Sometimes it’s gonna hurt.
I’m sure you’ve seen all the bad buzz about Dennis Yu during the last couple days ever since his post on techcrunch.
I personally think the post could have been done completely different and had less of a negative effect. If you’re not really familiar with the affiliate marketing space than the post sorta makes our industry look like we just spam and take advantage of people, which is of course far from the truth.
Some particular things annoyed me like calling Zango spyware when it is in fact adware. Incentivized offers should not be labeled as scams, because they aren’t. Certain advertising methods, while maybe shady are certainly not in my opinion spam.
I think Dennis had some good intentions but went the wrong away about it. It’s great to have some juicy information to get a guest post on a highly read tech blog, but not when it’s at other peoples and in this case a whole industries expense.
Even I admit I stuck my neck out at first before I completely read the TechCrunch post (I had just briefly scanned it before that comment). I like to try and support my friends and not just jump on the hate bandwagon, there is of course always two sides to every story. To be honest I would have being better off just not saying anything.
I like this quote Ruck said in the Wickedfire thread:
Dennis nor Techcrunch is going to slow down advertising on the Internet and they damn sure will not slow down the minds that work and adapt this quickly in an industry such as this.
All in all I think there is way too much drama going on about this, so I am done talking about it.
On a happier note, I can’t wait to see everyone at AdTech tomorrow!
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Dennis burned lots of bridges by that, I’m not sure his motivation? Linkbait? Personally it’s a huge pet peeve of mine when people call what I do a scam or something to that effect.
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Good to see a voice of reason in this whole situation…rather than joining the ‘lynch mob’ mentality that seems to be forming about this guy.
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I just quit affiliate marketing after promoting all those rebill products (acai, teeth, .. ). First was fun to sell some acai pills, but when I scaled everything and we were making somewhere at 200k/month in sales, I started to see other hidden things that are in the affiliate marketing. Bad things that made me quit. We made a lot of money but I’m not happy about it.
I talked with my team and told them that we will promote only legitimate products. One of my copywriters told me one day: “Cristi, we lied so much before that I don’t know how to tell the truth anymore”.
I don’t want you to quit aff marketing, all I want you to do is to listen your feelings when doing this.
God luck 😉
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Mikey Reply:
November 8th, 2009 at 5:28 am
You sir are full of shit, not as much as Bryn or Dennis but definitely up their on the corporal percentage of contained excrement.
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Nothing but respect for you Bryn. I think you handled the situation the way you should have. Even after sticking out your neck a little early, I think everyone that read that thread will have nothing but respect for you. Or atleast they should.
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Bryn,
Good to bump into your at Ad Tech NY. I liked that you did stand up too him on WickedFire since you had the personal connection. But there is some difficult rumors to not ignore on his practices. But overall he’s working what he can to make a buck but could have touched up the posts choice of words.
– Brian
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This makes erveyithng so completely painless.
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