Cleanmerchants down?

[kwabble]

Hi,

First post so be gentle. I was looking for cleanmerchants.com and it appears to be gone from the net. Anyone know where I can find a list of merchants who work with parasites so I can avoid them? Thanks.

[5starAffiliatePrograms]

Hi kwabble,

Welcome to SEW! Don't worry the people here are very friendly and the mods are fair, so I'll be gentle. ;)

Cleanmerchants disappeared a few weeks ago or at least that's when I notice it was MIA. I used to use it to double check all of our programs occasionally to be sure they were clean and no parasites had sneaked in.

I don't know of another service like it. Kelly AKA Ms B. has a list of all the parasite merchant lists where you could scan for specific programs before joining. See affiliatefairplay.com/merchant_list.html. She has really expanded the list. There's a bunch of new charity sites that Buyersport (Morpheus) owns listed now. This is a big list and it will take some time to do it this way.

Keep in mind however, that merchants that show up on the para lists sometimes are NOT really guilty. When I started managing Irvs Luggage a couple years ago, the 1st thing I did was clean house and drop Ebates and a bunch of others. We continued to show up on the Ebates merchant list for months. So if there is a program that you are really interested in that looks great all round except for showing up on one of these lists, you may want to check with the manager to confirm things before assuming they are parasite ridden.

Linda AKA Catalyst

[AFP]

Hi kwabble,

I'll disclaim that is on my site that Linda posted also. It is just links to the parasite Merchants page which they may or may not keep up-to-date as for as the Merchants who they are running through their software. Also it covers just some of the rebate type software and not the other types of parasites which there are quite a few of. It's just that the rebate type software are the ones who tend to have a web site with a Merchant list. So don't be lulled into a false sense of a Merchant is 'clean' just because they don't show in any of the lists linked to on my site.

There isn't a comprehensive list out there that I know of. In large part, it's because compiling such a list is problematic. Contacting the Merchant as suggested by Linda can be helpful, but some Merchants will tell you they are parasite-free when they really aren't. You can search different forums by Merchant name also and see what may come up. Looking for 'no software technology' clauses in Merchant's TOS can also be helpful (but again I've seen cases where such clauses exist but the Merchant seems to not actively monitor their program). The other issue I've seen happening lately is Merchants increasingly doing media buys directly with some of the parasites. So now instead of another affiliate's link to the Merchant popping in parasite, the Merchant's own direct ad buy pops. This is likely partly due to some of the Networks recently terminating some of the parasites from the Networks. In those cases, you need to know if the Merchant will pay on both sources (affiliate and ad buy).

The reality is there is no easy way to find the information you are looking for right now that I'm aware of.

Kellie

[5starAffiliatePrograms]

Hi Kellie,

So good to see you posting over here!

All, Kellie is one of the top experts in the field and is constantly researching and exposing some of the parasitic and unfair competition and abuse in the affiliate marketing industry.

Kellie said:
The reality is there is no easy way to find the information you are looking for right now that I'm aware of.

Unfortunately, that's true. "Contacting the Merchant as suggested by Linda can be helpful, but some Merchants will tell you they are parasite-free when they really aren't." Actually when trying to confirm a merchant you saw show up on a list - I think if you ask most AM's specifically "I saw you on the eBates list - are they still an affiliate?" they will tell you the truth. However Kelly is right if you just ask them generically if they partner with parasites the answer they give may not be accurate at all. Some AMs don't know about all the parasites, some don't care, some willingly partner and some think they are clean when they are not. Parasites are tricky. It takes a lot of police work to keep them out.

Another thing Kellie said is SO true. Only some of the bigger name adware and reward sites have merchant lists. Many of the others are very hard to research because they don't publish client lists. Unless you download the program and test to see if it's popping on affiliate links and overwriting cookies you wouldn't know for sure.

Thanks for the added info Kellie, good to see you again.