Wearing Slusher

 

 

 

 

Congrats to Rob, David and Mike (did I miss out anyone?) for putting on the NY Podcasting drinks and snacks tonight. I suspect I should have paid someone some money before I left in a hurry. Sorry guys. Will fix you up tomorrow at BlogOn (I assume someone will be there??). Otherwise, email me your PayPal account and I'll fix you up. Mea Culpa.

 

Anyway, Mike Dunn asked me to model this Evil Genius Chronicles shirt for Dave Slusher. After Dave's recent "feedback" about TPN, it cut me to wear it, but hey, I'm a big man. I can take it.

Comments

[Rob Irwin]

Is that some kind of ale or lager in a Guinness glass?!? Sacrilege!!!

[Tony]

Just saw on Mike Geoghegan blog that he had pics of you and Mike Dunn, your sunnies really stand out.

Any chance of getting an autographed podcasting book from Mike :)

[Phillip Molly Malone]

Bugger the book. Any chance mailing him down over his stuff with his handling of his dealings with Nexflix?

What do I mean? Read on:
http://mollyzine-podcasting.blogspot.com/2005/10/followup-on-reel-review-radio-and.html

Molly

[Tony]

I do recall something about this. I also agree that maybe it's best first to reply to a rejection to be an affiliate to find out what needs to be done to fix the problem and work around it before blogging on about it.

The Cool Shite guys were declined by Amazon because of use of profanity but I think they mentioned in their letter that was the reason. I could be wrong and Bruce chased it up to find out but the point is they didn't use their podcast or blog about being rejected as a way to "get back" at Amazon.

Now back on topic of this thread I saw on Mike Dunn's blog that photo and few other were taken at the "Welcome Cameron Reilly to NYC paty". They are either very lonely people or....well I can't think of another reason :P

Is your speech or any of the other speeches at BlogOn going to broadcast on TPN. I would webcast it but ya know being in Aus isn't a good time to listen to these things live. I would love to hear what you and others have to say about different issues going on in podcasting and blogging, een though I do neither at this stage.

[Cameron Reilly]

Molly I'm actually sitting next to Geoghegan this morning (in between him and Buzz) and he took me through the Netflix story. He's right. You're wrong. They screwed up and his response was totally in order. Sorry mate.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

Cam, thats the biggest load of crap I have ever heard. Have a look at the blog entries. He would have wrote a five second (okay lets call it 5 mins) email and got the response that he was after in the first place.

Netflix did it right, Michael screwed up and admitted so by writing the email!

Molly

[Cameron Reilly]

Nah I disagree Molly. Mike applied to them for their affiliate program. He did the right thing. They sent him a bad form reply. They screwed up. Not Mike. Not his job to write them emails to explain to them how they screwed up. It's their job to manage their business better.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

I disagree. They felt the site on the first inspection didn't meet their requirements. They probably have thousands of requests, I would image they need to be over protective of the system and not do a through examination of each and every request. It would be uneconomical to do so! That, would be bad business.

So having this policy/practice you, as a good business, should have a way of dealing with situations where your broad standards are actually not looking at the situation correctly. Therefor, you should have really give the customer/possible partner an option to sort the situation out and in fact, explain why they feel the company (Netflix) has made a mistake. This they did. They even spelled it out for Mick. They said something to the effect that if you believe they made a mistake, you should let them know and they will review the application.

Mick, not once but twice ignored this offer by Netflix! Then he had a good old fashion Whine about it! Now this isn't new, in fact I was just watching Today Tonight (an Australian Current Affairs show) that had some piece of crap about Telemarketers and it reminded me of this situation. Just flying off the handle with out exhausting the full range of options made available to him.

And I mean, if they are such a bad business, why would he go back and risk his good name on such a bad company? The truth is, they aren't bad company and they handled the situation fine and understandably. My opinion is that Michael didn't!

JMTC
Molly
PS. Your going soft dude! Just because he is sitting next to him is no reason to suck up to him!

http://mollyzine.libsyn.com

[Phillip Molly Malone]

PS. It seems the TPN is down! (well for me anyway)

[Cameron Reilly]

Here's the thing you have to understand about an afilliate program. The whole purpose of it is to help Netflix sell more product.

Mike applied to help them sell more product. Netflix didn't look at his site. They rejected it based on a button he clicked in the form which asked if he had downloads (he's a podcaster). They sent him a form letter email. He's a top ranked podcaster on films and would have made a good partner for them. They blew it.

Now you are saying HE should then spend MORE time asking if he can have permission to help them sell more of their product cuz they didn't listen the first time?

[Cameron Reilly]

oh and TPN seems fine to me, but we are having db issues. Grrrr.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

Cam, the thing you need to understand about an affiliate program is that the affiliate earns money from each customer they send to the program. Thats why Mick went to the program in the first place. So Mick cut off his own nose despite his on face and went with (from what I can tell) what is second best in Blockbuster as he was too lazy/arrogant to follow the procedure in front of him.

Now important to this is the program he is now using. He you looked at his site? Its Netflix. I ask you why? You could believe the lame argument that he (and I am paraphrasing) just wanted to kill sometime and decide to send the email. I don't buy that.

Mick seems like a very smart and successful business man and I don't think he makes such an important decision as to the DVD/video affiliate on his popular movie website unless there is a very good reason.

The reason as I see it? Blockbuster did cut the mustard! They might let him join with less questions asked but people didn't want to join their program. The prospective customers wanted Netflix as they are the Market leader (from what I can tell) in this area. Do you think they lost any sleep over the blog entry? No. On the whole do you think they lost a lot of revenue? No. On the whole do you think Mick lost a lot of revenue for himself by going for an inferior program because he wouldn't write one email? Yes! Do you think he his whine put off people from Netflix? Probably not (I never heard of them before his whine, so in fact he did a bit of free advertising in some ways to which he got no reward).

JMTC
Molly
PS. I know you guys are after bigger fish at TPN, but why don't you use more affiliate programs over at TPN?

PS. PS. On the TPN problems and Databases, your obviously not using a Progress DB! (www.progress.com) Tut tut tut

[Rob S]

Everyone had a great time, thanks for coming out. Best of luck with your travels and TPN.

Rob
Podcast NYC

[Tony]

Molly,

I know your an Aussie and all but in all your worldly internet travels and friends you had never heard of Netflix? That is truly amazing....

I think Netflix did screw up because of the way that they assess people for being affiliates. If your going to ask if a person has downloads on their site I would assume then that you would want to know what kind of downloads, then investigate the site before a standard rejection letter is sent out. Even if it is an automated email it should have safeguards in it where a person can say the downloads they have are podcasts, pictures or something that they provide for free. It should then be flagged and sent to someone in a higher position to then investigate the site and see whether they are worthy. This should all have been done before Mike (or anyone else) received a letter saying that they have been declined.

No sane company in that kind of industry (film) would decline Mike after looking at his site and the amount of traffic it drives on a daily and weekly basis. I do think Mike should have written back and asked about the decision before ranting but he chose not to and that was his right.

I have no problem with him then accepting, or them accepting him, as an affiliate for Netflix as something had obviously gone wrong in the process and things apparently have been sorted out.

Being an affiliate is ultimately a money driven exercise or they wouldn't exist but if Mike was declined by one why wouldn't he go to their opposition? There is nothing wrong with being affiliates to more than 1 company in the same area of business, animeondvd.com has been doing it for years.

In the long run Mike got his affiliation with Netflix and I am sure Netflix get a reasonable amount of traffic from Mikes site which I am sure makes them think they have made the right choice.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

Tony, so good points. But two things to point out:
1) When Mick put his whine up, podcasting was barly 6 months old! Whether or not Netflix should have understood this is another arguement but it is some what understandable.
2) Aren't we all complaining about spammers that get their adwords account from google for just having a valid website? Now when a company has tough critera, we say there wrong?
3) (okay I lied) How many requests do you think NetFlix gets compared to how many Affiliate programs Mick applied for? In my opinion Mick would be doing better out of this then Netflix in a relative sense.

On not knowing Netflix, I am not a big movie buff, although I do love the Cool Shite boys! Liked the TPN Movie show before it Jumped the shark!

Molly

[Tony]

LOL,

So when did it Jump The Shark?

I wouldn't doubt that Mike may do better than Mike out of the Netflix deal but the thing Netflix gets out of it is advertising for those people like you who may not know about it's service.

Well anyone can get adwords (check this site for example :P ) but there are also tough criteria and tough criteria. I still believe a rejection letter shouldn't be issued until an examination of the site has occured.

And the Tassie lads do kick ass and are funny. Who would have thought it.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

Well those Tassie guys do have those extra heads! (just kidding)
Molly