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Archives for March 2006

UK Affiliate Network, buy.at, Gets £7.3 Million Investment

March 31, 2006 by Shawn Collins

buy.at, the UK’s largest privately owned affiliate marketing network has secured its future growth following a £7.3 million investment from Cazenove Private Equity (CPE). The company will be chaired by Bruce McLaren who led Advertising.com as International CEO to a successful sale to AOL Time Warner.

In 2002, Perfiliate Technologies Limited launched the buy.at affiliate network. Over the last three years the network has rapidly expanded to provide affiliate marketing solutions for many of the leading names in the UK including AA, BT, John Lewis, Lloyds TSB, M&S, T-Mobile, Sky and many more.

The £7.3 million investment from CPE will ensure that buy.at will continue to be the fastest growing UK affiliate network, with a leading reputation in the sector. Steve Brown, Chief Executive of buy.at said:

“The investment from CPE is a huge milestone for the buy.at network, allowing us to maintain strong growth and gain an ever increasing foothold in the market place. The investment permits us to improve our focus to ensure that we continue to deliver according to our clients’ expectations – offering exceptional delivery coupled with cutting edge technology.

buy.at“To further differentiate the buy.at network from our competitors, we will continue to concentrate on enhancing our service, innovation and providing an industry leading affiliate solution”.

CPE specialises in investing in the brightest prospects in the UK and European technology, media and telecoms sectors. Companies backed by CPE, such as buy.at, operate in proven or high-growth markets and will be driven by exceptional management teams, with the vision and ambition to dominate their chosen sectors.

Nic Brisbourne, Investment Executive at CPE said of the recent investment: “buy.at is the best performing UK company in what is undoubtedly a very hot market. We are excited to be shareholders and look forward to working with them through the next phase of growth and international expansion.”

Joining as non-executive Chairman, Bruce McLaren will be a vital asset to the company, providing strategic guidance and a provision of knowledge to assist driving buy.at to its greatest growth potential. Commenting on his new role with buy.at Bruce said “this company has sensational technology that is the best in its class and a great management team. It’s ready to move up to the next plateau and become a major European player in the near term.”

For further information on the buy.at affiliate marketing network visit www.buy.at or call Chris Tradgett, New Client Manager at buy.at on 0191 241 6500 or email: chris.tradgett@perfiliate.com.

-End-

For further media information, please contact Anna Barry or Laura Przybek at Perfiliate Technologies Limited on 0191 241 6500, or anna.barry@perfiliate.com or laura.przybek@perfiliate.com

Photo Caption: Joining forces to drive further growth for buy.at – (Left to right) Nic Brisborne, Investment Executive at CPE, Steve Brown, Chief Executive at buy.at and Bruce McLaren, non-executive Chairman of buy.at

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Worst Practices: Merchant Encourages Bidding on Competitor Names

March 29, 2006 by Shawn Collins

There is much ballyhoo about the occasional affiliate who violates the pay per click edicts in affiliate agreements. But there also merchants that have a devil may care attitude when it comes to rules and regulations.

One prime example is Citrix GoToMyPC on Commission Junction. I was looking through their linking options yesterday, and I came across Link ID 10360563 / Competitive Keywords for All Audiences.

I reread the name a couple of times, as I couldn’t imagine they were encouraging their affiliates to bid on their competitor’s names.

Then I read the description of the link… “This keyword link is including competitive keywords such as pcanywhere, timbuktu and logmein.”

Are they serious? They are telling their affiliates to bid on their competitor’s brand names? Yes, I’m afraid they are doing just that.

Among their recommended keywords: pcanywhere, pc anywhere, timbuktu, timbukto pro, and logmein.

Aside from the lapse in ethics when it comes to encouraging this sort of behavior in affiliates, it’s also a violation of the Google AdWords Editorial Guidelines.

As stated in the Google AdWords Editorial Guidelines:

Underlying all the Editorial Guidelines are two simple principles that have worked for thousands of advertisers already in the program:

  • Clearly and accurately describe your site.
  • Emphasize the unique benefits of your product or service.

Unless the Citrix GoToMyPC affiliates are running sites that compare GoToMyPC to the competing products, it looks to me that bidding on those competitor’s names for the purpose of driving traffic to GoToMyPC. This is expressly forbidden by Google.

The Google AdWords Editorial Guidelines also state, “Your keywords and ad text must be relevant to your site, products, or services.”

Merchant inspired competitive keyword biddingI searched on Google for pcanywhere and, sure enough, a couple of the GoToMyPC affiliates were adhering to the suggested strategy: bidding on pcanywhere and funneling the traffic to GoToMyPC (see image to the right).

I’m sure GoToMyPC isn’t the only merchant engaging in such bottom feeder marketing – they are just the one I happened upon.

Wondering aloud…will CJ clamp down on this activity? How about Google – it’s a violation of their rules after all. If nothing else, I’d imagine Symantec isn’t too happy about this misuse of the pcAnywhere™ brand name.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Limited Number of Invites for the MSN adCenter

March 28, 2006 by Shawn Collins

I managed to get an account when they opened up the MSN adCenter Beta for a small group of advertisers about a month ago, and now they are providing me with ten invites to share.

The MSN adCenter is MSN’s pay per click search engine.

If you would like to apply to be a part of the MSN adCenter pilot, contact me and I’ll send you an invite (if you are one of the first ten to request it).

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources

Backup Your Files

March 28, 2006 by Shawn Collins

As an affiliate marketer, you code, your content, your copy, etc. is your business. So what are you going to do if your hard drive or machine dies on you?

The solution is to get yourself an external hard drive. Think of it as cheap business insurance.

You’ll also need a backup software program to automate the process. Otherwise, you can copy all of the files manually to your external hard drive.

Not only does this provide you with protection in the event of some technical failure, but it also protects you against the sort of stupid mistakes that happen late at night.

What you do with an external hard drive is to backup your entire hard drive to the external hard drive on a regular basis – daily or so.

Personally, I make a complete duplication of my system each week, and every night I back up any new files. And I have a second external hard drive off site, which gets a complete backup of my laptop ever couple weeks.

If you don’t want to buy two external hard drives, you can also do incremental backups to DVDs.

While you are protecting your data, you should also consider safeguarding your machines by getting a battery backup to block power surges, spikes, and outages that can damage your computer equipment and corrupt important data.

There are lots of options for capacity, price, etc. I have the following in place as my main backup: Maxtor One Touch II 200 GB External Hard Drive, PC Back Up software, Belkin 1100VA Battery Backup.

Don’t wait until you lose everything – protect your affiliate marketing business proactively and sleep well tonight.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Tips

Changing the Channel of Blame to Search and CPM

March 26, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Affiliate marketing is a risky scheme, and anybody that uses it to advertise their company is reckless and ill informed. Right? No, not right.

But you’d be inclined to believe just that if you took seriously the frequent hatchet jobs on affiliate marketing by folks with a vested interest in CPM and search.

Peter Figueredo wrote an entertaining piece on ReveNews recently,” EXTRA EXTRA: Online Ad Displayed Next To Inappropriate Content – BUT ITS AN AD BUY – NOT AN AFFILIATE.”

In the post, Peter points out a story about brands being represented in an embarrassing spot. “This article describes Apple and AT&T ads appearing on an upskirt website through an ad network buy.”

This is news, because the “watchdogs”, who are so quick to condemn affiliate marketing at every turn, never mention the considerably frequent times this sort of thing happens elsewhere.

I see it all the time – contextual ads from search engines and banner ads from networks paying on CPM that are placed on sites that are inappropriate at best.

This whole situation reminds me of the book, Bias, by Bernard Goldberg – a treatise that documented the lack of objectivity in the “mainstream” media. Thanks Peter!

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Tell the U.S. Gov’t a Domain Monopoly is a Bad Idea

March 23, 2006 by Shawn Collins

There is a troublesome story that hasn’t been getting enough attention lately, and it could negatively impact the pocketbooks of all affiliate marketers.

In late February, ICANN’s (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Board of Directors met and approved a pending deal with VeriSign for the .COM registry.

The registry is different from a registrar, in that they maintain the Internet routing systems, domain availability lookups and basic records.

The registry sells domain names to the registrars (i.e. 1&1, Go Daddy and Moniker) at a fixed rate, currently $6 per name, and then the registrar chooses to either discount the cost to lure customers or mark it up.

Anyhow, back to how this could impact you. The agreement enables VeriSign to increase prices by 7% annually in four of the next six years.

But it’s not a done deal just yet. It still must be approved by the Department of Commerce. That’s where you come in. Bob Parsons, Chairman and Founder of Go Daddy, has provided a suggested form letter at http://www.bobparsons.com/ICANNletsusdown.html to contact your Congressional Representatives and/or Senators.

Take action today.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Ask Shawn Collins: Time for an Affiliate Program

March 22, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Q: How can I tell if my Web site is ready to offer an affiliate program?

Shawn CollinsA: I’m glad you asked. I see too many people try to launch an affiliate program at the same time they are launching their site, or shortly after the site has launched.

My suggestion would be to have your site out there and generating sales or leads for a good year or so before looking into an affiliate program.

The reason here is to get all of the kinks out and establish a track record for your site. After all, affiliates aren’t willing to be your lab rats and you must determine that your site can successfully perform.

That issue out of the way, a site that successfully transacts can generally work for an affiliate program. That said, if you’ve got something very niche or regional, it can be a big challenge to find a decent number of quality affiliates.

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Filed Under: Ask Shawn Collins

Affiliate Classroom Magazine – March 2006

March 21, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Anik Singal’s latest Affiliate Classroom Magazine is now available, and the focus this month is e-mail marketing.

There are articles on the current state of e-mail deliverability, Spam law compliance, and effective ways to develop your first e-mail marketing campaign.

If you are already gathering leads via opt-ins, there’s a helpful article that breaks down the process of troubleshooting e-mail deliverability problems. And if you’re an active e-zine or e-newsletter publisher, there are two articles that offer some useful, advanced tips.

In the News and Views sections, there are some intriguing pieces on advances in clickstream analysis, the emerging online marketplace in India, and MSN’s new ad program.

There is also an article for the newbies on how to do a Springtime tune-up on your existing affiliate sites.

Unfortunately, the link to the magazine is broken these days.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources

New Tool from Axandra to Optimize Marketing ROI

March 19, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Axandra, the company that puts out the popular tool ARELIS to find competitor’s links, has just launched a great, new tool for Webmasters called AxROI (Axandra’s Marketing ROI Optimizer).

linksAxROI shows Webmasters which ads and search engine rankings perform well and which are just a waste of time and money.

It works for Google AdWords, Overture/Yahoo and all other pay per click services, as well as banner campaigns, newsletter ads, text link ads, and any other online ads. Plus, it tracks organic search engine listings and paid inclusion links.

The way AxROI works is that it allows you to find out what exactly people purchase, how much you earn from your ads, whether people subscribe to your newsletter, if they visit special pages on your site and more.

You can get that information for every banner, text link, PPC ad and every visitor who found your site through a search engine listing.

Just like other products from Axandra, AxROI provides a 30-day period to give it a test drive. If you don’t like it, you can get your money back.

I’ve been using it and AxROI has been effective in lowering my ad costs and increasing your profits. I’d give it a thumbs up.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources

Biggest Mistakes Affiliate Managers Make

March 18, 2006 by Shawn Collins

I am going to be moderating a panel at the next eComXpo, “Biggest Mistakes Affiliate Managers Make,” at 1:15pm CST on April 5th.

The panel will cover threats to affiliate success and it features industry experts; Rosalind Gardner, author of Net Profits Today, Nikki Russell of FreebieJeebies and 77Blue founder, David Lewis.

If you are not familiar with eComXpo, it’s the top virtual tradeshow for eCommerce marketers, and this marks their 3rd show, taking place April 4-6, 2006. 

They are going to bring together more than 7,000 advertisers, publishers, search marketers, merchants, affiliates, webmasters, agencies and vendors, making it the world’s largest tradeshow for eCommerce Marketers.

For a list of panels and presenters, take a look at http://www.ecomxpo.com/EducationApril06.htm. Attending the event is completely free, and registration is now open at www.ecomxpo.com.

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