Geez. This article was hard to follow but... it sounds like the merchant is really screwing up. My SaaS business gets most of our users via an affiliate program, and many years ago I worked in porn where nearly all of our users from an affiliate program.
The #1 rule of affiliate programs is to treat affiliates like royalty. Or more accurately - business partners. Be clear about what you offer, be generous, and always resolve reasonable misunderstandings in their favor. A single good affiliate can make your business. A bad reputation will destroy it.
There are third party affiliate software systems that can help with trust, but they are all terrible. Nothing substitutes for just being trustworthy. This post is probably going to be top news in the "keto affiliate community" (which, even without checking, I already know to be a thing) and it will be a problem.
Is there a good way to contact an online business directly and say "It seems you pay a 20% affiliate fee. I would like a 20% discount?" Amazon kinda does this with smile and donations, even though I don't use amazon anymore.
I go out of my way, with link strippers, cookie removers, adblockers, to the point of often manually copy and pasting links into a private window if necessary, to avoid affiliate links. When I do this I usually feel like I'm supporting the online store, but there are some cases (e.g. I'm looking for an oversized mattress) where I know the whole industry is corrupt and I just want to pay as little rent as possible.
Do you use any of this affiliate 3rd party software yourself or did you roll your own solution? I'd like to make an affiliate sales program for my SaaS too, but it's hard to figure out where to start. I don't want to invest a lot of time integrating with X if nobody uses X, but I also don't want to invest a lot of time in rolling my own if everyone expects you to be using X.
Agree! Like a Judge I was thinking: obviously there is a payment dispute since otherwise why would I be reading pleadings? But where in hell does it say what IT is?
The whole long story behind the dispute may be interesting for the writer of the story, but not in general. And those with long history, or institutional history by now the N+1th version of yet another dispute is not inherently interesting.
What is interesting is the OP's link may have discovered new area in the solution space. So please talk about that!
I would love to get into the porn business, how do I go about this? To clarify, not as a performer or cameraman but I’m not sure what other roles are available.
The blog post he mentions Identity Theft, Credit Reports and You is a really good read that has surfaced on HN a couple times. If you haven’t read it, you should. The notion of simply being an organised professional being the most intimidating thing to bureaucracies is very true in my experience.
When I moved to Europe, I was VERY surprised to say the least that this doesn’t apply at all here.
The attitude is more like “you should feel lucky we let you give us your money and purchase something from us. Now fuck off.”
I tried the professional attitude, I tried threatening legal action (I have legal insurance that would pay an obscene amount of lawyer fees if it came to that), I have tried the angry consumer, I have tried to complain to the regulator... None of that worked. Most of the time, they basically say something like “kiss my ass”
I don’t know how to deal with EU companies. I was always getting what I wanted in North America by using the organized professional method. I’m at a complete loss in Europe. Any advice?
I like the article. It presents the way that I believe we should all behave with each other in a professional environment.
Respect and Courtesy are important at all times (IMNSHO). Some folks seem to feel that being respectful is a sign of weakness, but cops are extremely respectful, as they explain to you why they will be writing a ticket for an eye-watering amount (at least, good cops are).
Many moons ago, when the domain market was still a “thing,” I had a broker offer to sell me a domain I wanted, and the price was extremely reasonable, so I took them up on it. It turned out that they actually were “leasing” it to me, and they wouldn’t transfer it to me.
I asked them, and they responded fairly aggressively, pretty much telling me to FO, and that I was “harassing” them (a legal term, really), by asking them to release the domain.
My response was fairly similar to the approach in the article, and I was able to get the domain. They were not very gracious about it, but I did get it, and we never needed to deal with each other again, after that.
I could not disagree more. Ethical and considerate _actions_ are important at all times. Many very dishonest people help themselves sleep at night by pretending that being polite excuses their actions.
It does not. Actions have real life, often irreversible, effects on those around you. Being polite has few, if any, tangible effects.
I understand the fact that the author took the matter in his own hands and claimed what he was owed but this article is just another proof that instead of doing our jobs and spending our time more productively, we always need to play the "lawyer" and the "detective" because some people/company always abuse their position of power. The author did manage to get his money, but at the same time pointed them a flaw (the affiliation page) in their little scheme, which means that he didn't help protect anyone else that wants to start an affiliation with them. And yes, I understand that this is "how the world works" but still, I always get bothered by this kind of behavior. Maybe an alternative maybe, would have been to stood up by just ending the partnership and finding another company that treats its affiliations with more respect AND post the article in order for others to read the bad experience he had.
In another country, like the one I now live in, this would be a job for law enforcement.
You'd just hand over your files to some branch of the government, and in a surprisingly short amount of time, you'd get some money, but also, the site would stop cheating people.
Except that this rarely happens here, because companies know that law enforcement cares about systematic scams.
They might try to cheat you once, to see if you're a sucker, but if you put up any fuss, they'll give you the money.
Alec Mwali is a shady affiliate manager who has tried to get me to post fake reviews for companies he represented in the past. Not surprised to see his name show up in a post about shady affiliate business. (Documented my experience with him here: https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/04/22/dirty-slimy-shady-s...)
"This company is ripping me off, but I'll protect its identity because I feel like I owe it something" is plain misguided and a huge disfavor to other participants in the market.
> If they failed to pay, my plan was to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and reach out to other affiliates suggesting they do the same.
Where do people get their info from to just go with a "time to contact the FTC"? If feels like the equivalent of people threatening they will contact the BBB.
Depending on the amount (that was $88 per the screenshot?), that is something you take to small claims court, you don't even need a lawyer for that.
> Where do people get their info from to just go with a "time to contact the FTC"? If feels like the equivalent of people threatening they will contact the BBB.
I'm well aware of how toothless and irrelevant BBB is these days. ("Yelp for old people"). Almost nobody visits BBB before making a decision, only after a bad experience. Given that, a business with a bad grade there probably doesn't feel much of a sting.
But I'm totally unfamiliar with FTC's power or purview. Is involving them on something like this a waste of time because of the dollar amount? I don't expect they would recover the money, or mediate a dispute. But I think the author is coming at it from the angle that the other party would rather not rack up complaints at all. Especially if they could get other affiliates to follow suit.
I work in telecom, and complaints to the Public Utilities Commission are treated seriously within my company (and in the wider industry AFAIK). We really do not want customers to file any. When a customer mentions the PUC at all, we take them seriously enough to get some more eyes on their problem.
My guess is that the author's checklist includes small claims as the next step after the FTC complaint. Or maybe they just stop at the FTC complaint and consider a lawsuit—even if small claims—to not be worth it for the amount involved.
I'd say this depends on the situation you're negotiating. If your only means of communication are e-mails, your best bet is to keep the line of communication open, and present data that builds a case that they cannot ignore without risking a (heavy) loss.
If, however, you participate in face-to-face negotiations, you open up a whole slew of other possibilities of influence only limited by your personality and personal morals. As an example, a CEO friend of mine told me that he'd always make sure to get really drunk the day before an important negotiation, so he'd be grumpy and mean when he finally sat down at the table. Let's just say that his methods were in stark contrast to those promoted by Dale Carnegie.
I enjoyed the read. Side note: is it just me or is the Keto industry in general just like 99.5% criminals?
I’ve had my credit card stolen multiple times this year, and the thief has used my card to send ME keto pills I didn’t want. This makes the transaction more difficult to dispute and doesn’t benefit a common thief in any way. These companies are just a facade for criminal activity in my opinion, though I’ve been unable to concretely connect the dots.
Actually you've uncovered part of the ruse. The thief / criminal is actually working in cahoots with the unscrupulous keto pill company. He gets a stolen card, charges it for product, ships you the product, and the keto pill company makes money without actually selling to a real customer, and gives a kickback to the credit card thief. Meanwhile you've gotten the product, making it harder to dispute the charge since they can show that you received the purchased product.
I've had this happen and did something very similar. I purchased a Kardia EKG device for my spouse's smart watch (before smart watches had them built in). The web page clearly stated that you could use the product without having an account. (My spouse and I are pretty vehement about not using any device that requires an account for no reason. Getting data from a device I own to my own watch should not require an account.)
They pointed out that their web page clearly states you will need an account. I was shocked because I always make sure to very carefully research this. So I went to the wayback machine on archive.org and looked at their page on the day I purchased, and sure enough, the language was not in there. They had added it a few weeks later.
I sent them screenshots and receipts, and they still pushed back. Finally I issued them an ultimatum. Refund us the money or I'll do a chargeback and present my evidence to the credit card company. They immediately backed down and refunded us.
It is utterly insane that consumers need to take screenshots of every product page for products they buy in this day and age to not be screwed over.
A few years ago I got an unsolicited sales call from godaddy, offering me all sorts of bullshit that I didn't need (I did have some domains with godaddy then). I promptly told them no and thought that was that. A few days later I notice an $800 charge to my credit card I had on file with them. I call them and ask about the charge, they say I agreed to the purchase in the sales call. When I refuted this they said they had a recording of the call, and verified that I agreed. I asked them to play the call back and they refused. I called them a few times again asking for a refund or to hear the call that supposedly proved I agreed to the purchase. Anyway, a few weeks of bullshit later, I sent and email to HQ@godaddy.com, laying out what happened and telling them that in 24 hours I would be filing a complaint with consumer protection Ontario[1]. I got a full refund and an apology within a few hours. Needless to say I transferred all of my domains out of godaddy.
I don't know why the author didn't reach out to the actual affiliate tracking company. As an engineer, as soon as I got push back from the retailer that is the first thing I would have done. That or start polling my readers to see if anyone had purchased through them. You already disclose you are an affiliate so asking your loyal audience if they made purchase (which if they clicked through they are knowingly supporting you) should have gotten some response.
I worked at rewardstyle (a fashion affiliate technology company) for nearly three years when it first launched and built out their instagram affiliate tool LikeToKnow.it as a side project with one other developer and a designer. We faced A LOT of mistrust and doubt from affiliates about earnings - sometimes valid and sometimes not.
There are so so so many ways that different retailers would invalidate earnings, break the tracking, the buyer would delete their cookies, buyer would get redirected from a us store to au or eu or other intl and have it not track, we'd miscalculate a payout somehow, ship some bugs, etc.
But we knew that we were in an industry that was looked at as pretty scummy so we did our best to always make things right and error on the side of generosity.
There were times where a retailer would break the commission tracking on their checkout page and we would know there were 1000 sales but wouldn't be able to attribute them directly to a specific affiliate. We had to just do our best to extrapolate their earnings and add a "sorry something broke" bonus.
If it wasn’t for flexing your communication muscles I doubt the distraction and time spent was worth 88USD.
Most reasonable would be to ditch after the first answer from the CEO. They will likely disappoint in the future.
The more the company stonewalls you, the more likely your bad faith claims are to be accepted by a court. Bad faith contract violations come with punitive damages that can make it worth your time to fight, and I imagine that the $88 he made on this dispute did not actually take him all that much time. Writing the blog post might have, but that seems more like a labor of love.
I would like to second the recommendation for the referenced article by Patrick. Big kudos to patio11.
3 years back I had an issue go in my favor (for almost $2k) regarding a dispute with an auto body shop when I started asking them questions in a 'professional' manner (for documentation purposes) and questioning regarding their processes that they were following.
I used the article by Patrick as a template and and the auto body shop just folded on the case.
Respect and courtesy are nice but I think the reason this style is so effective is different. It makes the counterparty believe that you are collecting the paper trail to file a lawsuit. And behaving like you are preparing to file a lawsuit is much more effective than just claiming you will be filing a lawsuits.
I imagine that when presented with a choice of $88 payment or having to deal with a lawsuit, 100% of decision-makers will chose the former. And it’s not about the lawsuit outcome. Even if some complete garbage is filed which has no chance of success, the burden it creates on the business is clearly much higher than $88.
Tough numbers to make work. A hundred referrals and 88 bucks owed is... not a life changing number. Far more interesting is the revenue inflection point, going from an ongoing relationship worth zero to one worth 700 bucks a year.
But... apparently still not worth keeping:
> I’ve since removed all mention of Kiss My Keto, as I no longer have any interest in helping them earn money, regardless of what they pay me.
To me, it seems like the real story here might be that someone is selling bread for a 20 percent markup. Or maybe they aren't, but have been able to make ends meet by stiffing referrals. The margins on groceries are typically small, which is borne out by Amazon's 1 percent comission rate for the Grocery category. If someone comes along offering to 20x your income, skepticism is in order.
You can formalize that skepticism with a multi-armed bandit algorithm. Basically, put affiliate commissions into the feedback loop, picking which affiliate links to use by expected value. But it may take a while with low click through volumes.
I learned an important thing over time: recurring payment services always pay much higher commissions. One time purchases pay very little, even for big ticket items.
A 3€ per month liability insurance might have a 40€ commission, while a 400€ product might have a 10€ commission.
Seems like you're trying to be cynical, but it doesn't really fit.
The charge of putting a lot of work into an interesting article that HNers would upvote isn't very damning, and doing all of that just to increment 16 -> 17 in some marketing material isn't very convincing.
His own advice in the videos is "write good, interesting content" not some sort of gimmick.
Given how much time you've wasted with this, my feeling is that overall you still lost. They owe you money for the time spent as well. Good on you for publishing this, but you should have mentioned their company name in the title, so that hopefully it show up in search engine results and this alerts others to not collaborate with them.
I looked at it the other way around. For a dispute of $88, to hang this company out to dry on Hacker News (they didn't know that would happen specifically, but still it was a public post), I didn't find very professional. You know, for all that talk about acting as a professional. Oh, well, acting...
Passive income gets mentioned a lot here. He's collected over $100 for previous conversions and about $60 after that, and he'll keep collecting as long as the affiliate program runs. It's not a lot of money in general, but you don't start a keto blog with dreams of billions either.
As a non-vi user, I feel very excluded :( ^H means backspace guys. And probably the same type of CEO that wants to make money by not paying out affiliates
That genuinely sounds like he misunderstood the issue to be with prior untracked referrals rather than not paying out referrals properly attributed to him but "ineligible".
I got into a dispute with an electricity company (they later got fined for doing to me what they did to about a million customers...) and I used a similar approach, I kept been polite, firm and finishing everything with "if you can't resolve this matter, can you please refer me to someone who can" and ended up talking to one of their directors.
Amazingly at that point the entire thing was resolved in less than a day and not only did they finally get the billing amount correct but they then waived it entirely.
I never had an issue with paying them what I owed the problem was their figure and mine didn't match and they kept screwing up the collection.
Trying to get me to publish fake reviews about companies he represents. He also likes using fake 'Re: BS subject that you never sent' tactic and claims it was a keyboard error.
Not surprising he's continuing to work with shady companies.
I've probably had 10 such cases in the last 5 years: speeding tickets from countries I have not even driven to, medical services double-billed to both my insurance and credit card, ... all $100-300 range.
I'm confident I could probably recover most, but at this amount, I just don't want to deal with it. It's one of those cases where I wish I had a personal assistant. It makes me think there's room for a "consumer debt collector" service with a revenue share model.
They do exist but only for certain niches. For example in the case of the european air passenger rights. My partner missed a connection flight by a few minutes and had to wait overnight. On the next day she had to take another two stop flight instead of a direct flight. They gave her a hotel, a taxi and a little voucher for food but this wasn’t enough according to her rights.
There are various only services who go to court for you and will get as much money as they can. You go to their website, enter your flight, they calculate the probability that it was the airlines fault , they show you what you maybe can expect, you give them the permission and then they do everything else. The company takes something like 25% comission and that‘s it. It takes a few minutes. In the end she payed 100-200€ for the return flight and got something like 350€ back via the company.
Made me think if one could find the most unreliable flights, with the worst delay in case of a delay and fly them profitably by going to court all the time.
>It makes me think there's room for a "consumer debt collector" service with a revenue share model.
There was a company called Service that kind of did this. They launched around 2015. You would tell them about a customer service dispute you were having, and they would call the business on your behalf and recover the money you were owed. I used them several times, and they were able to recover money for me without me having to do much except give them the details.
It looked like they had a few million in VC money to blow through because it was free, and there were no minimums on the dispute amount, so it definitely couldn't last. In Feb 2017, they added a 30% commission on recovered money,[0] and then later that year, they pivoted to focus exclusively on disputes with airlines,[1] which it looks like they're still doing.[2]
Reminds me I have a bank and an insurance company to talk or rather write to.
They sold me insurance on my mortgage, then came up with new rules when my wife sadly needed it.
I was in a tight spot then so it ended up with my family having a boring time (cheaper food, Dad working more, less money to spend on toys, tickets etc - and we didn't have to much in the first place).
Now I do have time and I do have money and I am tempted to give it a go. It should be something around $5000 (two months worth og salaries for my wife).
Being very persistent and calm can go a long way when dealing with organizations in person: most customers, when confronted with a negative answer from a company representative will become irritated, frustrated and will want to terminate the exchange threatening to escalate to some higher authority, a boss (that is rarely available), the courts etc. It's a negative emotional state that most people want to stop.
What you need to do in those circumstance is realize that you still have immense bargaining power with the specific individual, that can, according to company polices present you with a negative answer that is profitable to the company, but in all other respects is severely limited and must behave in a courteous and professional way. You need to reflect that back to them, and repeat your claims ad nausea, bringing more arguments and repeating your point of view with the utmost calm, as if nothing they say is relevant to your problem. Verbally, you state your claims and non-verbally you deliver the message that "I can do this all day and will not leave until you drag me out with security, making a scene". You do not move away from the counter and/or follow the employee calmly, non-threatening continuing to repeat your claims.
The frustration will build up even in the most seasoned customers representatives. All of a sudden, you are no longer the company's problem - a lost or dissatisfied customer; you are THEIR personal problem, a persistent client that demands their rights and stops them from engaging with other customers. Should they make a scene and become rude or verbally or physically abusive, it's their job on the line, for failing to properly handle a demanding client; but if they continue being calm and professional with you, they are failing to do their job and serve other customers. Many representatives will cave under this pressure, if what you are demanding is in their purview, or, a the very least, be very happy to rid themselves from you by producing an actual manager with the power to solve your claim (that would very rarely be disturbed otherwise).
I have successfully used this method to negotiate out of unscrupulous baggage fees at the airport, obtain discounts at advertised prices instead of the "fine print prices" etc. It's a time-money tradeoff, as was this one here. The method is less efective over the phone where the representative has the power to terminate a call. In this case here one company official made a serious mistake by stating in writing something contrary to official company policies. You will usually not be that lucky in email exchanges with an unscrupulous company.
Author here. Happy to answer any questions or take any feedback about this post.
I wrote it a few months ago and submitted it at the time[0], but it didn't seem like it was a match for HN. I was quite surprised when I woke up to find a tweet from a friend letting me know it was on the front page.
If I may, I am not convinced that the "professional way" solved anything.
Of course just my opinion, but I read:
>In the meantime, how do you wish to resolve the matter? What outcome are you wishing for?
as an amicable prompt to find a way to solve a trifling matter in a short time.
I mean, the "professional way" has nothing to do with managing to escalate to the CEO (how exactly did you manage to get his e-mail?).
Besides, a sentence like "I will seek other means to recover the money owed." is ambiguous enough to be easily read as a threat, as there may be "other means" that are not legal.
So - still as I read it - you hassle the CEO of a company, and Mr. Herscu is tasked to understand what the issue is about, and as soon as he finds out that the matter can be solved with paying 88 US$ he pays, problem solved.
Pardon my ignorance on the keto lifestyle, but do you think that 10 bucks per loaf of bread is a reasonable price? Even the reviews on their website indicate a lot of people think it's expensive.
Obviously your keto site has a lot of products, but given the energy in this particular affiliate writeup, have you seen their product in retail anywhere?
It sounds to me like you've uncovered potential affiliate fraud and were willing to settle for a small sum. Honestly, they should be more scared about your article uncovering their bad business practices -- they'll lose more from that than the $88 you settled for.
However, despite the title including the word "debt", this is not a "debt" you were collected because the exact amount was not discussed. Instead, $88 just seemed like a mutually agreeable number. But it could have been a lot higher or a lot lower.
Basically, you just agreed to settle and not continue to press your valid claims of potential affiliate fraud.
Very well done. Personally, I believe that resolving issues in a calm organized and firm way helps you as well.
I recall one of my bosses telling me if you want to fire off an angry response, close your computer and take a walk outside. This works, I would come back and write a calm but firm email. Angry responses typically do not help.
How is there no better way to track conversions in a standard way by a third party? This whole win relies on the fact that the affiliate manager let out the real policy. She could have just said that there were no conversions, and the author would basically have no recourse?
Yeah, that was my initial thought too, but thinking about it more, I understand why that doesn't exist.
Merchants are the ones paying the affiliate platforms, so the affiliate platforms don't have incentive to create features designed to increase power of the affiliates at the expense of the merchant.
Affiliates in this space don't seem to be very discriminating. The only communities I've found for keto affiliate marketers are the groups run by the merchants themselves, so it's not like they're searching for information about which merchants are honest or not. I think the general trend is to try a merchant, monitor how much they pay you, then move on if the dollar amount is too low.
this is the real question here. how is the state of affiliate marketing so bad that affiliates have to trust without any means of verification the very people inclined to scam them?
This has worked for me in the past, especially for settling debts.
I adopted a mantra of "remain professional", avoiding engaging with their emotional tantrum and escalating the situation, just sticking to the facts and explaining the situation to them and what needs to happen to reach a resolution.
It's hard, because people get emotional, and you have to force yourself to detach from them attacking the thing you have built and want to defend and instead become very objective, robotic in nature, but it works.
It's not for the light hearted but sometimes this is what it takes to get paid.
Added (small) side-effect from this post, as a keto person who loves Patrick’s advice: now I know never to give the Kiss My Keto assholes a dime, via your site or anyone else’s.
> I intentionally steered the conversation away from stats, as I had no way to prove anything about Kiss My Keto’s internal sales numbers,
Well, the author could have used one affiliate link to visit Kiss My Keto and make a purchase. That way, he would have had proof that at least ONE converted.
Personally I’ve found that when someone does you completely wrong by doing something as egregiously bad (i.e. fraud) you can certainly find success being a huge asshole about it. Most people do not like being on the receiving end of justified berating and will do almost anything to make it stop. Sometimes starting off being an asshole and letting yourself be talked down creates a window for a quick agreement. It’s not a nice way to deal with things and some people aren’t always comfortable being the “bad guy” but it is effective with certain personalities.
The most important part of this article is that the author was right and had proof. The way in which he conducted himself was likely inconsequential but writing an article about being a dick and getting what you want won’t generate clicks.
Having recently tried to integrate the Walmart affiliate API from Impact.com I'm not surprised. These affiliate programs are a mess. Impact seems to be trying to make it cleaner but their own system is a mess.
Too bad as well, affiliate programs could be a much better way to monetize than advertising revenue.
> Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but I always find it to be the least stressful way of addressing disputes.
This make it very valuable to me. Resolving disputes can quickly become stressful, especially when as an engineer you rarely have to do so with customers.
Kudos to the author for getting the money back, but it seems affiliates have very little leverage. Since there's no independent verification of sales data, affiliates have to take the vendor's word for it when it comes to conversion rates.
The Organized Professional Method is even capitalized, to make it appear as if it's a thing. Part of the process, no doubt, except the target group for this is the article's readers.
This whole article read like an undisputable libel piece to name and shame a company.
Also, if a company tries to give me that run around once, why would I ever bother repping their products ever again? Also...it was $80. I do realize it can buy a decent amount of stuff but the amount of work and time this guy spent writing emails about this, he would've been better off black listing them.
If I were the CEO of any company and a customer emailed me very angry with an even vaguely plausible complaint, and then let me know that $88 would resolve the issue... I'd just pay it!
Don't make enemies over $88!
If it was $88k, then I'd treat it differently... Or if it was 1000 customers who have copy pasted the same email hoping to collect $88...
Yes once a user leaves your site, it is pretty hard to know what happens on the affiliate site - you just have to trust the system they use. You can look at trends and your previous experience, but it is hard to have any proof.
I've never known an affiliate system to have independently verified stats. Whether you're an affiliate for a small business or Amazon, they control the stats and you just have to accept what they say they owe you.
He could've had someone test this directly, by clicking on the affiliate link and purchasing a product, ideally while recording their screen so there's hard evidence. Then if the company still claimed there were no conversions, he would know for a fact that they were lying.
As they mentioned further down in the article, they later got access to data on how affiliate references were performing and used that to extrapolate over the 120 cases that were missing data.
It's pretty amazing to me that this is considered a "method". This is the way I have communicated with anyone that I don't have a personal relationship to in my entire life. I'm surprised it would be seen as some kind of "life hack".
Looks like KMK just tried to cheat hoping that nobody would make much of a fuss over a hundred bucks or so. And they are probably right in enough cases to make it worth it. If occasionally somebody does make a fuss, they just pay up the hundred bucks and still aren't worse than before.
Except now they have enough negative publicity about documented shady practice that it will likely destroy their affiliate program. Honesty really is the best policy
Is there no intermediary third party service which will allow advertisers and websites to register their arrangement and track conversions? Sounds like an obvious product idea. What am I missing?
I like this post but “unscrupulous merchant” seems harsh for a company that may have changed their policies and didn’t realize they had to inform the referring agent of those changes.
It’s not uncommon for policies to change; that initial marketing spiel for bringing agents aboard doesn’t look like a contract.
The reselling agent probably didn’t have a case here, and the merchant went out of their way to assist when presented with a good argument.
So, this is less about the “unscrupulous merchant” and more a warning to businesses to be clear and contractual with your policy and policy changes in order to avoid PR disasters like this.
>I like this post but “unscrupulous merchant” seems harsh for a company that may have changed their policies and didn’t realize they had to inform the referring agent of those changes.
Even giving them an extremely generous benefit of the doubt, I can't think of a way to describe them as anything better than "unscrupulous."
If it truly was an honest mistake that they forgot to tell affiliates they changed policies, their reaction upon finding out should have been, "Oh wow! Thanks for telling us! We owe hundreds of people money, so we'd better review our transactions and pay everyone what they're owed." But instead, they (as far as I know) only paid me and never informed any of the other affiliates.
Also bear in mind, that you can't just "forget" to tell people that you changed the terms of your business relationship with them. If I hired hundreds of employees by advertising a $20/hr wage, I can't just privately decide that their pay is lower and secretly reduce their paychecks until one of them notices.
I disagree that “unscrupulous merchant” is harsh. If only for the fact that they create a referral that's not for their flagship product and not for promotional products. Which they then go on to blast the visitor with.
I cannot read that scheme and not agree with “unscrupulous merchant” as a apt description of the company
> ...a company that may have changed their policies and didn’t realize they had to inform the referring agent of those changes.
Presumably the law varies depending on country, but in the UK you're absolutely obliged to inform any involved parties of substantial changes to the terms of any agreement you have with them. Deciding not to pay commission to affiliates on a flagship product is a pretty big change, if I was an affiliate I'd definitely want to know about it so I could reconsider my position.
This made me think of [1] this discussion here about subway and their fake whole wheat bread. It looks like Subway was forced to change their recipe but honestly I don't have faith in any many companies. Instead of offering good food it always ends up "return to share holders" mode and the product turns to crap.
{1| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24646755
My summary of this article in terms of good and evil:
- Kiss My Keto unsuccessfully tries to set up an affiliate program that doesn’t eat too much margin and is still equitable to the affiliates (I believe they are doing their best to be a force for good until proven otherwise)
- Mr. Lynch gets involved and finds out the program he thought he was joining is actually not as it seems, so he reaches out to Kiss My Keto to resolve things equitably (again, I believe people are doing their best to be a force for good until proven otherwise)
- Kiss My Keto initially balks but then realizes they weren’t being fair and does everything they can to resolve the problem (still a force for good)
- Mr. Lynch then publicly blogs about the issue from a one-sided perspective and paints an unflattering image of Kiss My Keto. He also drafts hard on someone who actually writes useful content instead of creating something useful on his own (now he’s a force for evil)
- Mr. Lynch also uses the blog as an opportunity to sell a course about how to get to the front page of HN while appealing to his authority on the matter since he has written articles that made it to the front page 17 times (more evil territory)
If this is what it takes to get to the front page of HN maybe I should spend way less time here. This guy wasted everyone’s time with bad intentions.
He could have legitimately wanted to help Kiss My Keto, which would have strengthened their relationship and potentially led to gains for both parties. Instead he wasted their time for a completely insignificant payoff. Seriously, if your site is getting 100k visits a month and you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for $88 you are doing something wrong or evil. Then he tells everyone else the story and makes himself the hero and Kiss My Keto the villain. That’s what they got for their seemingly good intentions and $88. So evil on Mr. Lynch’s part.
He could have thought of his own framework instead of drafting off Patrick McKenzie‘s ideas and twisting them to fit his selfish goals. Instead he practiced a bit of intellectual thievery and didn’t even further the discussion by adding anything useful. Evil again.
He could have made this story valuable to readers by giving us tools to live a better life, like Patrick McKenzie did with his article. Instead he extorts us for money to learn his “proven” process for gaming his way onto the front page despite having nothing useful to say and wasting everyone’s time. Major evil.
To be clear, I want more good in the world and less evil. If everyone acted like this guy the world would be terrible. Don’t be like this guy.
Am I missing something? Why did this make it to the front page and why do people seem to actually like this article and find it useful? Are we all that terrible?
-Mr. Lynch advertises for KMK on a site that he has poured many hours of work and creativity into over the years. Mr. Lynch does this based on an agreement, that, in fact, relies heavily on the merchants honest reporting of sales, a metric Mr. Lynch, does not have on his own. The balance of power in this relationship is strongly favoring KMK.
-Mr. Lynch learns that KMK is not, in fact, honoring its contract, this he learns from a small admission from KMK. The balance of power shifts slightly in favor of Mr. Lynch.
-Mr. Lynch reaches out to CEO of KMK, who effectively tells Mr. Lynch to pound sand. Escalating the conflict, and retaining position in balance of power.
-Mr. Lynch continues pressing CEO, threatening losses that a reasonable CEO would not want to incur, as well as the guarantee that this cheap problem will continue to consume the bread maker-CEOs time. KMK, in a moment of clarity signals that it is open to alternative solutions without admitting fault, by effectively posing the question, ‘What do hope to accomplish?’. Balance of power is basically equal at this point.
-Mr. Lynch and KMK CEO settle on $88 to make Mr. Lynch whole. Both are mutually satisfied to never conduct business together again. At this point Balance of power is now strongly in favor of Mr. Lynch, as he has recuperated the $88, but more effectively, he has won the conflict. Using the leverage that was ironically what KMK valued most as an affiliate partner, he nukes the bridge he just crossed as a demonstration of force, but more importantly send a message to the market, ‘you don’t screw over your affiliate partners’.
Some may say it was twisting the blade a little too much, some may say it was in bad taste. I say it was Sherman-esque; harsh, but necessary, so long as he didn’t take obvious pleasure in his brutality.
> "To be clear, I want more good in the world and less evil. "
That's great. You and I have common ground.
In my experience, dividing the world into good and evil is likely to increase negativity and evil. Embracing the shades of gray, understanding nuance or being brave enough to say "I do not have enough information about this very serious urgent issue to determine the correct moral path" usually increases good.
In my opinion, your instinct to suspect Kiss My Keto could be merely misunderstood is a good and generous one. Personally, I think it's misguided, but I'd hear you out. But to then go on to ascribe actual evil motives to the blogger is, ironically, increasing evil.
Because sometimes it's not about who's "good" and who's "evil". I found this story interesting and helpful because it did what it set out to do from the beginning: Answer the question of how to get what you feel is yours in a small contractual dispute without going to court by providing a small insignificant practical example. I don't really care who is right or wrong, I don't even know who Patrick McKenzie is.
Isn't he doing good by working so hard for $80. He is effectively discouraging this behaviour in the future by this company and by others. People get away at this behaviour because the harm is distributed and benefits accrue just to them.
> He could have legitimately wanted to help Kiss My Keto, which would have strengthened their relationship and potentially led to gains for both parties.
Maybe, as a company, it's a bad idea to rip people off for $88. Turns out that people who have to fight you for trivial amounts of money aren't motivated to either repair the relationship or improve your company. The only people motivated to make a big deal about it are people who can figure out an angle that makes it profitable for them.
Is there no difference between good and bad things? Aggressive marketing is annoying, not a moral failure. With some people, exploiting being a victim for personal benefit can be rationalized as worse than victimizing people. It's like a killer being angry that a relative of their victim writes books about the crime. "Where's my share?"
In terms of good and evil:
- Kiss My Keto set up an affiliate program. (morally neutral)
- Mr. Lynch joins that affiliate program. (morally neutral)
- Kiss My Keto has changed that affiliate program to exclude their primary product. (morally neutral)
- Kiss My Keto doesn't inform its affiliates of that change, or update the information on the website of that change. (morally bad)
- Kiss My Keto asks affiliates to share holiday promotion codes in order to "boost earnings," yet has a policy that refuses to pay referrals who use holiday promotion codes (morally bad)
- Kiss My Keto also offers promotion codes in pop-ups to people referred to its site, and if any of these promotion codes are used, they refuse to pay for the referral. They also do not mention this in any material they share with their affiliates (morally bad)
- Mr. Lynch notices that Kiss My Keto has effectively created an referral network that doesn't pay for referrals, and doesn't tell its affiliates that it doesn't pay for referrals. (morally neutral)
- Mr. Lynch spends weeks in an email exchange being ignored and argued with, until someone at Kiss My Keto notices that they are dealing with a loudmouth, updates their website terms, and starts paying for referrals. (morally neutral)
- Mr. Lynch blogs about it, and ties it in to a product that he's selling. (morally neutral)
What's not included:
- Mr. Lynch deceitfully fails to blog about the interaction from Kiss My Keto's perspective, completely fails to make an effort to preserve the image of Kiss My Keto in that blog, and viciously includes a reference to a different blog (that describes the approach he was taking in this dispute) rather than making up an original framework for dealing with disputes in general. (obviously destroying the world with his evil.)
The idea is to demonstrate a professional method for communicating with companies that are incompetent or otherwise untrustworthy. The amount of money involved and the business practices of the company with whom he is communicating is not strictly relevant.
Michael is a pretty frequent contributor to HN. In fact so much that his latest project is an ebook specifically about how to get on the front page of HN.
He has spent a few years building small one man startup type projects. His blog is quite obviously a way of generating initial interest in these projects.
He specifically notes that he has ended all relationship the affiliate so your baseless conspiracy theory is unnecessary.
> My hunch is that he wrote this article specifically to appeal to the HN crowd (see patio11 quotes) in an attempt to get additional commissions from driving more sales to a vendor _he himself_ describes as unscrupulous.
He actually sells a course on it! - Hit the Front Page of Hacker News [0]
It is a hell lots of work for 88 bucks. Amount of work spent writing emails, analyzing data, coming up with strategy - it comes down to pretty low hourly wage...
stickfigure|5 years ago
The #1 rule of affiliate programs is to treat affiliates like royalty. Or more accurately - business partners. Be clear about what you offer, be generous, and always resolve reasonable misunderstandings in their favor. A single good affiliate can make your business. A bad reputation will destroy it.
There are third party affiliate software systems that can help with trust, but they are all terrible. Nothing substitutes for just being trustworthy. This post is probably going to be top news in the "keto affiliate community" (which, even without checking, I already know to be a thing) and it will be a problem.
0xfaded|5 years ago
I go out of my way, with link strippers, cookie removers, adblockers, to the point of often manually copy and pasting links into a private window if necessary, to avoid affiliate links. When I do this I usually feel like I'm supporting the online store, but there are some cases (e.g. I'm looking for an oversized mattress) where I know the whole industry is corrupt and I just want to pay as little rent as possible.
m12k|5 years ago
jpcooper|5 years ago
doonesbury|5 years ago
The whole long story behind the dispute may be interesting for the writer of the story, but not in general. And those with long history, or institutional history by now the N+1th version of yet another dispute is not inherently interesting.
What is interesting is the OP's link may have discovered new area in the solution space. So please talk about that!
badconvincer|5 years ago
noodlesUK|5 years ago
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
ornornor|5 years ago
The attitude is more like “you should feel lucky we let you give us your money and purchase something from us. Now fuck off.”
I tried the professional attitude, I tried threatening legal action (I have legal insurance that would pay an obscene amount of lawyer fees if it came to that), I have tried the angry consumer, I have tried to complain to the regulator... None of that worked. Most of the time, they basically say something like “kiss my ass”
I don’t know how to deal with EU companies. I was always getting what I wanted in North America by using the organized professional method. I’m at a complete loss in Europe. Any advice?
ChrisMarshallNY|5 years ago
Respect and Courtesy are important at all times (IMNSHO). Some folks seem to feel that being respectful is a sign of weakness, but cops are extremely respectful, as they explain to you why they will be writing a ticket for an eye-watering amount (at least, good cops are).
Many moons ago, when the domain market was still a “thing,” I had a broker offer to sell me a domain I wanted, and the price was extremely reasonable, so I took them up on it. It turned out that they actually were “leasing” it to me, and they wouldn’t transfer it to me.
I asked them, and they responded fairly aggressively, pretty much telling me to FO, and that I was “harassing” them (a legal term, really), by asking them to release the domain.
My response was fairly similar to the approach in the article, and I was able to get the domain. They were not very gracious about it, but I did get it, and we never needed to deal with each other again, after that.
pavel_lishin|5 years ago
I'm glad you've had only positive experiences with the police, but this is a hell of a take in 2020.
codecutter|5 years ago
tsjq|5 years ago
YMMV.
In India, the rank-and-file cadres that the common public interacts with: have the dirtiest and most disrespectful people one would ever face.
momokoko|5 years ago
I could not disagree more. Ethical and considerate _actions_ are important at all times. Many very dishonest people help themselves sleep at night by pretending that being polite excuses their actions.
It does not. Actions have real life, often irreversible, effects on those around you. Being polite has few, if any, tangible effects.
damethos|5 years ago
TomSwirly|5 years ago
In another country, like the one I now live in, this would be a job for law enforcement.
You'd just hand over your files to some branch of the government, and in a surprisingly short amount of time, you'd get some money, but also, the site would stop cheating people.
Except that this rarely happens here, because companies know that law enforcement cares about systematic scams.
They might try to cheat you once, to see if you're a sucker, but if you put up any fuss, they'll give you the money.
ouid|5 years ago
ysleepy|5 years ago
Having a representative admit to violating their own policy/terms in writing is sort of a slam dunk.
The principle still applies though, good advice afaict.
digianarchist|5 years ago
coupdejarnac|5 years ago
ohashi|5 years ago
dmos62|5 years ago
rexreed|5 years ago
pjc50|5 years ago
[deleted]
leovander|5 years ago
Where do people get their info from to just go with a "time to contact the FTC"? If feels like the equivalent of people threatening they will contact the BBB.
Depending on the amount (that was $88 per the screenshot?), that is something you take to small claims court, you don't even need a lawyer for that.
function_seven|5 years ago
I'm well aware of how toothless and irrelevant BBB is these days. ("Yelp for old people"). Almost nobody visits BBB before making a decision, only after a bad experience. Given that, a business with a bad grade there probably doesn't feel much of a sting.
But I'm totally unfamiliar with FTC's power or purview. Is involving them on something like this a waste of time because of the dollar amount? I don't expect they would recover the money, or mediate a dispute. But I think the author is coming at it from the angle that the other party would rather not rack up complaints at all. Especially if they could get other affiliates to follow suit.
I work in telecom, and complaints to the Public Utilities Commission are treated seriously within my company (and in the wider industry AFAIK). We really do not want customers to file any. When a customer mentions the PUC at all, we take them seriously enough to get some more eyes on their problem.
My guess is that the author's checklist includes small claims as the next step after the FTC complaint. Or maybe they just stop at the FTC complaint and consider a lawsuit—even if small claims—to not be worth it for the amount involved.
omgwtfbyobbq|5 years ago
Haga|5 years ago
[deleted]
kebman|5 years ago
If, however, you participate in face-to-face negotiations, you open up a whole slew of other possibilities of influence only limited by your personality and personal morals. As an example, a CEO friend of mine told me that he'd always make sure to get really drunk the day before an important negotiation, so he'd be grumpy and mean when he finally sat down at the table. Let's just say that his methods were in stark contrast to those promoted by Dale Carnegie.
hnarn|5 years ago
Extrapolating from my own capacity to think clearly while I'm hungover I would suspect this is a profoundly bad idea.
twodave|5 years ago
I’ve had my credit card stolen multiple times this year, and the thief has used my card to send ME keto pills I didn’t want. This makes the transaction more difficult to dispute and doesn’t benefit a common thief in any way. These companies are just a facade for criminal activity in my opinion, though I’ve been unable to concretely connect the dots.
rexreed|5 years ago
thewebcount|5 years ago
They pointed out that their web page clearly states you will need an account. I was shocked because I always make sure to very carefully research this. So I went to the wayback machine on archive.org and looked at their page on the day I purchased, and sure enough, the language was not in there. They had added it a few weeks later.
I sent them screenshots and receipts, and they still pushed back. Finally I issued them an ultimatum. Refund us the money or I'll do a chargeback and present my evidence to the credit card company. They immediately backed down and refunded us.
It is utterly insane that consumers need to take screenshots of every product page for products they buy in this day and age to not be screwed over.
NOGDP|5 years ago
[1] https://www.ontario.ca/page/consumer-protection-ontario
harrisonjackson|5 years ago
I worked at rewardstyle (a fashion affiliate technology company) for nearly three years when it first launched and built out their instagram affiliate tool LikeToKnow.it as a side project with one other developer and a designer. We faced A LOT of mistrust and doubt from affiliates about earnings - sometimes valid and sometimes not.
There are so so so many ways that different retailers would invalidate earnings, break the tracking, the buyer would delete their cookies, buyer would get redirected from a us store to au or eu or other intl and have it not track, we'd miscalculate a payout somehow, ship some bugs, etc.
But we knew that we were in an industry that was looked at as pretty scummy so we did our best to always make things right and error on the side of generosity.
There were times where a retailer would break the commission tracking on their checkout page and we would know there were 1000 sales but wouldn't be able to attribute them directly to a specific affiliate. We had to just do our best to extrapolate their earnings and add a "sorry something broke" bonus.
lixtra|5 years ago
ouid|5 years ago
zebnyc|5 years ago
raviolo|5 years ago
I imagine that when presented with a choice of $88 payment or having to deal with a lawsuit, 100% of decision-makers will chose the former. And it’s not about the lawsuit outcome. Even if some complete garbage is filed which has no chance of success, the burden it creates on the business is clearly much higher than $88.
jldugger|5 years ago
Thats because you are.
jldugger|5 years ago
But... apparently still not worth keeping:
> I’ve since removed all mention of Kiss My Keto, as I no longer have any interest in helping them earn money, regardless of what they pay me.
To me, it seems like the real story here might be that someone is selling bread for a 20 percent markup. Or maybe they aren't, but have been able to make ends meet by stiffing referrals. The margins on groceries are typically small, which is borne out by Amazon's 1 percent comission rate for the Grocery category. If someone comes along offering to 20x your income, skepticism is in order.
You can formalize that skepticism with a multi-armed bandit algorithm. Basically, put affiliate commissions into the feedback loop, picking which affiliate links to use by expected value. But it may take a while with low click through volumes.
nicbou|5 years ago
A 3€ per month liability insurance might have a 40€ commission, while a 400€ product might have a 10€ commission.
NullPrefix|5 years ago
They currently advertise a discounted 4 bread pack for only $39.99 . I feel the markup is not exactly 20%.
tleb_|5 years ago
hombre_fatal|5 years ago
The charge of putting a lot of work into an interesting article that HNers would upvote isn't very damning, and doing all of that just to increment 16 -> 17 in some marketing material isn't very convincing.
His own advice in the videos is "write good, interesting content" not some sort of gimmick.
hydrogenbonds|5 years ago
sverhagen|5 years ago
locallost|5 years ago
dj_mc_merlin|5 years ago
How did the CEO write this and not immediately ^H^H^H it? Could he really not think of a better phrasing than "your conversions"?
hajimemash|5 years ago
MertsA|5 years ago
wrycoder|5 years ago
noir_lord|5 years ago
Amazingly at that point the entire thing was resolved in less than a day and not only did they finally get the billing amount correct but they then waived it entirely.
I never had an issue with paying them what I owed the problem was their figure and mine didn't match and they kept screwing up the collection.
ohashi|5 years ago
Guessing it's the same affiliate manager I documented here:
https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/04/22/dirty-slimy-shady-s...
Trying to get me to publish fake reviews about companies he represents. He also likes using fake 'Re: BS subject that you never sent' tactic and claims it was a keyboard error.
Not surprising he's continuing to work with shady companies.
JakaJancar|5 years ago
I'm confident I could probably recover most, but at this amount, I just don't want to deal with it. It's one of those cases where I wish I had a personal assistant. It makes me think there's room for a "consumer debt collector" service with a revenue share model.
faebi|5 years ago
There are various only services who go to court for you and will get as much money as they can. You go to their website, enter your flight, they calculate the probability that it was the airlines fault , they show you what you maybe can expect, you give them the permission and then they do everything else. The company takes something like 25% comission and that‘s it. It takes a few minutes. In the end she payed 100-200€ for the return flight and got something like 350€ back via the company.
Made me think if one could find the most unreliable flights, with the worst delay in case of a delay and fly them profitably by going to court all the time.
mtlynch|5 years ago
There was a company called Service that kind of did this. They launched around 2015. You would tell them about a customer service dispute you were having, and they would call the business on your behalf and recover the money you were owed. I used them several times, and they were able to recover money for me without me having to do much except give them the details.
It looked like they had a few million in VC money to blow through because it was free, and there were no minimums on the dispute amount, so it definitely couldn't last. In Feb 2017, they added a 30% commission on recovered money,[0] and then later that year, they pivoted to focus exclusively on disputes with airlines,[1] which it looks like they're still doing.[2]
[0] https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=8cdf4d62d0219f237ed96d7...
[1] https://mailchi.mp/dcc5d15901c4/meet-service-20
[2] https://www.getservice.com/
skinkestek|5 years ago
Reminds me I have a bank and an insurance company to talk or rather write to.
They sold me insurance on my mortgage, then came up with new rules when my wife sadly needed it.
I was in a tight spot then so it ended up with my family having a boring time (cheaper food, Dad working more, less money to spend on toys, tickets etc - and we didn't have to much in the first place).
Now I do have time and I do have money and I am tempted to give it a go. It should be something around $5000 (two months worth og salaries for my wife).
yholio|5 years ago
What you need to do in those circumstance is realize that you still have immense bargaining power with the specific individual, that can, according to company polices present you with a negative answer that is profitable to the company, but in all other respects is severely limited and must behave in a courteous and professional way. You need to reflect that back to them, and repeat your claims ad nausea, bringing more arguments and repeating your point of view with the utmost calm, as if nothing they say is relevant to your problem. Verbally, you state your claims and non-verbally you deliver the message that "I can do this all day and will not leave until you drag me out with security, making a scene". You do not move away from the counter and/or follow the employee calmly, non-threatening continuing to repeat your claims.
The frustration will build up even in the most seasoned customers representatives. All of a sudden, you are no longer the company's problem - a lost or dissatisfied customer; you are THEIR personal problem, a persistent client that demands their rights and stops them from engaging with other customers. Should they make a scene and become rude or verbally or physically abusive, it's their job on the line, for failing to properly handle a demanding client; but if they continue being calm and professional with you, they are failing to do their job and serve other customers. Many representatives will cave under this pressure, if what you are demanding is in their purview, or, a the very least, be very happy to rid themselves from you by producing an actual manager with the power to solve your claim (that would very rarely be disturbed otherwise).
I have successfully used this method to negotiate out of unscrupulous baggage fees at the airport, obtain discounts at advertised prices instead of the "fine print prices" etc. It's a time-money tradeoff, as was this one here. The method is less efective over the phone where the representative has the power to terminate a call. In this case here one company official made a serious mistake by stating in writing something contrary to official company policies. You will usually not be that lucky in email exchanges with an unscrupulous company.
mtlynch|5 years ago
I wrote it a few months ago and submitted it at the time[0], but it didn't seem like it was a match for HN. I was quite surprised when I woke up to find a tweet from a friend letting me know it was on the front page.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24144103
jaclaz|5 years ago
Of course just my opinion, but I read:
>In the meantime, how do you wish to resolve the matter? What outcome are you wishing for?
as an amicable prompt to find a way to solve a trifling matter in a short time.
I mean, the "professional way" has nothing to do with managing to escalate to the CEO (how exactly did you manage to get his e-mail?).
Besides, a sentence like "I will seek other means to recover the money owed." is ambiguous enough to be easily read as a threat, as there may be "other means" that are not legal.
So - still as I read it - you hassle the CEO of a company, and Mr. Herscu is tasked to understand what the issue is about, and as soon as he finds out that the matter can be solved with paying 88 US$ he pays, problem solved.
jldugger|5 years ago
Obviously your keto site has a lot of products, but given the energy in this particular affiliate writeup, have you seen their product in retail anywhere?
rexreed|5 years ago
However, despite the title including the word "debt", this is not a "debt" you were collected because the exact amount was not discussed. Instead, $88 just seemed like a mutually agreeable number. But it could have been a lot higher or a lot lower.
Basically, you just agreed to settle and not continue to press your valid claims of potential affiliate fraud.
dcminter|5 years ago
I do think it ran a little long, but no worse than that.
fourstar|5 years ago
ystad|5 years ago
I recall one of my bosses telling me if you want to fire off an angry response, close your computer and take a walk outside. This works, I would come back and write a calm but firm email. Angry responses typically do not help.
I typically hate responses on twitter
raz32dust|5 years ago
mtlynch|5 years ago
Yeah, that was my initial thought too, but thinking about it more, I understand why that doesn't exist.
Merchants are the ones paying the affiliate platforms, so the affiliate platforms don't have incentive to create features designed to increase power of the affiliates at the expense of the merchant.
Affiliates in this space don't seem to be very discriminating. The only communities I've found for keto affiliate marketers are the groups run by the merchants themselves, so it's not like they're searching for information about which merchants are honest or not. I think the general trend is to try a merchant, monitor how much they pay you, then move on if the dollar amount is too low.
swyx|5 years ago
FriendlyNormie|5 years ago
[deleted]
rexreed|5 years ago
jpswade|5 years ago
I adopted a mantra of "remain professional", avoiding engaging with their emotional tantrum and escalating the situation, just sticking to the facts and explaining the situation to them and what needs to happen to reach a resolution.
It's hard, because people get emotional, and you have to force yourself to detach from them attacking the thing you have built and want to defend and instead become very objective, robotic in nature, but it works.
It's not for the light hearted but sometimes this is what it takes to get paid.
sneak|5 years ago
peteretep|5 years ago
onetimemanytime|5 years ago
sengstrom|5 years ago
mtlynch|5 years ago
simonebrunozzi|5 years ago
Well, the author could have used one affiliate link to visit Kiss My Keto and make a purchase. That way, he would have had proof that at least ONE converted.
davewritescode|5 years ago
The most important part of this article is that the author was right and had proof. The way in which he conducted himself was likely inconsequential but writing an article about being a dick and getting what you want won’t generate clicks.
gogopuppygogo|5 years ago
Too bad as well, affiliate programs could be a much better way to monetize than advertising revenue.
m3at|5 years ago
This make it very valuable to me. Resolving disputes can quickly become stressful, especially when as an engineer you rarely have to do so with customers.
guyu96|5 years ago
utopcell|5 years ago
YuccaGloriosa|5 years ago
nondeveloper|5 years ago
He also invoked the “professional” archetype.
> “Angry people demand; professionals ‘require.’”
RaoulP|5 years ago
MeinBlutIstBlau|5 years ago
Also, if a company tries to give me that run around once, why would I ever bother repping their products ever again? Also...it was $80. I do realize it can buy a decent amount of stuff but the amount of work and time this guy spent writing emails about this, he would've been better off black listing them.
lolc|5 years ago
londons_explore|5 years ago
Don't make enemies over $88!
If it was $88k, then I'd treat it differently... Or if it was 1000 customers who have copy pasted the same email hoping to collect $88...
JumpCrisscross|5 years ago
Well there goes your leverage. Is this common in the content game?
ljf|5 years ago
markdown|5 years ago
I've never known an affiliate system to have independently verified stats. Whether you're an affiliate for a small business or Amazon, they control the stats and you just have to accept what they say they owe you.
ignoranceprior|5 years ago
glenstein|5 years ago
hnarn|5 years ago
smsm42|5 years ago
rendall|5 years ago
simonebrunozzi|5 years ago
This one mentioned in the article is one of the best blog posts ever written, IMHO. I re-discover and re-read it every ~2 years.
fareesh|5 years ago
markdown|5 years ago
greenkey|5 years ago
It’s not uncommon for policies to change; that initial marketing spiel for bringing agents aboard doesn’t look like a contract.
The reselling agent probably didn’t have a case here, and the merchant went out of their way to assist when presented with a good argument.
So, this is less about the “unscrupulous merchant” and more a warning to businesses to be clear and contractual with your policy and policy changes in order to avoid PR disasters like this.
mtlynch|5 years ago
>I like this post but “unscrupulous merchant” seems harsh for a company that may have changed their policies and didn’t realize they had to inform the referring agent of those changes.
Even giving them an extremely generous benefit of the doubt, I can't think of a way to describe them as anything better than "unscrupulous."
If it truly was an honest mistake that they forgot to tell affiliates they changed policies, their reaction upon finding out should have been, "Oh wow! Thanks for telling us! We owe hundreds of people money, so we'd better review our transactions and pay everyone what they're owed." But instead, they (as far as I know) only paid me and never informed any of the other affiliates.
Also bear in mind, that you can't just "forget" to tell people that you changed the terms of your business relationship with them. If I hired hundreds of employees by advertising a $20/hr wage, I can't just privately decide that their pay is lower and secretly reduce their paychecks until one of them notices.
d0100|5 years ago
I cannot read that scheme and not agree with “unscrupulous merchant” as a apt description of the company
remus|5 years ago
Presumably the law varies depending on country, but in the UK you're absolutely obliged to inform any involved parties of substantial changes to the terms of any agreement you have with them. Deciding not to pay commission to affiliates on a flagship product is a pretty big change, if I was an affiliate I'd definitely want to know about it so I could reconsider my position.
unknown|5 years ago
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Scoundreller|5 years ago
Edit: extra carbs I mean. Getting my diets confused here.
sneak|5 years ago
14|5 years ago
zogulus|5 years ago
m3kw9|5 years ago
chaostheory|5 years ago
redelbee|5 years ago
- Kiss My Keto unsuccessfully tries to set up an affiliate program that doesn’t eat too much margin and is still equitable to the affiliates (I believe they are doing their best to be a force for good until proven otherwise)
- Mr. Lynch gets involved and finds out the program he thought he was joining is actually not as it seems, so he reaches out to Kiss My Keto to resolve things equitably (again, I believe people are doing their best to be a force for good until proven otherwise)
- Kiss My Keto initially balks but then realizes they weren’t being fair and does everything they can to resolve the problem (still a force for good)
- Mr. Lynch then publicly blogs about the issue from a one-sided perspective and paints an unflattering image of Kiss My Keto. He also drafts hard on someone who actually writes useful content instead of creating something useful on his own (now he’s a force for evil)
- Mr. Lynch also uses the blog as an opportunity to sell a course about how to get to the front page of HN while appealing to his authority on the matter since he has written articles that made it to the front page 17 times (more evil territory)
If this is what it takes to get to the front page of HN maybe I should spend way less time here. This guy wasted everyone’s time with bad intentions.
He could have legitimately wanted to help Kiss My Keto, which would have strengthened their relationship and potentially led to gains for both parties. Instead he wasted their time for a completely insignificant payoff. Seriously, if your site is getting 100k visits a month and you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for $88 you are doing something wrong or evil. Then he tells everyone else the story and makes himself the hero and Kiss My Keto the villain. That’s what they got for their seemingly good intentions and $88. So evil on Mr. Lynch’s part.
He could have thought of his own framework instead of drafting off Patrick McKenzie‘s ideas and twisting them to fit his selfish goals. Instead he practiced a bit of intellectual thievery and didn’t even further the discussion by adding anything useful. Evil again.
He could have made this story valuable to readers by giving us tools to live a better life, like Patrick McKenzie did with his article. Instead he extorts us for money to learn his “proven” process for gaming his way onto the front page despite having nothing useful to say and wasting everyone’s time. Major evil.
To be clear, I want more good in the world and less evil. If everyone acted like this guy the world would be terrible. Don’t be like this guy.
Am I missing something? Why did this make it to the front page and why do people seem to actually like this article and find it useful? Are we all that terrible?
polartx|5 years ago
-Mr. Lynch advertises for KMK on a site that he has poured many hours of work and creativity into over the years. Mr. Lynch does this based on an agreement, that, in fact, relies heavily on the merchants honest reporting of sales, a metric Mr. Lynch, does not have on his own. The balance of power in this relationship is strongly favoring KMK.
-Mr. Lynch learns that KMK is not, in fact, honoring its contract, this he learns from a small admission from KMK. The balance of power shifts slightly in favor of Mr. Lynch.
-Mr. Lynch reaches out to CEO of KMK, who effectively tells Mr. Lynch to pound sand. Escalating the conflict, and retaining position in balance of power.
-Mr. Lynch continues pressing CEO, threatening losses that a reasonable CEO would not want to incur, as well as the guarantee that this cheap problem will continue to consume the bread maker-CEOs time. KMK, in a moment of clarity signals that it is open to alternative solutions without admitting fault, by effectively posing the question, ‘What do hope to accomplish?’. Balance of power is basically equal at this point.
-Mr. Lynch and KMK CEO settle on $88 to make Mr. Lynch whole. Both are mutually satisfied to never conduct business together again. At this point Balance of power is now strongly in favor of Mr. Lynch, as he has recuperated the $88, but more effectively, he has won the conflict. Using the leverage that was ironically what KMK valued most as an affiliate partner, he nukes the bridge he just crossed as a demonstration of force, but more importantly send a message to the market, ‘you don’t screw over your affiliate partners’.
Some may say it was twisting the blade a little too much, some may say it was in bad taste. I say it was Sherman-esque; harsh, but necessary, so long as he didn’t take obvious pleasure in his brutality.
rendall|5 years ago
Extorts whom for money?
> "To be clear, I want more good in the world and less evil. "
That's great. You and I have common ground.
In my experience, dividing the world into good and evil is likely to increase negativity and evil. Embracing the shades of gray, understanding nuance or being brave enough to say "I do not have enough information about this very serious urgent issue to determine the correct moral path" usually increases good.
In my opinion, your instinct to suspect Kiss My Keto could be merely misunderstood is a good and generous one. Personally, I think it's misguided, but I'd hear you out. But to then go on to ascribe actual evil motives to the blogger is, ironically, increasing evil.
chki|5 years ago
agbell|5 years ago
Abimelex|5 years ago
pessimizer|5 years ago
Maybe, as a company, it's a bad idea to rip people off for $88. Turns out that people who have to fight you for trivial amounts of money aren't motivated to either repair the relationship or improve your company. The only people motivated to make a big deal about it are people who can figure out an angle that makes it profitable for them.
Is there no difference between good and bad things? Aggressive marketing is annoying, not a moral failure. With some people, exploiting being a victim for personal benefit can be rationalized as worse than victimizing people. It's like a killer being angry that a relative of their victim writes books about the crime. "Where's my share?"
In terms of good and evil:
- Kiss My Keto set up an affiliate program. (morally neutral)
- Mr. Lynch joins that affiliate program. (morally neutral)
- Kiss My Keto has changed that affiliate program to exclude their primary product. (morally neutral)
- Kiss My Keto doesn't inform its affiliates of that change, or update the information on the website of that change. (morally bad)
- Kiss My Keto asks affiliates to share holiday promotion codes in order to "boost earnings," yet has a policy that refuses to pay referrals who use holiday promotion codes (morally bad)
- Kiss My Keto also offers promotion codes in pop-ups to people referred to its site, and if any of these promotion codes are used, they refuse to pay for the referral. They also do not mention this in any material they share with their affiliates (morally bad)
- Mr. Lynch notices that Kiss My Keto has effectively created an referral network that doesn't pay for referrals, and doesn't tell its affiliates that it doesn't pay for referrals. (morally neutral)
- Mr. Lynch spends weeks in an email exchange being ignored and argued with, until someone at Kiss My Keto notices that they are dealing with a loudmouth, updates their website terms, and starts paying for referrals. (morally neutral)
- Mr. Lynch blogs about it, and ties it in to a product that he's selling. (morally neutral)
What's not included:
- Mr. Lynch deceitfully fails to blog about the interaction from Kiss My Keto's perspective, completely fails to make an effort to preserve the image of Kiss My Keto in that blog, and viciously includes a reference to a different blog (that describes the approach he was taking in this dispute) rather than making up an original framework for dealing with disputes in general. (obviously destroying the world with his evil.)
tedchs|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
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FriendlyNormie|5 years ago
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calcsam|5 years ago
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Zanneth|5 years ago
VBprogrammer|5 years ago
He has spent a few years building small one man startup type projects. His blog is quite obviously a way of generating initial interest in these projects.
He specifically notes that he has ended all relationship the affiliate so your baseless conspiracy theory is unnecessary.
Do better, clacsam.
avinassh|5 years ago
He actually sells a course on it! - Hit the Front Page of Hacker News [0]
[0] - https://gumroad.com/l/htfphn/hacker
csomar|5 years ago
nxpnsv|5 years ago
runjake|5 years ago
He probably also wanted to burn the vendor/warn others.
Re #2: He didn’t. He states he ceased working with them after he recovered the $88.
noja|5 years ago
octoberfranklin|5 years ago
kova12|5 years ago
kzrdude|5 years ago
ChicagoDave|5 years ago
Dumb article.
effingwewt|5 years ago
The article is all over the olace and buried near the end is the book he got the 'solution' from.
A correct title would be 'how book' X' helped me recover funds'
But that wouldn't earn him mlre affiliate spam. Get bent dude.
mtlynch|5 years ago
>The article is just more affiliate spam
There are no affiliate links in this article. I link to a writing course I teach, but that's not an affiliate link, as I'm selling my own product.
>buried near the end is the book he got the 'solution' from.
>A correct title would be 'how book' X' helped me recover funds'
The link is to a blog post[0] that I discuss heavily in the beginning of the article.[1]
[0] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
[1] https://mtlynch.io/collect-debt/#handling-bad-behavior-with-...