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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Saturday, September 11, 2004

iTunes Affiliates

xlab: "I have to say I’m a tad underwhelmed by the iTunes Affiliate Scheme. This site got turned down for one of the following reasons :

* The content is unrelated to iTunes
* Your site is temporarily down or under construction.
* A wrong or misspelled URL given in the application.
* Your site is aesthetically unpleasing
* Your site promotes tobacco, alcohol or excessive drinking/drug use
* Your site contains extreme religious content
* Your site is international (with a majority of visitors based OUTSIDE the US)

I’m pretty sure this site fails on the last one (hopefully no-one considers this site to be 'aesthetically unpleasing' or my writing to induce 'excessive drug use'). This is a real bummer for those of us outside the US (yep, we don’t all live in America). If there’s one thing that really bugs me about Apple, it’s the blinkers they have when it comes to the rest of the world. It took us long enough to get the iTunes Music Store here in Europe. Anyway, despite the whole non-US thing, the scheme appears to be run by a third party organisation called the LinkShare network. Immediately this is a disappointment as I was expecting the scheme to run within the Apple website (possibly using your Apple ID or .Mac account). I wouldn’t think it’d be too difficult to get some web development people on the case at Apple. After all, Amazon and Google manage to offer nicely integrated affiliate schemes. Once an account has been created (after negotiating a horrendous form on the Apple website), you are sent a barrage of confusing e-mails eventually directing you to the LinkShare website. The e-mails encourage you to join up to Apple iTunes via LinkShare and create your links using their system ... I’m left feeling disappointed by the whole process. The current LinkShare-powered system only serves to discourage site owners from becoming affiliates — a situation obviously at odds with Apple’s intentions."

You know, I'd gotten a few emails from people wondering why I'd never mentioned the iTunes Affiliates program, and mostly it was because when I looked into it, I found it to be underwhelming. Now that it's obviously it wasn't just me, it's equally obvious that the people pushing this system to me previously had never even tried it themselves.

[ Posted at 7:41 AM | Permalink ]