Archives for August 2009

ShareASale ThinkTank 2009 has been announced and it will be taking place at The Resort at Pelican Hill, in Newport Beach, CA on October 23-25, 2009.

This annual event is designed to bring together top clients as well as new, up-and-coming affiliates and merchants at ShareASale. I’ve always heard great things about it, but couldn’t make it in the past for various reasons. But that all ends this year – I’m headed to Newport Beach in two months.

An important thing to note – attendance is invitation-only, however ShareASale invites all affiliates to interested in participating to apply to attend the ShareASale ThinkTank.

And they do a really cool thing – all affiliates invited/accepted are treated to the weekend’s accomodations, food, and entertainment by ShareASale.

More details at http://www.shareasalethinktank.com/.

Heidi Cohen, President of Riverside Marketing Strategies, just wrote an overview of affiliate marketing at ClickZ.

It’s a good primer on the industry that points out reasons to add affiliate marketing to a marketing plan, hurdles for the industry, and affiliate marketing metrics to track.

Sixty-seven percent of U.S. Internet users seek the lowest priced items and 40 percent find coupons, according to Pew Internet and American Life Project’s July 2009 “The Internet and the Recession” study. With lower sales, longer purchase consideration periods, and smaller marketing budgets, what can a retailer do to beyond price cutting to drive sales? One cost-effective method is to add affiliate marketing to your marketing mix or enhance your current program.

Affiliate marketing can be a great way to extend your marketing efforts cost-effectively. (To better understand affiliates, check out this report.) Evidence of this is the recent Affiliate Summit East, where affiliates and retailers made real-world connections to solidify their online relationships. This year, the summit had an impressive 25 percent increase in attendance over last year.

Read the complete article at http://www.clickz.com/3634757.

Magnify.net announced last week that they’ve released an application that will allow users of Boxee to view videos from Magnify.net video channels on their home TVs.

Boxee has more than 600,000 installs and 90% of their subscribers are connected to flat screen televisions, so it’s a compelling opportunity to get more penetration if you’re producing online video.

You can see the Affiliate Summit channel on Magnify.net at http://video.affiliatesummit.com/.

More details at http://www.streamingmedia.com/press/view.asp?id=14494.

Epicenter Network has announced that they paid out over $970,000 during the first six months of 2009.

These commission payments went to affiliates using the company’s DM2 site development and hosting platform.

Q1 payouts came to $376,209, and then commissions grew in the second quarter to $595,320.

It’s nice to see the commission figures shared, and I’d love to see more networks put their numbers out there.

More on the Epicenter Network at http://epicenter.net/.

Last week was Affiliate Summit East 2009, and despite my intentions to be a good food citizen, I feel victim to the evenings of bacchanalia.

Five days in New York City with lots of food and drink, combined with little amounts of sleep never turn up a good result.

So no scale check-in for the week. But since I returned home I’ve been running regularly.

I am on vacation with the family this week, so it limits my ability to go for runs, but I’ll make treadmill time if nothing else.

The thing that stinks there is that I like to track what I’m doing, average speed for miles, length run, etc. through my Nike+ device in my sneakers and my iPod Touch.

While it tracks well outside, there are only certain treadmills that work with the Nike+ device, so I’m out of luck.

So I’ll have some unmetered exercise this week. You can see my progress to date on my Nike+ account.

Since all of my runs are tracked, and I’ve been buying my shoes direct from Nike, I think it would be a great and logical move by them to tell me when it’s time for a new pair, based on the expected mileage a given pair have in them.

I am guessing the average person doesn’t get a fresh pair of shoes as often as they should, though I could be entirely wrong.

Anyhow, I’d love to know the right time to do it and whip out my credit card each time to Nike. Come on, guys – help me help you!

Starting weight: 225
Last week: 219
This week: not checking in Affiliate Summit aftermath

Video: I Wish Nike Would Tell Me When to Buy New Shoes

The eBay Partner Network has introduced Quality Click Pricing, a new quality-based Cost Per Click (CPC) payout model designed to better reward top affiliates, simplify the commission structure, and increase the quality of traffic driven to eBay sites through the affiliate program.

In contrast to the current Cost Per Action (CPA) payout structure for eBay affiliates, Quality Click Pricing rewards affiliates based on the value of the traffic they send to eBay… the incremental transactions and incremental high lifetime value users that result from their traffic.

Payouts to affiliates will also factor in revenue streams beyond item purchases, including eBay advertising revenue and PayPal revenue resulting from increased traffic and transactions.

Just as affiliates driving quality traffic to eBay will reap higher rewards, those affiliates driving lower-quality traffic will see a decline in pay.

I like this sort of Animal Farm (but in a good way) approach to compensation where all affiliates are equal, but some are more equal.

Any affiliates joining the eBay Partner Network as of September 1, 2009 will automatically be paid out under the new Quality Click Pricing structure, while existing affiliates will not be transitioned to the new structure until October 1, 2009.

More details at http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/news/announcing-quality-click-pricing/.