Should I Be Suspicious of This?

From their point of view, why shouldn't they? Better to have a proportion of the sales of something than none of them at all. (Besides which, they don't need the problem of "policing" it, if they disallowed it).

I agree with the comment above that this really isn't too smart of the vendor. The small proportion of affiliates he loses by doing this are the kind of "10% of your affiliates who bring in 90% of your affiliate sales", in my opinion, because affiliates who routinely look at stuff like that are the most businesslike ones who won't become an affiliate for something without a realistic business plan to sell at least a few hundred copies of it.

 

Update: Well, I just figured out that this vendor is cheating me out of my commission in another way also. I hadn't looked at his sales page in quite some time. I don't know how long it's been (maybe from the very beginning and I was just too inexperienced to understand what it was), but he has an e-mail capture in the middle of his sales pitch offering to give people a free sampling of a chapter from his book. I went to the sales page through my affiliate link and opted in and in the e-mail that he sent me, there was a link back to his sales page. When I clicked on that link and followed it through, there was a different affiliate ID there -- his own I'm assuming. I have gotten quite a few sales on this book, obviously just from those that buy at the moment they click through on my affiliate link, so obviously my presell page must be working well. It sickens me to think of the number of sales I've lost because it looks like he's doing more than one thing to try to cut the affiliate out. Very sad.

Okay. I'll stop whining now, I promise. Just thought others might find this interesting. I'll certainly be doing a lot more research the next time I select a product to promote.

 

yes, that's what happened to me with 2012 official countdown and I stopped promoting that vendor....(you can also partially figure out these commission leaks thru % refd rate...it should be atleast above %75 considering affiliates are promoting rather than the vendor himself)