Whinge, by all means, but don't forget the gift horse

No, whinging is not really the theme of the week--far from it; I'm on vacation and in pretty good spirits (no pun there). But having written about it yesterday with an example of how an affiliate network (for that matter, any company) can leverage a public forum to be on the good side of its constituents, I felt I had to look at another aspect of the whinge story, prompted mainly by this series of posts here.

As affiliates and associates who spend the time and effort to drive business for the networks and their merchants (and of course, ourselves!), we do have a right to expect the best possible support from the networks in realizing those objectives, be it in terms of the technology, processes or marketing creative. Networks certainly cannot abdicate the responsibility of providing the right kind of back-end resources (no matter what the challenges), and if they do, affiliates have a right to feedback and like any consumer, make themselves heard. In other words, gripe or whinge...

I am all for the expression of angst that most of us instinctively do anyway-- yet, I have reservations about the extent to which we take it sometimes. The above outpouring against CJ is a case in point-- personally, I felt there was simply too much vitriol out there. There is no denying that CJ has goofed up with some of its updates--- but hey, it's a company that has helped a lot of us in finding our niche and make profitable businesses out of it. Can we afford to stop looking at that gift horse in its face already?

Have we tried talking to CJ directly? Maybe that is a better way to resolve the problems faced than the collective boycott as suggested (which I must state is an effective, yet often destructive, mechanism if one REALLY has to go down that path--- picking a winner is next to impossible)?

Drastic actions lead to drastic results, not all of it desirable. The question is whether the problems encountered so far warrant such drastic actions. After all, with most things in life, timing is indeed everything (well, almost...).

Well, in the part of the world that I am right now, it's almost 'sun down' time--- and I better stop whinging (or sermonizing as some would say?) ....

Until next time,

Ben Flux, Traffic Junction

posted by Ben Flux - Traffic Junction @ 10/12/2005 09:39:00 AM