Archives for May 2005

After the Affiliate Summit 2005 conference sold out a couple of weeks back, the black market for conference passes started up.

As the wait list for passes swelled beyond 150 people, a number of auctions popped up on eBay where single passes to Affiliate Summit 2005 went for up to $2000 each.

And then the snakes came slithering in. I’ve been contacted by a number of people who bid, but didn’t win the auctions. It seems they were contacted by individuals who posed as the person running the auction.

They were mailed what amounted to phishing scam emails that copied the look of emails from eBay and telling the unsuspecting bidders that the winner of the auction decided not to buy, so the ticket was still available.

For anybody that is trying to buy an Affiliate Summit registration via online auctions or other methods, please contact us to verify that the seller is reputable.

Every registered person has a confirmation number – ask them for it, and we’ll check it against our database.

The following is what Dave Trenck of had to say in response the the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved?

What’s wrong with affiliate marketing today is individual expectations. You’ll see on the affiliate message boards posts like “No sales in days” or “I only make half as much as I used to”.

Typically they’ll then end up blaming the affiliate program, the affiliate manager, or the network. These affiliates should start by looking at themselves.

How are they different than the 1,000’s of other affiliates pushing the same products? What are they doing both online and offline to drive more traffic to their sites on a daily basis?

The answer, is typically nothing. These affiliates can improve by differentiating themselves, being strategic in the decision they make with who they partner with and how they promote them, and constantly seek out new avenues of traffic.

I recently chatted with a gentleman named Asif Malik who has released a new affiliate tool called GoldenCAN.

The premise of GoldenCAN is that sites with high traffic volume can easily add GoldenCAN Store Integration or GoldenCAN Coupon Integration to their site with just one line of code.

The result is that the site then displays millions of products, and thousands of coupons and promotions.

But there’s a catch that has some affiliates skeptical about the service. While there is no setup or ongoing service fee, Asif generated revenue from this technology with what he terms a shared link program.

According to the site, “Every 4th click on a store from your website will be replaced with GoldenCAN’s affiliate id. This means that 75% of click through traffic from a specific store on your website will contain your affiliate id and 25% will contain GoldenCAN’s affiliate id.”

Surely the service must generate money to cover the development and maintenance, but some affiliates have expressed concern over the potential that more than every 4th click would be attributed to GoldenCAN.

Participating merchants include Amazon.com, Boscov’s, eBags, and TigerDirect. As far as commissions for sites working with GoldenCAN, they are issued directly by the merchants to the affiliates.

I think this is a concept to keep an eye on. It may be a bit of a hard sell for the weathered veterans, but for those affiliates that reside on the wrong end of the 80/20 rule, this could be a breakthrough.

The following is what Mike Allen of Shopping-Bargains.com had to say in response the the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved?

Affiliate Marketing is a powerful tool that creates a win-win situation for online merchants and webmasters. However, with most good things, there are some potential problems if relationships are not handled prudently.

These potential problems do not doom Affiliate Marketing to failure but do require a little extra dedication and attention to overcome.

Perhaps the largest potential problem of affiliate marketing is caused in part by the remote nature of the affiliate marketing relationship between merchant and webmaster.

Remote or distant relationships inevitably require trust. While figures don’t lie, liars do figure. The affiliate marketing system performs only as well as the depth of trust that exists.

One solution to this dilemma is to have regional and national affiliate marketing trade events and conferences to enhance the level of education and interaction between merchants and affiliate webmasters.

People who have a personal relationship tend to be more honest with each other. They also tend to work harder for each other. The benefits of a real relationship far outweigh a faceless ID on a spreadsheet or in a database.

The educational benefits of such events are also many. Merchants can learn about tools to enhance their fraud detection and prevention arsenal, strategies to more effectively recruit and retain affiliates, and ways to better motivate and reward existing affiliates.

Affiliated webmasters can learn new uses for the datafeeds and other tools provided by merchants, industry-best strategies for ad placement and landing page design, and other ways to enhance their click conversion rates.

Educational and social events of this kind reinforce the win-win relationship that is essential in an Affiliate Marketing program.

Plus it’s nice to every once in a while to be around people who understand what you do for a living and take you seriously! Hey, did I mention that it makes a pretty good tax deduction as well?

The following is what Brian Appel of CPAffiliates.com had to say in response the the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved?

The problem with affiliate marketing is that there is too many seemingly scammy campaigns and fraudulent affiliates.

Everyone is looking for the quick buck. Every lame free iPod, free Plasma TV, get rich quick, Burger King v. McDonalds campaign that is out there just begs for fraudulent affiliates to soak up the cash, because it is way too easy to get into programs and start falsifying leads and clicks.

If we could get affiliate marketing to the point where it is just legitimate merchants selling quality products, then I think sales could increase across the board, because sites wouldn’t be so leary about taking on CPA campaigns.

We could finally have the core of affiliate marketing back, because it is simply one person referring another person to a company and being compensated for doing so.

How would you answer the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved? There are no right or wrong answers – just opinions that can help improve the industry.

The author of any response that is published at affiliatetip.com or affiliatesummit.com will receive a limited edition “It’s an affiliate thing, you wouldn’t understand.” t-shirt.

Share your thoughts now at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=56601070891

The following is what James Green had to say in response the the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved?

I personally think there are two main problems with/facing the affiliate world.

Firstly, there tends to be disassocation of the affiliate program and the rest of marketing. At times it seems the affiliate program is treated as the red-headed step-child of marketing.

However, businesses need to understand – and it is our job as affiliate managers to correct it – that most affiliate programs are pay for performance programs.

That means I know I will have a positive ROI. We may lose a little on our margins by paying out for sales but we take a smaller risk than other marketing streams.

Secondly, their is disassociation between affiliate managers and their affiliates. If affiliate managers took the time to work with their affiliates, know what they are doing, how they are promoting, etc… there would be less fraud and better relationships with affiliates, which equals more loyal hard working affiliates to drive your sales up.

It is our job as affiliate managers to communicate effectively with affiliates and company management to ensure we take a back seat to no one.

The following is what Nishank Khanna had to say in response the the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved?

The biggest thing holding back merchants from achieving record success and small affiliates from becoming super affiliates is… a lack of communication.

I’ve been on both sides of the fence — as a merchant and a super affiliate. By communicating one-on-one with smaller, budding affiliates, merchants are setting themselves up for long term success.

Real life example: For an affiliate program I managed, the majority of sales came from top 5 of our affiliates (1075 total in the program).

We pampered them with everything you can possibly imagine — increased commission, bonuses, RSS feeds for links so they can keep their content up to date without any effort.

But we didn’t spend much time on the “small fry” affiliates making a few hundred dollars in sales each month. When 3 of our top 5 affiliates found a better opportunity, we lost a significant percentage of our affiliate sales.

For another program, we did something not many merchants do — we treated ALL affiliates equally. Regardless of whether they’re making $1 million in sales or $10, we treated ALL like super stars. The result? 18 of the “small fry” affiliates turned out to be our biggest earners in a matter of months.

Moral of story: treat all affiliates like super stars, and the hard work will pay off in due time.

Every once so often, somebody comes along to declare that affiliate marketing is dead. The latest instance comes to us from Rick Aristotle Munarriz in an article on The Motley Fool.

The article begins with the question, “…if websites everywhere are taking to contextual ad blocks, doesn’t logic suggest that graphic banner ads and affiliate marketing are being pushed off the page?”

I had to recheck the date on this article. Yes, it was just published on May 19, 2005. Either the author has very antiquated notions of affiliate marketing, or not much of an understanding at all.

The idea that content sites are the end all and be all of affiliate marketing may have been true, say in 1997, but that’s simply not the case in modern times.

Mr. Munarriz, and pundits of the past don’t get the fact that affiliates are content sites, PLUS coupon sites, rebate sites, PPC arbitrage players, rewards/loyalty sites, comparison shopping sites, solo emailers, sites using web services, newsletter emailers, data-feed sites, blogs, etc.

The article cites Amazon as a model program in affiliate marketing, and states that their affiliate program is “likely to suffer if this trend continues.”

He knows the basic facts of the Amazon program, like the date it launched and number of affiliates, but I’ve got to wonder if he is familiar with Amazon’s years old Amazon Web Services.

After all, this is the recent past and real future of their affiliate program. Not newbies that put up a banner and cross their fingers.

Just as so many that came before him, Mr. Munarriz has experienced a premature immolation.