Archives for June 2008

There are lots of issues on the table for affiliates as we approach the 2008 United States Presidential election, and I got to thinking… which of the candidates would be best for affiliates.

While we face a variety of issues, including the economy, Iraq, climate change, and immigration, the area I will focus on in this instance is the wallets of affiliates and how the tax plans of John McCain and Barack Obama will impact them.

The Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan, joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, compiled a breakdown that illustrates how the average tax bill could change in 2009 if either John McCain’s or Barack Obama’s tax proposals are fully in place.

While most affiliates fall into income ranges where the tax proposals are fairly similar, the super affiliates (and those who aspire to that income range) will see markedly different changes in their tax bill under John McCain vs. Barack Obama.

Read more on the 2008 Presidential Candidates’ Tax Proposals at http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/election_issues_matrix.cfm.

If you’d like to hear a bunch of affiliate marketers discuss politics, listen to the weekly RedHatBlueHat podcast on GeekCast.fm.

The Performance Marketing Alliance (PMA), a new affiliate marketing industry group that was discussed this week on both the GeekCast and Affiliate Thing shows, is now forming “Working Groups.”

The purpose of the working groups is to get a broad perspective from different parts of the industry on issue around the setup of the PMA.

Hopefully the working groups will get participation from all of the types of affiliates, merchants, networks, etc., so a truly representative group can come together here.

More details at the PMA blog.

JupiterResearch has published a study on affiliate marketing that indicates online marketers will spend $2.1 billion on affiliate marketing fees, with US online affiliate marketing spending reaching $3.3 billion in 2012.

I am not clear what that means… “affiliate marketing fees”? I presume that is the aggregate cost of running an affiliate program: affiliate network fees, affiliate commissions, etc.

According to the report, affiliate marketing remains a highly attractive endeavor because it is performance based, presenting low risk and requiring low initial investment. Over time, marketers tend to work with affiliates that drive the most traffic to their sites, resulting in a small number of affiliates driving the majority of traffic and sales.

Because affiliate marketing is so heavily intertwined with the search engine marketing industry, Google is the one wild card that might affect the overall growth of the industry. Google’s dominance over SEM forces affiliates to be sensitive to Google’s Quality Score, which prevents lower-quality affiliates from buying paid search.

The lead author of the US Online Affiliate Marketing Forecast, 2007-2012 report was Patti Freeman Evans, who will be speaking at the LinkShare Symposium next week.

At TiECON East 2008, Blogpreneur Awards were presented to three entrepreneurial bloggers.

I was honored along with Al Carlton of CoolestGadgets.com and Jeffrey Strain of FinancialHack.com.

Unfortunately, I had a scheduling conflict, and was not able to make it to the TiECON Entrepreneur Forum at this year’s TiECON Conference.

I’ll definitely get that on the schedule for next year. Thanks a lot to Chitika and TiECON, and congratulations to Al and Jeffrey.

Check out the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtNfMD4VCqs.

Yanik Silver, who has created a number of successful online products, as well as the popular Underground Online Seminar, has a new article at Entrepreneur.com (5 Perfect ‘Spare-Time’ Online Businesses), and strongly disagree with his comment about affiliate marketing.

“This (affiliate marketing) may possibly be the absolute laziest way to make money because it doesn’t require you to have a product, make a sale or ever have any interaction with customers.”

Granted, affiliates don’t do the fulfillment, but being an affiliate is hardly a lazy pursuit.

Rather, it’s a difficult, financially risky endeavor that requires extensive testing and resources.

And the affiliates that do well are often interacting with the customers and helping to make the sale through their pre-selling efforts.

Now I like and respect Yanik, and on top of that, we went to the University of Maryland at the same (Go Terps!), but this is wrong headed.

A funny thing in Yanik’s bio at the end of the article: “Yanik Silver is the creator and author of several bestselling online products, but he still can’t build his own website.”

Maybe when he builds a site as an affiliate he will change his tune.

Read the article at http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebusiness/gettingstarted/article194524.html.

The Performance Marketing Alliance is a new professional association for affiliate marketers that has just kicked off operations.

The group is currently being sponsored by Affiliate Classroom, and spearheaded by Rebecca Madigan of Affiliate Classroom, who was previously at Commission Junction, where she was director of product management and solutions marketing manager.

There are three industry veterans who have been instrumental in building momentum behind the group: Lisa Riolo, Brook Schaaf, and Brad Waller.

The team behind the Performance Marketing Alliance has laid out some plans for moving forward, such as organizing a paid staff, determining objectives, and creating an advisory board.

More details at www.performancemarketingalliance.com.