Archives for June 2006

I was very curious when I saw the press release title, “Six-Year-Old Affiliate Marketing Company For Sale on eBay” cross the wires yesterday.

How many companies have been around the space that long? Must be something interesting. When I read the release, I learned that it was AffiliateAnnouncement for sale on eBay.

The release touted titillating figures:

2005 revenue for AffiliateAnnouncement was $55,059, already surpassed by the 2006 YTD revenue of $56,890.

Average monthly revenue is $11,378 for the growing company; projected revenue for 2006 is $136k+.

Really? I’ve got to agree with Wayne Porter, as he blogged, “With an average monthly revenue of 11k per month I have to wonder why the reserve is a paltry 25k or a multiple of only two months of earnings?”

On another note, you’re too kind with your headline, Wayne: “Venerable Affiliate Announce Service on eBay Auction Block.” Venerable? Not for nothing, but I think “antiquated” would be a more appropriate adjective. Bede is more relevant.

When Affiliate-Announce, the previous name of this product, was founded in 1999 by affiliate marketing legend, Neil Durrant, it was very useful, as there were many active affiliate program directories.

The herd has thinned considerably since then, and such a mass submission service just isn’t necessary anymore.

I got an invite to the next Performics Client Summit yesterday, and I’ve got to wonder if they’re putting out a subliminal message.

The graphic from the invite (see below) indicates, to me at least, that Performics is focusing more on affiliate marketing and less on natural search.

Notice how the compass is pointing north to the affiliate piece of their business, while natural search is going south.

Hidden message, or maybe I haven’t had enough caffeine this morning?

Jonathan Miller blogged a recap of the recent Digital River European Sales Summit in Majorca, Spain.

The event sounded interesting, but the real news of the post was the title on Todd Crawford’s new business card: VP Sales & Business Development – oneNetwork.

The oneNetwork Affiliate Program is a division of Digital River.

I’ve been tracking the growth of oneNetwork over the last year or so, and I think this is a great move for Todd and Digital River. Good luck!

Affiliate Classroom will be launching the 1st Edition of their Affiliate Manager Training Course on June 27, 2006.

The Affiliate Manager will teach affiliate managers (novice or experienced) how to recruit, train, manage, motivate and activate affiliates in any affiliate program.

In addition to folks such as Ben Edelman, Mike Filsaime, Yanik Silver, Linda Woods, and Chris Sanderson, I’ve contributed to this Affiliate Manager course.

In advance of the release of the Affiliate Manager Training Course, Affiliate Classroom has released a free report titled, “Can Affiliate Sales Change the Course of Your Business?”.

The report includes six types of affiliates you can recruit, a quick strategy to motivate your affiliates to sell for you, and the three most important ways to communicate with affiliates.

The Brother’s Schaaf (Brook and Forrest) are hosting an affiliate marketing get together down the shore in Brielle, NJ.

The Affiliate Marketing BBQ is taking place Saturday, June 24 from 1 to 5 in the afternoon. All are welcome to come by for food, drinks and affiliate geek chat.

Families and friends are welcome, but warn them that they’ll have to endure industry shop talk.

The Schaaf House is located on the Manasquan river, so bring your bathing suit if you want to take a dip.

They are located about an hour and a half south of NYC by car – or about 2 hours by train (they’ve offered to have somebody make train pick-ups).

If you come out, feel free to bring a side-dish or dessert. Totally optional. Affiliate Summit is handling the soda and beer – let me know if you want something in particular and I’ll try and grab some.

Contact Brook at brook(at)schaafco.com to RSVP or get more information.

Back in January of this year, Return on Affiliate, launched with a good bit of fanfare in the affiliate marketing space.

It was a novel idea – a social network for affiliate marketers – and many folks in the industry supported the effort. The site had something of a meteoric rise in registered members and traffic.

Then one day I got an IM from Kellie Stevens, President of Affiliate Fairplay, to notify me that Return on Affiliate was running pop-up ads through MyGeek.com that targeted AffiliateSummit.com and a laundry list of other affiliate marketing sites. Bad word of mouth started spreading.

This was all chronicled by Lisa Picarille, Editor in Chief of Revenue Magazine in her blog.

Anyhow, Richard Lewis, the founder of Return on Affiliate, was very active with his community and the affiliate marketing industry in general for the first few months of the year.

But shortly after the story came out, he seems to have dropped off the face of the industry. Out of curiosity, I took a look at his community for the first time in a while, and his news section, which had been getting updated a number of times per week, has been dormant since April.

It’s a shame really. I thought this social network was poised to play a positive role in the future of affiliate marketing. Who is the next one to give this concept a shot?

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

—T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” (1925)

There were some threads on ReveNews a while back about whether they should have coverage of the adult and gaming industries. Responses were divided on the subject with some affiliates vehemently against the adult and gaming industries.

That got me curious about whether affiliates in the so called mainstream – those who generally promote retail offers – are willing to promote adult, alcohol, gaming, pharmaceutical and tobacco affiliate programs.

In speaking recently with some folks running gaming affiliate programs, many of them are proactively recruiting top performing retail affiliates, so I’d imagine that practice is also being explored by the other controversial categories.

I surveyed a couple hundred affiliates with the question, “Would you promote affiliate programs in the following categories?,” and also gave them the opportunity to share their candid thoughts on these types of affiliates programs.

I’ll share comments that were submitted in a future blog. In the meantime, here are the results of the survey:

I’ve got to say that I was surprised that affiliates found tobacco affiliate programs to be the most objectionable. Meanwhile, the gaming affiliate programs were the only ones to get a thumbs up from the majority of affiliates surveyed.

I think this exhibits that there is some opportunity in these categories, since they are each the equivalent of affiliate Kryptonite in varying degrees.

They’re lucrative, yet many affiliates won’t touch them. For all of the people that ask me about areas of affiliate marketing that have strong potential for newbies, here you go with some on a silver platter.

The affiliates and merchants that work with CJ are channeling Howard Beale lately on the message boards, chats and blogs.

The sentiment about the CJ Link Management Initiative – they’re as mad as hell, and they’re not going to take this anymore.

Scott Jangro has organized an online petition that states, “If you are opposed to Commission Junction Link changes, please fill out this form. You’re here. Do it now.”

Those who sign the petition can post their name or keep it private and make comments as to why they are signing the petition.

Scott will be printing the list and hand delivering it to the CJ office in Massachusetts.

Read and/or sign the petition at http://www.jangro.com/cj-petition.php.