the merchant, you have complete control over the timing and content of the e-mails, creating a timely and relevant messages - an important aspect in marketing your products to potential customers.

For best results, merchants can include coupons and other call-to-action messages to help motivate shoppers to return to their abandoned cart.
The results are staggering:

Email Open Rate = 47.49%
Click-through Rate = 37.32%
Click To Sales Rate = 10.78%
Average Monthly Sales Increase Between 3-6%
Plus, Second Bite works as an affiliate of the merchant. We only get paid for recovering lost sales through our Order recovery application. There are no term commitments. So, we are highly motivated to help you succeed at recovering lost sales from abandoned orders.
Did You Know? 75% of all orders are abandoned during the checkout process. Second Bite can help you recoup those lost sales!

Using them requires the merchant violates all their privacy policies as they automatically pass the shopping cart information to these "incentive" wanks so collusion must be had to get this one by any honest AM's.

Ouch... http://www.practicalecommerce.com/public/344/

[Trust]

"The parent company is http://www.thinkpartnership.com/ "

Also the parent company of Kowabunga/MYAP

From Mike's link:

"How does Second Bite make money?

Second Bite works as an affiliate so the only cost ever associated with using Second Bite is any recovered sales or recovered sign-ups. We sign up as an affiliate in their affiliate network manager and accept whatever payout terms that are listed for that merchant. It it’s a percent of sales, we take a percent of sales. If it’s a dollar amount, we take that dollar amount. "

[mayfly]

That should explain why I only made very minimum sales with them in the past compared to other gift merchants...thank you for the post.

[ecomcity]

Some of the insiders should put together a list of the merchants and AMs in bed with Second Bite and MetaRewards and post it here at ABW. Both undermine the legitimacy and entire concept of affiliate marketing. They are affiliates hardwired right into the merchant's shopping cart. By allowing this those merchants are negating return day cookies and secretly p*ssing on their bread and butter traffic originators.

I noticed Dotster and TigerDirect do this with MetaRewards so they might also welcome a Second Bite out of our earnings. Any merchants want to volunteer a relationship with these DMA poster children?? Someone might mention these 2 to the FTC smoozefest next week. Go ahead and hide, but ABW has a way of OUTING weasels in the hen house. Another good question is this a hook placed into Kowabunga/MyAPP merchants?

[webworker]

Second Bite will be among the companies attending the Linkshare Summit in January

http://www.linkshare.com/summit2007/attendees.shtml

[Zeus]

Mike - Some of the insiders should put together a list of the merchants and AMs in bed with Second Bite and MetaRewards and post it here at ABW. Both undermine the legitimacy and entire concept of affiliate marketing.

I second that. We have to expose all the crooked merchants using them. We need also to pressure the networks to exclude them as affiliates. They are stealing one way or an other our commissions. If the merchant decide to use Second Bite or MetaRewards, they should pay them on top of our commissions NOT with our commissions. We have to make that clear to the networks.
Thanks TI Master

[Kimberly]

Originally Posted by Zeus

I second that. We have to expose all the crooked merchants using them. We need also to pressure the networks to exclude them as affiliates. They are stealing one way or an other our commissions.

Not to be a Devil's Advocate, but they're delivering sales to the merchants. And that's the bottomline.
I have to admit that the whole scheme is rather brilliant, but raises SERIOUS privacy concerns.

[ecomcity]

Basically OUTING the merchant's right here will expose the AM's responsible for allowing these Super Affiliates to market in the Post Sale or shopping cart coitis interruptus process to pad their own pockets. Absolutely no ethical difference between these "hard wired into cart" affiliates and the cookie cannon BHO's using trojan horse backdoors to drain commissions from the affiliate pool. Letting the LiveHelp wanks into the checkout and shopping process started all this mess.

Undue influencing/manipulating traffic and cookies before the sale isn't fair. Neither is Secretly washing legit affiliate return day/tracking cookies via "wired to cart" affiliates requires colusion on the networks part, potential payola on the AM/Merchant side and DMA/IAB membership puppeteers pulling the strings on the whole sleazy senerio.

[Zeus]

Originally Posted by Kimberly

Not to be a Devil's Advocate, but they're delivering sales to the merchants. And that's the bottomline.
I have to admit that the whole scheme is rather brilliant, but raises SERIOUS privacy concerns.

It's the responsability of the merchant to close the sale. Once the product is in the shopping cart, the merchant has to use HIS OWN money to convince the customer to buy.
Second Bite is doing the merchant job, not the affiliate job and they should be paid by the merchant. Period.
This scheme is a scam for the affiliates. And once again the networks are not seeing the problem.
We have to stop these practices or it will be the end of affiliate marketing. If you think this is brilliant, I've several ideas in mind we can use to steal our fellow affiliates commissions. It can be done if the merchants don't respect the agreements with their affiliates.

[fg20878]

I don't mind merchants do this after the first cookie expired. Otherwise, it is stealing. Let's list the names of the merchants using this kind of services here at ABW so we can avoid them.

Originally Posted by Zeus

It's the responsability of the merchant to close the sale. Once the product is in the shopping cart, the merchant has to use HIS OWN money to convince the customer to buy.
Second Bite is doing the merchant job, not the affiliate job and they should be paid by the merchant. Period.
This scheme is a scam for the affiliates. And once again the networks are not seeing the problem.
We have to stop these practices or it will be the end of affiliate marketing. If you think this is brilliant, I've several ideas in mind we can use to steal our fellow affiliates commissions. It can be done if the merchants don't respect the agreements with their affiliates.

[Zeus]

From TI Master post "45 day cookie - less than a week later"
Behind Cookie Washing, we should read Commission Stealing.

[webworker]

once again the networks are not seeing the problem.

The networks will get their cut either way.

[Zeus]

Originally Posted by webworker

The networks will get their cut either way.

That's one of the problems, crooked networks. I'm just waiting for LinkShare or CJ to brag about their next performers.

[luckyclown]

I totally get the problem here - but isn't it only a problem when someone puts something into their cart? the cookies still work if the user is just browsing, right?

[Zeus]

Look at all the services around the merchant stealing our commissions:
1-LiveHelp, offering customer help in exchange of our commission.
2-Free Shipping, free for the customer but at the cost of the affiliate commission.
3-Coupons, the customer got the reward, the affiliate lost the commission.
4-e-Mail, they remind the customer, they steal your cookie.

What's next?

What else, can we offer these merchants? I've a few lucrative ideas.

How long are we going to accept to be robbed from our hard earned commissions?

I'm sure CJ and LinkShare would give our commissions to the first idiot offerering to wipe the fat ass of all these crooked merchants. I'm starting to be mad at these thieves running these networks. We're far from the "trusted third parties" of our beginning.

[ecomcity]

Originally Posted by Zeus

Look at all the services around the merchant stealing our commissions:
1-LiveHelp, offering customer help in exchange of our commission.
2-Free Shipping, free for the customer but at the cost of the affiliate commission.
3-Coupons, the customer got the reward, the affiliate lost the commission.
4-e-Mail, they remind the customer, they steal your cookie.

What's next?

What else, can we offer these merchants? I've a few lucrative ideas.

How long are we going to accept to be robbed from our hard earned commissions?

I'm sure CJ and LinkShare would give our commissions to the first idiot offerering to wipe the fat ass of all these crooked merchants. I'm starting to be mad at these thieves running these networks. We're far from the "trusted third parties" of our beginning.

If we can compile a list of those merchant's partnering with MetaRewards and First Bite it would be easy to cross reference the AM's involved, and pinpoint the other clubbing methods they condone to beat the normal affiliate to death. Face it folks, our customer facing creatives, physical clicks and pre-sell efforts are just greasing the pockets of the point of sale attack dog. Fat chance these buttholes were ever willing to originate and drive traffic to merchants when the AM's allow them to kite sales from the checkout lane.

Out a few merchant's who share a common AM outfit and you can bet the rest are wired into these commission sharks.

[Zeus]

Mike - If we can compile a list of those merchant's partnering with MetaRewards and First Bite it would be easy to cross reference the AM's involved, and pinpoint the other clubbing methods they condone to beat the normal affiliate to death.

You had a discussion not so long ago with the AM of Taylor Gifts regarding AM eMails. His name Jamie Birch, the OPM, Converseon.
http://www.converseoncreative.com/ta...ites/minisite/

[Kimberly]

Originally Posted by Zeus

His name Jamie Birch

Ready... Set... Call:

Jamie Birch
Director, Affiliate Relations
Converseon

email: jbirch@converseon.com
ph: 212-213-4297 x307
cell: 208-290-0096
AIM: JamieConverseon
Skype: jamiee.birch

I'm going to send a text on his celly right now.

[Zeus]

Jamie needs to educate his merchants.
I can see some information on affiliate education, Shawn said:
http://www.converseoncreative.com/ta..._education.htm
Can't see anything related to ABW!
Well, WebmasterRadio, AffiliateSummit, EcomXpo, are they really the best places to educate Affiliates? Last time I heard WebmasterRadio, CJ was promoting eBates.

[Rollerblader]

As a precaution as an AM, we do not do this with our program. If you are going to create a list, please be carefull not to list merchants who do not use these practices in the list. It would be very unfair to give us a bad rap if we do not do this. Just a favor to please be careful if you start a list. Thanks.

[glinted]

I need to subscribe to this thread, very interesting... ;p

[Billy Kay]

Dear Bill Kxxxx,

Thank you for being a Taylor Gifts affiliate. We noticed that you have not had any activity on your account for the last couple of months. To avoid being deactivated, put links on your site by Monday, November 13th...

Jamie Birch
Affiliate Manager for Taylor Gifts and Get Organized

Fortunately... I don't have to worry about the cookie washing anymore

FYI: Their links were on ALL my sites. Now I know what happened