[msladybug]

Originally Posted by Charlie.Calabrese

With that said, we are currently working with Petmeds to resolve the many affiliate concerns which have been expressed to the network.

Hi Charlie - Will one of these resolved concerns be to address the OneCause toolbar issue? I see that OneCause is currently one of your affiliates.

[Trust]

OneCause is an affiliate at Buy.at or OneCause is an affiliate for one of the merchants at Buy.at and is an affiliate for that merchant thru another network? Just wanted to be sure.

[msladybug]

I see that PetMeds also runs their program through LinkShare so I think that is probably where OneCause has joined the affiliate program through. Trust - It may be best to move my question to the LinkShare or ParasiteWare OneCause forum then.

[knight01]

Originally Posted by Trust

OneCause is an affiliate at Buy.at or OneCause is an affiliate for one of the merchants at Buy.at and is an affiliate for that merchant thru another network? Just wanted to be sure.

If I join through buy.at and a user with onecause goes through my link and lands at 1800petmed.com, wouldn't they still get the notification they can 'donate to charity'?

If they click yes, to set the one cause 'donation' cookie, wouldn't there be two affiliate cookies, one from buy.at and one from linkshare. Who gets paid? Or would one cause overwrite my buy.at cookie so only they have a claim? OR since they were last cookie set, they claim the commission even if two cookies are present? Lots of questions about how this would work.

[Trust]

Split thread upon request.

"If I join through buy.at and a user with onecause goes through my link and lands at 1800petmed.com, wouldn't they still get the notification they can 'donate to charity'? "

I think so if they have that on their computer.

Avantlink, SAS, Buy.at are adware free in the sense that they don't allow those affiliates in the network but some merchants in those networks are also on other networks that have adware and can have adware affiliates in their program thru those other networks. So you can still have some of those same problems if shoppers to your site have those applications on their computers.

[Charlie.Calabrese]

To be 100% clear...

OneCause is not an affiliate on the buy.at network nor will they ever be if they continue in their current practices.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions -

charles.calabrese@buy.at

[msladybug]

Understood Charlie - That is why I had this thread moved from the buy.at forum. I respect that the buy.at network is clean and didn't want to be unfair by leaving my question in the original thread.

However, knight01 did pose an excellent question above regarding whether buy.at affiliate cookies might be affected by OneCause being a PetMeds LinkShare affiliate.

[Haiko de Poel, Jr.]

To answer the question ---

Scenario A
- 1800Petmeds runs an affilaite program on Linkshare and Buy.at
- Onecause (or any other parasiteware / loyaltyware) is an active affiliate of 1800PetMeds
- You are an affiliate of 1800PetMeds via Buy.at
- End user has onecause (or any other parasiteware / loyaltyware) toolbar installed

End user clicks your Buy.at affiliate link, upon landing on 1800petmeds site user should be automatically redirected to the landing page using onecause's affiliate link. Thus invalidating the buy.at affiliate cookie.


Scenario B
- 1800Petmeds runs an affilaite program on Linkshare and Buy.at
- Onecause (or any other parasiteware / loyaltyware) is an active affiliate of 1800PetMeds
- You are an affiliate of 1800PetMeds via Buy.at
- End user DOES NOT have onecause (or any other parasiteware / loyaltyware) toolbar installed

Your affiliate cookie is safe.

--------------
Last week when I did a test for a merchant the toolbar (V1.425) was overwriting/redirecting whether or not the end user was logged in or not.

[msladybug]

Thank you Haiko - That's not a pretty picture at all and I grow more concerned with more merchants cross networking.

Even though, I may join a merchant through a "Clean" network if they also run an affiliate program on another "Unclean" network and allow OneCause and other parasites in their program, I am still affected.

These cause toolbars seem to be popping up everywhere, this just has to stop.

[Haiko de Poel, Jr.]

msladybug,

The toolbars know when not to pop and when to (it's software - follow the rules), the problem is that they (parasites) are allowed to behave this way by the merchants because the networks (CJ, LS and GAN) sold them as a one stop shop super affiliate. So the problem isn't the toolbars (cause or otherwise) the problems are the COC, the lack of REAL policing, any remote hint of enforcement and the fact that the networks continue to allow, encourage and endorse such activity even knowing doing so is unethical, and worse - but as I said in my Ethics Session in Vegas --- it's all business as usual.


Added:

The only real thing we can do as affiliates is join ethical networks like Buy.at, Shareasale and Avantlink and promote the merchants there to further prove the viability of the the ethical channel, not because it's the right thing to do but because it speaks volumes to the merchants that the affiliates are on the other networks ... they truly acknowledge those real sales.

[msladybug]

Originally Posted by Haiko de Poel, Jr.

The only real thing we can do as affiliates is join ethical networks like Buy.at, Shareasale and Avantlink and promote the merchants there to further prove the viability of the the ethical channel, not because it's the right thing to do but because it speaks volumes to the merchants that the affiliates are on the other networks ... they truly acknowledge those real sales.

I think that is very sound advice for us all to make note of when joining or replacing merchants and networks in 2009. Thanks again Haiko!