The affiliate section has the great rule where it says you cannot post crap offers asking people to "PM me". Unfortunately other forums are not like that... and these posts are pretty much waste of everybody's time. (One could simply sell it, or say website where people can sign up or say the thing out loud or whatever). Would it be possible to consider adding a rule (general marketing & general business sections seem to get these notes) about this? Or, perhaps making it so that these should be offered in the freebie forum or something?
Yeah. Like the "free" methods in freebies. You get a PM with their affiliate link. Its just a way around the no posting affiliate links rule.
Perhaps it would be possible to at least add a rule that would make it possible to ban those users who merely first "PM me for more info" and then send affiliate links?
I'm not sure that asking direct action from the readers of the freebies section is a bad idea. After all, many of the offers there pursuing this model are actually legit. The reason for asking the "Please PM the link" sort of posts is to simply keep the thread afloat. It takes less than 30 minutes for the average thread to get buried on the second page of the freebies section. I actually tried the plain method of giving away the link straight away and the results have been disappointing. Perhaps a good idea would be to split the freebies into several sections, because right now I see the "Stumble exchange" sort of posts more spammy than the ones promoting affiliate links. Just my $0.02 Regards, George
Well, buried or not - I think the problem is the "PM me" and "here's your affiliate link" type of crap. When these type of threads appear on General Marketing / Business or such forums... it's wasting people's time. Maybe freebies or some section could be okay for "PM me" kind of thing (but even then - affiliate crap should be disallowed).