Having turned 30 yesterday, many have expected me to suddenly turn into Victor Meldrew, and true to form, I’ve already had my first “I don’t believe it!” moment.

And surprise, surprise – it’s one of the “me-too!” Direct Track networks that has prompted my age-related lack of belief. The following email was sent out to all PrimeQ affiliates yesterday evening:

Dear Affiliate, (don’t you just love the personal touch!)

Please take this as notice that the following campaigns have been paused until further notice, with immediate effect:

LIST OF 41 DIFFERENT CAMPAIGNS PASTED FROM A SPREADSHEET (I’ve not listed them here for space reasons)

So, basically, that means pretty much every campaign that we had joined on the network has been removed. Now from the generic tone of the email, I assumed that either: a) this was a mistake or b) we had been kicked off the network for not working with them enough.

However, it has now been confirmed by PrimeQ themselves that:

As you all noticed, we paused our PrimeQ campaigns earlier this month in both networks.
Our CEO, Jason McClain decided to process an audit regarding our PrimeQ campaigns in order to determine the quality and profitability of our campaigns and establish future topics for new campaigns in the future.

These campaigns are temporarily paused during this audit and a new platform will be live in November 07 with all our existing PrimeQ campaigns and brand new PQ Campaigns.

Now whoever heard of a network “pausing” all their campaigns just so they can “do an audit”? It’s bad enough when merchants assume that affiliates are taps of traffic that they can turn on and off when they feel like it, but we’ve never had a network act like this before.

Could you imagine the uproar if Tradedoubler, or Affiliate Future decided they were going to just shut up shop for a couple of months? Their share prices certainly wouldn’t fare well, and they’d be kidding themselves if they thought for a minute that affiliates would come flocking back to them when they’re ready to turn the tap back on.

Of course, the other news to have come out of PrimeQ recently has been key members of staff leaving – namely Alexia, and the worst blow of all, the loss of the excellent Nadeem Azam as consultant – all in the last few weeks. Pure co-incidence, or the proverbial desertion of a sinking ship?

I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone with a sense of how Affiliate Marketing works would think that shutting up shop for two months, and then expecting affiliates to welcome you back with open arms is acceptable, let alone a good idea?

Personally, and I know it’s no great loss to PrimeQ as I only do pocket change with them, but I won’t be working with them at all when they do return. Affiliates are not taps that you can switch on and off when you feel like it, and anyone who feels otherwise has no place in this Industry.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

You might also like to read...