I had to file this one under “Just for Laughs” because it sure made me giggle. There are times I absolutely LOVE this Industry and this is one of those times. Freeze.com offers “free” screensavers which come bundled with a multitude of adware applications. They have a pretty active affiliate program (thanks Freeze affiliates for spreading the problem!). They also own several other web properties, one of these being Screensaver.com, which has Freeze.com affiliate traffic redirected to it.
I’m out and about on the Internet, doing what I do, and I click on an affiliate link for Freeze.com which goes to Screensaver.com. What happened reconfirmed my belief in poetic justice and ironic humor. You have to see the video to fully appreciate things. So go ahead and watch the live action.
Don’t sneak down to the spoiler…go ahead and watch it first. 🙂
For starters, the affiliate link I clicked on belongs to ShopAtHome. I was redirected to a landing page on Screensaver.com that was a, drum roll please, parked domain landing page! Cookies were set, affiliate tags were passed in the URL but I certainly didn’t arrive any where I could download a free screensaver. 🙂
Now Screensaver.com itself is still accessible. But the landing URL for affiliate traffic, http://lan.screensaver.com, coughs of the parked domain page. Now I just find this more than a bit amusing. I’ll be…..Freeze.com affiliates with those Screensaver.com links aren’t earning commissions. And I did check some other Freeze.com links with the same URL structure as the one ShopAtHome is using and the same thing happened. I wonder how Freeze.com affiliate’s feel about being cheated out of their commissions?? The icing on the cake is that the links on parked domain pages on Screensaver.com end up going through Overture listings. Yes indeed, there are days that I really do just LOVE this business
