It’s been mission impossi-blog this week for me I’m afraid guys and gals.  I’m currently living on a building site so alas my concentration levels have been shocking and I’ve been spending my time after work clearing bits of wood and plasterboard from our home renovation to help keep the labour costs in check.

Here’s a pic of Affiliate Stuff central at the moment: -

The old wall that our builder (and next door neighbour) is trimming off is connected to my office which should neatly explain why I may not be fantastic at talking to you guys for the next couple of weeks!  As you can see both Duncan and him are sporting lovely ear muffs to protect them from the din so there’s not been a lot of work going on with me this week.

I had meant to do a bit about how the A4U Awards nominations were now open complete with lots of detail about various people I’m thinking of voting for (haven’t made up my mind properly yet), however I seem to keep on getting migraines for some reason. Not sure if its the noise or the 6 whisky and coke I need to calm me down in the evenings re: my concerns with what’s just happened to my formerly lovely home!

Finally….

Because it’s been a while since I posted a pic like this, and I’m famous for them I thought you all might like to see what we found in the void of a roof we are removing to increase the ceiling pitch in our kitchen: -

As you can see, Duncan is expertly modelling a lovely carpet python skin from behind our dust sheeting.  It’s not the only snake skin we found behind our walls, but it’s certainly a crackingly big one!  Life is never dull here in Australia that’s for sure

Something that never fails to amaze me is the amount of outright and blatant shit that is spoken by the “Make Instant Money Online Today!!!!!!” fraternity.  My near terminal bewilderment at the outrageous nature of their claims is only matched by my disbelief at the amount of people who fall for their spurious claims about lacklustre and / or completely useless products each and every day. (Sadly it’s usually the latter).

As a public service I’ve created a translation of the sorts of claims people make versus what they really mean.  That way, if you must search for things like “make money online” and “make money fast” you might have a chance of telling the bullshit from genuinely useful information (hint, searching for those terms rarely produces useful info).

Visit OurSpammySite.com and make enough money to quit your job next month! Free System!

We will send you a (useless) video on how to make money.  By the time we tell you the way to make the REAL money even QUICKER you’ll be too excited not to give us your credit card details.  Subsquently you may discover that the initial $849.95 wasn’t for the entire system and that you will need to give us $200 per month so that we may drive 85,000,000 visitors to your site.  Per second. When those visitors don’t turn up, this will be your fault.  But don’t worry!  We can fix that RIGHT up for just another $500 – you dolt!

Our simple system will create you a website with no knowledge of coding required.  Cowboy Dave’s system is a simple little method that has made many of his happy customers thousands of pounds!

For a simple one off payment you too can own a website about a product you know nothing about which is exactly the same as the other 24,000 we’ve sold to gullable fools here at Cowboy Dave Inc.  Once you get your site you’ll have no clue what to do with it, nor will you posess any of the marketing skills required to make a single bean.  However, worry ye not.  We’ll have your money by then and will be only too happy to draw your attention to the “No Refunds will be issued and all claims are for illustrative purposes only” clause in our terms and conditions.  We will think its great we totally blew smoke up your ass and took your money – and you can’t do a damned thing about it!

I make £10,000 a day doing almost nothing, sign up to my exclusive members club for full and FREE proof of my income.  All you have to do is exactly copy my system and you’ll be quids in.

I make lots of money every day by being a complete and utter scumbag.  My system consists of nothing more than lots of vague instructions, bland platitudes, outrageous promises, and absolutely no useful information whatsoever.  By the time you realise my red hot system gives you an ice cube’s chance in hell of ever making a penny, I’ll have spent your hard earned cash on something nice for myself.  Aren’t I wonderful?

Make £35,000 a month with my completely automated online system. Absolutely no work involved, no website, no building lists, no advertising spend.

Seriously, I can’t believe people fall for my bullshit sometimes.  Myself and my mate Cowboy Dave spend all our time competing to see who can make the most outrageous claim – and you guys still sign up.  To make things even more hilarious, I’m going to hook you into a monthy subscription and bombard you with advertising filled with increasinly ridiculous claims – and the odd request for cash to keep my Porsche 911 in petrol – those cars don’t run themselves you know (I’ve got 5,000 mug punters doing that for me).

Finally, my guide to the deep meanings in commonly used punctuation, words and symbols.

!!!!

We said absolutely nothing worth listening to in that sentence, and there was absolutely no information about what it is we’re trying to sell, but we’ve put these exclaimation marks in to show you just how dashed exciting our mystery product is.

Guaranteed

It’s guaranteed we’ll make money.  You didn’t think we were taking about you did you?!  *guffaw*

UNDERLINED and IN RED and UNDERLINED IN RED

We don’t want you to read the words in between these because you might work out our product is about as substantial as a puff of air.  Hopefully you’ll be that desperate you’ll only see words such as MILLIONAIRE and also EFFORTLESS SYSTEM that is FREE TO RUN except for our $200 a month admin charge, and your first born son’s lifetime earnings but this bit is not in red or underlined so its invisible.  Sneaky eh?

$$$$

Yep, you can earn $$$$ simply by joining our monthly club where we will slowly reveal absolutely hee haw of use to you.  We’ll keep you hanging on for as long as possible by repeatedly promising the really good stuff will turn up next month.  Eventually you will discover that you really can earn $$$$.  Of course, we didn’t put any figure in front of that so your earnings will be the multiple of zero of your choice.

Got Another Example?

Add your make money online translation to the comments section!

If ever merchants needed a good reason to sort out their blinking well Xmas promotions before December 15th then this syndrome must be it. I’m sure I can’t be unique when I say I’ve had it with Christmas.  In fact, I’ve had it with Christmas for at least two weeks but have struggled gamely on.

My brain is currently at the point where me simply sitting in front of a computer screen seems to induce me to contemplate my navel closely for several hours interspersed with the odd visit to Facebook or Twitter to talk a load of shit.  This is in stark contrast to my usual feelings of energy and downright go getter-ness (another symptom is that I’ve started making up my own words).

Merry BuggerAllThisMass…

As I sailed out the door to the shopping centre at 10am this morning full of the spirit of “Bugger All This Mass” I said to Duncan; “I really don’t know whats up with me dear I really just can’t think straight.”

“What do you mean you don’t know what’s up?” He says.

“Eh?” I eloquently replied.

“You’re like this every effing year love!”

“I am?”

And it’s true.  I am.  There’s something about the push for Christmas trade that is incredibly exciting.  But bear in mind that much like an over excitable 6 year old I’ve been getting myself all wound up for it since the middle of June and making sure I was going to do as good a job as possible in getting those affiliate pennies in at this very lucrative time of year.

And So My Dear Friends, This Tightly Wound Affiliate Coil Has Unsprung…

I must have done quite well with my festive efforts, because my “Cant Be Assed Mass” has arrived almost 20 days early.  I feel as if I have now done as much as I possibly can for the big man in the red suit and as a result I’m like a balloon that’s been burst (by that over excited 6 year old we were chatting about a couple of paragraphs back).

I think my lack of motivation is in reverse proportion to the amount of money appearing on my screen when I log on to the networks each morning. The more thats there, the less I want to do! What little brain capacity that remains has been devoted to keeping an eagle eye on my margins.  Much time is being spent analysing every single penny I spend and click I send. So merchants, it is now too late to grab my ear with your latest and greatest promotions.  That ship has sailed and it’s captain is  roaring drunk in the wheelhouse.

What Now?

Well, I’d better get my finger extracted from my derrierre and my head out of the clouds.  Christmas might be all sewn up but January is still flapping in the wind.  I’ve got a LOT to do.

The only thing I can think of is to take the rest of the week off, power down, power up Sunday night and hope the old spring gets wound up again to get into my January promotions.

So Merchants… Please Leave My Commission After The Beep. Anything Else Will Be Deleted. BEEEEEEPPPPPP!!

I don’t usually do blogging without making more than one effort to contact a company, but this time I’m making an exception and I’m making it for Tradedoubler and their dreadful support system.  I’m seriously considering indulging in a bit of brand name bidding because I reckon it might well be the only way to get Tradedoubler to actually talk to me in a time period that can be described as “less than an ice age”.

I submitted a support request quite a few days ago.  I know they got it because I got a “we have your support request” mail back.  I can’t remember how long ago and I can no longer find the mail, but I was already annoyed about it on October 28th when I posted about it on Twitter.

So In The Spirit Of Comparison…

Here is the time it took a recent support request from another network to be responded to.

Affiliate Window:

Ticket Submitted: 27 Oct 2009 23:53
Response: 28 Oct 2009 11:18

Within 3 hours of office hours resuming. Nice one Awin.

But Of Course, Tradedoubler Know All This….

Because people never cease talking about it on forums and blogs, and they have been talking about it for some time.  To be fair there has been one time this year (June I think) where a support ticket was answered within 72 hours, which I consider to be adequate.  I remember being distinctly surprised by this.  I’ll also be honest, this ongoing issue means I only ever contact Tradedoubler when its absolutely unavoidable.

Do I Need To Know The Secret Handshake?

I don’t have any contacts in there I can use (which is the first thing anyone suggests I need) but why should I need a direct line to one of their staff to get a simple request sorted? In this case I need my payment details altering before the next run else I’ll miss out, so I’m feeling moderately aggravated about the whole thing. 

Lets Try This One More Time…

I am now off to re-submit my request. Perhaps they did reply and it got lost somewhere in cyber space, or perhaps my request vanished into the ether quite at random. But  is it absolutely out of the question that a multi million pound company might have a communications system that works?  Or am I being foolish?  Tradedoubler have beautiful offices in the centre of London, a massive client base, and an internation operation.  But do they have a support ticket system that works?

Lets leave that one for Tradedoublers newest member of staff to answer….

Computer Says No…..

P.S. Read This Post About Their 2007 Same Day Response Promise.

**edit – I had contact from TD and it transpires that they did respond to my original support ticket (on the first working day they got it) it’s just that I didn’t get it. So they did do what they should have – but alas because they don’t have a support section for me to log into and check on these things, I didn’t know. This is a bit of a shame as the network are probably copping bad PR for “ignored” support queries that they answered promptly and efficiently. I feel TD need to invest in one of these as I think people would see a marked improvement overnight in what is often seen as a poor support service.

Well, the parents have left the building and have all returned home safely.  We had a fab time and it really was all over way too quick.

As always after a few weeks off, re-starting work will be a completely mammoth task.  This time it should be relatively easy for me, I’ve got some accounts stuff I need to catch up on, need to prepare a brief for the guy who writes my content (a great way to feel like you’re getting back in the saddle without really having to do much!!), and need to finalise moving my business here to Australia under a new company name.

Did I say It’d Be Easy?!

Nobody with an aversion to swearing should ask me about the last point on my affiliate to do list.  I had to open a GBP account here and was staggered to discover that none of the staff in my local NAB branch had a clue how to pay my cheques in for me.    I first had the audacity to try and pay in my cheques on Thursday, but after a seemingly endless wait whilst the teller checked with any staff member she could grab to see if anyone knew what one of these accounts was, called a helpline, printed a form, read the Ts & Cs, etc -  I was informed that as I had no ID I couldn’t give them any money.  This took us 30 minutes on my parents last day in the country.  I think the teller was glad there was some glass separating us because I could have melted it quite easily with the 1000 megawatt glare which I treated her to.

Upon returning today clutching my form (which as an aside would make any beaureaucrat beam with pride), and no less than two forms of idenfication I enjoyed another hour stood in the bank whilst (the same lady as her bad luck would have it) made phone calls and generally admitted she had no clue what the form was on about.

“Oh, it must be a new product.” My poor teller twittered.

“No, NAB have been doing these accounts for at least 2 years. The terms and conditions are dated 1997″ I managed to say (very nearly politely)

“Oh.  You’d think they’d have told us”

At this stage the teller beside her leans in with “Nobody here knows how to do that you know.  It’s new.”

“Yes, I can tell” I said, winning several awards for diplomacy.

After 2 or 3 more eternities, another call to a helpline, a debate with some other tellers about one or two of the options on the form and what they might mean, she trooped off to the managers office to get him to countersign my application to give them some of my money.  After 20 minutes she returned and declared,

“Manger’s never seen one of those forms either.  He didn’t have a clue what it was about.”

“Oh how super, you must feel so much better!” I enthused (winning 3 baftas)

So Webgains and Affiliate Window I may well be asking you to reissue some cheques.  They’ve probably been sent to Outer Mongolia for all I know.  The only silver lining in todays sterling customer service experience was seeing the look on the tellers’ faces when I remarked,

“I’ll be in every month doing this you know.”

“Can’t you get paid electronically?” They gasped.

“NOPE!” I beamed.  “See you again later in the month!”

Hopefully that will be the most of the switchover sorted now, it took them no less than a  month to even open my account so it’s something I’ll be really glad to see the back of.

I should be firing on all cylinders by the end of the week and getting back into a nice bit of Christmas type fun.  Now I (allegedly) have somewhere to store my money, this will actually be worthwhile again!

*gasp* Shock horror murder polis!  Yes folks it’s time for one of my rare negative posts!  However, as the title suggests it does lend itself to a follow up post with 10 things I love about this industry so never fear, balance will be achieved in due course

1. Affiliate managers who contact me dead keen to “work more closely with you and build a great relationship” and immediately ask “is there anything we can do to help you?” Upon taking delivery of my modest request for bestsellers info and regular contact re: new products I promptly never, ever hear from them again!

2. People who are rude / sarcastic to newbie affiliates on forums in situations where they really don’t need to be.  What gives with that?

3. Merchants who re-jig their databases putting in place new cutting edge technology which will not only revolutionise your conversions but will break every single image and link you’ve ever previously created for them. They are then mysteriously unable to implement URL redirects and contact you wondering why your conversions have turned to poop and asking you to pull your jolly well socks up.

4. When you have to complete an online assault course and answer 5 fiendishly difficult riddles that’d make a sphinx go cross eyed and head on back home – just to get a deep link from a network (OK, I exaggerate but you know what I mean!)

5. Affiliate managers who schedule a conference call with you and then don’t listen to a word you are saying, constantly interrupting you to get their point over.  Look, if you mean you want to schedule a monologue call with me – just send a tape recording and I’ll swear at it at a more convenient time for me!

6. People from outside the industry thinking I’m a pornographer when I say I market things online.  I dread that knowing look and the “Ahh… I SEE.”

7. Still not being able to switch off from work sometimes.  For all that I harp on about how fab it is only working 4 days a week, I often make up most of that time when I “nip on” to the PC for a wee while “just to check things out” on evenings and weekends and leave Dunc sitting wondering where the hell I’ve gotten to.

8. Little known fact: – Affiliate Marketing causes time dilation.  Why else can I plan enough work in a single hour to last Duncan and I a bloody year?

9. The “I’ll make you rich if you buy my course for just $4,000″ brigade.  What a bunch of arseholes – they make us all look dishonest, rip off people who can least afford to lose money, and I for one sincerely wish painful bowel complaints and a host of embarrassing and smelly illnesses on the lot of them.

10. Meeting people at networking events who think I work for an agency.  Because I own a pair of boobs.

11. Being so far away from all my affiliate pals

Yeah OK, I know that’s 11 but the last one is just a moan not a real “hate”.

Anyone got some other affiliate marketing grudges they might like to air?

Greetings Affiliate Stuff readers!  How are you all?  Are you well?  As you’ll note I’m now back from holiday where I was unfortunate enough to contract a lovely dose of the flu from my Father in Law.  This has left me moderately grumpy and sleep deprived so I thought I’d treat you all to a wee moan-ette / cautionary tale about merchants who don’t respond to their mail!

Setting The Scene

OK, so before I headed off on my jollies it sort of occurred to me that I don’t often Take My Own Advice and ask merchants for an enhanced commission structure.  It further occurred to me that considering the amount of work I’ve been putting in recently that this was extremely stupid of me.

With that in mind I duly wrote to two merchants I think I can do much better for on one of my sites and asked for their thoughts.  Now, in the above linked treatise I said the worst you could get was “a polite no”.  Oh how foolish and naive I was – it is now clearly apparent that the worst that can happen is that you get no response at all.

What’s happened in this case is that one merchant whom I’ve only recently started working with has opened a dialogue with me and the other, whom I’ve been working with for almost a year, has chosen not to respond.

But Isn’t It Obvious What Will Happen?

Merchants be warned.  For should an affiliate of yours mail you with a query you may well think “No chance.  We’re not doing that, away with them!  I shan’t even dignify that with a response!!”

But what if one of your competitors with very similar nay almost identical product lines DID respond?  Furthermore, what if they said “Sure.  We’ll look into this.  We’d love to work with you more.  What can we do for ya?”

Merchants who don’t communicate or respond to their affiliates risk losing their loyalty.

Me personally, I am a very loyal affiliate.  I value a decent relationship above all else and I will frequently opt to send traffic to merchants whom I’ll make a lesser return from in terms of EPC but will ultimately profit more with in the long term from the benefits of a close working relationship.

If You Run a UK Based Affiliate Programme And…

There’s a hole in your stats where £5,000 of monthly sales I was sending to you used to be in the next few weeks then you can reasonably assume that this article was about you

Well, my blog has lain silent this week save for the odd tumbleweed spinning through.  I’ve come up with a lot of post ideas… but I can’t quite get them to make sense.  Same deal with work.  I’m getting some stuff done, but mostly I’m sitting with my head abuzz jumping from one task to the next without really doing much work.

Why?  Because my head is full.   Nothing’s happening.  The cogs have ceased up.

So. Seeing as I’ve posted so much info that people have found useful, Y’all are going to help me out.  You’re all going to sit there and “listen” whilst I terrify you with the inner workings of my fevered mind.

Kirstys List of AARRRGGGHHHH

• Calls to action – could they be better on my sites?  How, what’ll I do?  How shall I test it?  Can I be assed to do split testing?
• Figleaves. Whatever next?  Why aren’t they converting like they used to? Are they taking the piss?  Where would the £XX,XXX  to replace my annual commission from them come from if they shut.  What process to identify and test new merchants?
• What should I do this year to diversify, how can I make sure that time is being spent in the most profitable way possible?  Where should my business be going?
• Why oh why do people keep contacting me and saying “we’re really keen for you to promote merchant X,Y & Z” and then when I respond and ask for a teeny bit of easy to provide info do they NOT EFFING REPLY?????????
• Credit crunch – oh brother!  All the rules have changed, the laws of conversion and seasonality no longer apply.  Or do they?  What will happen?  Why are some of the big brands not converting for highly targeted traffic?!
• The growth of my Lingerie Site. I’m adding 10 new categories a week. How long can it stay as a Wordpress blog, what’ll I do about that massive category list, why won’t any of the many pagination plugins out there bloody well work so I can improve my cross linkage?!
• For that matter, when I’m growing the site… who should I give my time to.  What merchants will work, whom should I trial now, who will perform well later in the year?  Who’s gonna turn out to be the arsehole that causes me aggro?
• The Australia Dollar / GBP exchange rate is up and down like a YoYo on acid.  My income value is going up and down like I don’t know what.  I agonise over exchange rate data daily.  How can I plan what to do this year when I’ve no idea of the “real” cost when the bill comes????
• God its hot.  It’s so bloody hot I can’t think.   I sit sweating at my desk all day waiting for the fan to blow some hot air in my direction.  Whose idea was it to put the office in this room?  Oh feck, it was mine.  Should I buy an airconditioner.  Is that environmentally wrong?
• Google Analytics has gone all “Winky Wanky Woo” on one of my sites.  Its recording PPC traffic as organic traffic, its driving me mad and ruining my nice stats.  How will I fix that?
• My new Australian site is going great guns.  What’ll I do next in the Aussie search space?  How can I improve what I already have further?  What next for the SEO.
• What’ll I do about this link campaign I’ve signed up for and can’t bring myself to sort out?
• AAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

*Ahem.  I’m off to hide in the airconditioned livingroom.  Normal service will be resumed when I straighten myself out. Whisky will be taken and a notepad will be filled.

Wish me luck

I know you all think that this post is going to be about Figleaves, but it’s not.  Despite the fact they do seem to have appointed Hannibal Lecter – the affiliate programme serial killer to look after their CPA marketing endeavours, that’s not actually the scariest thing that has happened to me this week.

Yes, hard as it may be to believe something has in fact shaken me more than the wholesale destruction of one of my best performing revenue streams.

Well, I can tell y’all are on the edge of your seats here… so I shall proceed with my sorry tale.

I was sitting working away at my general affiliate endeavours the other day.  Humming a happy little tune, and enjoying the view from my office window….

Now, although you can’t see it in this picture the office window overlooks my front door.  This is dead sneaky as it enables me to surprise parcel delivery men before they have the chance to pop the “Sorry You Were Out” slip underneath my door.  They really, really hate it

As I was sat industriously working away… a movement caught my eye.

They say that humans have a built in survival instinct, and I reckon it’s true… because what I was seeing out of the corner of my eye was this gorgeous wee chappie (or chappess in this case) dangling at face height right outside our front door.

*Caution – Those Of A Nervous Disposition Should Faint Now* – It’ll save you a bit of time later.

“WOOOAARRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I remarked.

“Oh, for feck sake.  Not this again.”

Said Duncan.

“LOOKIT”

I said.

“WOOOAARRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Said Duncan.

“See, I told you so.”

I quipped, playing the smug wife card for all it was worth.

For those readers not recognising this beauty, it is a Redback Spider and from the same family as the Black Widow.  A wee bite from one of these beauties can see you rushing in a hospital-ward direction if they manage to envenomate you properly.

As card playing was working well for me, I then played the “Well, I’m not effing well dealing with it, that’s your department” card and left Duncan to venture out in a front doorward direction whilst I shouted instructions from behind the mesh screens that cover all of our house windows.

After we’d quickly looked up the “Redbacks and their Wily Ways” site we realised getting rid of them from a safe distance isn’t all that easy.  Most insecticides will not work because the unsporting buggers can hold their breath for several hours.  The only sure way to dispatch them is to knock them down, and then squish them.

And That’s Where The Horror Part Of The Story Lies…

In trying to knock it down, my Duncan discovered that Redbacks can move very, very quickly.  In short, it vanished like a little bit of arachnid poop off a teeny, tiny spider sized stick.

So now we know we have a deadly spider living with us…. BUT WE DON’T KNOW WHERE IT IS.

WOOOAARRGGGHHH!!

Recently, I’ve had an unfortunate reminder that misbalance (dare I say unfairness?) in our industry is still alive and kicking. Merchants, networks, and agencies still hold all the cards and can simply renege on a contract with no consequences.

I’m not going to name names or bleat on about how unfortunate I am to have been treated unfairly… so I’ll just give you a bulleted list of events below!

• A year or two back I was doing rather well for a particular merchant.  As a new agency had come on board, they decided to change the rules on the programme and create a closed group of PPC bidders.
• I was invited to submit an application to be included, and did so.
• I was successful and was made to sign an eyewatering legal document detailing what the scope of my involvement was, and the required time period for me to respond to any of their requests (12 hours).
• I got all set up, and off we went.  I always complied with all the contract terms and did everything they asked of me.
• Whilst on honeymoon, I got a communication from the network asking me exactly what I thought I was up to bidding on the terms that had been laid out in my contract.  I responded telling them I was in the closed group.
• 23 hours later I was removed from the programme and all my commissions were reversed.
• Naturally, I was somewhat perplexed. (yes, this was on my honeymoon you can imagine how thrilled my husband was).  It took me a week to discover the issue.
• “Oh, the agency said they’d previously allowed you to do this, but it had ended.  To be honest, the agency didn’t tell us the arrangement had ended either… but there you go.”

So I was made to sign an iron clad contract.  The agency didn’t even bother to tell me they’d decided to end the arrangement despite being in posession of my e-mail address, postal address, phone number, fax number, and an undertaking from me that I’d surrender my first born child should I dare to step outwith the boundaries of their agreement.

So This Got Me To Thinking….

Looking back, the contract I signed was completely one-sided.  There was all sorts of Ts & Cs to protect the interests of merchant and agency.  This is absolutely right and necessary as it lets everyone involved know where their boundaries lie. But where were the conditions to protect my interests as a business parter?  I’ve now fallen into a situation where I’ve lost money because they simply could not be bothered to make sure I was informed of what their marketing strategy was.

So Who’s It Gonna Be?

When are all of our networks going to start protecting both parties in a contract of this nature?  Frankly, when merchants or agencies behave like this and the network basically says “Sorry, they can sort of do whatever they like to you.” it damages their standing.

In my view, networks standing there with an innocent look on their face saying “It wasn’t our fault.” simply won’t cut it as this industry moves forward.  They have a responsibility to both their merchants and affiliates.  .

So is anyone going to be brave enough to come up with a *gasp* TWO SIDED contract for their closed bidding groups?  I don’t want much.  I just want a level playing field.  Events like this simply make me lose respect for the rules of the game.  Its not at all good for our industry.

Finally…

How many industries treat their valued business partners like this?  How many could?