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Archives for January 2005

Affiliate Manager Salaries: 2002 vs. 2004

January 31, 2005 by Shawn Collins

I’ve just concluded the data collection for the AffStat 2005 Report, and I was anxious to compare some of the figures from two years ago to here and now.

One of the questions I am asked most often by affiliate managers is the average salary (including bonuses) for an affiliate manager. While pay scales for affiliate managers vary depending on geographic location, these averages can help get an idea about the ranges out there.

Compared against 2002, the earnings in 2004 were a bit more erratic. There were more folks at both the higher and lower ends this year. However, the numbers for 2002 and 2004 pretty much mirrored one another for the percent of affiliate managers that earn between $80k and $110k per year.

For the near 25% of affiliate managers that are making $40k or less, it’s time to ask the boss for a raise. 😉

2003vs2005.gif

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Filed Under: Affiliate Stats

Affiliate Summit 2005 Venue: Riviera Hotel & Casino

January 31, 2005 by Shawn Collins

riviera.jpgThe details have been set and Affiliate Summit 2005 will take place at the Riviera Hotel & Casino.

The group rate will be $69/night. Here’s some info about the hotel:

Question: Is there a shuttle service from the airport to your hotel?
Answer: There is a shuttle service which drops off at the Riviera. It is Bell Transport which is located outside of baggage at the airport. The cost is $3.50/per person. Their phone number is (702) 739-7990

Question: Where is the Riviera located?
Answer: The Riviera is on the Strip at 2901 Las Vegas Blvd., South. Click here to check their maps.

Question: How far is the Riviera from the airport?
Answer: 4.54 Miles. Click here to get driving directions from the airport to the Riviera Hotel and Casino.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Fraud: Affiliate Managers Fight Back

January 30, 2005 by Shawn Collins

On the affiliate solution provider side, it is very encouraging to see that a proactive stance is being taken against fraudulent affiliates.

Angry dog

Be Free

“Be Free has been doing a lot on the technology and services side to combat fraud,” according to Tom Gerace, founder and chief marketing officer of Be Free.

“Antifraud initiatives are critical for cost-per-click [CPC] and cost-per-lead programs, and Be Free recently released BFAST V6.70 to assist merchants in detecting suspect activity,” continued Gerace.

Be Free is also looking into methods for sharing community knowledge about affiliates that have been disabled by other merchants, and soon there will be an anonymous service called “Fraud Watch,” where affiliates and merchants can report suspect sites.

The recent BFAST V6.70 update from Be Free provides additional functionality to its “Suspect Activity” report, such as a new click-threshold value, new columns in the “Suspect Activity” report, and the ability to disable multiple sites.

Commission Junction

Todd Crawford, VP of strategic alliances at Commission Junction (CJ), recently shared with subscribers of the United States Affiliate Manager Coalition email discussion list some useful information about fraud.

“There are hundreds of sites offering robots to cheat CPC programs. There are actually organizations of cheaters (for both CPC and CPA [cost-per-ad] programs) numbering in the thousands. They are all over the world, and they range from kids clicking on each other’s banners (‘Click Clubs’) to criminal organizations,” said Crawford.

CJ has a very reputable compliance department composed of eight people who work full-time to detect and prevent fraud network-wide.

The group United Against Cheaters lists CJ as one of the companies with a strong stance against cheaters. The site states that CJ “maintains an active stance against cheaters and fraud” and “tries to come up with solutions that will benefit all members and advertisers. [Its] attacks against large cheat sites have resulted in shutdowns. [Its] sophisticated cheat prevention and manpower produce a large task force for taking down cheaters.”

LinkShare

In the LinkShare vernacular, the various forms of cheating and fraud are categorized as “invalid activity” to limit the legal risks involved with fraud allegations.

According to Stephen Messer, chairman, CEO, and cofounder of LinkShare, “A lot of the affiliate solution providers think of invalid activity as good revenue for them, so they are not as proactive as they could be in combating it. But we saw it as our responsibility to protect our merchants, and we built a SWAT team to combat affiliate activity that is detrimental to our merchants.”

In its efforts to protect CPC merchants, LinkShare utilizes a program called Cupid, which limits activity to one click per user ID. This method is helpful for catching the less sophisticated cheaters who attempt to manually click on their own link repeated times.

“We cannot share details for some of the more complex techniques utilized by LinkShare to root out invalid activity. There are some very smart affiliates that create programs intended to mimic all sorts of authentic Web usage, and we utilize a program we call Honeypot to identify and halt these sorts of actions,” according to Messer.

FreeFiliate

The high-end affiliate solution providers are not the only ones who take fraud seriously. FreeFiliate, a free affiliate solution provider, has also incorporated antifraud features for CPC programs.

JB McKee of FreeFiliate explained that these antifraud features employ cookies “to determine whether somebody has clicked on a link previously. If they have, the affiliate is not credited for the click. If the visitor’s browser is set to not accept cookies, the affiliate is not credited for the click at all.”

After determining that some hackers were able to circumvent this preventive measure, FreeFiliate also integrated a system for fraud detection where it monitors affiliate activity.

Unique Solution

As the cheaters become more sophisticated, affiliates are making greater strides in their antifraud efforts to keep pace. One of the ways Webclients.net tries to prevent fraud among its affiliates that run CPA offers is through the use of an authentication code.

Its “R Tag” technology generates a unique code for each sign-up in a JPEG format so that bots (programs that automatically fill out forms) are not able to read them. The user must type in the code in the box provided.

The cheaters and hackers are out there, and they’re fleecing affiliate programs all over. What are you doing to checkmate these rats? It’s essential to incorporate some antifraud measures into your affiliate management, or your program could be the next one to fold.

When it comes to affiliate fraud, follow the sage advice of that mean sensei from the Kobra Kai dojo (in “The Karate Kid”): “Strike hard! Strike first! No mercy!”

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources

Make Money off Your Blog – Washington Post

January 29, 2005 by Shawn Collins

Many companies run “affiliate” programs: Post an ad provided by Amazon.com or Lands’ End, for example, and receive a small commission every time your readers click that ad, go to the company’s Web site and end up buying a book or splurging on a down parka. Referral fees — the cash you get from these transactions — vary (you can earn as much as 10 percent per sale from Amazon).

LinkShare (www.linkshare.com) claims to run the Internet’s biggest “affiliate marketing network,” with more than 600 companies on its roster of advertisers. Another service, Commission Junction (www.cj.com), runs programs for eBay and Expedia.com, among others.

Complete article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43241-2005Jan27.html

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Fraud: An Affiliate Epidemic

January 29, 2005 by Shawn Collins

Fraud! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again!

On-line Internet auction biddingconcept illustration

If you are running a pay-per-click or pay-per-lead affiliate program, there are people out there trying to rip you off. Fraud is widespread in affiliate marketing, and it comes in all shapes and sizes, from pimply 13-year-olds who repeatedly click a link on a cost-per-click (CPC) program to sophisticated crime rings.

But what is this fraud that the affiliates are committing on us, you ask? On the surface, it’s really any sort of deceit, trickery, or cheating performed to steal from an affiliate program.

The Faces of Fraud

The bottom feeders are kids who repeatedly click on CPC links or fill out registration forms. They can be difficult to detect because they often do not produce a lot of activity. On the other hand, they can be sloppy and tend not to cover their tracks well.

The midlevel cheaters utilize automated scripts and programs that simulate real, human activity. For instance, there are JavaScripts that can fake clicks or open windows. Then there are programs that cover all of the bases for affiliates that don’t even have a site. These programs simulate impressions and clicks, and are capable of setting up a desired click-through rate.

Top-dog fraud perpetrators are the most dangerous of all. These affiliates write programs that create a large number of cookie-cutter sites. The innocuous-looking sites often never generate any red flags because the affiliates are savvy. Rather than achieving ridiculously high conversion rates, these affiliates set up their programs to operate at a level that is just above the payment threshold.

To paraphrase ESPN’s Dan Patrick, you can’t stop them; you can only hope to contain them.

I Didn’t Want to Do It

Before I became an affiliate manager, I was an affiliate for a few years, so I was well aware of the arguments on whether a program should have automatic or manual approval.

I was steadfastly against manual approval. After all, when I’m in front of the computer, churning along at Internet time, I want to do things in the here and now. If a merchant wants to approve my site before I can put up links, I’m often driving traffic to their competition by the time they approve me.

That thinking was applied to the ClubMom program from the time I launched until a few weeks ago. I wanted every interested affiliate to be able to get my links up as soon as possible.

Then reality hit. From month to month, I found myself spending more time identifying and researching fraudulent sites. I was spending far too much of my time vetting out the unsavory sites (and a great deal of them were banner farms and other tragic wastes of the human spirit).

So I finally pulled the switch. Geez… affiliate managers wonder why they have so many inactive affiliates? It’s simple: Most of the monkeys that applied to their programs don’t know the difference between HTML and the AARP.

No More Teachers, No More Books

I was approving the vouchers for February 2001 affiliate commissions when I came across an affiliate that I did not recognize. As I investigated this affiliate’s account further, I determined (through my top-secret antifraud tactics) that I had a cheater on my hands.

My suspicions were confirmed when I went to the URL supplied by the affiliate. The page consisted of one of my 468 x 60 banners and the following copy, which outlines how this guy was committing hot-line server fraud against me:

Click on the banner to get your access to my server!! You will get a username and password that gives you full access.

Instructions:

1) On the top-left, click the button to join the site. If the button does not appear, you need to click on the “ClubMom” icon on the top left, then sign out, and sign up again.

2) On the final page, titled “Thanks for joining ClubMom!” the username and password are the first word on the last line. (All lower-case. It begins with an “e.”)

NOTE: You do NOT have to verify your email address. You can type fake info if you like.

I followed my usual protocol of disabling the affiliate and sending a note about how I had determined that the affiliate had committed fraudulent activity and that the account was being closed. This is usually where it ends, but this affiliate decided to antagonize me with multiple messages.

It was then that I noticed that he had committed hot-line server fraud with his student account. This particular affiliate was attending a prestigious university in the Northeast, and I was pretty sure that committing fraud violated the student code of conduct.

To make a long story short, I received an email from the vice president for information technology at this university, updating me on the situation. He stated “The student will be meeting with our administrators later today. As of Sunday evening the student was contacted, his student account was disabled, and his residential networking port has been deactivated for a year. Not just the rest of this school year, but until this time in 2002.”

The school administration is currently deliberating whether this student will be suspended. He fought the law, and the law won.

You see, it is possible to win the battle against affiliate fraud.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources

New Breed of Pop-Ups

January 28, 2005 by Shawn Collins

Pop-ups are finished, right? Well, that’s sort of right. The old school pops have been sufficiently thwarted by the various pop-up blockers, but just as the big companies create a blocker, the evil genuiuses devise a workaround.

And guess what, there’s a bit of a pop-up renaissance. The reason is that most pop-ups have been killed, and only the slick ones are breaking through. The signal to noise ratio is way down and the effectiveness of pops is climbing.

These days, there are products out there using DHTML to get the pop-ups to pop. The one that snuck past your pop-up blocker was from a service called adimpact.

Instant Attention works around Microsoft SP2 Update*, Google Toolbar Blocker, Symantec’s Pop-Up Blocker and more.

These pops are a great way to highlight a time sensitive promotion you are running through an affiliate link. You can also use them to get opt-ins to your newsletter, promote a sweepstakes, or for any number of other objectives.

One hitch with Instant Attention is that you have to pay an ongoing fee to use it. There is software called the Dynamic Popup Generator that you can pick up for about $50.

The Dynamic Popup Generator can create pressure pop-ups, unblockable DHTML pop-ups, PictoPop-ups, conditional popups, instant opt-in pop-ups, and rotating pop-ups.

* Blocking can occur if user has their Internet Explorer security settings on the highest level. Microsoft states that this is the least functional security level. Most websites would fail to function properly at this level. By default, most security settings are set to medium.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Tips

Want to go to Affiliate Summit 2005 for free?

January 27, 2005 by Shawn Collins

AffiliateTip.com is giving away four passes to Affiliate Summit 2005. That’s right, we are giving away fully-paid conference passes (value: $995 each) to four lucky people.

Affiliate Summit 2005 is taking place at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on June 13-14.

The free pass to Affiliate Summit 2005 includes:

  • Conference attendance
  • Conference materials
  • Cocktail parties and other conference networking events

The winners will be responsible for getting themselves to Las Vegas and booking their hotel room (we have a low group rate). And the most important point – the Riviera Hotel and Casino provides complimentary wireless high speed Internet access in guestrooms and public spaces.

How to enter?
During the Sweepstakes Period (February 1 – April 30), visit http://www.affiliatetip.com/as2005sweeps and complete the Sweepstakes entry form.

That’s it – four entries will be selected at random over the next four months.

Click here for the official rules.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Ask Shawn Collins: Domains for Affiliate Programs

January 27, 2005 by Shawn Collins

Q: I have many domains, but don’t have time to develop them. I would like to sell them, but if not, then run some profitable affiliate content. Please have a look at my domains and suggest what I should do.

Shawn CollinsA: If you don’t have time to develop the domains, you’re not going to make money simply by pointing the domains to affiliate links.

In order to generate affiliate income from your domains, it’s essential that you give people a reason to go to them, and then marketing the domains to let those people know you are out there.

After that is done, you will be able to make money by serving up targeted ads to the audience you’ve brought to your domains.

But if you’re hoping that people will magically type your domain names into their browsers, arrive at your site, and click on affiliate links, you’re in for a disappointment.

If you just don’t have time to make real sites out of the domains, I’d suggest selling them, rather than squatting on them.

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Filed Under: Ask Shawn Collins

Ask Shawn Collins: UK Affiliate Solutions

January 26, 2005 by Shawn Collins

I am developing a product in the UK that I want to sell online (initially to the UK, but then further afield later). I am trying to locate an affiliate system that I can purchase, install on my server, so that it allows people to sell my product via their website (and automatically calculate commission etc.). My problem is I am having tremendous difficulty in locating such systems. Do you know of any UK based affiliate solution developers?

I am not really well versed on the affiliate solution providers that concentrate on the UK, but there is a list of UK affiliate networks at http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/solution-providers.php

The networks listed are:

Affiliate Window
Affiliate Future
Ad Select
Cible Click (UK)
Buy.at
Comission Junction
Paid On Results
UKaffiliates / DGM2
Tradedoubler

I believe the companies all host the technology, and I would generally endorse going that route for support, upgrades, etc.

As far as installable software, I would suggest Groundbreak.com Ultimate Affiliate.

I urge you to visit the Affiliates4u affiliate marketing forum at http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/ to ask questions and learn more about the options available in the UK.

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Filed Under: Ask Shawn Collins

Get IM Opt-ins

January 26, 2005 by Shawn Collins

You’ve got an email newsletter and you’re gathering email addresses from folks that want to hear from you. But that’s not enough.

too-much-email

While you have the attention of these people, make a pitch for more information.

More specifically, ask them for their instant messenger name, so you can send them special updates, deals, news or whatever.

You’ll notice that people have IM accounts from a variety of places, such as old school ICQ, IRC, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo.

But you don’t want to have open chat programs for all of those different types of IM clients. So get yourself a copy of Trillian.

There is a free version, as well as a paid Pro version, which runs $25. I’d suggest the paid option, as it has more bells and whistles.

So after you’ve gathered IM names for all of these people that want to hear from you, and you’ve got Trillian, what you do is set up all of these IM subscribers in a group. So when you have something to say, you can blast it to all of them instantaneously.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Tips

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