Since the leading management of WJunction forum (@JR, @Tango, and @M) said that there will be some changes on the forum, I'd like to suggest the first one regarding affiliate representatives.
There is a countless number of affiliate representatives active here, on WJunction, which ease webmasters to receive some 1st-hand support from them. You've recognized a need for sticking out the affiliate representatives with proper rank, but I believe there is also a need for good moderation on those threads (file hosting, image hosting, URL shortener, etc) threads.
Why?
Since I am new to the forum, I've been doing some research on affiliate programs here, and find out that many of them claim that they have several fraud detection methods, and with those in place, they're identifying and banning WJ users for fraudulent activities on their accounts. And that's great, they should protect their business.
But what worries me is that many of those affiliate owners are also doing some unethical activities, and some of them are:
- Banning users due to low-quality traffic, while they're not explicitly mentioning those rules in their ToS, or here, in their advertising thread.
- Falsely advertising affiliate revenue model, by using third-party tools to "shave" actual revenue from their users, while claiming to have none of those tools active (to be precise, picbaron and all affiliated sites with them have those in place, publicly admitting on a local forum, which you may find here, on the first post), and probably others as well. This also is rugged by the "adblock detection algorithm", while insufficient proof is shown that there is any.
- Running away with the webmaster's cash.
While the first two are not reasons to ban affiliate, I believe there should be an option to differentiate fully transparent affiliate programs from unethical ones. And I believe that solution for those would be a "Verified" Badge for the affiliate thread or for the affiliate representative. If affiliate representatives are interested in providing some level of transparency to the moderator here on WJ in order to show all of their members that they're indeed running a clean affiliate model, they can initiate verification with that moderator.
Outcome? Fewer people screaming "scam" or "shaving" to the honest affiliate representatives and recognition to those as well.
I'd like to open a discussion for this, so please let me know if you would like to see something like this on WJ, and also if the staff is interested to implement something like that in the future.
Moocheers!
There is a countless number of affiliate representatives active here, on WJunction, which ease webmasters to receive some 1st-hand support from them. You've recognized a need for sticking out the affiliate representatives with proper rank, but I believe there is also a need for good moderation on those threads (file hosting, image hosting, URL shortener, etc) threads.
Why?
Since I am new to the forum, I've been doing some research on affiliate programs here, and find out that many of them claim that they have several fraud detection methods, and with those in place, they're identifying and banning WJ users for fraudulent activities on their accounts. And that's great, they should protect their business.
But what worries me is that many of those affiliate owners are also doing some unethical activities, and some of them are:
- Banning users due to low-quality traffic, while they're not explicitly mentioning those rules in their ToS, or here, in their advertising thread.
- Falsely advertising affiliate revenue model, by using third-party tools to "shave" actual revenue from their users, while claiming to have none of those tools active (to be precise, picbaron and all affiliated sites with them have those in place, publicly admitting on a local forum, which you may find here, on the first post), and probably others as well. This also is rugged by the "adblock detection algorithm", while insufficient proof is shown that there is any.
- Running away with the webmaster's cash.
While the first two are not reasons to ban affiliate, I believe there should be an option to differentiate fully transparent affiliate programs from unethical ones. And I believe that solution for those would be a "Verified" Badge for the affiliate thread or for the affiliate representative. If affiliate representatives are interested in providing some level of transparency to the moderator here on WJ in order to show all of their members that they're indeed running a clean affiliate model, they can initiate verification with that moderator.
Outcome? Fewer people screaming "scam" or "shaving" to the honest affiliate representatives and recognition to those as well.
I'd like to open a discussion for this, so please let me know if you would like to see something like this on WJ, and also if the staff is interested to implement something like that in the future.
Moocheers!