Casalena.org

Follow me on twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/acasalena

Thaaaaaaaaaaanks.

We’re looking to hire one single Java programmer. Job posting over here:

http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/1259

We’re in no rush to get this position filled and would rather see it not be filled rather than have the wrong person on board. Get in touch if you know someone (being in the New York metro area is a plus!).

Call me totally confused.

We originally signed up with Commission Junction for our affiliate program for a number of reasons. CJ acts as a third party tracking and payment service — which means that our publishers can feel safe that another party is in charge of tracking the payments and handling the payouts. That sort of arrangement is much more fair than just Squarespace doing the tracking, as they track such arrangements for thousands of other advertisers. They can also pay by check — something we don’t have the capacity to do. They’ve helped us improve our payouts and launch incentive discounts for affiliate performance.

One additional neat perk of the CJ affiliation was that they have a network of publishers already — some of whom might be interested in advertising Squarespace. Since we’ve started there, we’ve had 1,400 advertisers sign up to be a part of our program.

… which ended up being the biggest nightmare I’ve ever engaged in. Here’s what came of that:

• Many, many site operators taking out search AdWords under our company name, where we already advertise, in an attempt to skim commissions from people who would have found us anyway. All of these people had their accounts terminated from our program. There is absolutely no value being added here.

• A bunch of coupon sites attempting to monopolize “Squarespace coupons” searches, and going as far as to tell individuals on their landing page to “click here for Squarespace
  coupons” — even though there are none — so they get commissions from those searches. Again, anyone looking for “Squarespace coupons” already knew about us, so there’s no value add — and they’re further lying to get people to click on the links. That’s incredibly deceptive.

• One single individual advertising from a legit site that we’d actually like to be a part of. Out of 1,400 people subscribed. Seriously.

(Note: These are the “Network Recruited” people — not our real customers who we’ve added to our program. None of our real customers have done any of this sort of thing.)

Managing and tracking all of the bad stuff has consumed hours and hours. Masked affiliate links under our company name take forever to track, and we end up finding because our own tracking software clearly shows where the people were actually signing up from.

After terminating another “affiliate” today for more advertising under our company name, we got the most incredible email back of all. He suggested that we allow that sort of advertising to continue so that we can boost our rankings in the CJ network. That’s correct: Allow a bunch of individuals to simply take thousands of dollars in commissions — for leeching on the brand we’ve already established — so our ranking numbers improve within CJ. Are our “competitors” in CJ really doing this? That’s a mind-blowing waste of money, and we refuse to participate.

Let me be really clear: With crap like this going on, we DO NOT CARE WHAT OUR EPC IS WITIHN THE CJ INTERFACE. Do not try and scam this program or lie to your site visitors.

The arrangement, in case anyone is actually confused, is really (really) simple: If you’ve got a site that can refer people who are interested in publishing to Squarespace, we’d LOVE to pay you. In fact, if you’ve got an amazingly large site and would like to negotiate terms, we’d love to talk to you as well. Be completely honest and promote our site honestly, and we’ll pay you.

Why is that so hard to do?