A View On Click To Reveal

Is it fraud? Is it good business practice? I think the only real answer depends on who is asking who. Let's start at the beginning. A click-to-reveal is basically a click here to reveal a code. The customer clicks and a code is revealed. Nothing wrong with that you might say. Another window is opened on the customers machine dropping a cookie and meaning that they will win the sale (following the last referrer wins rule). However some people have taken it upon themselves to list merchants who do not issue voucher codes. Therefore when the customer clicks to reveal, they are told there is no code, yet a cookie is still dropped. Ultimately conning the customer and dropping their cookie.

Some people who follow this practice will tell you a different story, they will tell you that by spreading their cookie seed (so to speak) they are still making money for the merchant, without them having to lose money on a voucher code. They will also tell you they use these merchants without codes for SEO on their sites, therefore helping many other merchants by people trawling the site and buying other things. Some may be arrogant enough to not care, as at the end of the day, they are the ones with money in the bank.

There are a million sides to this story;
The ones who write content - These affiliates take the time to trawl websites and write unique content, just to have their hard work pissed on by cookie dropping voucher sites.

The ones who list vouchers - The people who spend time trawling merchants for voucher codes getting frustrated by non-working or short expiring codes... People who seem to be all categorised under the same term - 'thieves'

The Merchants and Networks - These people get their money either way.

People who are doing their own thing and are earning some money regardless - they just don't care.

So the recent decision by many (not all) Networks to begin policing click to reveal is causing a stir from all camps of affiliate marketing. Some people strongly agree with the decision, others think it is an infringement on their rights of some form... Most are indifferent as it is only a small proportion of the industry who are using click to reveal when no voucher code is present.

Here are a few other posts around the recent news;

Loquax
A4U Forum Thread
Sinead from Azam

Me? I don't care... I am one of the smart ones who lists codes on my content sites. So no sales being stolen there! I will start getting really angry if people start attacking what I do to make money...

AB