Halloween is the only time of the year where you can show up for work dressed as a monkey and not look like a fool. That is, unless your job implies some weird antics. We’re not sure we want to know.
It’s also an opportunity to scare people and gnaw on delicious candy. For grown-up affiliates though, the trick-or-treating days are a thing of the past. Which leaves us with one option for the most part: adult parties where we do our best to impersonate popular characters only to revert back to our ordinary selves the next day.
Exciting, right?
The tradition to instill terror into the heart of your friends by sharing your own bloody stories (usually involving ghosts or serial killers) is what makes Halloween so special in the first place.
It’s a creative and unique way to pay tribute to the souls of the dead, which are believed to roam our world on this occasion.
We’ve considered coming up with a unique take on the horror genre, but we’ll leave that job to pro authors or popular series like The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix (give it a try!). Instead, we’ve prepared a real witch brew of unfortunate if not downright spooky affiliate blunders… based on real events!
Planning nightmare
It’s finally done: after hours of hard work, Suzanne can get some much needed sleep. All of her new campaign emails have been set up and are ready to roll. This time, she just knows it’s going to net her a positive return on investment.
She wakes up a bit later than usual, but something doesn’t feel right.
By now, she should have received some notifications about her campaign...
Unsure of what’s going on, she hastily logs into her computer. The inbox is empty, but she should have received the special promo she prepared.
That’s when it hits her… the campaign has been scheduled for next year! A single digit error she will regret just before the release of a sweet new feature. Ouch!
Blissful ignorance
This one actually happened to a friend of a friend, let’s call him John. He kept boasting about how he had found the one niche to promote as an affiliate and how it would bring him tons of cash.
One of the first screenshots he sent over to show off had some admittedly nice traffic stats and a couple of conversions — quite the feat for such a beginner.
Nothing to write home about, but still seemingly good work.
Asked to share his marketing method, John excitedly explained how he had posted his watermarked adult videos on this new group he had specifically created with Facebook. Needless to say, we were mortified by his lack of reading comprehension (the Terms of Service are pretty clear on that one).
The following day, John sent another screenshot to his pal, this time showing his account termination.
John hasn't been heard from ever since that fateful day...
Pact with the devil
Julia had been an activate affiliate for months.
At first she created a nice blog, ripe with fresh unique content and initially had no issues monetizing it with various banners…
But then, something changed.
Unfortunately, Julia found out that managing one’s website can be pretty taxing.
Ungrateful even — she sometimes had to work hours for a single blog post that would ultimately end up bringing $0 in revenue in. To kick things into gear, Julia started plastering her URL on every social network or community she could find. She even went as far a spinning interesting articles for her readers.
At some point her intentions might have been noble, but Julia had sold her soul to the blackhat marketing devil. Her website never got off the ground, was penalized by search engines and slowly vanished into obscurity…
Skating on thin ice
We remember Jack being ecstatic about affiliate marketing.
However, for some reason, he thought investing himself in niches he didn’t really care about would work. All he wanted was to promote offers with the highest payouts.
It did work… for a time.
As weeks went by, Jack grew tired of creating content for his niche. Because deep down, he just knew how much of a pain it was — not caring in the slightest.
His posts became almost unreadable. Distorted even. It’s like he had a screw loose. If only he had chosen a niche which didn’t chip away at his own sanity.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Virtual massacre
Jade was just starting out as an affiliate marketer, discovering how to make money online.
She figured it would be wise to use every trick in the book to lure people to her promoted offers.
The strategy Jade used involved plastering banner ads all over her site. In fact, Jade was relentless with the adverts. But, as she learned of additional lead generation ideas, she included them—ultimately creating one hell of a “Frankenstein” in the process.
Pop-unders, mailcatchers, animated GIFs, exit intent pop-ups, you name it, she had it on her site; it was a real monstrosity.
When visitors reacher her domain, they only had one goal in mind: get out of there ASAP. Thus the bounce rate skyrocketed and all Jade was left with was her own twisted creation.
She wanted to kill it with online sales. In the end, she put a noose around her own baby.
Zombie army
This one we’re not sure who exactly is responsible — patient zero.
What we do know is it led to a massive horde of automaton-like affiliates driven only by hunger.
Not for flesh mind you, but ... money.
It's as if their bodies had been snatched by a parasite of sorts; first crawling inside, then slowly taking over everything - including their mind.
Affiliates lose their appetite for creativity when this happens, reverting them to a primal state, leeching off others.
This army knew how hollow this process was, but still chose to rot away by mimicking others at the end of the day.
Part human nature, part laziness.
These walkers might not take a shotgun blast to the face, but they’re already dead nonetheless.
Happy Halloween!
We hope you enjoyed this Halloween special. May you have a wonderful, frightening time today!
Writing this article was a lot of fun. Here’s some scary movies that served as inspiration for our little stories:
- A nightmare on Elm street
- The Devil’s Rejects
- The Shining
- Fear dot com
- Dawn of the dead