Home > Articles > Predatory Business Practices Are Dead?

Imagine, if you would, being a web designer or developer. You have an idea or better yet, a client. The creation process begins as you build a site page by page.

The links into your site were all chosen with care to fit the theme and concept of your site. They're partners, of a sort, in your endeavor, and the look and feel of their advertising or message is flawlessly integrated to your site side by side with your products.

The development and organization of building a purposeful site takes you weeks of fine tuning, but you've launched a useful site loaded with critical information and services.

You're proud.

You've optimized your pages, invested in a quality submission company to accelerate your placement. Your graphics were designed with care and sized to provide quick loading times and a pleasing visual theme for your site.

You've learned it's not enough to just build it, so you begin participating in traffic programs and eZine advertising to drive quality targeted traffic to your site. You've analyzed your client base and have a wonderful, highly defined unique sales position that took hours to fine tune. Your campaigns pull well, and your hit meters start to roll.

You take a deep breath and begin focusing on refinement, but you are pleased. As promised, the systems and methods you've learned through helpful mentors works.

Then, one day you're showing the site to a prospective client. On their screen, your site is covered with bronze and green links - links you never intended for advertising.

That's right — your links have been hijacked.

As a web developer, I am angered that pages I’ve created have been altered. As a consumer, I am even angrier that a company would knowingly steal visitors I generated. I consider it unethical and unacceptable. If I wanted my clients customers to view other advertisers, including pornography, I would have built a page and directed them there. I sure wouldn’t have linked it to a business site, though.

Ad revenue is important for all internet businesses. It’s our cushion against catastrophe, an important resource for our clients and our choice to include or not. Involuntarily subjecting my guests to off site links doesn’t fit my definition of a successful advertising campaign, for anyone.

The irony is that most people don’t know or aren’t aware of how these programs work, or how they corrupt the system they’re imbedded on. Perhaps if they did, there would be more pressure on the companies that use this type of ambush marketing.

What can you do? Don't get mad, get even. Your first weapon in this war is knowledge. http://www.thiefware.com/ has all of the tools and information you need to stomp out this latest form of plagiarism and dubious business practices. End your affiliations with consistent, unresponsive advertisers (there is a full list you can review at thiefware.com) and communicate precisely why.

If webmasters have been the backbone of successful affiliate programs, we can also be a force for correct and ethical advertising. Don't doubt that we won't be heard.

Sue Cline, the author of this article, can be reached at: http://www.networkingpages.com Her web site is a resource for marketers and webmasters of all levels. You can also subscribe to her free monthly *iStrategy Journal* and get free gifts and goodies worth $195.00! Just send blank email - netyourworth@networkingpages.com