Talk:Affiliate marketing/Archive 1

message: Hi, How do we get our legitimate and innovative network listed on 
this page with the others? Please advise.
Thank you,
Gary Marcoccia
garymarcoccia at Yahoo.com
*Hi Gary...   the best way would be to make your network notable by increasing traffic and customers.  The site's PageRank is 0, Alexa traffic ranks you as about the 500,000th most popular site, as opposed to the other US networks listed, that are in the most popular 500 sites on the web (or 6,000th in the case of Performics, which now that I think about it, makes me want to delete it's link).  Post your site to Open Directory Project and Yahoo directory, that'll be a good start  LordMac 18:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Affiliate Marketing Page Listing 

message: The Content about Affiliate Marketing was very weak and some very imporant aspects and developments were missing.
I added the blocks "The Wild West", "AdWare" and "The new Web".
I also added two important external links. One to Affilipedia (Affiliate Marketing Wiki) and to Revenue (Important Print Magazine of the Industry).
I updated the Return on Affiliates Link because it stated "Affiliate Forum" which it is not. It's actually an Online Community for people in Affiliate Marketing (Affiliates, Merchants, Networks and Outsourced Affiliate Managers). It offers a Forum (dah), News, Blogs, Private and Public Interest and Discussion Groups etc. 
I did not touch the existing Content of this Article because I don't know if this will be an issue for some, but I think it should be restructured.
--Roy-SAC 04:48, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Massive Content Extension 

message: The issue with the external links here seems to become an obsession beyond reason. I doubt that the decision about those links should be left to people that now a thing or two about affiliate marketing and its community. It is clear that this does not mean that any commercial spam can add their junk here. The sites selected should be representative and also not pure profit driven. What does that mean? 
Sites whose purpose and sole reason of existence is the gain of profit and not the contribution of value to the (specific) community should not be listed here. 
Sites (related to Internet Marketing) whose purpose is to contribute to the (Marketing) community are most of the time not completely free of Ads. People of the community would not even expect that and rather send comments to the site owner and recommend where he should add Advertisement on the Site without interfering with its usability. It is also not a problem if an income is generated from operating such a site. The important characteristic of a valuable site in the Marketing Industry in particular is that the owner makes the decision to sacrifice profit for value to the community from time to time. A prime example is the business model of Google. They rather not add Advertisement to some of their Services which would generate several Million Dollars for them, if it reduces the usability and usefulness of their service.
To remove any shadow of doubt of the positive intentions behind adding those external links and proof that this is not about SEO or Spamming, add those links that they contain the "rel=nofollow" attribute which tells Google to Ignore the Link as a "vote" and thus not has any impact on Page rank of the Site whatsoever.
The best thing Wikipedia Developers could do is to add automatically the "rel=nofollow" tag to ANY external link automatically. I am new here at Wikipedia and try to contribute in areas I know something about from which Internet Marketing is the one that will always cause a clash with other editors that are against any form of marketing whatsoever. If you believe it's evil, fine. I don't. I believe in evil marketing, but that is something completely different.
You could help me out here and tell me where I should go to recommend the addition of code to the Wikipedia Engine which would solve so much of our problems today when it comes to real link spam with the sole purpose of SEO. --Roy-SAC 08:17, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Links Peace Offer 

message: Remember, whether the links are relevent is not the issue here. WP:NOT a web directory. We should only link to sites that contain encyclopidic content, references or offical sites (if the article is about a product.) --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 16:40, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't deleted anything. Please be more specific with your comments. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 17:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry JiFish this one was directed to Monkeyman (<- the "some persistent people" have a name and a user btw.) and Barrylb --Roy-SAC 17:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

text:  I re-added the links. Damn now I am late for work (which has in part to do with Affiliate Marketing) .. to be continued. --Roy-SAC 17:18, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that was appropriate behaviour given this discussion. Barrylb 17:59, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 23:16, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Roy-SAC, please read my suggestion again. I said it is important to have a neutral directory. No commissions etc involved. Have a look at the Google Directory link and come back to me. Barrylb 07:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that a single link to a directory is the best way to go.  The competition to get commercial links into this article will be unbearable.  We'll all be wasting hours patrolling this article for external links otherwise.  Monkeyman(talk) 13:19, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I put my vote in for linking to a directory.  I think that if there is ever some kind of neutral industry or government site that provides oversight of Affiliate Marketing programs and other such things, we could (and maybe should) link to them, just like we would like to a government watchdog organization.  However, I still think we'll have to patrol this article and delete links all the time.  Anca 18:26, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

text: There is no neutral affiliate marketing directory. Anyone who knows enough to make a directory has monetized it and put in their affiliate codes, or added AdSense, or something similar. Google's directory is copied from DMOZ and DMOZ is not necessarily impartial. I suggest no links  - lock that out - and we all just focus on making the articles better. People who truly want to improve the wikipedia articles should be allowed to do so without fretting over external links.Peterkoning 22:21, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is something I considered also. DMOZ is not perfect but it is probably the best choice out there.  I suspect we could have a lot more trouble with external links if we have nothing at all.. Barrylb 15:10, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Affiliate marketing is a big enough industry that there are detailed and neutral papers written about it.  Companies like Forrester Research and Gartner Group have surely written abou it.  Perhaps what we can do is reference THEIR papers, when available, though often a Forrester or Garther report requires shelling out $$$ for the privilege of reading it.  Anca 22:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I suggest people try to improve the articles instead of being so focused on linking externally. Write some useful content and then give the reference in the article. Peterkoning 23:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent point, which seems to reflect the thinking in the external links guidelines. The desire to add external links often reflects a deficiency in the article. Barrylb 07:16, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Roy your link to Affilipedia is not acceptable. It is a site primary devoted to supporting the affiliate marketing industry and that puts it in the linkspam category.  Barrylb 14:52, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Links 3