I was kind of excited to catch the notice on the new GOVIOS affiliate program over at shareasale today.
Until I read the program’s policy / affiliate agreement. Let me just say this, there’s not a snowballs chance in hell I would promote this affiliate program with it’s current terms.
Because their team of lawyers decided that we can in NO way compete with GOVIOS for any keywords. Now it’s pretty common when it comes to keyword bidding, aka Adwords and similar programs. But their policy goes on to say that you can in no way use any SEO techniques for their terms.
Let me get this straight GOVIOS geniuses… I can go out and get cellular phone targeted traffic, as long as I don’t use ANY terms that might take away from your website.
Here’s a clip of that legalese:
Search engine optimization: GoVios.com and GoViosMobile.com does not allow search engine optimization techniques using merchant trademark keywords by affiliates for search engines including but not limited to Google, Yahoo and MSN, for the GoVios and GoViosMobile brand terms or for any brands featured on GoVios and GoViosMobile. Direct Affiliates are also not to use any of the above brand names in their Meta tags. This includes the Meta title, description and keywords. Affiliate agrees not to draw traffic away from the merchant by any means through search engine optimization. Affiliates found in violation of this policy are subject to punitive actions by us, without notice, including but not limited to: suspension of affiliate account; termination of affiliate account; withholding of payments to affiliate; and public notification of affiliate’s suspected malfeasance.
Dumbasses.
Understand this, GOVIOS powers that be. Your affiliates want to use those terms TO SELL YOUR PRODUCTS. Don’t let your greed get in the way of that fact. If we are allowed to do some basic SEO around those terms, we can fill up the first ten pages of the search engine results WITH LINKS TO YOUR SITE, YOUR PRODUCTS…
D.
U.
H.
Stop listening to your the lawyers you bought with that VC money and listen to some pro marketers. Now, while you’re beginning.
We can and will send you the traffic to make you a star.
But don’t be court crazy with your affiliate contract. Don’t tell me you’re going to sue me if I’m working on selling your product.
No thanks. At this point, I won’t be promoting the GOVIOS affiliate program. Not unless they change the program participation agreement. And I don’t suggest any other affiliate marketers do so either. Not now.
Step up GOVIOS. Looking for a comment in return in the comments below from the GOVIOS staff. Splain’ it to me Lucy!
Dumbass Affiliate Managers
***Update May 26, 2009***
****GOVIOS has since changed their TOS, which I have covered in this blog post about their program.***
*************************************************
GOVIOS responded to this blog post, and they actually are changing their terms of service.
I am not at my main box so I can post the email they sent, but I do want to say that I was wrong about their program. At least the problems with the TOS. They responded quickly and seem to be a stand up cellular phone company.
So I can’t wait to start promoting them.
I will make a more official post on this during the first of the week. Happy memorial day weekend all.
Whoa… this site is pretty awesome
your layout is really well designed, and your blogs are (judging from what i’ve read) very interesting. heehee… consider yourself favorited. 
After so many weeks I am able to find a blog providing good information about the affiliate programs. I am glad to see that there are still few persons on the internet who are NOT using auto blog posters. Creating a blog like yours and maintaining it are difficult tasks but you managed it. Ok! Come to the point. However, you have tried to give good information about affiliate programs but I am still against affiliate programs. I mean fault is not in the affiliate programs but in the people. They do not want to work hard and leave the programs after some time. Now, you might be thinking, if I am against affiliate programs then why I am here at your blog. Actually I am doing some sort of research on affiliate programs and when started reading your blog, I sticked to it and could not stop myself writing comment. I am not so much against affiliate programs, but my nature is a sort of experimenting. I keep on doing experiments for making money in new ways. If you visit my website, clicking on my name in this comment then you are bound to get amazed. If, I write more about my site then you will think that I am spamming and I do not want to get my comment considered as spam. So, again from the begining, you have done a very good job! Hard work is appreciated! Well done! Thanks for providing such a nice detailed information. Keep it up!
Some affiliate programs require an affiliate webmaster to generate a minimum commission amount before receiving payment. This is fair enough since it would not make much sense to send an affiliate webmaster a check for a few cents when it would cost more to write, send and process the check. However, find out what the minimum commission payment is before you join.
It looks like Govios is gone boys and girls. I got an email from ShareASale that said they were removing them from their system and that their affiliate program was no more.
It also said that govios.com was down as well.
They come and they go.