[bibby]

Below is a message I received yesterday.

"Starting August 24th we will no longer be working with coupon sites or providing vanity codes. This stems from an increase in PPC violations from multiple coupon sites. We hope you can continue to promote Overstockart dot com."

I think these types of decisions are ridiculous. There are many PPC rule breakers and obviously not all of them are couponers. Why not shut your whole program down?

I hate getting brandished as a cheat even if that wasn't the intent of the message. ABW is an example where you will find that most couponers are honest and ethical affiliates.

[Chuck Hamrick]

What is their PPC policy when it comes to trademark +coupon?

[bibby]

Originally Posted by Chuck Hamrick

What is their PPC policy when it comes to trademark +coupon?

Below is their SEM plociy:
Please do not bid on or show up for keyword queries containing the branded terms Overstock Art or Overstockart.com. This includes all misspellings and variations of these terms. Please add these terms to your campaigns as negative broad match keywords. Any affiliates found showing up for these queries will have their commissions reversed and will be removed from the campaign.

[purplebear]

Not in that program but that kind of mentality reaaaally annoys me, too. Even tho I have coupons on my sites, is an awful lot of content too so fortunately most merchants don't consider me a coupon site so don't have to deal with that kind of thinking too much.

Have said for quite some time that the larger (altho don't know if they all would be or not) unethical coupon sites get away with how they act and the ethical affiliates pay the price for their behavior. Letting them into programs have created monsters out of them and seems almost now that everybody's afraid of them so they get to act whichever way they want.

Not whining lol doesn't accomplish anything lol but is definitely backwards to how it should be. lol Good behavior should be rewarded, instead the bad is and those bein good suffer.

Anyway, agree with ya Bibby. If a merchant has a program, they should research what's involved first before starting it. Make your rules, then enforce them. Don't make your good or ethical affiliates suffer cos you don't want to be bothered enforcing your own terms.

[bibby]

I sent a letter to the AM telling him "This is one of the dumbest moves ever!" I don't expect to hear back from him but it did make me feel better

[Service Merchant]

I was wondering if you ever heard back?

[bibby]

Nope.

[TrishaLyn]

Originally Posted by bibby

Below is their SEM plociy:
Please do not bid on or show up for keyword queries containing the branded terms Overstock Art or Overstockart.com. This includes all misspellings and variations of these terms. Please add these terms to your campaigns as negative broad match keywords. Any affiliates found showing up for these queries will have their commissions reversed and will be removed from the campaign.

The part I bolded above is curious... is that to say that if you just have killer SEO and show up in a Google search that they'll cut you? Seems unrealistic.

[Trust]

Originally Posted by TrishaLyn

The part I bolded above is curious... is that to say that if you just have killer SEO and show up in a Google search that they'll cut you? Seems unrealistic.

The part following the bolded part tells me they were thinking of PPC when they wrote that. Adding the terms as negative broad match keywords, since you can show up for just about anything with that. (Never understood people using broad match) There have been merchants that have had issues with affiliates even showing up with natural search, which doesn't make much sense, since it's going to happen when you link to them using their name. Not sure if it's with this merchant as well.