Hello,

I had kind of an interesting experience with the amazon affiliate
program. Starting making a lot of money and then it all stopped. I
wrote the story as a Behind the Clicks article for pixelsUSA:

http://www.pixelsusa.com/www.friendl...nd_the_clicks/

Be curious if anyone else had a similar story.

Thanks,
-Andrew

andrew_at_friendlyhippo wrote

Does it say anything about being a spamming bastard?

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Hey Charles,

Not sure I understand why you consider my message spam? I thought spam
on newgroups is when someone posts a totally off-topic advertisement
like "Buy perscription drugs here!" or "Get great deals on product X",
etc.

I posted (what I thought was) a completely on-topic story about my
experience with the amazon affiliate program. Isn't that exactly the
kind of information that should be posted to alt.www.affiliate or
alt.ecommerce?

Sorry, not trying to be a spammer, I'm honestly confused by your
objection.

On 3 Nov 2005 oneone@gmail.com wrote:

It would help if people knew which Charles you are responding to.

You should always quote at least the relevant portion of the posting you
are replying to and include attributions so people know *who* you're
replying to.

Quoting from another post:

: http://www.safalra.com/special/googlegroupsreply/
:
: If you find that, when you start a News reply, Google does not provide
: the previous article in quoted form, note what Keith Thompson wrote in
: comp.lang.c, message ID <lnwtuhfy7d.fsf@nuthaus.mib.org> :-
: If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
: the "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on "show
: options" at the top of the article, then click on the "Reply" at
: the bottom of the article headers.

Spam isn't determined totally by the subject.

Unless I am terrible mistaken, Charles was posting from
alt.www.webmaster (as am I at this time) which has this in its FAQ
(among other stuff):

: ¤ Unsolicited commercial messages of any kind
: are prohibited, and will probably be reported
: to the sender's ISP and web host etc. by one
: or more of AWW's regular participants.
: "Commercial" is defined in The American Heritage®
: Dictionary as "Having profit as a chief aim" and
: that's an excellent way to define the type of
: messages we don't want. You cannot promote your
: web site, offer to "sell" anything, exchange links,
: form partnerships, etc.
:
: ¤ Genuine offers of paid employment are acceptable,
: as long as the offer is for a fixed hourly rate,
: price per page, or a contract rate. Posting an offer
: to trade web design for future profits is not allowed,
: unless you have prepared a written business plan that
: includes the percentage of shares/profits we will
: receive for our speculative investment of time, and
: any other pertinent details.
:
: ¤ A newsgroup has been specifically created for
: those offering products and services of interest
: to webmasters. You are welcome to post your ad in
: alt.www.webmaster.ads (AWWA).
: See http://awwa.aww-faq.org/ for the AWWA FAQ.
: If your ISP doesn't carry it, please ask them to do
: so. Do not cross post messages to AWW and AWWA.

Affiliate spam (or *alleged affiliate* spam) shows up frequently enough
that some people have hair triggers when the word "affiliate" is mentioned
in a post (and they usually turn out to be right). This frequently
includes fake requests for "Could you review my site and suggest
improvements." whic are occasionally posted here not to get advice but
just to get people to click on affiliate pay-per-click redirectors.

In the past, "shoot first and ask questions later" could have been a
survival trait and may be partially hardwired into our genes. Those who
waited to find out what made that noise in the woods before taking action
frequently found out what made that noise seconds before being eaten by
what made that noise. Those who acted first (shoot and run) and then
investigated (from much farther away) more often lived to pass the results
of their investigations (and, sometimes, some fresh meat) on to the rest
of their family or tribe.

--
Norman De Forest http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~af380/Profile.html
"> Is there anything Spamazon DOESN'T sell?
Clues. The market's too small to justify the effort."
-- Stuart Lamble in the scary devil monastery, Fri, 13 May 2005

wrote

What message? You didn't quote it. There was one earlier in the thread
from another person, Andrew. For the purpose of this response I'll
pretend that you are Andrew, and you are referring to the first post in
this thread.

No you're not, you're full of shit. Please go elsewhere if you want to
play games.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Andrew - thanks for the story of your experience with working with a
dropshipper. Interesting story, and I don't know who this Charles guy
is but he reminds me of a girlfriend I had. I sent flowers to her and
it upset her so much that she ended the relationship. In other words,
your story was relevant and valuable - thank you, and please don't let
this kind of weirdo stop you from future posts with stories like this.
I wish more people would actually write stories like this with
substance instead of lashing out at someone for no reason... what a
psycho!! I don't even know what this guy is talking about but he should
clearly be on medication.
-Scott

scottkriz:
I agree it is a well-writen and interesting article.

scottkriz:
The problem is cross-posting. In particular, the post was not really
appropriate for alt.html. Charles reaction was too strong but he is
certainly right.

Regards, Guillaume

--
My desktop is worth a million of dollars. Put an icon on it.
http://www.milliondollarscreenshot.com/

wrote

Looks like a day out for the gmailers.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com