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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LinkShare China is go.

Well while everyone is raving about the new LinkShare Publisher Dashboard I decided to take a look around the rest of the site to see what had changed. Heading straight to the international section and then over to jobs, and low and behold what do we see jobs for LinkShare China in Shanghai. So it would appear the rumours were true and LinkShare is finally heading into China!

Not much else available that I can find on the China launch, the last time it seems to have been mentioned was back in early 2006 in an article in Revenue. Well it will be interested to see whether they launch with a focus on eCommerce or lead generation and what they have learnt from the the success and failures of the early network entries into the China market

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2007 AMWSO Year in Review

2007 was a year of innovation and evolution for AMWSO, and especially toward the end of the year, the door was opened for some exciting developments and opportunities in 2008.

In 2007 we launched over 10 new programs, including Baghaus, Ecampus, Sonoma Diet, Jillian Michaels, along with several more. We had great success with these launches along with the affiliates who joined up and started promoting them. We helped Ecampus have their best year ever during the back to school season, and we helped Baghaus spread their brand and become a premier handbag focused merchant. Diet season is starting right now, and we have primed our diet and fitness programs for affiliate to reap the whirlwind in January and February.

We had tremendous success in regard to innovations using affiliate videos with the Gaiam program. Our client Gaiam won the prestigious 2007 LinkShare Golden Link "Innovative Merchant Of The Year" Award due to affiliate trackable video files that we helped introduce.

We also met with some challenges in 2007. One particular program that we launched for an air filtration and water filtration system proved very challenging. We learned that having an outstanding product was not enough to make a program successful. Brand marketing support is needed along with an affiliate program, so that not only the public learns about a product, but the affiliates become more familiar as well. All of the cogs connect when building a successful affiliate program, including paid search initiatives, natural search and media buying.

In recognition of this, we introduced new services to offer our merchant partners in 2007.  Services including PPC Management, Social Media Marketing and SEO Services. We're especially excited about our Social Media Marketing service, as there are few companies out there that can do this as well and as effectively as AMWSO. When compared to CPM banner advertising, Social Media marketing can achieve volumes more "bang for the buck." This effectiveness should not only be measured in terms of raw traffic numbers, but targeted and engaged traffic.

Toward the end of the year, AMWSO announced it's affiliation with Syntryx. Syntyx is a powerful tool allowing AMWSO to delve deeper into the web to find great affiliate partners and to help our merchant partners better understand where their traffic comes from and use this as a competitive advantage. I'll be writing much more about Syntryx in a blog entry in January.

The core team at AMWSO remained unchanged throughout the year, and we're excited and motivated going into 2008. We have new ideas that we'll be working on to grow our partners businesses, and we'll be bringing on some great new partners in the coming months.  Definitely stay tuned to this blog for some great stuff in 2008!

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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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Linkshare Awards a real blast

Well, just got back from the Linkshare Awards Dinner - Food was awesome at Cyprianis and the networking was even better - these events are far too much fun to be considered work!

2 AMWSO clients were nominated this year, Forzieri for International Merchant and Gaiam for Innovative Merchant, and unfortunately we only won one of them.So Forzieri is a bridesmaid for the second time - but I get the feeling a future Golden Link is on its way for this excellent merchant and its super AM Patrick Goodfellow.On a brighter note, Gaiam as expected won Innovative Merchant of the Year for the use of affiliate coded text links in video - very cool - and it was a thrill to go up with Bill Moran from Gaiam to accept the award on behalf of Pete and James Nardell (the AMWSO AMs for Gaiam). Nice job indeed guys!

Personally I think the Innovative Merchant Award is one of the best prizes to win - it's super to be recognized for creativity and ingenuity! Congrats to all the winners, and indeed all who were nominated - see ya all at the Symposium.

Cheers,

Will H-W

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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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