Do not add:
MLM - multi-tiered program. Main company where resellers sell the
product and also recruit other sellers to work beneath them.
Mirror sites - sites that contain the same content but are accessed from
different URLs.
Affiliates - single-tiered program. Main company with independent
resellers. Online seller gets paid a commission for referring sales to
the main company.
In the case of MLMs and affiliates, the main business site which offers
the affiliation may be
added. Do not add individual seller sites to the general
directory. These sites may be submitted through Speed-Pass to the Independent
Business Affiliates Topic.
One affiliate of a company
offers the same content as all the other affiliates. Listing
multiples of them does nothing to provide information for
the end user and only bloats the topics. You may list the
affiliate company’s main URL in
Directory / Computers / Internet / Affiliates.
If the company sells the product directly, you may list it
under the appropriate shopping topic.
An example of what not to list is the Vstores’
affiliates. With the Vstores setup, the affiliate stocks a
Web site, created and hosted by Vstores, displaying their
products. Every time a customer buys through this site, the
webmaster will earn a percentage of all sales made. All this
does is give the company more free exposure for their
products.
There are lots of Web sites that provide products that
are being sold on a commission basis. Everything provided
(products, shipping, handling) by companies like CD Now,
Amazon, Chapters and others, sold through referral links on
Web sites, will not disqualify these Web sites from being
listed as long as there is enough original content on the
site.
Other types of sites that
frequently use affiliate content include hotels/travel and loans/financial
sites. Editors need to check these carefully before adding the site.
