Talk:Affiliate marketing/Archive 2

Massive Content Addition - References added
I spent quite some time during the last days to extend the content of the article and also provide some references. Feel free to make corrections where you see the need for it. When it comes to the content itself (revisions, rewrites, deletes), please explain them here at the Talk Page that we can discuss them. Thanks. --roy&lt;sac&gt; Talk! .oOo. 09:05, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Affiliate Marketing Resource Link Discussion
I was there when we had the long discussions about what site to add and which not. It's a tough call, because this article is a popular SPAM target. The Dmoz link was the only compromise to have at least one further pointing resource for readers of the article. I am building currently a massive collection of (for the most part) free resources for affiliate marketing and more. Sometimes are no free resources available (or they are worthless). This makes it necessary to point to commercial services and products.

I am not just building a collection of links, DMOZ is doing that job just fine, but provide stuff like an aggregated news feed that merges various leading industry news sources into one convenient RSS feed. I also created and maintain a public Google calendar with industry events.

Have a look first and then state your opinion. I most of you don't think it's good, fine and I will remove it myself. Thanks for your feedback. --roy&lt;sac&gt; Talk! .oOo. 05:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

User:JiFish just removed the link with the comment "rv linkspam; clearly a commerical site and link placed by the owner of that site". I added a more detailed comment at his Talk Page which is a good addition to my statements above. I am going to re-include the link and would like to hear some arguments first before it gets removed again. User:Deli_nk who removed the link first now does not object it anymore as you can see at his talk page. User:JiFish did not respond yet. --roy&lt;sac&gt; Talk! .oOo. 16:36, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

discussion about the lag of supporting external resources in this article.
Due to a dispute regarding external resources for this article that ended in no consensus in march this year were all external Resources but the reference to the Affiliate Marketing Category at the Open Directory Project (ODP) at Dmoz.org removed from this article.

This is in my opinion not sufficient. This Article is a target for Spammers, but not all Links that were added over the last months were actually Spam. They were valuable Resources that were added by a visitor who noticed the lag of such. I learned a lot about how Wikipedia works, but most normal visitors don't. I can imagine how disturbing it must be for a Visitor that reads the article, likes it and notices the missing resources and spends the time figuring out how to add one. Then coming back later and see that the change is gone and the article has the same problem as before.

Something should be done to correct this degradation of education and informational quality of the article.

'''I propose two solutions. '''

1. SEO Article Solution

Follow the example of the even more spammed and controverse article Search Engine Optimization. It took a bit, but we got all the the Editors that are watching and contributing (basically the Wikipedian that care for the content of the Article), to flesh out the problem with the external links and SPAM on the one hand and providing a quality article on the other. All agreed that having no external resources in the article for further research endangered the Articles conformity to Wikipedia WP:NPOV, WP:REF and WP:RS.

The result was the agreement for 6 sites to be added to the section called "Sources of background information". One Site for each Site category (or type of site) that can not be replaced by Wikipedia and is considered to be the most Important in its category.

The Links are not sizzled into Stone for the ages. Anybody can come and dispute the referred resources or recommend one he believes to be a better one. The Link will be added, replacing the previous for the category If agreed upon. Additions should only happen for new emerging resources in new website categories.

Any Link that gets just added by somebody is considered Spam and any deleted link vandalism.

I personally prefer this Solution.

2. Outsourced Resources that go beyond DMOZ

DMOZ is very limited and also very restrictive regarding its content. Affiliate Marketing is commercial in it's very nature, something despised by a lot of activists at DMOZ as well as Wikipedia.

I started Building a quite comprehensive Resource Collection on my Family Homepage regarding this topic. Resources that are not just links to other sites, but things like a Free Google Calendar with Industry Events, Aggregated RSS News Feeds and more.

I am constantly expanding the resources without littering them with secondary or irrelevant stuff. I am eager to hear any recommendations on improving the resources and appreciate any missing resource that gets pointed out to me, especially free resources that are almost as good as their commercial counterpart. In some cases does this free resource simply not exist. I must link to the commercial resource because the overall resources collection would be degraded in quality if I would leave them out.

Check for yourself:


 * Affiliate Marketing Resources - plus Aggregated Industry News Feed and public Google Calendar with Industry Events and more.

I am also a very active Wikipedian that cares about the content of this article among others and keep it on my watch-list to review the correctness of contributions, revert spam and vandalism. Feel free to check for yourself and visit My User Page/Talk and check My Contributions.

I was bold when I just added the Link to the Article and requested to enter the discussion about the general issue.

The First Reversal was done by User:Deli_nk. I engaged him at his Talk Page and explained myself. He agreed with me and said, that he will not remove the link anymore.

Next was User:JiFish who removed it with the comment "rv linkspam; clearly a commercial site and link placed by the owner of that sit". All stated in the comment was no secret and I also engaged him at his User Page. I did not receive a response yet. I improved my comment when I added the link back and also provided move information at this talk page (previous paragraph).

Shortly after did User:Barrylb came along and removed it for the third time, with the comment "better idea is to discuss first before adding a link to your own site - reverted". Now I also engaged him at his User Page. I also did not receive a response yet from this User.

I realized that all this is going nowhere and I added the Templates to the Article and Talk Page. Provided the Background Information and laid out my proposals.

I Invited the 3 Wikipedians mentioned and I also invited the following Wikipedians that showed interest for the content of this article and/or contributed to it: User:Monkeyman, User:Rhobite, User:Peterkoning, User:Anca, User_talk:Nyarpy, User:Bcwaller, User:Velocitynyc, User:Markaff2, User_talk:Revler. Feel free to express your thoughts regarding this. Additional proposals are not automatically excluded. On the contrary. If better alternatives are possible, step forward and let everybody know. I appreciate your time and contribution. --roy&lt;sac&gt; Talk! .oOo. 09:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I can't support a proposal to link to your own site as an external resource. Rhobite 14:28, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I do feel that we could relax our attitude towards external links from this article, a little. Links to notable companies like CJ and forums such as ABestWeb should be added, IMO. Rhobite 16:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thannks Rhobite and I agree with you. I prefer Option 1. myself. I created already Articles here at Wikipedia for the Big Aff. Networks (which still need some work though) to get those covered, but Sites like Forums, News Sources etc. are not as easy. My list of notable sites include: ABestWeb as Forum, affiliateprograms.com as Directory, RevNews as News and Opinion and AffiliateTip as Resource and Research Sites. May be also WebMasterRadio.FM as Radio/Podcast source and Revenue Magazine as Print Magazine. Those are my candidates. --roy&lt;sac&gt; Talk! .oOo. 17:18, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * When it comes to Industry events is it a bit more complicated to pick one, because there is not really a single one that can be considered the "most important" where everbody who is serious about this business is going to. I like my Idea of the Public Google Calendar. I believe a link to it would be useful. What do you think? --roy&lt;sac&gt; Talk! .oOo. 20:30, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Brad Waller here. As noted above I was invited to the discussion. I can see the conflict in referencing one's own site, and I would say that I am too new to the Wiki cluture to really say what is right here. It would be best if there was a different site that could be referenced, but if the content is still the same, why is is so bad if the site owner earns money from the site? I'm assuming that there would be no objections if the site was some random site with no affiliate links or advertising, but the content was identical. If so, then how much worse is it to reference a "commercial" version with the same valuable content? Just a question, not a position. As for events, at this point AffiliateSummit is the #1 event, with eComXpo #2, and then maybe Ad:Tech. --Bcwaller 22:11, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi Brad, thanks for the feedback. I believe option 1 (the leading site per category which wikipedia can not replace) to be more appropriate. Option 2 is nice and good (looked good to me at first at least), but you can already see, that other wikipedians have doubt regarding the intentions (my intentions). I can only guess what anonymous readers of the article might think. People might think for reasons which I perfectly understand that Wikipedias position to provide information from a neutral point of view is in conflict with this. Regarding the Events. I tend to agree with you, but you know how it is with all the network events and also the "hybrid" events that have not only to do with affiliate marketing, like Pubcon or even eTrade, Did you have a look at the public Google Calendar? I think that will be the best solution to cover the Events and Tradeshows. --roy&lt;sac&gt; Talk! .oOo. 09:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I doubt there will be any links I would be comfortable including. Due to the nature of the subject any link we include is likely to be spam-like. I would prefer to have a great article. -- Barrylb 04:51, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi Barry, I understand that you do not like the general concept of Internet Marketing as a whole, but you can not deny the fact, that it exists and that it is a vital part of the Internet today. The Internet became mainstream and mainstream means commercialized. The good thing is, that not all parts are commercialized today and that the original roots are not forgotten nor dead. However, you can not separate the two and pretend that there are two different kinds of Internets. To cover the facts properly and complete, Wikipedia must reference to external sources, that are relevant to the subject and can not be integrated into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a news site, nor a blog or a forum. It's not a magazine, a how-to resource collection, a radio station or events calendar. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. I am sure you agree with me on that part. --roy&lt;sac&gt; Talk! .oOo. 09:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Article rebuilt
I was just gone for a few weeks to see the whole article lying in ruins when I came back. Vicious Spam attacks and other things caused over half of the article ending up undeleted. I rebuilt the article to its former self, respected all real content (and template) fixes made since the version I used for the recovery. I also removed all invalid references. The article is still not perfect and the external link issue is still open. I am going to add external links to the most relevant resources (see pervious paragraph) after the comments made regarding this. Everybody seems to be for the addition of a few and most relevant external resources, some are neutral but not against this with exception of Barrylb which seems to be alone in his opinion. This is not about one person so I argue that we should take the step forward and do what is best for the reader (IMO). I will add the Link suggestion here to the talk page first for comments, before I add them to the article itself. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 09:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

External Links Section Preview
Sorry for the long delay. I was very busy the last weeks. Here are the promised Link Recommendation with description for the external link section. Several were already recommended by others, some were only mentioned by me during the last discussion (although they were mentioned before already or used to be in the external link section before all links were removed).

I would like to hear your comments, feedback and opinion on the links and their description before I add them to the article as I already announced one month ago. Leaving the Link to the ODP in fine with me and another valuable link IMO. I also included a link to the Yahoo! Directory which seems to be the most relevant of the Categories available at Y! regarding this topic. Thanks everybody.

Here is the list:


 * ReveNews.com - Internet Marketing News and Opinion. Voted best Affiliate Marketing Blog by MarketingSherpa
 * ABestWeb.com - Foremost Affiliate Marketing Forum exclusively dedicated to Affiliate Marketing
 * www.affiliateprograms.com AffiliatePrograms.com - Comprehensive Affiliate Program Directory
 * This domain has subsequently been nominated for blacklisting. --A. B. (talk) 21:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * AffiliateTip.com - Affiliate Marketing News and Resource Site. Google News Source.
 * Revenue Magazine - The performance marketing standard print magazine for the Affiliate Marketing Industry
 * Webmasterradio.fm - Free Internet Radio and Podcasts for Webmasters and Internet Marketers
 * Website Affiliate Programs at the Yahoo! Directory
 * Website Affiliate Programs at the Yahoo! Directory

This is the list. I will update the article if I don't hear any objections during the next few weeks. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 00:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

External Links and References
As per the last months discussions. I added the Yahoo! Dir to the External Links Section. I added the other sites to the "References" section, because I believe that it more appropriate. Those are not just "related sites" links. But source of content found in this article. Directly and indirectly. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 08:19, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Affiliate Networks
I noticed that someone added a link to the Amazon Affiliate program. Should it link externally, or to a Wikipedia page? Also, should we move the listings of Affiliate networks to the Affiliate Network page? Anca 22:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Rule of thumb, if it has an article at Wikipedia, link to the article. Only link to the external site, if you do a citation and reference to the original source. I hope this makes sense. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 10:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I removed the Amazon Associate Program. It's not a Network. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 13:42, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

style
Hi, drive-by-wikipedian here. I was just in doing some quick link disambiguation, and noticed that this article really needs some stylistic cleanup. There are templates warning that this is a contentious topic, so I don't want to get in the middle of anything, but if contributors (on whatever side of whatever debate) could try to keep an eye on style issues&mdash; excessive captitalization, in particular&mdash;that would be great. Words like "account" and "advertiser" and "bank" generally don't need to be capitalized unless they're, like, at the Beginning of a Sentence beginning of a sentence. Know what I mean? TIA! -- Xtifr 20:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
 * GO for it! I am glad for any honest help I can get with this article. Thanks in advance :) --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 16:15, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I removed the template. I was going over each paragraph and changed tons of words and phrases. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 13:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the style cleanup - good work. I have reattached the template, however; the style issues were only a very small part of the major overhaul that this article needs. It is full of POV language, "how-to" language, personal opinions about the desirability or undesirability of various marketing techniques, the ordering of sections and layout makes no sense, and there is a copyvio from a book that needs to be either summarized or deleted. It's just not very encyclopedic, and though I intend to work on it, it should also be listed in order to attract more attention from experienced editors. --MCB 17:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks MCB. What you say makes a lot of sense. There were some more Editors here some months ago, but most of them "gave up" due to some unresolved disputes with other Wikipedians that were not working on the content of the acual article but complained about things like references etc. It is one of the "hot" topics because it is commercial in nature and any quality resource will be to some degree commercial in nature as well. I encouraged some of the Editors that "left" to come back without success so far. I did not give up yet :). I did what I can, considering the time available to me and that english is my second language. I am very knowledgable about the topic, but I still need to improve on my writing style. When me and User:Rhobite (who is an excellent Editor IMO) worked on some content together, was the result at the end very good. I hope that more Editors will become interested in this article to improve the writing style and structure of it. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 23:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I can see how the topic is a flag for spam posts. Many people are using affiliate marketing as their only source of income more and more. I just added a basic overview section on the benefits and generalities of affiliate marketing. Thanks! Matt Bacak, The Powerful Promoter User: Mbacak 18:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Please do not insert material from your own web site, especially as you seem to be commercially involved in the field, since that presents a strong conflict of interest and does not represent a neutral point of view. In addition, citing to ones' own web site/blog/etc. is not the type of neutral, third-party, reliable source that Wikipedia policy requires. Thanks, --MCB 20:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

CPM - Cost-Per-Mil/Mille
I changed the entry back. Somebody stated that CPM is CPM and M is thousand in greek. That is not correct. M stands for MIL or MILLE which is latin, the language of the Ancient romans, and means thousand. M is also a Roman numeral representing the Number 1000. Just FYI --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 08:18, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup and Expansion
I spend a considerable amount of time to restructure the article (some paragraphs did not make sense or were repetitive), I rephrased a lot of the existing content and also added several new paragraphs with content that was missing but is IMO relevant to this topic. My English language skill are not that good as you will notice when you read the article. I am asking Wikipedia Editors that do have excellent Editorial and Language skills but no topical knowledge about affiliate marketing (if you do, even better), to go over the current article text and correct language and grammar. I would really appreciate it. Thanks for your contribution. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 19:42, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

permanent semi-protection
I just requested permanent semi-protection for the article. The anonymous spam every day is getting old. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 16:27, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The Affiliate Marketing article is now semi-protected, which means that no anonymous edits can be made anymore. The reason for that are the daily spam attempts followed by their reversal by an editor. Those changes make up the most part of the articles change history which is sad.

If you would like to change anything in the article, simply create an account and do it. Once you are logged in, you will be able to make modifications to the article without any problems. If you don't want to create an account, post your comments here at the talk page and an editor with an account might implement the requested change if it makes sense. Thank you for your understanding and support. --roy&lt;sac&gt; <b style="color:red;">Talk!</b> .oOo. 04:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)