Day Trip Media: 888's Getting Me In A State

Sunday, 10 August 2008

888's Getting Me In A State

A lot of things have been conspiring to keep me from work recently, I crashed my car, had to search for a new one, trip to London, family visits, Summer holidays etcetera. I'm up to my eyes, I have roughly 7 or 8 sites that I have all the content for, but just need the time to sit down and put the actual sites together. I also need to look into getting another dedicated server for Playing Bingo, as it's been suffering a bit on the shared hosting its on. Fun and games, but that's not the reason for this post, as the title suggests, it's a moan about 888's affiliate programme.

Other affiliates have already complained about the functionality of their affiliate programme, the fact it's in dollars despite the sites we're promoting being in sterling. Then there's the fact they take $25 to perform a BACS payment when everyone else does it for free. These I can live with, but 888 are fast getting a reputation with me (and others I've spoken to in the field) of being really bad at handling relations with their affiliates and sending out crappy emails.

I've had a couple of emails already, bemoaning the fact my conversions were not great. No thanks for the conversions I'd made, just a short mail suggesting I do x and x to improve them. It got to the point I complained to them and asked them to stop else I'd stop promoting them. That did the trick for a couple of months and the AM involved promised they'd stop emailing me in that manner. However, last week I received a mail bemoaning that July's conversions were down on June's. My blood boiled - for me 888 Bingo doesn't perform well, so I don't push it too much. However, June's conversions were 4 times the usual, but did I get a thank you? Then they drop off again and straight away it's the same mail complaining about the fact I'm down and suggesting how I manage my sites to improve them (because obviously, I don't realise this stuff).

Then this morning, I check my mail box to find a general mail from 888 suggesting I promote their other properties. Fine, not a problem, but unfortunately they've sent the mail to a large group of affiliates and not BCC'd the email addresses. Whilst I'm not interested in other affiliates addresses, it only takes a couple of the ones on the same list to be spammers and I can look forward to loads of crappy affiliate related mail spam. Seriously, how can any company be this way with the people who are making them money?

I'm starting to find this is like an inverse equation. The more I make with a partner, the less effort is involved. The sites that I make not much with tend to need the most management and discourse. 888 doesn't make me a vast sum, but it's nice enough to not want to take them off my sites. However, I'm very close at the moment to doing just that. I don't need these sort of hassles, as I've said elsewhere I'm a busy bunny, and I know what I need to do to improve sales with certain partners. The thing is I only want to improve sales with companies that I think are worth my time doing it for. So far, 888 is continuing to throw barriers in my way and fast become a company I'd be happy not to work with.

Posted by Dio Bach at 10:55

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