|
I consult for a group that does its own products, builds its own list and does quite a bit of publisher work (with the requisite PPC, email and what have you) and I'd say that PPL/PPA stuff really has to be treated differently than PPS stuff.
Either way, though, what's not being said is that while you take the brunt of the risk in promotion spending as a publisher, it's the network and the advertiser that take the brunt of the expense in creation and distribution of the product and the brunt of the legal risk if something should come back on them. Just for example, when the shit hit the fan about promising "free" gift cards, it wasn't the publishers that had to pay out million dollar settlements to the FTC, it was Adteractive and the other big publishers. When MySpace spamming and phishing got way out of hand it was CPA that had to pay the court costs for the actions of the affiliates. There are definitely two sides to this coin and there is no reason that playing both the affiliate and the advertiser role can't be very profitable. If you're using your affiliate work to build a list that you can contact to generate recurring revenue then you're already a step ahead.
The biggest danger from what I can see is in relying entirely on any one revenue stream - wherever it comes from.
|