As promised, I'm now distributing a proposal for how I think an affiliate union of sorts may work. There are a couple of points I would stress before I go any further:
i) This structure is not intended to appeal to everyone. In fact for this structure to work too many participants would be just as detrimental as too few. The concept behind this would be to gather 50-100 like-minded affiliates NOT to get thousands of affiliates to agree.
ii) With the best will in the world I simply do not have time to debate whether or not people like the idea of a union. We have a major new tool launching imminently and with the UKGC's new advertising rules coming into place I'm buried helping operators adjust their promotions and ensuring our own content is compliant. I would ask anyone considering responding to ensure that if you're highlighting what you see as flaws in the system, to put forward constructive feedback in the form of potential work arounds. Let's try and keep this positive or let it fail through lack of interest if it's going to.
iii) I have spoken to a number of people I have respect for before posting this. The response has encompassed the full spectrum, from those who stopped the conversation at sentence one because a union could never work to those who thought it sounded like a very workable idea with views in between as well. This post is NOT targeted at everyone. It's targeted at those who read through the idea and come away thinking 'this seems like a good idea'. If you don't have that warm fuzzy feeling at the end of this post then this project isn't for you. If not enough people think it's a good idea, I'm fine with that. I'd rather move on than try to convince people who are lukewarm of the merits as they are unlikely to ever be fully sold and if you don't buy-in intellectually the system breaks.
Proposal
There is one main issue that confronts affiliates time and time again when dealing with programs that simply decide to change the terms of their agreements - many affiliates are simply not in a financial position to attempt to challenge via the legal system actions taken by an affiliate program that are to their detriment and may not be legally sound. Court action can be very expensive and while there are some affiliates who have deep enough pockets to be comfortable dealing with the expenses themselves, most of us are not. Affiliate programs know this and selectively enforce detrimental changes, allowing the larger affiliates with more clout to do as they wish while ruthlessly altering the contracts of the smaller affiliates who they feel cannot viably pursue them.
In my opinion smaller affiliates working together could address this issue. There are two fundamental barriers that have prevented this from ever happening:
i) Historic efforts to put together a union have fallen at the first hurdle. In each case the union has suggested that 'we all agree not to work with certain programs'. Affiliates have vastly differing standards in what they consider a 'good' or 'bad' program. Even between sites with significant synergy there will be programs that differ in their standing. Simply put, most affiliates cannot allow someone else to dictate who they work with as this can have serious financial implications for the affiliate's business. Even if all members were to agree to this in principal, policing it would be effectively unmanageable.
ii) Affiliate Unions are difficult to organise primarily because many affiliates would be put off by the idea of having to pay upfront fees to a body administered by someone else. Who should be trusted with this role? What are reasonable fees? How would it be decided what the fees are spent on. Affiliates tend to be entrepreneurial individuals that do not like being told what they can and can't do. The idea of signing up to a group where someone else gets to make the decisions does not appeal to many of us.
Both of these issues are actually closely related - why would I hand over control of a significant area of MY business to someone who may not have our best interest at heart?
Here's what I would suggest to address these issues.
Basic outlines of the structure:
- Each member would be assigned one vote.
- At no point will the union dictate which programs any member can work with.
- Any member can approach the union to request a review of an issue. The union would then prepare an overview of the key facts of the case, including what the affiliate feels is the problem and in which jurisdictions legal action could potentially be pursued. The overview would be distributed to all members. There are then multiple options, but each would require a vote. Before action would be taken, a majority of 55% of the membership would have to be in favour of it.
Potential actions:
i) The union membership would have a vote on issuing a public statement/press release asserting the position of the membership with regard to the actions of the program. Much like you see with petitions published in news papers, if 50-100 affiliates all publicly condemned the actions of the program it would create a lot of negative press and pressure on the program. Those in favour of action would be asked to publish a statement on their respective sites. If managed correctly there is the potential to create a 'link wheel' like structure between the published articles to ensure that the articles rank well and even give some SEO benefits to the participating members.
If this type of action was pursued pre-publication legal review of any statement would have to be engaged. Expectations of cost for this would not be likely to exceed £500 (far less based on my own prior experience).
ii) The union membership would be asked to vote on whether to move forward with taking legal advice on any legal action that could potentially be taken.
If the majority (55%) are in favour of taking legal advice the union then looks to engage a legal firm in the relevant jurisdiction and undertake a review of the case. The cost for this would be split equally amongst all members. This means ALL members, not just those in favour. While it would be fine for an affiliate to decline to publish the press statement if it was critical of a program they worked closely with, funding any legal action has to be shared equally to avoid free rolling members who look to get the union membership to fund their actions, but opt-out any time another member would like the union to consider action.
To this end each affiliate who wanted to join the union would have to sign a legally binding contract on behalf of their business when they join agreeing to fund their part of any legal action the union's membership decides to take.
If the vote is to take legal advice on a case, once legal advice has been taken, the advice is then distributed to all members who are then asked again to vote on whether or not to pursue further action. Again if the majority are in favour of taking further action the costs would be split equally amongst all members.
At each point where new information becomes available a new vote on any potential action has to be taken to ensure that the majority (55%) are still committed to moving forward.
- To ensure that votes are conducted in a fair and transparent manner all members would be issued with a four digit 'membership number' that would be confidential and only known to them and the vote coordinator. At the conclusion of any vote a spreadsheet of all membership numbers alongside the direction of their vote would be distributed to all members. In this manner each member can confirm that their vote was counted correctly while no member would be able to identify another member's voting direction.
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i) This structure is not intended to appeal to everyone. In fact for this structure to work too many participants would be just as detrimental as too few. The concept behind this would be to gather 50-100 like-minded affiliates NOT to get thousands of affiliates to agree.
ii) With the best will in the world I simply do not have time to debate whether or not people like the idea of a union. We have a major new tool launching imminently and with the UKGC's new advertising rules coming into place I'm buried helping operators adjust their promotions and ensuring our own content is compliant. I would ask anyone considering responding to ensure that if you're highlighting what you see as flaws in the system, to put forward constructive feedback in the form of potential work arounds. Let's try and keep this positive or let it fail through lack of interest if it's going to.
iii) I have spoken to a number of people I have respect for before posting this. The response has encompassed the full spectrum, from those who stopped the conversation at sentence one because a union could never work to those who thought it sounded like a very workable idea with views in between as well. This post is NOT targeted at everyone. It's targeted at those who read through the idea and come away thinking 'this seems like a good idea'. If you don't have that warm fuzzy feeling at the end of this post then this project isn't for you. If not enough people think it's a good idea, I'm fine with that. I'd rather move on than try to convince people who are lukewarm of the merits as they are unlikely to ever be fully sold and if you don't buy-in intellectually the system breaks.
Proposal
There is one main issue that confronts affiliates time and time again when dealing with programs that simply decide to change the terms of their agreements - many affiliates are simply not in a financial position to attempt to challenge via the legal system actions taken by an affiliate program that are to their detriment and may not be legally sound. Court action can be very expensive and while there are some affiliates who have deep enough pockets to be comfortable dealing with the expenses themselves, most of us are not. Affiliate programs know this and selectively enforce detrimental changes, allowing the larger affiliates with more clout to do as they wish while ruthlessly altering the contracts of the smaller affiliates who they feel cannot viably pursue them.
In my opinion smaller affiliates working together could address this issue. There are two fundamental barriers that have prevented this from ever happening:
i) Historic efforts to put together a union have fallen at the first hurdle. In each case the union has suggested that 'we all agree not to work with certain programs'. Affiliates have vastly differing standards in what they consider a 'good' or 'bad' program. Even between sites with significant synergy there will be programs that differ in their standing. Simply put, most affiliates cannot allow someone else to dictate who they work with as this can have serious financial implications for the affiliate's business. Even if all members were to agree to this in principal, policing it would be effectively unmanageable.
ii) Affiliate Unions are difficult to organise primarily because many affiliates would be put off by the idea of having to pay upfront fees to a body administered by someone else. Who should be trusted with this role? What are reasonable fees? How would it be decided what the fees are spent on. Affiliates tend to be entrepreneurial individuals that do not like being told what they can and can't do. The idea of signing up to a group where someone else gets to make the decisions does not appeal to many of us.
Both of these issues are actually closely related - why would I hand over control of a significant area of MY business to someone who may not have our best interest at heart?
Here's what I would suggest to address these issues.
Basic outlines of the structure:
- Each member would be assigned one vote.
- At no point will the union dictate which programs any member can work with.
- Any member can approach the union to request a review of an issue. The union would then prepare an overview of the key facts of the case, including what the affiliate feels is the problem and in which jurisdictions legal action could potentially be pursued. The overview would be distributed to all members. There are then multiple options, but each would require a vote. Before action would be taken, a majority of 55% of the membership would have to be in favour of it.
Potential actions:
i) The union membership would have a vote on issuing a public statement/press release asserting the position of the membership with regard to the actions of the program. Much like you see with petitions published in news papers, if 50-100 affiliates all publicly condemned the actions of the program it would create a lot of negative press and pressure on the program. Those in favour of action would be asked to publish a statement on their respective sites. If managed correctly there is the potential to create a 'link wheel' like structure between the published articles to ensure that the articles rank well and even give some SEO benefits to the participating members.
If this type of action was pursued pre-publication legal review of any statement would have to be engaged. Expectations of cost for this would not be likely to exceed £500 (far less based on my own prior experience).
ii) The union membership would be asked to vote on whether to move forward with taking legal advice on any legal action that could potentially be taken.
If the majority (55%) are in favour of taking legal advice the union then looks to engage a legal firm in the relevant jurisdiction and undertake a review of the case. The cost for this would be split equally amongst all members. This means ALL members, not just those in favour. While it would be fine for an affiliate to decline to publish the press statement if it was critical of a program they worked closely with, funding any legal action has to be shared equally to avoid free rolling members who look to get the union membership to fund their actions, but opt-out any time another member would like the union to consider action.
To this end each affiliate who wanted to join the union would have to sign a legally binding contract on behalf of their business when they join agreeing to fund their part of any legal action the union's membership decides to take.
If the vote is to take legal advice on a case, once legal advice has been taken, the advice is then distributed to all members who are then asked again to vote on whether or not to pursue further action. Again if the majority are in favour of taking further action the costs would be split equally amongst all members.
At each point where new information becomes available a new vote on any potential action has to be taken to ensure that the majority (55%) are still committed to moving forward.
- To ensure that votes are conducted in a fair and transparent manner all members would be issued with a four digit 'membership number' that would be confidential and only known to them and the vote coordinator. At the conclusion of any vote a spreadsheet of all membership numbers alongside the direction of their vote would be distributed to all members. In this manner each member can confirm that their vote was counted correctly while no member would be able to identify another member's voting direction.
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