The saddest day of the year – Blue Monday is celebrated on the third Monday of January. Traditionally, on this dubious holiday, we turn to a specialist in sadness and depression to hear about the problems of affiliate marketing.
We find ourselves again on a street illuminated by blue neon, climbing the stairs of a rather poor house, along a dirty corridor of rented apartments, where behind each door we hear either crying or swearing. We knock on the specialist’s door, but the door opens by itself under our fist. This inspires alarm, but the next moment we see a silhouette in a semi-dark room, looking at the street flooded with neon through the blinds. Melancholy jazz is playing. At first glance, nothing seems to have changed in a year, but looking closer, we realize that it has become worse and dirtier.
– At first glance, nothing seems to have changed in a year, but look closer, everything has become worse and dirtier, – the master of sadness begins his monologue. – Everything we discussed last year is still relevant this year.
– What kind of ratings and tier lists can there be here? All these problems are more like a pile of garbage, and we, simple affiliates, are buried somewhere at the very bottom. Damn laws are strangling us, monopolists are strangling us, economic crises do not take their hands off our throats, so that not even a sip of cheap whiskey will slip through.
– They say that the world is changing, but they forget to add that it is not for the better. Guessing the algorithms of search engines and social networks is like monitoring the mood of a madman. They reduce my audience reach as they want and whenever they want. Advertising campaigns are impossible to plan, their budget is constantly growing, and the income is falling. It falls with a crash, like a dry tree, and no one cares about it. My tracking links are blocked by browsers and VPN services, and conversion attribution is just a dump.
– And trust? What do you think about trust in this crumbling world? I remember the times when people didn’t lock their doors, kids played in the door unsupervised, and people clicked on banner ads and bought without asking questions. And these memories only make it harder, I wish I didn’t remember it, and didn’t know. How could everything have changed so much for the worse, where did we take the wrong turn?
– No, I understand everything: inflation, crisis in the financial and IT sectors. But is this a reason to lose humanity? Sometimes it even seems to me that my old vinyl records with jazz have started to sound disgustingly life-affirming, and the ice for whiskey has started to be made too warm.
– And what in the end? Do we lend each other a helping hand in difficult times? Oh, no. Competition is growing and not only among affiliates, but also among advertisers with their damn exclusive offers. We are only getting stronger at each other’s throats, the very throats that are strangling all the above-mentioned corporations and others. And throats, I will remind you once again, we need them to drink cheap whiskey, and in rare cases to sing sad jazz vocal parts.
– Now leave me alone, I’ll look at the neon light through the blinds for a while and then go cry curled up in the fetal position on the unmade mattress.
We close the door, congratulating the specialist on Blue Monday, and leave the street, graced with blue neon. Until next year.
