I got a check today from Intermark Media. What affiliate company is owned by Intermark Media? I'm a part of so many networks that I can't tell who it is from and they didn't put the affiliate company anywhere on the check or envelope (which is retarded and unprofessional). Thanks.
One of my forum members posted an inquiry about Copeac in our affiliate programs folder, so I went to check them out to possibly do an article on my affiliate programs blog. I was going to signup but I was turned off because they ask way too much information on their signup form. I don't mind giving my LLC's tax id and my business phone, but it sort of struck me as odd that copeac has a phone verifiation system on signup. So I went to check out Intermark Media and noticed they were a "list managment" and "lead generation" company. hmmm, no way was I going to go that far just to signup. So, still curious, I searched Google for Intermark Media and found this interesting thread... http://www.threadwatch.org/node/11564 Evidently, the bozos at Intermark put out a t-shirt that says "DigitalPoint loves spam", "Webmasterworld are Bitches", "Earners forum are evangelical fags", the word Sitepoint with Site x'ed out and suck writtin above with a penis pointing at it. Jeremy at Shoemoney has a pic of the notorious T-Shirt on his blog that I saved to imageshack, here it is... Go to Google and search for "Intermark Media Inc" (include the quotes), this is not a reputable company, in fact they have complaints against them for "Affiliate network using deceptive ads to enroll consumers into monthly subscription plans."... Damn glad that phone verification thing turned me off and I looked into Copeac and Intermark Media a little more in depth before these sleazy marketers got my business information. What a bunch of losers... I'm adding them to my "Affiliate programs to avoid" right along with Clickbank, Obeus and revenue Universe.
If your going to avoid an AM company for a shirt, you're in the wrong game. Also, show me an AM company without "deceptive ads". Hahaha
Copeac is an awesome network, much better then any other one around. Why would a phone verification stop you? I think it is good that they do it and it just proves you are who you say you are and keeps fraud down.
Marketing companies are required to filter their marketing data (phone numbers) against the state and national DNC (Do Not Call) lists as well as against the NPA-NXX for Tier A/B/C (wireless) numbers. However, if you add your phone number to a marketing list, you negate any DNC rules if the marketer has your info. Obviously Intermark has some sort of "dialers" in operation for purposes other than verification. More than likely they're one of those companies that dials your number looking for an answering machine to drop a message on. The telemarketing business has been hit very hard by the FTC and FCC in recent years, whereas they used to purchase data subsets from companies like Experian or Equifax and scrub the DNC's, they now rely on "custom built" lists. First, I'll tell you I worked as a C++ Programmer/DBA for one of the biggest IVR/VCC/PO companies in the US who the FTC put out of business in 2005. Intially the company was contracted to handle Arbitron (radio) surveys but quickly the marketing team dreamed up new uses for our existing hardware and "in house" software. We had dialers in several states to get around legal issues and we handled outbound calls for political candidates, churches, timeshare, mortgage, etc... I quit that job because I felt it was unethical to be dialing millions of homes every day and annoying people. Even more unethical was the S&M team's constant quest to find loopholes in the system to circumvent the legal issues. Us programmers would tell them, "That's a bad idea" but they's run with it. Well, in the end a nice $28Million fine and criminal charges against the company's owners stopped them (I was loooong gone before that happened). Along the way, that afformentioned company had built the same sort of reputation Intermark is. Copyright infringment, consumer complaints, etc... It's up to you who and where you want to give your data to, but in response to moratraffic, I don't see how verifying a phone number could reduce fraud? Do you know what a "burner" is ?? ie: a prepaid cellular anyone can buy at Walmart for $20 with no ID reqired. @ben51959, Yes, I will definitely avoid any company that uses racist, homophobic or mysoginist terms as part of a marketing campaign . Obviously you have no ethics about doing business with people of that ilk, but I do. haha...
Please tell me the high moral fiber AM companies you do business with, I would love to check out their offers and see their clean slate of complaints
No, they don't. I've never gotten a call on my phone number that I listed with COPEAC for anything not related to my promotions at COPEAC. Why are you so paranoid about these guys? They probably use one of the big phone verification services. COPEAC is reputable and is one of the largest CPA networks. If you're basing you opinion of them off of that investigation, then add a few more companies to that list (from http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/florida-attorney-general-investigates-affiliate-marketers/): That's COPEAC, CPA Empire, PrimaryAds, RocketProfit, and W3i. Remember, ValueClick has also been targeted in a similar way for their free-gift websites.