Apple takes an axe to its App Affiliate Program Apple extended a corporate middle finger toward its army of fanbois as it announced the death of apps in the iTunes Affiliate Program yesterday. The programme, which allowed sites to link to an app in Apple’s App Store and earn a percentage of a subsequent sale, initially offered affiliates 7 per cent of the price. Last April …
So all the little websites that helped make the Apple Apps Store what it is are just thrown to the four winds....after years of promoting the company.
What a lovely company to have as a "Partner"
B4$T4RD$.....
That said, all the big players try and use the same process......get them hooked with a good deal, make it worse, stop the payments.
I don't see the issue; review sites that depend upon the revenue of persuading people to buy the apps they review immediately then and there are not on my list of fine upstanding gentlemen. The decent ones already make the majority of their income from running adverts, so that there's no ulterior motivation for positive reviews.
So Apple withdrawing an affiliate programme doesn't really feel like another effort to screw the little guy. Just one ugly profit-seeking corporarion declining furthet to help other ugly profit-seeking corporations.
I can't help but notice that most of their reviews give 5 or 4.5 stars. Furthermore not only the site but the individual writers have Patreon accounts, which suggests that the wages aren't fabulous.
I note that senior editor Arnold Kim is, according to the New York Times, a multimillionaire, so at least he's doing okay.
@Ashley_Pomeroy
Well, they aren't going to give an App two stars, because nobody would buy it, and they wouldn't get their cut. They might make the argument they only promote quality Apps,... but the responsibility of a reviewer is also to weed out the chaff.
What a lovely company to have as a "Partner"
I always considered 'partner' in the business world to equate to 'exploitable resource'.
Anyone surprised should brush up on their Rules of Aquisition.
As the first place most "power-users" will look for an app, is a review site. Ironically though, they may also be doing those users a favour - perhaps reviews will be a little less biased!
On a personal note, I don't begrudge such sites making a commision (they have running costs!), but they piss me off and hit my shit-list when I see them giving outright biased to paid apps or just becoming glorified billboards (Yesss... Downloads and CNET, I'm pointing at you)
Never do business with Apple. They honestly don't care about you, from tiniest old granny through to hugest corporation.
Not just in a "heartless businessman" way, they will just screw you over when they see fit as they have "no need" for you as they demonstrate here.
It's one of the many reasons I don't deal with them any more (yes, I have hundreds of Apple devices, no, I've never once got a satisfactory answer from Apple, and most of the time they just have nobody capable of dealing with my queries at all).
As far as they are concerned, they toss a product at you and they're done. That's it.
I honestly find nothing redeeming in their designer "design" (i.e. looks pretty, works badly in practice), their product range, their services, their customer service, their business handling, their internal processes (e.g. taxation, staffing, etc.) or anything else. It's always been the same.
Literally, my policy as an IT guy for personal support (and lately, business, because they have no idea how to do business so lost us as a customer): Apple? You're on your own, mate, sorry. Take it back to your Apple geniuses who you're paying to fix all that stuff.
It's like asking my mechanic dad to repair a Tesla.
I was working in a land far, far away when my out-of-warranty MBA died. I went to the local Apple shop and they fixed the Mac and replaced the PSU just in case it was the culprit. It cost me nothing and I was back working within the hour. That can hardly be described as "they toss a product at you and they're done". Try doing that with any other make of PC.
I've done my fair share of complaining about Apple, and reserve the right to continue to do so, but overall, for me, they're OK.
It's one of the many reasons I don't deal with them any more (yes, I have hundreds of Apple devices, no, I've never once got a satisfactory answer from Apple, and most of the time they just have nobody capable of dealing with my queries at all).
...
I honestly find nothing redeeming in their designer "design" (i.e. looks pretty, works badly in practice), their product range, their services, their customer service, their business handling, their internal processes (e.g. taxation, staffing, etc.) or anything else. It's always been the same.
Uh?
Clarification:
I work for schools, and have for 20 years, with Mac suites, hundreds of individual pupil /staff iPads, staff iPhones, etc.
We've revoked all those devices / decisions because of the way Apple handle our business (support, complaints, legal obligations - GDPR, complaints process, acknowledging recorded-delivery letters sent to their head offices, all sorts) . They have literally ZERO interest in supporting hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of Apple devices.
And though the above poster's "easy replacement" may be nice for him, you're paying through the nose for that service on the product price, with no advantage over other types of devices. Literally, for the price of a suite of Macs and appropriate service, I can get two or more suites of PCs with the same. And when they fail, I can generally fix them for minimal cost even outside of the support contract.
I've also got any number of tales of people who take their stuff back to the Apple store only to not have them be as helpful because "they didn't pay for Apple Care" (even to the point that Apple tried to wheedle their way out of providing statutory EU warranty cover if people hadn't paid for Apple Care).
If you think I'm just throwing arguments out there without them being based on real-life events, you're mistaken. Hey... find me an Apple GDPR-compliance statement that I could use in a court of law to prove I only gave my data to GDPR-compliant organisations. You won't find one, like you wouldn't find DPA-compliance statements (which Google, Microsoft, etc. all do). Sure, you see a lot on there - news stories, "GDPR" download-your-data etc. functionality, "promises" to fulfill it, "as part of our GDPR work" but what you can't get is "Are you GDPR-compliant?" in writing. Until April, their data protection statements literally carried wording to the effect "We could store your data anywhere, at any time, as necessary". That's NEVER been legal under DPA.
(There's a reason they can't do GDPR too - iCloud is nothing more than MS Azure and Amazon instances spread all over the globe, and there are Reg articles about just that).
Your golden-boy, wonder-child device is from a company that you should never do business with because despite being "the biggest" they can't do things like reply to serious legal concerns, provide a GDPR compliance statement, or provide a modicum of support to huge customers.
Obviously axing the affiliate program will help Apple hit the 1 trillion dollar mark .... adam payne
I'm more for wondering what they can now purchase with their streams of flash cash. Ideally, nowadays via these humble means and effective memes, a Must Have Perfect Reality Program BetaTesting Core Apple Product for Future Presentation, will have them surely Create a Virtual Monopoly in the Pre-Processing of Resultant Subsequent Programming. ...... for a Clear Lead which Feeds into Everybody's Devices so Coming NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT Futures are not an Overwhelming Surprise but rather the Master Application they've been Enthusiastically Waiting For ......... and Fully Expecting of Prime Delivery, whether without or with and within AI, of a Practical Virtually Immaculate Supply.
Does Apple HQ Do Monopoly Play .... Universal Edition? Or is that an Uncle Sam Military Plot/Plan for Apple to Present and Realise .... Both Virtually and Really. Are there No Astutely Brilliant and Fully Virtually ACTive Actors in House and Home Grown [which would be nice to know] or are such Trials and Trails Contracted in from Special Forces Sources with Nothing More Need be Known on Surely Understandably So, MkUltra Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information.
:-) And do you know what that can easily cause to be true, rather than hover and fly as a fiction? Total Mayhem and Madness and Systems Meltdowns in the Command and Control of Clouds Hosting Advanced Operating Systems, which is a Prime Future Premium Option Readily Available to Beleagured Forces and Bewildered Sources too.
Such Easily Allows for Supply of Future AIdDevelopments to Current Establishment Leading Great Games Players.
What's not to like with those sweet and sour apples, Apple? Wanna go Cooking and Frying Chips with
New Stellar Content ....... with Advanced and Alienating Codex to XSSXXXX Providing Safe and Sound CyberIntelAIgent Security with Stirling Sterling Protection.
Methinks then, after announcing all, or even any of all of that is being ACTively Reviewed for Preview, which is Quite An Innocuous Few Words, would a trillion dollar valuation be trifling. Even doubling or squaring that result would be miserly, methinks.
So quite a lot rides upon that COSMIC AIMission, Apple HQ. And it is not as if you don't have Ably ACTivating and Attractive Captivating Competitors Experimenting in the Field with Fab Fielded Players.
I use Apple stuff, always buy refurb or used, still using 10.6 so likely I'm not helping them achieve more figures.
Have worked as Applecare phone tech, saw things from the inside. Applecare agents are rewarded for selling stuff, but not for helping. I was at an outsourced call center; Apple mangers would call for support for their products and try to hire me away when I did well. Perfectly ethical in their world.
Apple products are so second-rate, every single one of them, it's astonishing what can be sold to idiots through slick marketing. They should be congratulated.
Honestly, 8 years late with OLED, 6 years late with wireless charging, 4 years late with fast charging, no expandable storage in phones, most expensive devices, most delicate devices, buggiest mobile OS, most dongles, fewest ports, proprietary connectors, no touchscreens on laptops, useless siri, the watch, those earpods, the $300 speaker. There's not a single Apple product that has any merit at all and there hasn't been for years.
If you have a business which depends on affiliate/advertising/marketplace etc income from Amazon, Google, eBay, Facebook or Apple - you don't have a business, you have a hobby. Further, you aren't a partner - you're a data point in their market research at worst or a minuscule element of their revenue stream at best.
All of these companies act like capricious gods. The rules around affiliate income in particular are arbitrarily changed to hit their sweet spot with little to no notice and no recourse. Good luck even finding a sympathetic human there to cry on. In my near decade experience of working with a number of these platforms - and to be fair, earning a decent wedge for relatively little effort at times - I've been asked for my opinion about scrapping one of their programmes exactly once. I explained doing would instantly kill my business (in part because they scrapped all of the alternative revenue streams) - and nothing happened. I still expect the knife to fall on that someday and without warning. But, for now, it seems to suit both of us.
But it's for partly these reasons, I have never given up the day job. One of other reasons is that to maximise your income from this stuff, you have to do things - like giving glowing positive reviews all of the time - which don't sit right with me.
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