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How Far Are You Willing To Go For Linkbait?

posted on January 26, 2007


It looks like the Copeac Affiliate Network and WickedFire Forums decided to play shirtbait at the recent Affiliate Summit. I didn’t attend but Shoemoney did and he posted a picture of the Copeace shirt. I won’t even try to put in words what the shirt says as I don’t want Andy’s site ranking for such things, but let’s just say it goes to the edge if not over.

This is an obvious attempt to create the type of buzz that I have the feeling is about to happen. I am a fan of both WickedFire and Copeac. They are both run by some great people who are very smart.

So my question to you is, does it go too far? How far are you willing to go to get links and promotion? I would normally consider this shirt going to far and counter productive but based on Copeac’s size I have no doubt this campaign will be considered a success.

I don’t think a larger network could get away with such a stunt without some negative repercussions but Copeac is small enough where most webmasters haven’t heard of them before now. When you are the little guy on a very crowded block, sometimes you have to throw some stones to get noticed.


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  • jdog

    It’s all in fun, too many people take this stuff way too seriously.

  • http://www.wickedfire.com Jon

    Nice post Jeremy. Short, sweet, and to the point.

    I’d like to say, that in my own defense and for Copeac’s as well, blame WickedFire, not Copeac. We had full design creativity for the tshirt, and it was me who came up with the front of the shirt’s joke, and my designer and I for the “bashing the forums” bit. Copeac saw it, and slapped their logo onto it because they sponsored it for us, amongst many things.

    I don’t consider Copeac so small anymore. I think they are rising pretty quickly in the ranks and are definitely in the top 10 ad networks right now. They run a tight ship too, which I think a lot of affiliates are attracted to, so more power to them on that.

    For the shirt though (and I loooove the “shirtbait” term), we did it for one reason. Branding. From what I’ve seen on the other forums, people’s blogs, people’s facial expressions at ASW 2007, and just from the buzz around the show it was a huge success. Did we piss people off? Probably, but that’s what we do. If some people can’t take a joke, that’s their own problem and maybe they should lighten up.

    The best way to explain why we do things like this at WickedFire is simple. Affiliates don’t sit at home in shirts and ties. We work in whatever we want, we listen to our music, we read and post on blogs, we swear (99.9% of us at least once a day), and we are just normal people. For the suits of the industry, they are the ones that are so used to having some type of super professional projection of themselves, when really, they should be a lot more laid back and cool. Dealing with affiliates is a flippin (caught myself) walk in the park compared to dealing with corporate America folks, and why should they act differently in person (at the wild parties, at the shows, swearing and just being yourself) at conferences/shows and then put on some type of false professional game face as soon as they get home to do their work? It just makes no sense to me. I think a lot of people need a reality check, and seriously need to lighten up.

    PS – We are already planning our poison for ASE 2007 in Miami. Shirtbait will soon have some siblings.

  • http://www.webmaster-money.org Webmaster Money

    I wouldnt be very happy being on the Tshirt. Anyway they are called Wicked Fire and the word Wicked says that it want be too serious but dont know if I would be happy anyway.

Filed Under: Affiliate, General