In their defense, it very often is. The reputation is well earned.
I used to work in a major affiliate marketing ad network, and they have these events where the most successful affiliates are taken on a vacation. One time, this took place at the company headquarters, so I spent a little bit of time getting to know them.
Not hating, but what a bunch of unscrupulous rogues they were! To say they were a pack of untrustworthy hooligans would be politely understating the point, which is exactly what I will do.
Yep. A while (10 years I think) ago I made a lot of money by 'accident' by replacing my ads with affiliate offers on a very busy site I had. I had no clue what affiliate marketing was or how it worked; I read a spam email by a company doing it and it sounded like it was worth a try. It worked; it converted like mad and my income from this side project rocketed. The company invited me to one of these vacation things on a ship; the people I met there... I like the affiliate concept but indeed a lot of companies and people involved are just borderline criminals. I also noticed that most of them just know nothing; they accidentally rolled into this and it worked for them, but they don't know business (the money tap is just on or off; most of them don't do bookkeeping or pay tax) or anything outside 'Must Make Money Easily'. Not sure if the latter changed as I never went again.
I used to work in a major affiliate marketing ad network, and they have these events where the most successful affiliates are taken on a vacation. One time, this took place at the company headquarters, so I spent a little bit of time getting to know them.
Not hating, but what a bunch of unscrupulous rogues they were! To say they were a pack of untrustworthy hooligans would be politely understating the point, which is exactly what I will do.