[flamingoworld]

My Coupons is crawling my site, checking out all my coupon pages.
Time to ban them.
66.179.79.69 MyCoupons Coupon Crawler 1.0

Getting tired of other coupon sites scraping my site. Get your own coupons! Or at least don't waste my bandwidth with your bots.

[tmartini]

I'd settle for other coupon sites not stealing my exclusive coupons. Brad's Deals has had my exclusive E.L.F. coupon posted for three months now and has ignored my request and my Linkshare rep's request to remove it:

bradsdeals.com/e.l.f.-cosmetics-coupons-mid-826.html

What makes it worse is that the coupon is expired!

-- Todd

[OTProf]

That's a crack up -- it even says your name on the coupon code!

Amazing!

[flamingoworld]

Yeah, it is one thing to post an exclusive code that is all numbers but we don't post any that are obviously someone's exclusive. Not that hard to get your own if you want one.

[Rexanne]

Originally Posted by OTProf

That's a crack up -- it even says your name on the coupon code!

There's an idea! Have your merchant coupons all be your web site URL - LOL - Let the scammers advertise for you.

[tmartini]

Originally Posted by OTProf

That's a crack up -- it even says your name on the coupon code!

Amazing!

Yep. I can understand when someone posts a generic exclusive code by accident. but when the code is "alexscoupons" there's really no excuse.

-- Todd

[Leader]

Or put some fake ones up in WingDings or some similar font.

The humans will think it's just a pretty design, but the baddies' bots will "read" it and then the their sites will be full of junk, heh heh heh...

To be SE-safe you could make a "Special" directory for those, and use robots.txt to block the real SEs from seeing that stuff.

[Billy Kay]

Caroly Tang can do this - maybe elf will:

the affiliate who's coupon is used gets credit for the sale

[Eric Ewe]

Originally Posted by tmartini

Yep. I can understand when someone posts a generic exclusive code by accident. but when the code is "alexscoupons" there's really no excuse.

-- Todd

Have a coupon code, NOBRAD and hide it (change text color to white). If he has a crawler, guess that it will show up on his site.

[OTProf]

or you could make the coupon code on of the following:

BRADSTEALS

BRADSDEALSSTEALS

BRADSMELLS

[Rexanne]

Originally Posted by Billy Kay

Caroly Tang can do this - maybe elf will:

the affiliate who's coupon is used gets credit for the sale

Perfect. Why isn't it like that already?

[flamingoworld]

I have a few merchants that if someone is using my exclusive coupon I get credit. The let the ones using it know too. Doesn't stop them, but at least they help me make money

[Billy Kay]

There's a down side to being famous

FWorld has been famous as long as I've been in the biz, so it's an easy target

By the nature of his site - and the Linkshare write-up - made Todd a celeb

But as Connie pointed out, there is a plus side

It's all a trade off

[MichaelColey]

I have a few merchants who offer truly exclusive coupon codes (where the affiliate it was issued to gets credit no matter where it's posted). I love those merchants and give them extra exposure. I don't mind when people steal those exclusive codes.

[tmartini]

Originally Posted by Billy Kay

Caroly Tang can do this - maybe elf will:

the affiliate who's coupon is used gets credit for the sale

Thanks Billy, I'll give it a shot, but I won't hold my breath. I tried to get ELF involved in getting Brad to take the code down, but they had no interest in helping.

Hope everything is going great. Talk to you soon.

-- Todd

[tmartini]

Originally Posted by OTProf

or you could make the coupon code on of the following:

BRADSTEALS

BRADSDEALSSTEALS

BRADSMELLS

I was actually going to create one called BRADSUCKS, but I'm taking the high road here!

[Angel Djambazov]

Originally Posted by tmartini

I'd settle for other coupon sites not stealing my exclusive coupons. Brad's Deals has had my exclusive E.L.F. coupon posted for three months now and has ignored my request and my Linkshare rep's request to remove it:

bradsdeals.com/e.l.f.-cosmetics-coupons-mid-826.html

What makes it worse is that the coupon is expired!

-- Todd

Hey Todd, you should suggest to E.L.F. that if another site scrapes your exclusive coupon that any commission they would have made through that traffic be reverted back to you. That will sure stop them from doing it in the future.

[Angel Djambazov]

Originally Posted by MichaelColey

I have a few merchants who offer truly exclusive coupon codes (where the affiliate it was issued to gets credit no matter where it's posted). I love those merchants and give them extra exposure. I don't mind when people steal those exclusive codes.

I think keeping coupons truly exclusive that way helps keep you affiliate channel clean which is something as a merchant you should be worried about.

[tmartini]

Originally Posted by Onlineshoes MGR

Hey Todd, you should suggest to E.L.F. that if another site scrapes your exclusive coupon that any commission they would have made through that traffic be reverted back to you. That will sure stop them from doing it in the future.

Yep, that's what I decided to do. I'll let you guys know if I'm successful. Like I told Billy, I'm not holding my breath.

[erninator]

Thanks for the post, Connie. I just found them crawling my coupon pages this morning.

[tmartini]

E.L.F.'s response (no big surprise)

"Thank you for your email, I hope all is well! Unfortunately I am unable to share that report with you, especially seeing as it would be difficult to say which site the coupon originated from. Unfortunately as coupon hunting goes, people copy the best deals, I don't agree with the past actions and I apologize. The coupon has now been expired, and hopefully we can avoid this problem in the future. Have a great rest of your week."

Looks like I'll be looking for a new merchant to replace them on my site.

-- Todd

[Trust]

"especially seeing as it would be difficult to say which site the coupon originated from."

? Lost AM. The code is the site. They probably could have gotten an exclusive code just for asking, I guess they were lazy.

[tmartini]

Originally Posted by TrustNo1

"especially seeing as it would be difficult to say which site the coupon originated from."

? Lost AM. The code is the site. They probably could have gotten an exclusive code just for asking, I guess they were lazy.

Exactly, I even wrote to Brad and told him that all he had to do was contact ELF for his own exclusive code. From what I've heard Brad has been incommunicado to just about everyone lately. I know that a number of affiliate managers have contacted him without success about his bidding on trademarked terms. I guess he's too busy with his media appearances on MSNBC!

-- Todd

[tmartini]

Hey, I see two people from MyCoupons are monitoring this thread. So what's the deal guys? Why are you scraping your competitors' sites?

[Trust]

"I know that a number of affiliate managers have contacted him without success about his bidding on trademarked terms."

That one is easily solved. Affiliate managers just have to tell him they won't pay commissions if he violates their PPC policy. And then those merchants can just take all the free traffic he is sending them. Or just deactivate him. There is no shortage of good coupon sites out there. And he can't be competitive if merchants start to drop him.