Which merchants have chosen not to work with cashback sites?

I'm putting together a list of merchants who don't accept cashback sites as affiliates. These merchants would rather use their limited marketing budgets for real promotion rather than supporting a 'lifetime cookie' cashback site.

PrezziesPlus.com
Amazon
John Lewis

If you have any suggestions to add to the list, please post them here.

What IS affiliate marketing?

I've been racking my brains over the last couple of days over a pretty basic question - what IS the aim of affiliate marketing?

What were the original aims when the idea of commission-based online marketing was created? Was it to harness buying power to visitors of sites that have genuine content relating to specific product types?

When I started out a decade ago, things seemed a lot more straightforward and uncomplicated - you had a website on a specific subject and wanted to monetise it by adding links and advertising to products your target users would have an interest in. Therefore, you signed up to one of the then-young networks and started popping links on where appropriate. You'd generate a small income that would cover your costs and maybe put some change in your pocket for a few beers.

At some point in the last decade the focus has changed from that to a whole cut-throat industry worth billions, but that is severely and negatively affected by an underground 'scene' that is out to generate as much money through fraud as possible. On top of that you have more legitimate sites that are there to redirect advertising budgets into their own pockets and those of their visitors whilst adding no real value for merchants.

There also seems to be a middleground of sites that are put together specifically to promote particular niches using more and more clever ways of bringing in traffic through SEO.

Unfortunately, all of these things have conspired against the sites that were in affiliate marketing in the early days. Those sites now have to become more and more about SEO and marketing of themselves to ensure they continue to generate a stable income through the affiliate model. With more focus being placed on Google rankings rather than creating genuine and useful content that isn't JUST about selling the latest gadget it becomes near impossible to sustain a decent income.

So modern affiliate marketing is a lot different now - however does it really offer the same benefits to merchants that it did in the past? Are the merchants receiving a decent stream of new customers come in through their affiliate marketing channels? Or, are they seeing the same customers they would have had anyway, but now they have to pay 5% or 10% for the priviledge?

Is there really a long-term future for affiliate marketing as it is now? Are the 'super affiliates' actually offering any real financial benefits for anyone other than themselves?

Merchants acting as competitors - promoting affiliates and cashback

Yesterday I discovered an email in my junk box from Purple Parking promoting a new(?) cashback site. Usually I just ignore spam, but in this case I'm very unhappy for two reasons:

1. I ALWAYS opt out of receiving promotional emails - so this email is 100% unsolicited.
2. More importantly, this email is obviously sent out by Purple Parking to all of their customers - some of which may have been referred through their affiliates. By promoting a cashback site, Purple Parking are biting the hands of the affiliates that have sent them many hundreds of valuable customers.

This situation opens a whole host of issues and implications regarding merchants promoting other companies, or subsidiarys, via affiliate links or even operating their own affiliate-funded sites. I know I would be unhappy to refer customers to one of our merchant partners only to find that when they get there they're going to end up being shown ads and being sent emails that promote other merchants and services at the detriment to my own affiliate income. I have real issues with the concept of cashback and its overally implications to the wider affiliate marketing arena, and as such won't be sending my users anywhere near a site that will then promote their own cashback brand and potentially steal my future referals.

If a merchant is benefitting from customers and referrals provided by affiliates then they should at least have the courtesy of NOT promoting their own affiliate links and ads for other companies within their sites.

I have posted a thread on the A4U forum, but have not, to date, received a response: Related Thread

Ethical Saving - a new stance for Price Devil

I'm repositioning Price Devil as a site that is standing up for all the good things about affiliate marketing. By doing this I'm making a promise that the site will operate within all the affiliate marketing rules and guidelines and will act in the best interests of the industry as a whole.

Here is the text I have posted on Price Devil:

Price Devil prides itself on a basis of 'ethical saving' - our definition of this is giving you, the consumer, the chance to save as much money as possible without unduly and adversly affecting other people. We provide factual information that has been provided to us specifically for promotion to you via the 'affiliate channel'. This includes basic prices, vouchers aimed at the affiliate market and offers promoted to us directly from our partners.

Unlike many other sites, we don't try to exploit loopholes, bend the rules and play an unfair game. Every company needs to make profits to survive and during the current economic climate we should all be doing our best to support the UK retailers who provide us with quality goods at decent prices. Every time a voucher code is misused, the merchant may end up paying out twice - significantly eroding or totally wiping out profits. If this continues many companies will struggle and find themselves without enough income to survive.

Every voucher code and offer listed on Price Devil is specifically targetted at our visitors. We won't try to make a quick profit out of other people's misfortune or work.

Using our links will, in most cases, earn us a small percentage of each sale. This money is used to pay our hosting fees and associated costs - as Price Devil grows we'll need to spend an increasing amount of money keeping it alive. We're not here to make a huge profit and at times will be forsaking our commission cut in order to provide you with bigger savings at no additional cost to the merchants involved. The more people that use our site and our links, the better the deals we'll be able to arrange.

Price Devil is leading the way in ethical affiliate marketing - we adhere closely to all affiliate guidelines and IAB rules to ensure that we provide the best service possible for our partners and our visitors. We'll use all the technology, contacts and friends at our disposal to find new ways of saving you all money without the need to bite the hands that feed us. We hope you'll approve of our stance and help us make a difference in an increasingly anarchic money-saving world.

http://www.pricedevil.co.uk/EthicalSaving