affiliate Programs- spam or not spam?
Is it normal practice for affiliate programs to contact you through your website or is this a form of spam? I just received this.... sorry if it's long
Hello,
I’m Alisha Brandom from Testclear.com. I was reviewing your wonderful site http://mylifepoststroke.com and thought thatyou would be a perfect fit for our affiliate program. I invite you to join our affiliate program and start earning generous commissions today. Our online store specializes in the sale of drug testing equipment and related supplies. Testclear has been helping people pass drug test for 7 years providing proven drug testing solutions to help people pass urine drug tests, pass hair drug tests, and pass saliva drug tests.
Passing drug tests have never been so easy with our drug testing products. We believe that people should get jobs based on their education, knowledge, and skills instead of their bodily fluids. Passing a drug test doesn't have to be complicated or stressful. I am sure your website visitors will love it.
Our affiliate partners earn 12% per sale. We have set the cookie tracking period to count cookies for 45 days. That only means we continue to partner with you for a much longer time and keep sending you residual sales commissions. Is this not an exciting opportunity? I am equally excited to partner with great affiliate partners like you.
Please join our affiliate program here:
http://www.testclear.com/Testclear-Commission-Junction-Affiliate-Program-W151.aspx
Please let me know if you have any questions. I look forward to welcoming you to our affiliate program.
Best regards,
Alisha Brandom
Affiliate Program Manager
Should I be flattered and be happy they found my site? I am suspicious that its spam because their product doesn't really relate to my niche. I don't know how drug testing products would fit into my stroke survivor support group website. Since it arrived as an email to me, I can just trash it, but is there any way to stop them from coming or is it something I just have to accept and deal with?
Recent Comments
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I am a General Practitioner and if drug tests are requested for any reason a legitimate report is required, from a registered laboratory. that's my take on it, spam
Excellent question that will help many others besides yourself. It is definitely spam and you should mark it as such and you won't receive any more from them in your inbox.
I would think it's spam, especially if your site doesn't really relate to drug testing. Unfortunately, it's probably the first of many.
Hi.
I don't know anything about the drug test industry - so I can't comment on how ethical or not their services may be.
However, other than mentioning your website in their first sentence, it's all about them. Comments should be there to provide feedback for your website, so that others can get a balanced view of your content - or to ask questions, or put across a different view.
If they genuinely wanted you to promote them and earn from them, they should have emailed you (imho) - not blatantly promoted themselves on a post you have worked hard to get ranked.
All the best, Mark
Hi - sorry, I thought it was a comment that was left - hence what I was saying it wan't right to add promotional comments to your site.
Your email program (Outlook, Gmail, whatever) should allow you to easily mark a sender as "spam" or "junk" - in my experience, my Outlook isn't very good at identifying spam - but if I let my GMAIL account download my emails, it's very good at identifying it, and marking it as such.
Cheers, Mark
It's ok, yes it was my gmail account. By marking it it will send only future emails from that sender to spam folder, but not new spammers. Sometimes wa stuff ends up in there too.
Good Morning
Basically it is a bot as mentioned by someone below.
If your site is built using wordpress I would recommend you install Akismet.
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog's "Comments" admin screen.
thanks, unfortunately it wasn't left as a comment but was sent as email through my site .I have askimet, can it prevent this too?
Doesn`t sound related. My guess is that they picked up on some related keywords on your site and an automated system sent you that email. I'd guess that it's real.
Automation can be a wonderful thing if done right. I wouldn't want to send out thousands of personalized websites if I was them.
I am suspect of the email because it seems to be a way to pass drug tests whether you deserve to pass them or not. I would not promote anything that might be shady. I think this looks pretty shady. See what others think of this. Thanks for sharing.
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Most spam comments sound obvious. This one however, sounds more legit (even though it is actually spam). I hate these types of comments because it makes you wonder (this post you made is a perfect example of what I am saying). To be on the safe side, I would trash it being that it is not related to your niche. It could hurt your search engine ranking potential going forward. Have a great day!