Affiliation

Affiliate. A word commonly used on DBZ websites, but the reason is far from widely known. It is classed as, to quote from the Collins School Dictionary, “An organisation that has a close link with another.” This can be translated into terms which are appropriate for a website, and this would be that in the DBZ web community, an affiliate is basically a friend. Someone who helps you out, and gives you assistance in fixing problems. It has had its meaning completely distorted though.

The average modern DBZ web page consists of a fair amount of content, multimedia (Mainly stolen from other sites), information, and of course, masses of links down the side of the page, with the section entitled ‘Affiliates’. These are merely links to other sites on the web which have around the same number of hits, and which are basically sites who have exchanged links with them. Really this section should be dubbed as ‘Top Links’, as you certainly cannot describe them with the word ‘affiliate’.

The lesser sites are usually the worst at this, having about 15 buttons down the side of their page, and having daily updates that basically consist of some news, and the fact that yet another so called affiliate has been added.

You could confidently bet money that the affiliates of these sites have never actually helped them, or even spoken to them in any detail before. In fact, if they were even daily visitors to each other’s sites, then I must say, I’d be impressed. Unfortunately though, they only link to each other in order to gain more hits, basically giving each other preferential treatment in the form of a link on the homepage.

I for one believe that this is becoming incredibly stupid. Not only do these ‘affiliates’ cluster up the page and make it look untidy, but they are usually too lazy to try and get onto peoples link pages by making their site as good as possible, instead settling for low quality content.

Contrary to popular belief though, the less significant websites aren’t the only offenders in this category. Many of the top DBZ sites do it too, and it just makes you lose a lot of respect for them. None of my personal favourite sites have affiliates in the sense that they are littered down the page, but have proper ones, like you should have on the web, but I’ll go into more detail on that in just a few paragraphs time.

I’m not being hypocritical here, as I am aware that DBZGT Legacy has a few affiliates, and admittedly we don’t treat them as they should be. True affiliates ask for favors from each other, and automatically grant free help without question. There’s only a handful of DBZ sites out there who abide by this, and unfortunately ours isn’t one of them. I hate to criticize my own site, but it is dismally true. Hopefully this is a problem that we will sort out in the near future.

Well, I said I’d explain which sites are real affiliates, and here they are: Daizenshuu Ex and Temple O’ Trunks, and in a lesser form, Daizenshuu Ex and Planet Namek. These groups of sites may not even realize that they’re affiliates, and many other people certainly wouldn’t, but upon close inspection you realize that they are. They have all the qualities which true affiliates have, extending the relevant courtesies, and although they don’t have each others buttons on their home pages, this doesn’t make them any less affiliates.

By now you may well be confused, well I’m not particularly surprised. I have told you what an affiliate isn’t, and hopefully you agree that I’ve been extremely clear on that. A true affiliate though is much less complicated to describe. They give plug ins to each others sites on their homepages, advertise worthy sections, speak to each other regularly and get along well. They also visit each other’s sites on regular occasions, and believe that their counter-part deserves to receive their praise.

I hope that this has been an insightful editorial, and will encourage all of you website owners with affiliates to go out and actually utilize them, or at least think about the true meaning of the word. Basically affiliates are friends who don’t need their button on your homepages, but should be given help when needed, and plug ins when relevant. It’s plain and simple, yet so widely unknown.