Affiliates banned from Twitter?

July 8, 2009 | Affiliate Marketing

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I’ve spoken about affiliate marketing and twitter before, both the good, the bad and the ugly. Like all social media platforms there are those that will use it for good and those who will abuse. Should affiliates be banned from using twitter?

Well Amazon clearly think so and have now taken steps to claw back commission from affiliates promoting their products via twitter. As far as I’m aware the news broke over at Search Engine Journal where you can read the whole storey “Tarantino style” here.

So where do you draw the line? Can affiliates use Facebook, Youtube, Squidoo? Of course they can but in theory the same rules would apply if you were an Amazon affiliate. Amazon Associates, as one of the longest standing affiliate programmes can sometimes be seen as an authority for best practice. I personally hope it’s not a trend that will catch on any time soon.

Are Amazon in the right or wrong? I believe it’s latter but it does make for an interesting discussion.

Thanks

3 Comments

Hubtonomy
Jul 10 at 1:24 pm

I can appreciate it from both sides of the fence. My feelings are that these days the bigs boys are trying to squeeze out the little guy. It’s like they want the internet to resemble the high street.

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Cedrick Reese
Sep 3 at 8:43 am

I am glad that it is happening. I joined twitter so that I could learn from others that I follow. Sometimes they post things at twitter that they will not post at their blog. Now it seems like whenever I log into my twitter account it’s just full of things people are trying to sell to me and I just stop following. I am seriously thinking of closing my twitter account.

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Dan
Oct 14 at 11:42 am

From a merchant perspective I wholly support Affiliates being banned from social networks. There is nothing worse than having your brand registered on Twitter and a bad affiliate spamming under your name and alienating your client base.

If they are incapable of understanding the power of social media and how to harness it and promote themselves (and the brand) in a favourable light, then I would prefer that they were banned.

However, I see no reason why affiliates can’t build up a profile under their own name and occasionally tweet a relevant promotion with their affiliate code.

But as always the spammers have ruined it for the rest of us.

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