More on the Affiliate Program

As I stated on Twitter, I am disappointed that the affiliate program is ending. I always saw it more as a loyalty program that rightfully rewarded people who worked hard to help promote and support ExpressionEngine.

To be fair, however, this isn’t exactly how EllisLab touts the program on their website:

Do you love ExpressionEngine? Are you often referring friends, family, and coworkers to ExpressionEngine for their online projects? Now you can earn money for every new person you refer to us who makes a purchase in the store.

They are very plainly looking for people to help them refer new people to ExpressionEngine. I think I did that (just out of the sheer existence of my training materials and people finding this site through Google searches) but obviously not as much as needed. They said exactly that:

After careful evaluation we’ve determined that the affiliate program has not been as effective at bringing new ExpressionEngine users into the fold as we had hoped.

What are they going to do with the extra money?

Making this change will enable us to look at more effective forms of advertising as ways to reach new ExpressionEngine users and grow the community.

I sincerely hope they use the funds they would’ve paid out to affiliate program participants to help grow the community. Historically, there has been no push from EllisLab to advertise or promote EE, so I’m not particularly hopeful that they’ll start now.