First of all, no worries -- you are more than entitled to your own opinion. I agree in many respects, maybe I am naive to think that the company should proactively manage some aspects to ensure the affiliates are ethical and upstanding "referrers."
At some point there must either be:
(1) such an awesome product I will shout it from the rooftops; or
(2) big enough incentive to tell people to try it (still should be a good product)
Dropbox did such a great job because they managed to create the 2nd scenario without a cash outlay.
Appreciate the discussion! Good luck with your programs, whatever you decide to do
Dropbox is a good case in point. I use their service, and happily refer my friends to it-- the "affiliate fee" from Dropbox, in the form of extra storage) is a nice bonus. If my friends refer their friends, that's none of my concern-- and if Dropbox made it my concern (via some incentive), that would feel very uncomfortable for me. I don't want to be that involved in Dropbox's business, and I don't want to start thinking about who I can refer that can refer a lot of other people, or how I can push my friends to refer others, etc.
Similarly, if I have some books I want to recommend on a blog, I have no problem using an Amazon affiliate link. For me to put up a link trying to sign up more affiliates for Amazon, on the other hand, feels wrong-- I've crossed the line from "recommending" to "shilling."
I'm not saying that it is impossible to do multi-tier affiliate systems well; I'm sure there are people that are doing it properly, somewhere. But I'd certainly not make a blanket recommendation that everyone should attempt it, or even that it is appropriate in the majority of cases.
At some point there must either be: (1) such an awesome product I will shout it from the rooftops; or (2) big enough incentive to tell people to try it (still should be a good product)
Dropbox did such a great job because they managed to create the 2nd scenario without a cash outlay.
Appreciate the discussion! Good luck with your programs, whatever you decide to do