Website Replication
The Internet is the perfect platform on which to run a business. The advantages are clear. You can reach a much wider audience than usual, the costs are many times much lower than with normal businesses, and your approaches can be quite varied and unique. That is why many multi level marketing (MLM) companies have also take the step on to the Internet. Their affiliates are no longer hampered by their location as the Internet allows them to take the company's business and go, quite literally, around the world. With the use of website replication, the task is made even easier.
Website replication is a phenomenon that has been around on the Internet for a while but is starting to become prevalent. The concept is quite simple. Using a script or program of some sort, a person is able to replicate an existing website and post it again without having to go through all the trouble of writing a website from scratch. With MLM companies the website is changed to reflect the personal details of the affiliate who is being replicated for. Usually the e-mail address and the affiliate number are changed but other changes can also be implemented. This means that the affiliate immediately has a website that he or she can use as part of the MLM company's marketing. But even though this is a very useful tactic, there are critics who frown upon this practice.
The critics are against the practice of website replication because of the dubious history that is part of the practice. The idea originally came from, usually unscrupulous, individuals who wanted to improve the hit rating for their websites on search engines. To do this, they copied their original website as it was and renamed it to things like 'index2.htm'. They posted the replicates on the Internet and successfully tricked search engines into ranking them higher on the results. This ploy seemed to work until the search engines got wise to the practice and put into place various methods to fight against this practice.
Sadly these methods have a detrimental effect on the websites of affiliates as well. Since the websites that they are sent by the MLM company they represent are identified by search engines as 'replicates' they have a harder time making their presence known on the Internet. There are many ways to get around this problem but most of them involve making your own website that still conveys the same message as the original. Since many affiliates are not necessarily web designers, web replication was seen as the best way to help them make a success as an affiliate.
While web replication has its critics, there are many that say the practice should simply be closely monitored. The problem is that search engines cannot, at the moment, distinguish between the replications of MLM companies and those made by unscrupulous people who simply want to abuse the system. Until a solution is found, the problem will persist but at least the affiliate is on the web and might still be noticed.
