Affiliates and merchants are supposed to be partners and be respectful of one another. As an affiliate manager, every now and again you receive an email or some other form of communication that is clearly spam offering an exclusive deal to the merchant. Affiliates who spam shine a bad light upon themselves and they cast a dark cloud over the affiliate marketing industry.

The spammer may stay under the radar with large networks like Commission Junction and Linkshare, but affiliate solicitors in smaller affiliate networks Share a Sale and Affiliate Future will be reported to the network and banned. As an affiliate marketer I would much rather try and fail multiple times in hyping merchants through my website or PPC, then to buy email addresses and bomb everyone with useless material. Just as in all other areas of life, when you do business be ethical and respectful towards yourself and those around you.