Lions Tigers and BHOs. Oh My!

Logging on to ABW this afternoon I was greated by a thread that burst into life and racked up a mass of interest in the blink of an eye. The attention grabbing thread had the title "ShareASale and Toolbars / Call for Participation on Guidelines" . Yes Oh My indeed, the bastion of BHO free marketing is considering its' stance.

I highly recommend reading the thread and joining the discussion.

My thoughts :

A major concern I have with this idea, is that, all "BHO affiliate" tool bars, at the end of the day, do far more than just influence/decide which "BHO affiliate" gets the sale. They also canabilize merchants other sales channels, especially the ones based on loyalty, organic (direct to site/seo) and PPC. The bigger the brand the greater the the impact.

When I talk to merchants about tool bars I usually discuss the effect on the affiliate channel along side the impact to the above channels, large brand merchants (the ones that toolbars target) tend to get the majority of their traffic through the above (Toolbar targeted) channels, which ads no value and simply steals sales from the merchant.

How does SAS plan / propose to prevent toolbars that they allow on to Shareasale from cannabilizing a merchants other sales channels? If their plan is not all encompassing then they will simply be enabling tool bars to go to town on Shareasale merchants just like they do on LS, CJ and so forth, adding no value, but certainly adding to the BHO Affiliates revenue.

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Crossing the Line

I'm often asked by people "Why don't you make a network?" and "Why don't you be an affiliate and promote your own clients more?" and certainly we have considered it, but it always comes down to a key issue : conflict of interest. And I'm sure we could boost our revenue rather nicely if we started playing all side of the business, but at the same time we very well may destroy our trust amongst our affiliate partners.

Firms such as Pepper Jam have progressed through the business from merchant, to affiliate, to affiliate managers to Network. The mixed reviews and acceptance they get, shows that it is not an easy path to travel, and a very difficult one to do while keeping everyone happy.

One of the most debated roles in the industry is that of "Affiliate Network", the"Trusted Third Party" that is meant to remain neutral and ensure that everyone is working in a fair field of play. It's not an easy task as everyone has a different opinion on what is a fair field of play.

My personal opinion is that a fair field of play consists of these qualities

• affiliates add value to the consumers purchase cycle
• affiliates drive new customers to a merchants site
  
• affiliates don't intercept consumers already in the act of going to a merchant's site
  
• affiliates don't cannibalize other marketing channels
• affiliates don't cannibalize each others traffic
• requires a direct consumer interaction with the affiliate marketing being run
• no adware, bhos or malware
  
• that all parties work within their defined roll be that Network / Affiliate / AM or Merchant

So when a "Trusted Third Party" Network such as LinkShare not only allows an affiliate to actually ignore most of these qualities but actually owns it too, then you have to wonder where the "Trusted Third Party" bit has gone. Affiliates can argue back and forward on whether BHOs (Browser Help Objects) should be part of the affiliate channel and how they should interact with the consumer, but the real argument has to be, why is LinkShare now operating as an Affiliate? It is, without a doubt, wrong at all levels.

Certainly they aren't the first, but as they like to state, they are a market leader, so why is a market leader going out of its' way to cannibalize it's affiliate base? Already multiple tests have shown that not only is the LinkShare owned BHO failing to follow LinkShare's own Terms and Conditions but it is also going beyond BHOs the likes of Ebates and overwriting tracking that is meant to be protected by the afsrc=1 code.

A couple of example videos below on how this LinkShare owned affiliate BHO is cannibalizing Walmart traffic, please allow the videos time to load.

• Example One
  
• Example Two
  
• Example Three
  
• Example Four
  

If this is the way Networks are going then I think we can throw the "Trusted Third Party" label our of the window, perhaps go with "Affiliate and Merchant Cannibalization Network" instead?

As a merchant ask yourself? Do you want this kind of "marketing" to be cannibalizing your sales channels, and as an affiliate, do you want to be promoting merchants that allow your traffic to be cannibalized for someone else's profit?

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Innovation in Affiliate Marketing

AMWSO is very proud to have been short listed in the category for Innovation in Affiliate Marketing in the E-consultancy's Innovation Awards 2008. The other firms short listed certainly make it a short list worth being on withthe full short list being :

• TradeDoubler
• sunshine.co.uk
• AMWSO Co Ltd
• Essence Media
• Digital Window

The winners of the award will be announced on December 2nd, by a panel of judges that come from a top tier selection of firms that include the BBC, Apple, Orange, Target Marketing, Whatif!, Internet Retailing, Dyson and Google.

Congratulations to all the firms shortlisted.

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Big Game Hunting : Trade Mark Bidders

Sports hunting has evolved online and no longer do we need to go around shooting lions and the like. Nope online there's bigger things to hunt, and over the past year "Trade Mark Bidders" have become the primary target.

The issue is quite simple, it's easier to make a fast buck bidding on someones trade mark than it is to try and actually add some value to the shopping process, add to which trade marks convert really well and we have a recipe to attract every layabout and lazy dog on the Internet. Granted their are exceptions but the majority of TM bidding is all "value take" not "value add".

Online merchants expect their affiliate managers / management firm to audit their affiliates, make sure they are adding value and, more and more, that affiliates are not cannibalizing their Trade Marks. The issue then becomes one of time and resources, how does the affiliate manage monitor a multitude of search engines, especially when ppc can now be set to target consumers within specific time periods and within specific geographic locations. An affiliate manager working from 9 AM to 5 PM in LA, is not going to see the ads targeting consumers "only" in Seattle, nor the ads in LA that kick off at 6 PM PST. The affiliate manager could effectively spend 8 hours a day simply trolling the search engines in hope of finding violators. The chances are still slim that they will find the violators even if they are there as TM bidders have become sophisticated in how they hide their links and disguise how their traffic gets to a merchants site. Yes they have a nice looking "niche" site in their profile...too bad it actually drives no traffic at all!

Anyway, so what we have is a situation where the affiliate manager is spending more time auditing than doing their core job, or where they simply throw their hands in the air and declare the situation to be beyond their control, pass the buck and hope someone else will take care of it, or not notice that have stopped monitoring the TM bidding.

Last year we thought about developing something that would automate this process, but with other tasks to do that fell by the way side, and we've seen other firms try to launch products that will do the job, but ultimately have failed to deliver. This morning however I had a great call with David Naffziger of Brandverity, who appear to have a working solution and clear understanding of the challenges that affiliate managers face. While not yet perfect the system they have developed certainly does far more than most other systems we've had a look at to date.

As well as the core task of tracking down direct to site affiliate TM links it also records all forms of TM bidding to allow the affiliate manager to swiftly trace a bid to a landing page and tie it to an affiliate account or a competitor. It allows inhouse ads to be ignored and even has the ability to white list specific trusted PPC partners so that the reports will come through clear of approved / inhouse marketing.

A key mistake I made with their system was to only read the daily email report and not log into the site. The emails are fine, but are a little overwhelming, log in and the data is far more manageable and also deeper! Brandverity cover a number of key markets and search engines and are expanding constantly to cover new markets, and as David said, they are very keen to get feedback and ideas on how to make the tool better. Overall looks like this will be the solution that allows affiliate managers to get their focus back on helping value ad partners, and away from wasting time chasing down those out to take away that value.

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New publisher mining tool from Syntryx

A new tool is on the horizon for the Syntryx Solution Suite. While it's always been easy to track down competitor publishers within the suite, review their data and the potential power that can be generated from working with any given partner, it has, till I saw this new tool, been quite a task to get a full picture of the overlapping nature of different relationships between merchants and their publishing partners.

With the amount of data such a report can generate, Syntryx opted for a visual representation, which will look like this :


Each color representing a keyword and each white dot a site, so what you're looking for is where the most colors come together.

How does this work in practical terms? Well pretty much as follows...

With this tool I could for example compare 3 (or more) different merchants and then visually be able to see

* The overlap in publishing partners of all three merchants
* The overlap between pairs merchants
* Areas where there are no overlaps

I'm then able to drill down and see the data for any publisher working with any of the three merchants.

So if I was a new merchant (a competitor to all three for example) I could use this to data to perform a form of triangulation to discover what may be the "best publishers" or "most used publishers" by other firms. Or looking at it from another angle, I could see which publishers are heavily used (perhaps overused even) and find those little gems that only one merchant is partnered with and are completely under utililized used. Naturally finding out whether a publisher is over or under used requires that little extra digging and Syntryx has never lacked for digging tools or data to find!

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Shareasale launches "Affiliate Create a video"

It was a rumour and now it's fact. And rather than repeat what's already posted in the ShareaSale forum, click here and read about the great new tool that allows affiliates to create and generate their own video creatives, and link them to multiple merchants throughout the video through the use of cue points. Meaning an affiliate can create a niche focused video covering five related products and promote five different merchants all in one video, darned cool!

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Shareasale ads Video Support

While affiliates continue to look for ways to ad value to a merchants marketing campaign, they are often hampered by a networks limitations on what linking and tracking options are available. Most affiliates find they can only innovate as fast as their network partners allow. While video has been hot for a while and some merchants have had click trackable video available for a couple of years, it's still not easy to support directly within most networks. Most solutions to date have used a work around system to avoid the complications or added expense of using an affiliate networks options.

So it's great to see Shareasale once again step into the breach and release a video tool set to help merchants create and deploy videos for their affiliates to use.

The present system provides a way for merchants to set up videos in Shareasale, but it looks like there will be a system to support affiliate created videos too!

Check out a demo of the system on the SAS Blog.

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Affiliate Call to Arms: Add Value Now or Die!

Jeff Molander recently let loose on what’s getting in the way of innovation in the performance marketing (affiliate) industry. Jeff’s an outspoken guy with a keen eye on challenges our industry faces. I’m glad to report his agreeing to occasionally offer AMWSO readers insights on how affiliates can survive the storm – thrive in an increasingly hostile environment. I asked him to comment on what affiliates should be doing to add value to their site visitors in a way that drives financial results for both themselves and the advertisers they represent. The following was his response…

Affiliate Call to Arms: Add Value Now or Die!

There’s never been a time where advertisers have demanded more of cost-per-action (CPA) affiliates – period. Today’s affiliates are asked to walk on water among other things. So what’s a responsible business owner to do? “Adding value” to merchant relationships sounds good but what the heck does that really mean beyond the buzzword? I’ll give you a handful of value-add strategies to consider and implement in short time. Ready?

Say Buh-Bye to Pimpin’ Traffic

First, let me empathize a bit with you veterans out there and for newbies listen up! In 2006 I was falsely accused of saying in front of an ad:tech crowd, (it was actually Declan Dunn’s catch phrase!), “it’s tough out here for a traffic pimp.” What prompted Declan to make such a funny yet truthful statement that ad:tech itself chose to play dumb on? A pre-session discussion among panelists who’s heads were all spinning from major changed handed down to the affiliate marketing industry. At the time, both eBay and Google were dishing out all kinds of new rules – issues that affiliates of all sizes and flavors were forced to confront. Decisions were being made by Powers Almighty and their fate seemed out of their control.

Yet things ARE in your control if you choose to place yourself in the driver’s seat. The choice is yours as a CPA affiliate or any small business owner on the Web: You must “live life” rather than “let life live you.” The choice is yours. Which will you choose? If you’ve read this far you’re at least interested in the latter choice – viva la affiliate!

My driving point here is this: advertisers don’t need your “traffic.” From lead buyers to retail marketers they’ve evolved beyond “traffic.” They’re busy managing the intersection of search and affiliate programs. They’re interested in:

• Diversifying their mix of distribution points across the Web (NOTE: they’re already doing their own search marketing and rely less on yours!)
• More incremental sales, higher quality leads and/or new customers

Innovate or Die

There are tremendous obstacles impeding your march toward increased revenue and innovation. The affiliate marketing industry is going through serious growing pains and don’t let anyone tell you that it’s not. And no… “Web 2.0” is not exploding opportunities for affiliates. Yes there are rare exceptions (i.e. best practice using video and affiliates) and if you keep on reading this blog you’ll notice that AMWSO is leading the way J

“Affiliate marketing has evolved and it’s difficult for newcomers to jump in without any capital and start making money,” says Chris Finken, of OrangeSoda.com. “Blogs remain a popular tool for affiliate marketing ‘on the cheap,’ but successful affiliates are still making great money without experimenting with video and mobile.”

The point: none of this is easy anymore. It’s time to get honestly innovative but even that is tough. The future of affiliate marketing is being retarded by incumbents. Yet Mr. Finken and I both remain hopeful… but only when focused on making the best choices.

Your Choices

Ok, Molander, so what are the choices?! In short form, they are derived from what advertisers want most. Let’s tackle a few.

Better Distribution (Increased Subscribers for You!)

Ok, ok so a few affiliate networks are actually innovating here including Linkshare with its FlexLinks. AvantLink is taking an open source approach to innovation, opening up its system to affiliates for further development, rather than simply offering them a boxed solution. AvantLink makes a bevy of RSS-enabled tools available to affiliates and advertisers. What does that mean?

“We're offering merchants the ability to maintain ‘on sale’ and ‘deal of the day’ RSS campaigns for affiliates to publish on their sites,” says AvantLink’s Gary Marcoccia. “And to take it one step further the affiliates can promote ‘subscriptions’ to the same RSS feeds.”

“The key in generating feed subscribers from their site (in addition to, of course, sales), is affiliate IDs being embedded in links from the deal feeds… for as long as they are in use,” adds Marcoccia.

Impressive! Affiliate link syndication by way of customer subscription. Bada-bing (merchant value), bada-boom (value to your business). Now I’ll be straight with you this is a strategy with plenty of tactics. Paging RSS for marketers Guru, Rok Hrastnik… please pick up a blue courtesy phone (or better yet, fair reader, check out Rok’s ‘Unleash the Power of RSS’ book and encourage him to finish up his new book). RSS is frighteningly open-ended and innovation intense. The challenge is how to make it rapidly used by consumers! Then again, my mom, dad and I’ll bet your grandparents are using RSS today without knowing it. We all are!

Revtrax, formerly Oncard Marketing, is all about taking affiliate marketing to stores. That’s right, dirt world stores. They’re literally providing a means for advertisers to partner up with affiliates who have distribution outside of the Web – like stores or direct mail (think ad-stuffers that ride along with utility, credit card and other bills). Might you be able to tap into such distribution based on people you know at the local Rotary Club or business card exchange? I’ll bet you might! Talk about the Holy Grail of advertiser value!

Think also about successful CPA affiliate sites like Buzzilions.com – one of the first in our business to convince advertisers that wrapping customer-generated content (product reviews) around their products (distributed to them via affiliate networks and direct merchant relationships) was valuable. Was it new distribution for advertisers? You betcha it was.

Flexible, Performance-based Cost Models

Revtrax and other successful affiliate businesses – including those that remain family-run/owned like FatWallet.com or SheFinds.com – have one thing in common. That is, they’re diversifying themselves and, in fact, transforming from affiliate to publisher and finally to media company. This involves offering advertisers more than just commission-based placements. Look also to small business successes like Jellyfish.com who blend various performance payment models and customer-facing value. Don’t forget, the major comparison shopping engines all started as CPA only and migrated to CPC with some blending CPA+CPC today. Use your historical data with advertisers to your advantage. Negotiate other types of pricing based on effective CPA.

Of course, earning those CPM/fixed fee placement and/or cost-per-click (CPC) dollars isn’t easy. Doing so requires a high degree of professionalism and unique insight as to the demographic composition of your site visitors. It also requires a sales staff that can speak the language of other departments within marketers’ office… or interact with their external advertising agency. It often requires thinking and acting outside your comfort zone. Doing so is difficult but once you’ve overcome the fear, packaged yourself up and closed a few deals the fear goes away.

Denial is Not Just a River in Africa

Ever notice how things can smell like a skunk in affiliate marketing… but many pretend that everything is fine and rosy? Next think ya know, whammo. Affiliates get dished a raw deal… but ultimately they’re forced to swallow a bitter pill. Maybe an affiliate network stabs an affiliate in the back. Or maybe an affiliate turns around and bites the hand that’s fed it since childbirth. Other times affiliates themselves win the battle…but make no mistake, there IS a battle being waged. Let’s quit denying it and address the real issues. I’m not confident that affiliate networks are able to or actively addressing it on your behalf. Aaah, for the glory days of Commission Junction when it catered to affiliates first, advertisers second!

It’s sad but true: there are people who prefer to avoid talking about the fact that advertisers are asking for more. Are you one of them? I recommend getting off that train and now!

Although these battles create difficulty for affiliates they serve a purpose – to force change and create new opportunities. Will you be there “left holding an empty bag” or will you keep an “ear to the track” and listen to that train coming down the track before it pulls into the station? The choice is yours and in the end you need to take action that creates true value for your visitors first, advertisers second and, as a result, your business.

Jeff Molander is CEO of performance marketing consulting company, Molander & Associates Inc. where he provides executive-level guidance on digital marketing and media to multi-channel retailers, entrepreneurs and investment firms. He’s also a principal with The Partner Maker LLC, a new affiliate management system designed to drive increased revenue between affiliates and marketers. His background includes helping found digital marketing services company, Performics Inc.; today a division of Google. He can be reached at jeff*at*jeffmolander.com

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Merchants can take Advantage of Falling Dollar though Affiliate Marketing

Every week the dollar seems to be falling further down against all of the other world currencies, including the Yen, Euro and Pound. The bad news this reflects: the rest of the world doesn't quite have the same faith in the U.S. Economy anymore, and also things will be getting a bit more expensive within the USA, and the power of the dollar decreases.  However, for merchants, the good news is that American products are now less expensive and are more attractive to consumers in other countries. Promoting visits to the U.S.A. is getting to be quite popular to Europeans with the thoughts of coming over for cheap holidays and shopping.

Our world is shrinking everyday from a business perspective.  I love this ad from the Financial Times that illustrates various landmark skyscrapers all existing on a "global island".

Business in America have a great opportunity now to start marketing their products overseas. If a merchant has never attempted to market products overseas, using an affiliate program is a good way to "dip the foot in the water." In the U.K. affiliate marketing is growing by leaps and bounds and more publishers are getting turned onto the advantages as opposed to Adsense. There are now 2 major annual affiliate events in the UK with the A4U Expo and the new Affiliate Summit UK.

Affiliate marketing (while lagging the UK) is also gaining more mainstream popularity with webmasters in Australia and New Zealand. There are certainly plenty of webmasters promoting sites in the US that are already familiar with affiliate marketing principles. These are the easiest to enter markets for Americans due to the language similarities. Other European and Asian markets however do offer potentially attractive affiliate markets. Affiliate marketing (through mobile commerce) is a HUGE industry in Japan. There is also potential in countries like Ireland, Germany, France,  Singapore and Korea.

They key: get assistance from a knowledgeable agent and/or network with experience in the region. AMWSO has enormous advantages since we are based in Asia with many staff members originally from Europe. Getting connected through a network can alleviate any international affiliate payment and tracking issues, leaving the merchant to contend with payment processing and shipping. Major credit card processing and Paypal eliminate 90% of international payment issues, and now with the various logistic and fulfillment services from companies such as UPS or even Amazon, storage and shipment of products can be localized as well.

The barriers for selling internationally are being lowered everyday. Consider dipping your foot into the water through performance marketing before your competitions locks down the market.

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Affiliate Marketing and Appealing to Different World Views

Everything a person looks at, experiences or examines gets filtered through a specific world view. Seth Godin, in his book All Marketers are Liars emphasizes this issue (among other things) as a key point in crafting stories or messages that will appeal to potential customers. One of the key themes in the book, is that merchants should not try and appeal to a multitude of world views, or else they risk their message becoming too diluted, unfocused and generic.

Affiliate marketing can be a valuable tool in expanding a merchants reach to different types of customers with different world views. Just on the surface, consider that couponers know their visitors are hunting for discounts and deals, forums know their customers have in-depth interest in particular niches', and content/blog sites will of course appeal to various niche interests.  Recruiting different types of quality affiliates to an affiliate program allows a merchant to touch these potential customers, through the affiliate partners that they might not never have been able to reach when focusing on their core customer's world view.

For example, consider a trendy woman's fashion merchant. Logic would dictate they this merchant would craft their message to their core customer segment, woman interested in trendy fashions. Now, suppose we have a webmaster who runs a blog with a community of married men who are computer enthusiasts (aka nerds) (note: I would definitely be a member of this community). Right before Christmas time, these men are desperate and searching for advice and tips on gifts to buy their wives/significant others. The blog owner signs up for the woman's trendy fashion affiliate program, and offers this merchant up to his community. Just like that, the trendy woman's fashion site gets exposed to a group of men who wouldn't ordinarily be visiting this site, and who are looking for things to purchase.

Among the advantages of CPA marketing; measurable and clear ROI, it's important not to neglect the huge advantage of expanding the merchant reach to customers not ordinarily exposed to a merchant. Good affiliate managers will be on the look out for these types of affiliates and will be actively recruiting them into a program.

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Text Links vs. Banner Ads

As an affiliate manager, I'm often asked, "Which convert better: text links or banners?" At first glance, the most obvious answer it text links. Glancing at a report or statistics will reveal that most of the time text links do convert better than banner ads.

However, there's more to the story than just that. I believe it has to do with how text links are used as opposed to banners that contribute greatly to the higher conversion / success rate. Consider for a moment how text links are employed as opposed to banners.

Let's first take a look at how text links are commonly used. The greatest use of text links comes from product data feeds. These product data feeds employ the specific product name as the text link. Of course, any shopper who is looking for a specific product, sees the product name, and then clicks the link will have the highest possible conversion chance. If a visitor knows what they want, and has already made up their mind that they WILL be making a purchase, then closing the sale becomes a far less challenging task. I discussed this a bit further when examining effective affiliate landing pages.

Another common use of text link: they are placed into the body of a webpage. Content is built around the text link. It much easier to built a value proposition, or tell a story when you have content build around a link then it is to tell that same story with just a banner/picture with a short tag line.

In comparison, consider how banners are commonly placed. Either at the top of a web page, or along the sidebar. Experienced web surfers have already trained themselves to know, banners placed in these spots (especially the leaderboard banner across the top of a page) are trying to sell them something, It's quite easy to automatically tune out to those messages.

The common perception: text links lead to information, banners lead to a sale pitch. Now, this is not to say that banner cannot be an effective tool in promotion. Just don't expect to put up a page and slap a bunch of banners up and expect to have any success. Build up some content, tell a story through that content that appeals to your visitors wants.

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Strategies for Conversions through Effective Affiliate Landing Pages - Part 2 (Directing Visitors Who Want to Buy)

In Strategies for Affiliate Landing Pages Part 1 we discussed the idea of a value added landing page, talked about two types of site visitors, and discussed strategies for designing a landing page for early buying cycle visitors. Now, I'd like to discuss strategies for those buyers who know exactly what they want to purchase.

You can usually identify these buyers by how they are arriving at your site. If they've used exact product names, or very specific keywords, then you can generally assume that they have already narrowed down their choice to this specific product. Now it's all a matter of directing the visitor to where they can make the purchase.  Your job as an affiliate is not to convince them to make the purchase, this must be accomplished by the merchant. If you are promoting a specific merchant, then you should already know that the merchant is able to convert visitors to customers.

Visitors who have arrived at your page from typing in a specific product name, or model number, are expecting to see that product clearly on your page. Header, title, bolded, make it very clear to the visitor that they have arrived at the correct place. K.I.S.S., or Keep It Simple Stupid. Don't clutter up the page with unnecessary distractions, banners, etc. Be concise and clear, keep sentences short, paragraphs short, and even use bullet points. Emphasize promotions or coupons that a merchant has available, and make the value proposition clear.

If you have a comparison on the page of the product from a few different merchants, highlight the value proposition for each merchant. Guarantees, free shipping, return policy, etc. The visitor knows what they want to buy, now they need to be directed on where to buy from. Give them the information to make a quick decision, and pass them to the merchant to close the sale.

And finally, but critically important, make a very clear, very easy to identify, call to action:  Click here; Buy here, Buy now.

Don't be afraid to test and try different things.  Try two different pages and alternate them. Does one convert better?  USE it. Good affiliate marketing takes effort, so don't be afraid to put forth the effort and build a couple landing pages and test them.

Recap:

• Product name/keyword featured on the page.
• Keep it simple.
• Emphasize coupons/discounts/promotions.
• Provide short value propositions if different merchants promoted.
• Clear, visible, distinct call to action

If you have any other tips or advise, or want to share successes, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

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Strategies for Conversions through Effective Affiliate Landing Pages - Part 1

Well there was a lot of hubbub that came out of he Affiliate Summit and Jason Calacanis' keynote talk. He called affiliates to the table, especially those with what he termed "thin landing pages." The warning that he sounded, is that some bad affiliates are polluting the well for everyone.

Granted, deceptive landing pages, cookie stuffing, deceptive redirection, misleading offers, etc., are polluting the well, however thin landing pages really are just poor business execution. Affiliates aren't paid on clicks, they are paid only when the sale is made, so if affiliates do not send pre-sold or targeted traffic to a merchant, the affiliate isn't going to be making any money.  As more people get into the affiliate business, and start building value added sites, these thin landing page sites will get driven off the map. This is a natural progression, the cream will rise to the top.

Now, how do you as an affiliate ensure that you are part of the cream that rises to the top? It's not a secret sauce, and it's not rocket science. One need only add some value to the buying cycle.  There are essentially two types of buying traffic, people gathering information and in the early stages of the buying cycle, and those who have pretty much decided and looking to make a purchase. Each visitor has different needs that must be met. You can get an idea on what type of visitor will be arriving at your site, based on where they are coming from and the keywords they are using to reach the web page. Let me provide an example, I run the program for Baghaus handbags. Now if someone arrives at a site using the keywords, "Celebrity Handbag", I know they are generally early in their buying cycle, and just shopping around for ideas or information. However, if they hit the site using a very specific handbag name, I can deduce that they are looking to purchase that specific handbag.

Visitors in the early part of the buying cycle should be directed to a different type of page that late cycle buyers. How can you add value to the early cycle buyers?  Here are some ideas:

• Show many different products listed and compared.
• Informative content / articles concerning the type of product or niche.
• Comparison chart

The important thing to consider is, "what is going to be valuable to your visitor, and convince them to make or return and make the purchase through your site?" Establish your site as an authority site for information about this product or niche for this visitor.

Let me tell you, slapping up a site with a ton of banners mish-mashed all over the place isn't going to get that done. Put yourself in your visitor's shoes. If you hit that type of site, how will it help you in making a purchasing decision? What value is it adding for you in the buying cycle?

On your site, add a "About Us" page and also a "Privacy Policy". Fill these in as well, to give your visitor a sense that your are running a real business, and are committed running a professional operation. I guarantee having these two simple pages will increase your conversions and return visitor numbers.

Next post, we'll deal with how to build pages for those late cycle buyers who are intending to make a purchase.

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ShareASale "Under the Stars" Party at Affiliate Summit

Here are some pictures and a clip from the awesome ShareASale "Under the Stars" party that took place on Sunday, February 24th at the 2-story Sky Villas on the top floors of the Palms Hotel "Fantasy Tower".


Mike Allen, super-affiliate of Shopping-Bargains


Brian Littleton, founder and CEO of ShareASale

Brian of ShareASale at the piano.

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Can you make BIG money in Affiliate Marketing?

Yes, you can! Paul from Uber Affiliate just put up a new site compiling some of the pictures and earnings from a few large affiliates over at S.eriously.com. Those checks and earnings reports can certainly be motivating (Granted there is some discussion and debate over how many are real and how many are...touched up). But either way, as a firm, AMWSO has issued some big checks over the past few years. Of course these aren't generally net earnings, as a lot of that traffic might have been paid for via paid search ads. So even though an affiliate gets a check for say $100,000, they might have to pay $99,000 to Google, Yahoo or MSN for search advertising. Then of course, there is this other tried and true method of "earning big money via onlne marketing" :)

However, who can argue with an extra $1000 in the pocket. Plus, there can be ancillary benefits. Imagine if you're paying for all of those search ads on a credit card that gives cash back, or rewards points. 99,000 rewards points can add up to some nice all paid vacations in a short amount of time, or cash back, or any other benefits offered by credit card companies.

How can you start earning some of these monster checks? It isn't easy, but it's attainable, however it does take effort and work to build sustainable protected earnings.

The first thing to do, is to decide what product and how you'll be promoting a product or program. Basically you can make a niche site that is content focused, or a more general type of site like a coupon site or reward site.

If you decide to go with a niche site, then you must decide on what that niche is. There are various recommended ways of deciding on a niche, some advise to start off doing keyword research. I would recommend to start writing down some topics that interest you. At least, while you're learning to be an elite affiliate marketer, you'll also be learning about a subject that inspires you. Find some affiliate programs centered around these niches, sign up, and ask the affiliate manager for a keyword list. Then do a bit of keyword research to see what kind of traffic the recommended keywords are getting. See if you can come up with your own long-tail keywords using the provided list as a base. I would do a review of keyword tools here, but I don't think I could be more comprehensive that this keyword tool review by Aaron Wall.

In another post here, we'll talk about what kind of costs you might incur when investing in a keyword tool, getting a web host, getting some design help, and promoting your site.

If looking for program ideas, sign up for one of the AMWSO programs and get some help from one of the AMWSO managers to get you on the fast track to receiving one of those monster checks!

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Valentines Day for Affiliates

Next to Christmas, Valentine's Day is one of the biggest shopping holidays of the year. Close to a billion dollars will be spent for Valentine's day, and affiliates are in an excellent position to grab a piece of the pie. Most of the shopping is done the week prior to the 14th of February, with another surge occurring just a couple days before the day as shoppers search for those last minute ideas and gifts.

The expected usual suspects: jewelry, flowers, chocolate and other gifts are the hottest items for the Valentine's Holiday.  Thankfully, most respective merchants have affiliate programs in all of these niches.  Men average over $100 spending for the holiday, with woman averaging just over $50. While it's true that many people are actually turned off by the commercialization of this day, 30% of people surveyed by the NPD Group appreciate the romance of the day, and 8% are pressured into making a purchase, "so they don't get into trouble."

Jewelry and the like will be the most promoted items, however do consider that women might also be making purchases for men. Also consider, once people are prompted into a "buying mood", anything might get purchased for anyone, including purchases for oneself!  According to Google checkout, 50% of people shopping for Valentine's Day make multiple purchases.  According to the National Retail Federation, 22.4 percent of men and 7.3 percent of women plan to purchase jewelry.

AMWSO runs several jewelry and fashion programs that are positioned well for the Valentine's holiday. We've set up a special Valentine's Day Affiliate Programs page to highlight the specials, deals and offers that are being promoted just for Valentine's Day.

This is really the last gift giving holiday until Mother's Day in the USA (although some people gift for Easter), so gear up, get those banners, links, promotions and coupons posted!

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US Bank Visa Not Allowing Internet Purchases

Lee Odden over at his Online Marketing Blog has related a story where a major bank is not allowing purchases made with it's credit card over the internet. It's not as if affiliates have enough factors getting in the way of them earning their rightful commissions. Factors including cookie blocking, parasiteware, cookie stuffers, failed tracking and other factors. However, now if credit card companies force consumers to call a company to complete an online transaction, this will certainly have an impact on affiliate sales.

Affiliates and the major affiliate networks need to be aware of this, and keep an eye on the trend. US Bank is not small, and it's a pretty narrow view they are taking in the name of "security." I certainly hope they start to see the light as they lose consumers and transactions as consumers reject this inconvenience, as Lee had done.

Just to note, I tried to contact the PR team listed on the US Bank web site for a comment and response, and sent emails to Steve Dale, Teri Charest, Amy Frantti, and Lisa Clark, but did not receive any replies.

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A First for Affiliate Applications on Facebook

I've seen a lot of chatter around about, how will merchants use systems like Facebook for affiliate marketing, or even how will affiliates use it, lots of chatter, little action, until Scott sent me an application he has developed to look at, bingo!

Scott (aka Mallicious) has created a really cool, coupon sharing, snipping and commenting application for Facebook, that allows any user to plug in the coupon system to my profile, share it, share individual coupons, snip coupons for later use and comment them

We are the first social shopping engine to combine coupons, deals and price comparison to help consumers discover deals through their social graph.

Users can quickly and easily create their own deal feed that is automatically combined as "Social Deals" for each of their friends. Consumers can now get gift ideas, discounts and coupons from their personal social circle.

The main coupon system page shows lots of data for the individual coupons too, snipped how many times and community comments. Might be I've overlooked, or not been invited to use other Facebook applications that open the way to merchants to get involved, but this is the first affiliate marketing application on Facebook that I have seen that adds value and looks like it can succeed in leveraging a social network.

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Macau Affiliate Convention Day Two

Okay I overslept and missed the first session, but certainly enjoyed the next few sessions which dealt with issues such as payment solutions in China, the China Lottery and online gaming in Greater China. The most topical for me being the presentation on payments, presented by Chen Yu from Yee Pay. A surprising fact that was raised was credit card penetration, which is a maximum of around 5 million cards, of which maybe 2 million are active, on the other hand Bank Debit cards have a penetration of 20 Billion (with a B) . The great distrust between buyers and sellers for online products is still very strong, but gradually being broken down by firms like YeePay, Alipay and 99Bill which are showing consumers that there are trustworthy payment solutions. As well as in areas where the purchase is for online services such as MMORPGs, electronic deliverables and the like.

The final event of the day an the show was the Beer Panel which featured 6 of us from a wide range of backgrounds and industries fielding questions on a wide range of topics, from fraud in Asia to what areas are affiliates in Asia doing well in, to affiliate training and what are the emerging markets in Asia, and in what commerce areas.

All in all it was a great event. A great job by Mark Lesnick and his team to put this first Macau affiliate event together and I certainly look forwards to the next one!

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Macau Affiliate Convention Day One

Well my first surprise of the day was how many people are here, I guess I'd been expecting 50 or so, but there around 150 to 200 folks here from as far afield as the USA, Australia, Cyprus, Israel and all over Asia. A very solid turn out for the first event. A lot of the attendees and most of the exhibitors and gaming firms, but a lot of presentations are retail and general affiliate focused. An interesting mix for sure.

Certainly for me it was very educational to hear some of the China based presentations, especially from key note speaker, Shimizu Yoichi from Adways, getting an insight into what markets are working on in the region and what are not as well as how advertisers are using affiliate networks with the very slow change from CPM/CPC based ad runs towards CPL and CPA. Also regarding the restrictions in online gaming on the region that prevent the major gaming firms from moving very quickly into the market.

Mobile marketing has a very big roll in for networks and publishers , especially in Japan, apparently around 20% of all network Adway marketing is through mobile devices.

My 101 Session was not hugely packed, the majority of affiliates here being experienced folks who are already successful enough to fly from all corners of the world to join the event. I did have one heckler in the back row, who we almost had to throw out, I managed to fail to recognize David Wolf from Syntryx :-) , much to his amusement. Luckily I recognized everyone else that I have had chance to meet or talk with before.

Probably the best session of the day though (for me anyway) was the presentation by Monte Cahn of Moniker.com , it was an eye opening lesson in "domain real estate" and the reality that investing in a good domain is likely to bring in faster and better return than just about any other investment a person can make in any business. Looks like the new car is going to have to wait!

I finally found the river / canal that the hotel promotes as having "in" the hotel, much to my surprise and wonder, it is on the 3rd floor. You can take a gondola ride through the Venetian style shopping arcade of some 100+ shops. Pretty impressive!

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Macau Affiliate Convention Day Zero

Well it's a nice easy 2 and half hour flight from Bangkok to Macau and this is also my first visit to Macau. And so far I'm well impressed. Landing early, it was a 30 to 40 metre walk from the planes steps to the customs counter, cleared in 10 minutes, and out to the shuttle bus in 5 more. The bus left 10 minutes later and the hotel is so close to the airport I could probably have walked there in that time. The hotel (The Venetian) is huge. It's not big, or large..it is huge..and busy..it took longer to queue to check in that it did to land clear customs and get to the hotel.

Then I got lost trying to find my room, the instructions were simple enough, go straight turn right before the casino floor and take the lift to the 10th floor. I must have taken an early right and did a tour of the out wings before finding the right lift. Discovered ABBA are playing here next week in the process though!

The rooms, are all suites and are lavish, you could put a family of 10 in one room and have room to spare for sports. Wireless Internet in all rooms, TVs, Giant Bed, bathroom (bigger than some rooms I've stayed in) the living room and bed room are split by a mezzanine floor style layout. The floor plan is on the left.

I think I'd need an extra day to just explore the hotel.

Anyway the event starts tomorrow, so I have this evening to track down a few fellow attendees and see who has lost their marketing budget playing games of Casino War, Baccarat, Fan Tan, Caribbean Stud, Sic Bo and Yee Hah Hai... games I'm sure everyone knows all too well, okay they have Black Jack, Roulette (US Style Tables), Three Card Poker (Called Bragg in the UK) as well as the slot machines.

Right enough for day zero, more tomorrow once the event starts!

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The Difference Between a Super Affiliate and You

There really is none, other than a little bit of luck, experience, and action. Anyone who stakes a claim that they were able to develop a $1000+ net income stream from affiliate marketing is certainly a rare exception to the rule.

Right now, experienced affiliates are beginning to reap the whirlwind that comes with the holiday shopping frenzy. Time was spent preparing their sites, tweaking their SEO and building links, testing PPC ads and campaigns, and adding content to their sites all in preparation for Q4. Make no mistake about it, there's a lot of work involved. Don't be fooled by the get rich quick false sales pitches of earning thousands with no effort within days. There are exceptions to every rule, but you might as well play the lottery to pin your hopes on these kinds of expectations.

But you CAN get there,  You can reach a high level of income coming from affiliate marketing with patience. Experiment, try, build your first site and work with it to try and optimize it. Ask yourself the question, "What do people need?  What would you like to have?"  Even if you don't have any experience with building a webpage, there are so many tools now available to easily put something up.  Take a look at Weebly, Jimdo or Synthasite for easy on-screen site building. Start a blog through Blogger. Build a Squidoo lens or a Hubpage.

The super-affiliates got to where they are today because they put up their first page, and played with it, worked it, and built their site or sites into something meaningful and valuable.

Still lost?  Check out this page for other AMWSO Affiliate Marketing tips.

The point of all of this, is to start now and put up a page for affiliate marketing. You can of course learn from reading and analysis, but the quickest way to learn is through trial and error. Nothing gets earned until you put up that first page, build your content and then put up those first affiliate links, so why not do it today while you're reading up from the forums, blogs and books?

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Duplicate Content Search Engine Penalties and Affiliate Marketing

Many merchants who run affiliate programs make available content for their affiliates to use on affiliate sites. A common question / concern asked of AMWSO is if this content is being distributed to all affiliates, and multiple affiliates are using the content, will this incur a search engine penalty?  It's a question asked of us both from the merchant perspective, as they redistribute content on their own pages, and also from the affiliate perspective, since the affiliates want to use that content.

First, having a page considered as a duplicate does not earn you a penalty in the search engines. Search engines aim to retrieve the best result for any given search, so if a page is considered a duplicate, it is simply filtered out of the results for that particular search query. Your site and domain do not receive any penalty once this happens. To quote from one source written by SEO expert Jill Whalen:

Reprinting someone's article on your site is not going to cause a penalty. At best, your page with the article will show up in a search related to it; at worst, it won't. No big deal either way.

If you are really concerned about duplicate content, and your objective is to get those pages with the content ranking in the search engines, then Webconfs.com provides an excellent article with tips how to get around the duplicate filters. Steps suggested are as simple as writing a brief editorial around the content, or simply changing the page structure around.

For the merchants out there, don't let the fear of duplicate content filters dissuade you from providing valuable content for your affiliates. After all, these affiliates are working to drive that traffic to your site in the end.

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Affiliate Marketing and using PPC and Organic SEO as Traffic Driving Tactics

I know no valid reason for not using both tactics to drive traffic to an affiliate website other than fear (don't know PPC, might lose money) or laziness (I get traffic via PPC, why should I bother with organic SEO?). Organic search results are obtained through time, building quality links back to the site, and page optimization. Time is really a key factor with organic rankings, as it generally takes time to obtain high rankings for a wide range of search keywords. Paid search or PPC is simply a marketplace for visitors. An affiliate submits an ad to the search engines and bids for placement, and buys clicks/traffic/visits.

Organic search results are viewed by consumer searchers as more credible than paid search advertisements. From a consumer perspective (be it a truly valid or not), the search company is an objective party assigning credibility to top search results by ranking them highly. However, it's not likely that any affiliate can rank in the top 3 or top 5 for the majority of keyword searches for their target categories across all of the major search engines. This is where paid search comes into play. An affiliate is still able to get onto the first page of results through a paid search listing for keywords they might not otherwise rank for organically.

When first building an affiliate site, one effective strategy is to immediately jump in with PPC ads to drive traffic to the site. This allows an affiliate to test things out (is the page converting, how well is it being received, etc?) WHILE the organic search placements are being improved through time and through link building. The important factor, when using PPC ads to drive traffic to affiliate offers, is to track, measure and adjust. Make sure your ad costs are not exceeding what you are making via commissions. Kristy at AffiliateStuff just gave us a great formula for figuring this out:

Avg Order Value x Avg Conversion Rate = Avg Sales Per Hundred Clicks x Affiliate Commission = Avg Earnings Per Hundred Clicks

Once you have your average earning per 100 Clicks, compare that with your ad cost for 100 clicks, and if the earnings are higher, then you're making money! If it's lower, then it's time to do some analysis, figure out which keywords are costing the most and converting the least, and either optimize the ads, or get rid of those keywords. Successful PPC marketing is all about trying, measuring, analyzing, and reconfiguring; it's quite a simple process that only seems complex at first.

Now, back to the original topic at hand, paid search vs. organic search. I've tried to build the case for using paid search and even delved into a tactic on how to do paid search. Now, to address those who are just slapping up quick landing pages designed only to funnel the visitor as quickly as possible to the merchant page, There really is no reason not to build that landing page up for organic rankings as well other than laziness. Half the battle is finished, the page is there, online, the affiliate link is set. Now, simply build some original quality content for the page, and start working to get links back to that page or site. Organic results are free, an added bonus that costs nothing outside of effort and creativity.

A well-rounded, diversified affiliate will employ both tactics to make their affiliate business a success. If you're neglecting one or the other, there are some great free resources out there through forums and blogs to help you build up your skill set. However, don't try to over analyze and over educate, the important thing is to dip your foot in the water and try it yourself. Experience is always the best education.

Excellent Learning Resources for SEO and PPC:

• Abestweb Forum
• SEOmoz Community
• SEOBook Blog and Tools
• Webpronews
• WebmasterWorld
• Digital Point Forums
• PPC Ad Copy Article - Marketing Experiments

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What Does OpenSocial Mean for Affiliate Marketing?

Within tech circles, there is a huge amount of buzz swirling around the Google OpenSocial initiative. Google has partnered up with Myspace, Hi5, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Oracle, Bebo, Ning and a host of others (however not Facebook yet) in support of an open API for social web mini-applications. What the OpenSocial initiative is really about is providing a common API, or common language for application developers to write mini-applications for the various OpenSocial participants.

What are the advantages or uses of applications?

Using mini-applications/apps/widgets, companies / affiliates can now efficiently extend their website experience to existing communities on popular social networks.

What are social networks?

An existing network or community where friends or people of similar interest share.

Facebook was the first social network to open up their API for application development. Applications sat on top of the Facebook platform, and were accessed and used by users through their Facebook profile pages. There are a few affiliate approaches with applications; from Social Shopping Mall which allows users to share / clip and use coupons through the app to iBought which allows product recommendations and purchases through the app.

The OpenSocial API takes the Facebook concept and transforms it to an open standard accessible to any social network. Now with the OpenSocial APIs, application writers can write one application and have it run on a variety of platforms, thereby opening up exposure to even more users. One interesting side note about the OpenSocial participants, Oracle, SalesForce and LinkedIn have chosen to join up, thereby leading one to believe we'll be seeing many more business related applications in the future.

I have listened to some affiliates complain that they've tried to market on Myspace or other social networks with very minimal success. The initial attempts were flawed; making a profile, adding as many people as possible as friends, and then trying to push a marketing message out to these people. This approach didn't fill a need or solve a problem. Now with the opportunity to be creative and innovative, and write an application that can fill some need or solve some problem, marketers have a  new world of opportunities before them.

Will this be the gateway to instant success, or lead to fast millions, probably not. We are potentially riding the very beginnings of a shift. A shift away from traffic being driven by open searches through search engines on the open web, to more defined niche based traffic coming through user selected applications and widgets. Why not be prepared for when this potential shift picks up furious momentum?

If you are a merchant, do you have a social web strategy? If not, one potential way to dip your foot in the water is through your affiliate program. Partnering with value adding affiliates who are already building social applications can give your business and products exposure to the social web while minimizing your risk with the new medium.

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Commission Junction Damaging the Future of Affiliate Marketing!

If you're an affiliate marketer or read affiliate blogs, then you must have heard that Spybot Search and Destroy is now immunizing it's users against CJ links. Any Spybot user using this immunization feature will be lead to an error page after clicking a CJ link. No chance for a sale to be made for the affiliate, no affiliate cookie is ever set.

CPA-Affiliates wrote a blog article breaking this story and Shoemoney also wrote a nice follow-up. In the comments many people call on CJ to "fight against the Spybot program" or address / correct this issue with Spybot. I suggest CJ would do much better to address the root reason why these spyware protection programs block CJ/affiliate cookies.

Anyone in the industry knows that CJ permits too many shady practice affiliates to operate on their network. Much of an affiliate manager's daily activity with a program on CJ revolves around weeding out bad affiliates. Bad affiliates that are using shady practices such as browser hijacking through toolbars, cookie stuffing, forced redirects and forced clicks. Lip-service is paid to the CJ terms of service written against these practices, but true enforcement is passive and minimal at best. The short-term benefit from the added commission revenue just seems too tempting on a broad network-wide scale. However, short-term shady profit acquisition will damage the long-term health of the affiliate industry. Affiliate marketing's reputation will further slip toward the perception of shady/bad business.

Affiliate networks need to follow the Shareasale example, and clean up their act. Networks are making a few extra dollars now, but what happens when Google / Yahoo / Firefox / Spybot etc., start using this justification to block affiliate links and cookies on a much wider scale? What happens when merchants start taking a hard look at the bottom line and realize that shady affiliates are cannibalizing other sales channels and start bailing out of their programs in droves? Poor perceptions can quickly outweigh the perception of value found from hard-working, true value adding affiliates.

Clean up your act CJ, and gain further leverage with Spybot and other spyware programs to stop blocking affiliate links. Even a small step such as providing full click source data to merchants to view and audit could carry a long way toward cleaning things up.

If you have a program on CJ that is infested with bad affiliates and poor performance / ROI, consider seeking the services of an outsourced affiliate program manager before terminating your program.

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Holiday Affiliate Campaign Preparation

Well, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years, Thanksgiving, they are all almost here and of course this means lots of consumer buying. For affiliate marketers, it means lots of site work, deal preparation, and testing. This is often times the busiest time of year, but for good reason, since it's usually the most profitable time of year.

Are you looking for help or guidance as to what you should be doing to prepare your affiliate business for the holidays?  Take a look at this Holiday Season Tips article prepared by the folks over at Share Results for some ideas and tips.  Some other ideas for niche research for the holidays can be found over at 5StarAffiliatePrograms.com

Many of the AMWSO merchant partners offer some revenue supercharging bonuses and consumer sale campaigns, so sign up for the AMWSO Affiliate Program News feed to get the latest breaking promotions and affiliate program news.

According to the Linkshare Holiday 2007 Trends reports, the top reasons people shop online during the holidays are:

1. Find discounts
2. Save time
3. Compare prices
4. Gift ideas

Free shipping is the most highly favored promotion according to consumers. followed closely by sales.

If you're still looking for ideas, don't forget to reach out to your affiliate manager. You affiliate manager is an excellent resource for ideas and help, and is all to often not thought of as an asset to be utilized when searching for help and ideas.

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Affiliate Marketing Can Answer Consumer Online Ad Blindness

E-Consultancy reports on a Deloitte & Touche survey backing up what most of us already know, consumers are looking to avoid on-line advertisements. Blogs, online videos, social sites are all gaining users daily, and new users are becoming more adapt at training themselves to avoid advertisements as numerous eye-tracking studies have shown. Users have gone so far as to install ad-blocking software. Some of the highest rated and most popular add-ons for the Firefox browser include ad blocking modules.

Each quarter, business world publications release a slew of studies and surveys showing ad spending via the Internet is rising dramatically. More people are getting comfortable with using the Internet to make purchases and review and get information about products. Sure, if you're Coke or GM, slapping up banner ads on a cost per impression (CPM) basis makes sense. Their primary focus is to implant their brand in your minds, but if you're in the business of SELLING your merchandise via a website, an affiliate program is a vital tool for success.

Affiliate programs allow your affiliate partners to talk about your products, put text links right in front of their site visitors, and find other creative means for promoting your brand and products. Text links usually convert at a much higher rate than banners, and part of the reason is due to the inherent flexibility permitted with promoting a text link.

Relying on search pay per click is a great advertising tool, but to have a full Internet marketing arsenal an advertiser must also have affiliate partners. As users become more savvy searchers, the natural tendency is going to be to ignore those paid ads to the left and right of search results. Keep in mind; those users who are most comfortable with making purchases now, ARE already ad savvy. Build an affiliate program with high quality affiliates adding value to the sales process, and this could have an equal impact on sales as the pay per click efforts.

An affiliate program is one of the most efficient and cost-effective means for acquiring customers, provided that the program is not on auto-pilot. Manage the program effectively, keeping out parasites, BHO domain targeting, and effectively managing trademark bidders are part of the success formula for having a hugely profitable affiliate program. AMWSO affiliate program services can help you create a cost-effective, vibrant affiliate program that works in concert with other online marketing efforts.

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Macau Affiliate Convention

While the CAC events have been mainly Casino focused through to 2006. This past year they have started opening the event to appeal to retail affiliate marketing too. Which is great for me with their next event being in Macau. I've not been to Macau before so this will be a great chance to see a new country and meet people in the Asia region. It's a two day event with presentations covering a range of topics with the core focus being on how to market in and to an Asian consumer base

I'm penciled in for a couple of presentations, though likely I'll focus on doing an "Affiliate Marketing 101" work shop (or two), it's great to be involved in teaching new people how to do affiliate marketing, and of course how to do it ethically!

If you'll be at the event or in Macau let me know as I have a day before and a day after free for meet, eat and drinks!

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Incentive Browser Plug-Ins / Add-ons Deceive Merchants, Rob Affiliates and Damage the Affiliate Marketing Industry

I was prompted to write this post upon reading about a fairly new Firefox browser add-on called CashAddOn. It was especially distasteful since I am an avid fan of Firefox and open source software, and users have the mistaken impression that his type of add-on is being endorsed by Mozilla and Firefox or that it’s gone through some kind of ethical / good behavior test.

Scott Jangro has an excellent write-up on the bad practice of Cashaddon operates.

From a consumer perspective, the idea of getting some cash back in addition to any regular coupon or discount is very attractive. Many consumers are not overly concerned that a nameless/faceless webmaster might have had his earned commission stolen due to the bad practice of this particular browser add-on.

The merchants that this add-on targets need to be made aware, that this is costing them money, sacrificing goodwill amongst knowledgeable affiliates, and providing NO added value in return. A comment in this discussion from Alex truly brings to light the lack of knowledge about how this add-on operates. The comment expounds the belief that merchants are HAPPY to have this kind of affiliate since it is driving added traffic to the merchant site. However, Cashaddon drives no traffic and adds no value at all. It simply leaches off the traffic ALREADY headed to a site, either via PPC, affiliate link, or simply natural search.

Partnering with affiliates that bring added value to your customer interactions provides the best way to really bring long-term prosperous benefit and growth to an affiliate program. Getting rid of these leaches from a program will not only benefit the bottom-line, but also help to build excellent positive relations with true affiliate partners that have a common interest in parallel success.

AMWSO and many other OPM firms have long promoted ethical and value-added affiliate marketing. If your affiliate program is overridden with parasites, and your other marketing channels are being cannibalized, contact us for a service review and let us apply our value-added principles to cleaning up your program and expanding your bottom-line.

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Tied to your desk.

I just had a great conference session with James Martell and the focus was about affiliate marketing and travel.

I think one of the big draws of affiliate marketing, or any Internet based business really, is that you can do it from home, free yourself up from travel to the office, live a better lifestyle... but the reality is that many of us become just as tied to our desks now as we did when we had to go to the office to work. Heads down 7 days a week, we barely take note of where we are or what we could ... should... be doing.

If the Internet is our place of work, and our laptops our desk then we should all be trying to take our desks outside, away, far far away, hit the beach, the pool, where ever and start living a little of the lifestyle we planned, but didn't do.

I'm as guilty as everyone else on this, but I wonder how many people do manage to get out and do work where ever they lay their hat.

So here's my challenge for everyone, start working away from your "home" , head to a local pool with wifi, a cafe, library, where ever, experience working "out of the office" and then once you've overcome that nervous first step, see how far you can take your desk, and live a little of that lifestyle we should all be enjoying :-)

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Pre Coded Video via RSS Feeds...

It's late and it's the weekend, and I should be in bed, my eye sight is kinda blured, but the truth is there in front of me... I've managed to put a Gaiam video into the LinkShare RSS and have it spit out the other side pre-coded with the affiliate link... and I've played with the content, updated it, changed it and generally mucked around and it's still working, still updating in real time and still tracking perfectly. You can check out the sample I threw together here. It is rough and ready. Or log into LinkShare and grab the raw feed Gaiam (TEST) from the RSS section.

And I must admit when the LinkShare RSS for merchants email arrived in my mail box on April 1 I thought it was some ones idea of a really poor joke... especially when I logged in and couldn't find it.

As it turns out I've been able to plug our own custom RSS feeds for merchant news direct into the LinkShare system with no fuss at all and now I have Video. I shouldn't, but there was nothing else to do at 2 am this morning so I thought I'd have a crack at it before breakfast.

So now it's working I better work out how we can put this to the best use.

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Vancouver Affiliate Meet Up

This will be my third trip to Canada and the 4th Annual Networking Dinner is on at the same time again, great timing there Ian. It's strange to think that for first few years working in affiliate marketing I met no one from the business, not one. And then when I attended the Vancouver Networking Dinner for the first time it was stunning to find some many people in one location speaking about the affiliate business, from all kinds of backgrounds too!

This years event looks like being the biggest yet and we'll have the Western Union team as our guests too. Brian from Shareasale looks set to roll in , as do a good number of ABW folks that I have worked with for years and never met! That will be awesome!

For anyone in the area who'd like to attend but is short of a few dollars, let me know we're sponsoring 10 tickets to the event. Just drop me a mail, comment or post on ABW and I'll be more than happy to grab you a ticket.

I'll personally be looking for anyone with the insider news on how to skip over the border into the USA.... or has a large boot on their car :-)

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Affiliate Marketing, the only equal opportunities employer

It occurred to me the other day that affiliate marketing offers the opportunity to make money to everyone who wants to try. Yes you've heard that before, but think of it like this. In the offline world, when a person walks in for an interview for a sales job (or any job) , the person doing the interview already has an idea of the kind of person they want to hire, based on their own preconceptions or prejudice , or based on the target market they are looking to sell to.

Regardless of qualification a person can fail to get the job, based not on how good they are, but on a companies personnel preferences or dislikes. Sure most Western firms have rules on how they advertise jobs and how they say they hire people, but do they really follow those rules/laws once the interview process is in action? I doubt it.

On another front how many companies will take on a total novice to be a sales or marketing person for them... and let them market other companies products at the same time!

Affiliate marketing is the only business that I know where a person regardless of education, experience, race, location, physical condition, personal habits or fashion sense (or lack of) can get right to work with some of the top companies around the world and be looked upon with respect for their results, not who they happen to be!

If anyone knows another business that is truly an equal opportunity to everyone, then I've yet to hear about it.

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