They still need to update their affiliate signup page as previously mentioned.

Whether this was their initial intent, or a change to reflect feedback doesn’t really matter – it is now possible to promote Namecheap (as many have done for years without any monetary incentive), offer coupon codes, and make a small amount for each referral.

As niche marketers & affiliate marketers often have domain portfolios costing them hundreds, and in many cases $1000+ each year, a little extra income and recognition never hurts. (these aren’t hardcore domainers, just people who accumulate domains… and even sometimes build websites on them)

Namecheap Affiliate Interface

So you get an affiliate link… no sign of any kind of subid tracking or deep linking support, though it is possible deep linking works just sticking an aff ID on the end of each link.

Looks like there isn’t any click tracking either, though you can always use your own.

In some ways using a proprietary affiliate interface makes sense with Namecheap, as I am invariably using the interface on a weekly basis, but it is a little lacking in “affiliate” features, whereas they could probably integrate something like Hasoffers.com quite well (though that isn’t perfect).

At least one of Namecheap’s major competitors will switch off your domain and force you to pay a huge processing fee to switch it back on, even if the spam complaint was for an email that just listed your domain, or an affiliate link that went to one of your sites, sent by a 3rd party.

That can happen at any time, and Sod’s / Murphy’s / Finagle’s Law it will happen at the wrong time, such as a major product launch.

I have been told by friends that Moniker are also reliable in this regard, though I have never used them for normal domain registrations.

Some time ago during other support requests with Namecheap I asked about a possible affiliate program, as whilst it would never pay big on domains, it could offer a little more on things like SSL certificates and maybe hosting.

Namecheap Affiliate Program… Disappoints

Update: Namecheap have announced that most coupon codes can now be used with their affiliate program

Here is their announcement email in full

You appreciate NameCheap’s easy to use interface and responsive customer support, so why not earn money letting others know about it? We now have an Affiliate Program so you can make money spreading the word about NameCheap. Earn 15 percent any time someone buys our services for the first time from your affiliate link. Then use those funds towards other NameCheap purchases or eventually deposit them into your PayPal account.

Signing up takes less than two minutes. Just login to your NameCheap account and choose “Affiliate Program” from the right hand side. Follow the instructions and you will be provided with a unique affiliate id. You will get a unique affiliate URL which you can either advertise by itself or with a banner. For more information, please see this page.

If you have any feedback about our program, please send our Marketing Specialist an email at michelle(at)namecheap.com. We are very happy to finally offer this to the many people who have asked about it for some time now.

Get the Savings and Support You Love from NameCheap Hosting

You’ve come to love the support you get with your domain names and we promise you won’t be disappointed with our web hosting. You can use the following coupon codes at our website:

SCHOOLTIME – 10% off any shared, business and reseller package
HOSTSWITCH – 15% off any shared package and business package
USE4VPS – 10% off any VPS package

This Month’s Domain Coupon Codes

Save money on all your new domains with coupon code DREAMTIME. For transfers, use coupon code SWITCH2NC.

Have a wonderful September and thank you for choosing NameCheap!

Note: as bolded (by me) the affiliate program only covers the first sale, and all the coupon codes Namecheap have traditionally offered.

Now lets pull some info from the referenced page

* Earn 15% commission on any sale(First purchase only)
* Commission upto 15 days of referral
* Coupon code can’t be used with Affiliates
* Commission on new purchases only
* 30 day waiting period
* Commission reversed on refunded orders, cancelled orders or fraudlent orders

Update: Namecheap have announced that most coupon codes can now be used with their affiliate program

So as someone who recommends Namecheap to others as a better alternative than some of their competitors, especially for any internet marketers who may be launching products with affiliate programs, or running mailing lists (even when using a 3rd party autoresponder service), I have a choice to make.

1. Use an affiliate link, and make a minimal commission on a first domain sale that would most likely happen as a test, before someone transfers more domains, oh and whoopee maybe 15% of 1 month webhosting or a cheap SSL.
2. Inform my readers of the cheaper prices they can get by using a coupon, which thus forfeits the affiliate commission, but my readers will thank me.

For me the choice is obvious, I want my readers to get the best possible value. Affiliate commissions should never be at the expense of customer value, in the same way product producers should never get in a price war with their own distribution channels – it is just bad business.

Update: Namecheap have announced that most coupon codes can now be used with their affiliate program

The obvious solution for unscrupulous affiliates would be to create an coupon site for Namecheap, but only list old coupon codes that are now invalid.
A significant percentage of users would just purchase regardless, though chances are anyone looking specifically for a coupon in Google would already have an existing Namecheap account.

The only people I can see gaining value from this affiliate program are search services for domain names, but they might earn more from another services which pay significantly more for hosting referrals or a reseller system.

Michelle is going to think I am picking on her as she represents Namecheap, and was previously working with Volusion.

Namecheap are still great, I will still recommend them, but I am not going to push an affiliate link that offers my readers a worse deal than using a coupon that is widely available.

With affiliate programs or CPA networks offering $1-$2 just for an email signup, and hosting often offering $50-$100 for a new customer, I find it amazing that Namecheap are being cheap on customer acquisition. Surely they have enough data to be confident of their lifetime customer value for genuine new referrals.

Currently Technorati still return an authority rating for your blog, even if they have determined you are gaming the system, but there is no guarantee that that will remain the case indefinitely.

Many blog monetization systems rely on Technorati authority as an indication of the value of placing a link on that blog, and thus there are quite significant rewards for having a high authority, which results in a lower ranking position, “1″ being the top ranking.

Open Source Publishers

One of the best rewards of publishing Open Source software is you can often include a link back to your site somewhere on the pages of the people using your software. These links in turn are used by various search engines to rate the authority of the site being linked to. With Google one indicator is Pagerank, with Technorati it is their authority.

Even the most prominent Open Source Developers are not immune from being banned by Technorati.

Compare Matt’s blog to the “official” top authority blog, and there is a massive divide.

Widgets

Widget publishers are not immune to the Technorati nerf stick. Even if you are a top rated SEO blog such as SEOmoz, and gaining 100s of editorial links on a daily basis, you might be removed from the top100.

Theme & Plugin Publishers

Theme publishers are not immune from being banned by Technorati if they include live links to the blog from the themes they give away for free.

Blogrolls

There are various ways to exchange blogroll links such that they are counted by Technorati, but don’t provide real links that are seen by other search engines.
Whilst joining such blogrolls might not get you banned (unless you hit the top 100), it is more than likely that Technorati will start discounting those links.

Blog Networks get away with some massive interlinking, but the more legitimate networks are making an effort to make those links more relevant.

Paid Links

In this case I am referring to links which appear to Technorati as a blogroll – if you buy lots of obvious “sponsor links”, it is quite possible Technorati is going to ban you.

I can’t say whether that is why John appears to be banned, but it might be one explanation, though the majority of John’s links have certainly come from other kinds of payola.

Unfortunately it doesn’t take much poison to taint a well.

Paid Reviews

This is a tough question and Technorati are faced with a similar problem to Google. Which links are editorial, and which are purely for pagerank and other factors.

In my opinion, quality reviews are most likely to remain in all indexes, but then I am an open supporter of quality paid reviews which give more value than just links.

All You Care About Is Money?

If all you care about is money, then obviously for as long as Technorati continue to report your authority via their API as being significant, even if you are effectively banned, then gaming the Technorati authority system could be looked on as a good idea to boost your earnings from text links and reviews.

The big problem with many of the ways of gaming the system is that they are permanent. Those links are out there, so if you have some success with a theme you publish, and through your own blogging efforts you start to approach the top100 list, there is no way to fix the problem.

There is no rule saying that Technorati have to continue giving a rating of banned sites by API, thus any “gamed” rating in the future might effectively return a “zero” in the future.

Why Should You Care?

If you are going to publish a theme or create a widget, you need to think carefully whether having a Technorati rating is something you wish to maintain.

I am not referring to whether you are listed in the Top100, but whether you would have a rating being returned at all by the API.

It is easy to say that you don’t care about being listed on Technorati, all you care about is how much you can sell your links for, but what happens if Technorati decide to stop reporting banned sites via their API?

There is a chance you might get reincluded, if Technorati develop technology so that they can discount links from the sidebar and footer totally, but it wouldn’t be so simple to still allow legitimate blogroll links.

How To Avoid Being Banned By Technorati

It is well known that Technorati currently don’t follow 301 redirects, so the solution currently is quite simple.

• Decide on a theme name
• Register a domain name for the theme
• Use the domain name for the link within a theme
• Use a 301 redirect from the domain name to your blog

You could actually just use one domain for all your redirects, or use a 3rd party service that issues a 301 redirect though that is placing your eggs in a basket you have little control over.

Alternatively just use nofollow on the links, but then they will not be seen by other search engines, and that would be throwing away good “Google Juice”.

A 301 Redirect would still be recognised by Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.

If in the future Technorati do support 301 redirects, it would most likely be possible to tell them not to follow certain redirects for your themes. The most likely scenario for the future is an interface in Technorati to allow you to tell them that 2 listings are effectively the same.

Note:-Technorati Authority is not the same as Technorati Favorites.

Technorati to my knowledge haven’t banned anyone from encouraging people to add them to their Technorati Favorites.

Technorati Authority on the other hand is the cornerstone of their search results to determine relevance, and thus they are going to defend it.

Retroactive Action

I have no idea how you could take retroactive action to fix your ratings.

This affects me too, a while ago I created a widget for LinkedIn, and it linked to a static page. As the functionality of the widget was eventually blocked by the service it was intended to promote, I changed the graphic used, and most links have now been removed from sidebars.
In hindsight I would have used a domain name and 301 redirect.

Theoretically any authority gained from that widget will be outside the 6 month rolling window that Technorati use within the next 2 months, and my own situation will be cleared up.
This would be much harder to achieve for theme and plugin authors. Maybe easier for those with paid links.

I am not a lawyer, and the following is for entertainment purposes only

There are a lot of things stacked up against Google:-

• Why didn’t they register it first, plus gmail.com.pl as well – yep Google don’t seem to own that domain either
• Gmail seems to be just a trademark, not a registered trademark
• Poland is in Europe, and Google have already had problems with the UK and Germany. Google does not have prior claim to the term Gmail in Europe, thus the Gmail trademark owners in those countries might have more claim than Google to the trademark.
• They are going to have to fight this “away from home”

Google are geting very bad press over this in Poland already, such as this article on Gazeta.pl

przez ponad dwa lata spółka nie wykazywało zainteresowania kupnem domeny gmail.pl (podobnie zresztą jak i w innych krajach), co mogłoby sugerować, że e-maili z polską końcówką nie zamierza oferować. Czy teraz zmieniła zdanie?

Rough translation: For over 2 years the company didn’t show any interest in buying the domain gmail.pl (just like the other countries), which could suggest that they didn’t intend to offer the email service with the Polish top level domain. Have they now changed their minds?

Grupą Młodych Artystów i Literatów (GMAiL) are probably enjoying the publicity, although they should think about offering some English language pages for the 1000s of visitors this story will bring them.

I am very disappointed in the AFP coverage on Yahoo news. They didn’t include a live link to the site even though they had multiple quotations.

The Guardian did link through to the domain, and questions Google’s “Don’t Be Evil”, and so do Digital Inspiration, and Profy.

With domain disputes it is normal to follow the procedures dictated by the regional domain registrars, which generally conform to ICANN procedures.

In Poland the national registrar is NASK.

Domain names in Poland are a lot more expensive than in the US or UK, here are NASKs current prices.

If you wanted to compare apples and oranges, for a typical Polish worker that is the equivalent of more than $500 to register a domain, as compared to domain cost in the US and typical income.

NASK conveniently have their policies and rules available in English.

DISPUTE RESOLUTION
14. In the event of a third party filing to the Arbitration Court at the Polish Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunication in Warsaw (hereafter “the Arbitration Court”) a motion against the subscriber demanding to desist the infringement of his rights resulting from the registration of a domain name, the subscriber shall accede to the negotiation proceeding described in the Rules of the Arbitration Court. If the subscriber and the third party fail to reach a settlement, the subscriber shall deliver to the Polish Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunication a signed arbitration clause within a time limit set in summons to sign the arbitration clause.
15. Failure to sign the clause described in the preceding section shall result in (in the order indicated):
a. suspension in the possibility of using the domain name, effective after 30 days from the expiration of the time limit set for signing the clause,
b. termination of the contract within 3 months of the expiration of the time limit set for signing the clause.
16. Disputes, in which both parties are registered or resident outside the Republic of Poland, are resolved by the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center pursuant to the WIPO Expedited Arbitration Rules for Domain Name Dispute Resolution under .PL (the Rules). The provision of the Rules regarding the parties’ Arbitration Agreement applies when the dispute is to be resolved by the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center.
17. If NASK is informed about existing dispute concerning a domain name, any changes of the subscriber of the domain name, shall be suspended until the dispute is resolved.
18. NASK shall execute a court award resolving the dispute between a subscriber and a third party concerning a domain name. In the case of award declaring infringement by a subscriber of third party rights resulting from the registration of an Internet domain name, the contract is terminated as of the date when the award becomes in force.

Unlike similar rules for .com, .net and .info that I have read from US registrars, there doesn’t seem to be an option to fight this in the courts rather than arbitration. Google have an office in Poland, thus they probably have to act as a Polish entity. They probably don’t class as a foreign party under the 16th clause.

New rules come into effect on the 18th March 2007 and those mention court decisions.

A legally valid decision of an arbitration court or the common court stating that the Subscriber has infringed a third party’s rights shall be a basis for the termination of the Agreement by the NASK with that Subscriber without the period of termination.

These changes might be the reason that this dispute is being handled now, and not in a few months time.

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