Archives for July 2005

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

I believe improvements could be made with every aspect of affiliate marketing, but the first things that should be addressed are the most serious.

The unethical and crooked affiliate marketers AND merchants alike. As an affiliate manager I spend a great deal of time every day preventing fraud, and cleaning up after messes left from unethical affiliates.

I also spend a great deal of time talking to potential affiliates about how great our affiliate programs really are, trying to convince them that we WILL pay you, and we WILL help you.

On both sides of the coin, affiliates and merchants alike are spending to much time fighting off the bad press, reputations, and rumors that plague us from merchants that bail on their affiliates, and from affiliates that reek havok on our program.

The problem lies with the lack of regulation, procedures, rules, whatever you want to call them.

Merchants need to come together and build a pool of trustworthy standards, and affiliates need to join together and demand it. It’s the one bad apple cliché.

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

Cape Coral, FL — July 6, 2005 — GoldenCAN.com announces the launch of its revolutionary new Internet marketing solution for affiliate marketers and merchants, available online at www.GoldenCAN.com . For the first time, GoldenCAN.com’s Store Integration Program provides affiliate marketers with data feeds, coupons, recent price drops and product searches provided by hundreds of merchants in one simple line of code. Affiliate marketers without an extensive knowledge of computer programming now have access to millions of data feed products from some of the most respected merchants on the Web.

“Affiliate marketing has greatly changed the way Internet merchants do business,” explained GoldenCAN.com’s founder Asif Malik. “Great success is available for affiliate marketers; however, without an understanding of programming and technology, it becomes difficult for some to stay competitive. GoldenCAN.com evens the odds for affiliate marketers or anyone who wants to try their hand at the world of affiliate marketing. If you have a Web site, you can display millions of products, coupons, recent price drops and search results on your site with only one line of code.”

GoldenCAN.com’s new Store Integration Program offers affiliates the opportunity to work with a variety of different Internet retailers, including both retailers who use third party programs, like Overstock.com, CompUSA, MC Sports, and The Sports Authority as well as retailers like Amazon.com who offer their own programs. For the first time, one single program offers millions of data feed results for an affiliate’s own customized selection of merchants.

Affiliates may also utilize the sales-driving power of merchants’ search features using the GoldenCAN.com Search Integration Program. Search Integration allows affiliates of all levels to display price results without any of the overhead associated with developing or maintaining a comprehensive program. In addition, GoldenCAN.com’s groundbreaking Coupon Integration Program displays thousands of coupons, promotions, and products with recent price drops using only one line of code. This allows affiliates to easily provide their customers with the most current offers and sales available, without the maintenance and time needed to do so.

“The time involved in keeping current with discounts, promotions and sales is enough to keep my own staff very busy, much less one affiliate marketer working on his/her own site,” Mr. Malik explained. “GoldenCAN.com allows me to share the extensive knowledge and collection of data I’ve gained over the last four years. It is my pleasure to provide this wealth of services in one small package, a ‘golden can’ if you will, in a way I know will truly benefit the affiliate marketing community.”

GoldenCAN.com’s new services provide affiliates with advanced tools to better promote and showcase their products, sites and services. These features are ideal for affiliate marketers, but can be costly to develop and maintain. GoldenCAN.com provides these services with free registration, utilizing the existing pay structure of click-through affiliate share programs. One of every four clicks driven through GoldenCAN.com’s program is credited to GoldenCAN’s affiliate link, leaving the remaining three to be credited to the user.

GoldenCAN.com recently launched a comprehensive, all-in-one service combination of the Product, Search and Coupon Integration Programs called Store Integration for Multiple Merchants. This premiere package enables users to combine hundreds of thousands of categories, millions of products, thousands of coupons and recent price drops products, multiple merchant searching and price comparisons, all in one line of code.

By Warren Corpus

For the second year in a row, I’ve had the pleasure to work with Missy and Shawn on their internet marketing lovechild, Affiliate Summit.

This year’s Summit was the biggest to date, with over 500 attendees, an exhibition hall, and breakout sessions during both days.

Just like a child, with growth comes responsibilities — in this case, more conference bags to stuff, more registration staff, more meeting space, more people to herd around, and more liability.

With all that said, Missy, Shawn, Corey, and the staff put together a great conference that will be remembered for ages… or until the Vegas hangover wears off.

Here’s what a few speakers, attendees, and exhibitors had to say:

“The best part of Affiliate Summit was Declan Dunn’s talk on ethical affiliate marketing. It is good to see that some people still see marketing as a business and an art instead of just spamming 4 trillion people, to make a buck. His talk was well worth the price of the conference. It was also nice to meet other internet marketers, some of us end up working from home so it is always good to be with like minded people. You can make more money and have more fun marketing with integrity.” — Marcus Campbell of PCMoneyMaking.com, attendee

“Affiliate Summit was the first event to bring the entire affiliate community together, and for me it was refreshing to see the top brand companies mingle with the CPA Networks…the folks in the trenches generating amazing amounts of revenue. We saw all 3 affiliate worlds — merchants, affiliates, and ALL networks — merge and meet. The real difference is that in the affiliate business, we are all competitors and all partners. Rarely do you see businesses understand that partnering creates more revenue than the old school way of competition. That’s what you find at Affiliate Summit and what made it a powerful event for me.” — Declan Dunn of Dunn Direct Group, keynote speaker, Day 1

“The Affiliate Summit has grown over the last two years and continues to grow, as seen by this sold out event in Las Vegas. As a vendor and sponsor of this event, I liked that there is not an event that showcases our industry the best. The Affiliate space has been growing and interest in the space expanding, so having an event dedicated to important relevant topics and showcasing the industry leading vendors is a big plus and boost for the industry.” — Jason Wolfe of Direct Response Technologies, exhibitor and sponsor

“The Affiliate Summit was a fantastic opportunity to network. As an affiliate program manager, I was able to come back with many valuable contacts from both sides of the publisher/advertiser fence. Right now I have 30 new offers scheduled to go into my network and have seen a significant spike in publisher traffic all from the show… This is definitely a conference that I would recommend to anyone in the affiliate marketing sector!” — Erin Garcia of VayanPays, attendee

“Affiliate Summit can be summed up in one word: relationships. Personally I have built many great relationships with some of the industry’s heavyweights as well as those up and comers who have an insatiable drive to one day reach the upper echelons of the affiliate marketing space. Each year I walk away from the Affiliate Summit a little bit wiser, a little bit hung over, with a few new business ideas and a ton of new relationships with people I not only consider business partners but close friends. My hat goes off to Missy, Shawn, and all the vendors and attendees who collectively make Affiliate Summit a huge success each year. I think the only other people who enjoyed themselves as much as the affiliates was the Soccer team from Ireland. Maybe next year we should invite them to join us.” — Michael Krongel of Intermark Media/COPEAC, exhibitor

“I learned more in the CAN-SPAM sessions than from any AD:TECH… those 2 sessions alone were worth the price of the conference….” — Shai Peritz of UniqueLeads, attendee

“The Affiliate Summit proved to be a priceless opportunity. The platform gave us a vehicle to create new endeavors with both existing clients and the clients that Affiliate Summit enabled us to establish. The conference was designed articulately so that we no matter if you were a sponsor, advertiser or affiliate, every minute was packed with something valuable to gain. Missy and Shawn deserve much appreciation from our industry. Events like these are what propels our businesses into a world of no limits.” — Rhianna Ross of XY7.com, exhibitor and sponsor

“The overall tone that came out of this year’s Summit was that this was undoubtedly the ‘Year of the Affiliate”. With money pouring into the sector in the form of acquisitions of affiliate marketing companies, large players entering the space and hundreds of ad networks crowding the industry, it becomes more and more important to realize, acknowledge and respect those individuals and companies whose business model revolves around earning affiliate revenue. They are the force that makes the rest of it work. Without productive affiliates driving traffic thru networks, thru tracking companies, to merchants’ buy pages – there would be NO affiliate marketing. All Hail the Affiliates!” — Linda Woods of PartnerCentric, exhibitor

With an event as large as Affiliate Summit 2005, there are bound to be little bumps in the road — late registrations, an event or two running behind, a hung-over panelist — but overall, the event was a huge success. Who knows — with a larger venue, maybe we’ll break a thousand next year!

See Warren’s photos at http://biturl.com/affsummit/

Warren Corpus (warren@vayan.com) is the Director of Business Development for Vayan Marketing Group.

Last year, I was poking around at BlogAds in search of some targeted blogs to place ads for affiliate recruiting.

As I was looking for some good prospects, I came upon WilWheaton.net. I was thinking – this guy looks familiar – who is he?

His site jogged my memory that he was Gordie Lachance in Stand By Me, as well as one of the guys in the under-rated flick, Toy Soldiers.

Trekkies know him better as Ensign Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But I came to know him for being a really funny, entertaining, and candid blogger.

Based on Wil’s blog, I ran out (well actually, went to Amazon) and got his autobigraphical book, Just a Geek. Great stuff – the struggles with HTML and everything else in life really resonated.

Anyhow, the audiobook version of Just a Geek is now available in pre-release. You can get it on CD or MP3 at http://www.10quicksteps.com/wilwheaton/.

Why am I mentioning this on my affiliate marketing blog? Well, Wil is an affiliate. He sells his own books, plus some suggested music and videos over at WWdN (WilWheaton.net for the uninitiated), and he’s got a CJ link to ThinkGeek.com.

Affiliate geeks will appreciate that Wil knows well enough to use ref=nosim to deliver his Amazon links straight to the product pages, and he uses the “hide tracking code” option on CJ.

He’s no pedestrian affiliate, for sure. He’s one of us, and I think you’ll really enjoy his audiobook. I purchased mine tonight, so I’ll be listening to him as I walk the dog tomorrow morning.

Ian Turner has been found – alive and healthy.

Ian Turner, of Romsey Associates based in the UK, went missing on June 25th or 26th, 2005 after attending the WebmasterWorld Conference in New Orleans.

If you are not familiar with Ian, he moderates the UK & Ireland forum on WebmasterWorld.

He is a partner in an internet marketing consultancy called Romsey Associates based in the UK and is well known in the Search industry.

His disappearance has caused much concern in the Search community and many have posted to their blogs and websites in an effort to gather more information to help his wife, Ali Turner work with the UK/US police to find him.

How YOU Can Help

• Please spread the word, use everything at your disposal to get this information to as many people as possible.
• Contact Ali Turner, Ians wife on ali.turner (at) hot-smoke (dot) com
• Contact the UK authorities, they are coordinating with the US authorities (please do not contact US direct). Speak to DC Cole at Woking Missing Persons unit +44 (0)1483 655081 or email him cole10437 (at) surrey.pnn.police.uk

If You Wish to Discuss, Or Ask Questions

If you are a member of the press please contact Ali Turner directly on the above address. If you would like to ask questions, or add information, then use the comments in this thread. You will need to register if you do not already have an account (only takes 1min).

Or, speak to Ali Turner directly (if non-trivial, I’m sure you can understand she’s very busy and very worried), or email me, Nick W at nick (at) threadwatch (dot) org.

If for any reason you wish to forward information anonymously, please use the form located here and simply use a fake email address.

Any information received in that manner will of course be flagged as unconfirmed.

For more details, visit http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum19/2745.htm and http://www.threadwatch.org/node/3008#comment-17609

The preceding information was reprinted with permission from http://www.threadwatch.org/ian