Normally I wouldn't complain about affiliate networks as I've had excellent luck over the years and have made some awesome profits but my current situation just seems FOUL. I'll try to keep this short as possible. Bodybuilding.com was the affiliate. I had a pretty good Acai Berry based health site which I promoted this affiliate starting in February. I went through Bodybuilding's forums and saw a lot of people posting signature links to their related fitness sites and products. I even saw some postings out to Bodybuilding coupon sites so I decided to buy a couple signature links off some senior members of the Bodybuilding.com forum. The links were to my Acai site. No affiliate links. I'm not that stupid. Keep in mind, I do not have an account on their forum. 2 months go by and I see that my payment never came through but showed up marked as "commissions" so I fired an email off. I explain the situation to CJ and the affiliate manager at Bodybuilding in which they replied "The quote from Bodybuilding.com's account information is very clear that posting links to Bodybuilding.com itself on its forums is not acceptable" I told them that I was NOT posting affiliate links and again I was posting links to my own site. I went on to say "Here is just one: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=115975521 where multiple senior members, some with over 3,000 posts are advertising "Driven Sports" so my question to you, is if I don't have an account and members that how been on the site for years are able to put links to 3rd party sites, how am I supposed to know this is not allowed when they also tell me it is allowed and posts containing such links are clearly displayed all over the place. Especially if this kind of behavior doesn't seem to be moderated." After that I received no response for about a week. This was directly to . I decided I should get CJ involved in this so I emailed the network quality team. Finally an affiliate manager from Bodybuilding writes me back (of course giving no answers to my questions) "We have zero tolerance on this. You will not be receiving commission on these sales. Thank you." Then they go on to say: "There may be a few specially authorized publishers that Bodybuilding.com allows, though I'd have to ask who those are, but without such a special authorization, you can't do it." - So they're saying zero tolerance with some exceptions? That doesn't make much sense.
First of all why would you post links to the website which you joined as an affiliate. You were clearly asking for trouble. The reason they have an affiliate program is to generate sales from other sources apart from their own website. So if you go and spam their site with your links you are not generating any sales from outside the bodybuilding.com site but only from it. I doubt very much that you will get paid.
lol..you could have try somewhere else. there are lots of forums out there that wont mind having four signature links.
Sorry to hear about your burn... If you are looking for a replacement Acai seller.. I have personal contacts in an outfit paying 60% rev share. And these guys will pay you.. Guaranteed.. PM me if interested