Yesterday I received a call from an Affiliate Manager friend with an issue.  Affiliates running ads on reserved trademarks, coupons dominating, backend tracking getting more and more difficult and the workload it was causing.  Generally, my friend wasn’t having a good day.

So I suggested that we go through each item one by one and maybe my suggestions would help, and maybe they wouldn’t.  But in any case my friend would at least have things to think about.  And as we worked our way through the high spots everything boiled down to this.  The true Value of the Affiliate Performance Marketer is being hindered by artificial means.  That instead of fighting the Affiliates they should get creative and work with the Affiliates.  And that there is “hidden” value that needs definition and measurement.

And here are the ideas along with the Value:

If Affiliates want to bid on your product names, etc. how about enabling them on terms everyone can be happy with?  Allow the bidding as long as the links go to you.  Then figure out a way to make that work in your favor.  For example,  Running special banners/text leading to specific “landing page experience” sites just for those affiliates that are bidding on your trademarks?  Make it special, and exclusive enough that you leverage the behavior to the benefit of your brand/store?

Since “Coupons are King” right now.  Embrace them in intelligent ways.  Maybe have your discounts/coupons tied to a Facebook “like” button?  Tweet this page to enable your Coupon?  etc. and by all means find a way to have the hard working Affiliates link in those “share” items so they get a little credit.  But how many high performing affiliates will promote your program knowing that your going to tie the use of a coupon/discount to spreading the affiliates links?

Leverage your Affiliates for SEO.  There’s a million ways to do this.  Some good..  and some downright evil.  Stick with the valid, honest, and realistic ways to do this.  Work with your SEO people and build up a plan that works for everyone.  When a consumer searches for your keywords, and the first couple pages of Google are totally filled with your own site and those of your affiliates (and not your competitors) there’s value that makes the two items above nearly priceless.  Take your time, be smart, and figure it out.  It’s worth it.

And lastly, the combined cost of Affiliate Commissions and Discounts.  The conundrum of a 20% discount and a 15% affiliate commission costing so much.  To that I asked a simple question.  “Does your Affiliate Program show a profit, or a loss”?  The answer was profitable.  So my response is “So What”?  If your making a profit from the program (including management costs, network costs, etc.) then the discounts and commissions arn’t completely out of line.

One final subject was discussed.  Defining how to measure the results!  Some subjective, some objective, and some objective with subjective judgements.  Sales, EPC, etc. are all good.  But go through some other things as well.  How many links from your affiliates on the first page of Google/Bing, etc. for your keywords?  Over time, when those numbers increase do your sales increase?  If you trade bidding on your own trademarks for letting your affiliates “help out” is splitting that gain 50/50 with your affiliates helping them work harder for you?  Do you have any “leading/lagging” indicators in your data used to help you predict, then measure, what’s happening?

And yes, I basked in the comments of my friend of how helpful I was, etc.  But really, my friend knew all of these things already.  It just took a little discussion to clear out some clutter and think about that program from a fresh perspective.  Are you tossing away perceived conceptions and looking at your affiliate programs in ways that help you drive sales and value your affiliates for what they’re really doing for you inclusive of the non-direct sales benefits?

With the realization that Facebook has decided to take on Google the challenge of SEO is the changing landscape itself.  And this changing landscape will help smart, aggressive, and forward thinking affiliates to grow their business.  And those stuck in the muck of the past will lose.

Before it was all Google, MSN, and then Yahoo.  Now it’s Google, Facebook and Bing.  The good/bad part of it is that getting your sites on Facebook is radically different that with Google and Bing.  Remember Meta Tags?  Well, they’re back and in a huge way with the Facebook Social Graph.  Site internal links, external links, follow/nofollow, etc. are all part of Google (and to some extent Bing).  But it appears that it plays a very small part in how Facebook is doing it.  Facebook is paying attention to it’s Meta Tags and you putting a “Like” button on your pages.

Which brings up the largest factor in how Facebook will be ranking sites…  The Like Button.

You see, if you charge up your pages full of the Facebook Meta Tags you can define your niche.  Target your potential customers and help Facebook give terrific results.  Thinks like Title, Location, Whether it’s a Blog, Page, Application, and even an image to display, etc. can all be defined.  But the one thing you can’t control is the Like Button.  Which means you can have the greatest page of all time and if your potential customers click on your Affiliate Links instead of the Like button your going to get a commission…  And lose the Facebook equivalent of “Link Juice”.

It is possible that if you convert too well that your Facebook “Page Rank” will go down (because your links are being followed).  And if people love your site and click the Like Button that they may be “leaked” over to Facebook instead of clicking on your Affiliate Links.  Essentially, Facebook may become big enough (and some contend they already are) to force you into installing “leaky links” onto your affiliate sites.

Which won’t affect Google or Bing results one little bit.  That could change too.  But for now SEO is morphing into a Triple Headed Hydra where Google, Bing, and Facebook will all have to be accomodated in some fashion.

What are you gonna do?  Let’s talk about this on AffSpot and crowdsource this one together.

It never seems to amaze me with the extent some will go to monitize their blogs.  Sure, there are exactly TWO (2) advertisements on this blog (rotating).  And they do fairly well.  But I digress….

I submit for your approval the following screenshot of an article aptly named “WhatYou Don’t Know About Affiliate Marketing” (Site Name and URL removed to protect the #FAIL):

Now, I’m no stranger to cattle (I raided cattle in my youth), but when your subject is Affiliate Marketing it seemed a little odd to have AdSense placements of Miniature Cattle and Cattle Management Software on the page.  The dating ad on the right is a little goofy as well.

But Wait, it gets better…..

The “author” of the article touts themselves as being  “a Mobile Marketer, an Internet Marketer, Publisher and Entrepreneur.”  Which appears to be true.  But obviously in need of help.  Selfishly, I would say if they submitted their site to the AffSpot Performance Marketing Affiliate Forum that an equal share of “What the Hell are You Doing” and “Try this to Fix Your Site” would be offered.  And most of the advice would be pretty good.

Maybe I need to put this together for a presentation I’m doing later this summer…  But really, having advertising everywhere isn’t monitization…  It’s just counter productive.  And although I love AdSense for certain sites, not testing your site and seeing if the advertisments are relevant to your content is just plain lazy.

Here’s what this poor soul should do to fix their site.  The content isn’t bad.  It’s not the greatest, but it’s not bad.  But the conversion rate must be horrid.  I would get rid of the AdSense and change the offers to be relevant to the content.  An advert for a Wordpress plugin, a hosting company, a network and/or affiliate programs themselves would convert at a much higher rate.

But the shame of it all is that technically the site is build fairly well.  A reasonable template, the site is connected to Twitter and Facebook.  An admirable effort at in-site SEO was done.  With the right niche targeting and relevant offers this would be a good site.

But as it is now…  This is a Blog Monitization #Fail which equals Poor Affiliate Marketing.

]]> http://blog.affspot.com/2010/05/blog-monitization-fail-poor-affiliate-marketing/feed/ 7 http://blog.affspot.com/2010/03/leveraging-social-media-to-engage-with-your-customers-on-their-turf/ http://blog.affspot.com/2010/03/leveraging-social-media-to-engage-with-your-customers-on-their-turf/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:18:48 +0000 scottm http://blog.affspot.com/?p=326

I gave a webinar on this very subject last Sunday evening.  Basically I covered three points (each with their own subset of points).

• Your Customers are Everywhere – Go where they are and bring them back to your site/store/blogs
• Use automation to put routine updates in the locations you need in the formats best suited (via RSS)
• Be Like Dr Pepper – Log in at 10, 2, and 4 spending 5-15mins tops to personally engage (or 12 / 4 / 7, whatever)

I saw on Google Buzz this week where the very same subject came up.  How to be more efficient but still actively engage.  My thoughts were duplicated in that thread and have been received quite well.  Then I saw an article today on TechCrunch about why Google released Buzz so quickly and this single point got my attention:

The other reason Google needed to establish its own social stream pronto is that links passed through social sharing are beginning to rival search as a primary driver of traffic for many sites.   (article is HERE)

A point I really didn’t bring out in my webinar session (kicking myself now) is just how powerful a traffic driver it really is.  Social Engagement can bring big traffic.  Targeted traffic.  Traffic from people that have consented to follow your posts, have become familiar with you and your personal side.  And have CHOSEN to do business with you.

Here is the full recorded Webinar for you…

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Opportunity knocks in the strangest ways sometimes.  Being a big believer in Luck = Preperation + Opportunity I have retained several domain names over the years.  Mostly of places I’ve lived, activities I enjoy, etc.  And I maintain them mostly through automation and a brief posting every few weeks or so.

Then, over this past weekend..  the Opportunity component came into play for one of them.  You see, I live outside of a small town.  The town is just big enough to support a couple small lite manufacturers, a couple gas stations, a couple resturants, a grocery store and a few churches.  The town is quiet and the schools are good.  But then over the weekend Opportunity Knocked.

There has been some talk over the past few months that “something big” was coming to town.  But nobody knew what it was.  Only that it meant jobs.  And in this economy, that brings alot of interest.  Over the weekend the official city website had a press release…  A gathering at a larger auction house in town to announce a new industry moving in.  Along with the opportunity for up to 3500 new jobs!  This is big news.  And a big opportunity.

And what did I do?  You guessed it…  a couple domains where I’ve built local focused sites that garner some traffic are now on the front burner.  And I’m choosing the Affiliate Programs I promote very carefully.  I’ve joined the affiliate programs for every local franchise business.  Auto Parts, Movie Rental, etc.  Dropped in a couple other programs that are represented “brick and mortar” in the neighboring towns, etc.  Over the years these sites have grown very authoritative for the City name (it’s a good thing the local paper has no concept of SEO).  So when the news hits…  My sites are prepped and ready to take advantage of the traffic boost.

Oh, but it’s not only that…  I’ve sold advertisements to several local businesses (who will be linking to the site as well), and added even more solid original content, information, and a news channel.  And the traffic is already building…  Can you imagine what it will be when the news hits, and my little site is #1 in Google / Bing / Yahoo for a sleepy little podunk towns name?

Affiliate Gold is what that is..  And it’s an example of thinking longer range, building sites slowly over time, and striking while the iron is hot.

Granted, the application of statistical analysis used in baseball (specifically, Sabermetrics, invented by Bill James) seems to be a little “out there”.  And it is, kind’ve.  But using the data available lets us do more than simply report the measurement of observations of our campaigns.  You can take these observations and apply the numbers in ways that help you properly judge past efforts, and see what you need to work on to improve future performance.

For example…  Runs Created.  Bill James came up with a system that could grade a player’s offensive ability regardless of if he is a speedster who walks and steals a lot, a high-average singles hitter, or a low-average slugger.   the essential computation of Runs Created is:

RC=(H+W-CS)X(TB+.7SB)/AB+W+CS

Runs Created equals hits plus walks minus times caught stealing multiplied by total bases added to seven-tenths of bases stolen divided by the sum of at bats plus walks plus times caught stealing.  Sounds a little goofy (especially having Caught Stealing on both sides of the equasion).  But it woks.  The deviation from real life is a scant 4% and generally within 3%.  There are a couple exceptions, but overall you can take this formula, apply it to an entire team over the past 30 years or so it’s very, very close.  Which is to say after 20 or so games into a season you can begin using this to predict how many total runs a team will score for the season and get pretty close.  Not Vegas Bet close, but close.

Now, how do we apply this to Affiliate Marketing?  Let’s look at the information we have available to us.  We have Traffic, ClickThru, Sales, Visits, Pages Viewed, etc.  Traditionally we have all been measuring ourselves with CTR, CPC, etc.  Which are extremely simplistic measures.  What if we apply a little bit of Sabermetric thinking and come up with our own measurement for Runs Created?  How about Sales Created?

Let’s lay out a possible scenario:

SC=(Clicks-Bounces)X(Page Views+Uniques)/(Visits+Clicks+Bounces)

This would reward Clicks and Uniques, penalize Bounces, and rate it all against the total number of Pages Viewed.  Run some of your stats over this and see what the ratio of the resulting number (SC) is compared with the total number of sales made…  I’m seeing some results that are making sense.  The first site I compared this too was spooky. I had cleared 74 sales on an offer.  This example came out with  a score of 72.50.   Thus “predicting” the number of sales within 2% of actual.

I compared it with a few other sites, called a couple friends and got some example numbers.  So far, it’s doing a reasonable job of computing how many sales based on the numbers and statistics alone.  The interesting thing is that one of the examples was high traffic with high bounce rates, another had low traffic with very low bounce rates…  And the numbers held up.  I don’t believe this is the final form of this.  Let’s not kid ourselves, this is counter-intuitive and I spent less than a week on this.  But a logical conclusion to this little experiment is that we arn’t recording and analyzing the data we’re already gathering in effective ways.

We Affiliate Marketers need to start really looking at the data, the history, and figuring out better ways to measure what is really happening with our offers, etc.  Judging ourselves by the observations made (logs), and discovering ways to make ourselves better.

(Guest Post by Simon Gornick, CEO of Spotcher)

As the economy tightens, advertisers and their agencies are looking inward to discover the best way to deliver effective marketing messages.

The landscape is in a state of deep flux. There are a flood of new approaches out there, all competing for eyeballs. But there’s one that’s rising faster, and burning brighter than most. Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketers are some of the most confident, entrepreneurial and innovative people in America. They don’t need hand-holding.

And they’re a big reason why we created our new web app.

It’s called Spotcher. Think of us as the “Craigs List of Online video”.

Spotcher is designed to help bloggers, affiliates, small businesses and mini-moguls of all kinds monetize their video libraries with interactive overlays.

At Affiliate Summit West, there was a great deal of buzz about how affiliate marketers can leverlage video, but also some hesitation.

Video adds value and staying power to a web page, and especially a landing page. Plus videos are treated well by the search engines.

And one more thing. Creating, hosting and syndicating an effective video is easier than you think, and we can point you in the right direction.

Whether your video is global, national or locally targeted, our simple system gives UGC and small business video a path to real revenue potential. If you’re interested in selling products via your own videos, Spotcher can really help you.

We don’t host videos. We just give you more control of them. Partnering up with video share sites gets you a ‘portion’ of the ad revenue. With Spotcher, we know you do an awful lot of revenue sharing as it is. Do you really need another outfit taking a bite out of the hard-won revenue your content is earning?  Didn’t think so.

THE WORKFLOW

• We’re a simple, no frills app that offers only two things. One, Interactive Overlays for your hosted videos, and two, the help and guidance you need to use them effectively.

• Affiliates drive their self-hosted videos through our brandable player, create and add monetizing or info links to their own interactive overlays, then market,  distribute and share their videos.

• Links can continue to monetize across all instances of each video for as long as they’re active, so the process works well for long-tail e-commerce.  And the good news is that videos index better the longer they’re around.

• Our site guides and helps our users on creating great videos, as well as converting, hosting, linking, indexing and marketing their libraries.

• Except for our free plan (which starts free and stays free), we charge a small subscription based on number of videos users link to us, and that’s it.

WHY INTERACTIVE OVERLAYS

• Interactive Overlays are a seamless, intuitive, opt-in way to get commercial messages across without compromising enjoyment of your video content.

• When used best, commercial message overlays enhance a video rather than distract from it. That can mean a big boost in engagement and click-throughs.

• We think self-generated overlays will be a far more effective way of monetizing the video explosion than any other ad format. So why offer anything else?

• Because the content is driving the consumer’s decision to buy, that potential buyer is often far more motivated punch that ‘click to order’ button.

• The best indexing algorithm is the one in your head. You know best the relevant products and links for your video content.

• With the help of our easy to use metrics package, as well as your network stats, you can figure out what’s what’s flying and what needs changing.

LINKING WITH SPOTCHER

CPS Text URLs work best. Use Skimlinks, Viglink or any deep-linking engine from your CPS networks like CJ, Linkshare, and Google to create product, category or site links that you can add to your overlays. If it works in your browser’s address bar, it will work in an overlay. Simple as that.

TRY SPOTCHER FOR YOURSELF

We’ve just got started, so we’re keen to get your feedback on how to make our service even better. And remember, Spotcher helps you monetize your first two videos for free, so you can get to know the system before you move to a pay subscription.

Simon Gornick is the CEO of Spotcher

http://spotcher.com

@spotcher

]]> http://blog.affspot.com/2010/01/add-cps-links-to-your-videos-with-spotcher/feed/ 0 http://blog.affspot.com/2010/01/amazon-penalizes-affiliates-natural-search-results/ http://blog.affspot.com/2010/01/amazon-penalizes-affiliates-natural-search-results/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:05:22 +0000 scottm http://blog.affspot.com/?p=288

Amazon is doing the unthinkable over in the UK right now. Remember PPC going away in the US a few months ago? Well now they’re doing it in the UK and it does not bode well for US Affiliates (This Means You)!

In an article at SearchEngineLand they’ve quoted the UK Amazon letter ending PPC for Affiliates. And an additional paragraph has been added. Here it is:

In addition, as of February 1, 2010 we will no longer pay referral fees on purchases made by customers who are referred to www.amazon.co.uk or www.javari.co.uk via Free Search Results. Free Search Results are links containing an Associate’s tag displayed in a search engine’s free, natural, or organic search results in response to a search query which send customers directly to an Amazon site without the customer first being sent to an Associate’s site and the customer clicking on a link to arrive at the Amazon site.

So, you’ve built out sites with quality content, even localized in many cases, did some decent SEO, have your newsletter going out, etc. Things are pretty nice now that your site is on the first page of Google, Yahoo, etc. And the link to a specific product on your site that sets your tracking and takes a customer to Amazon happens to show up on that search term. You’d think that was good. You’d think that your hard work and smart execution of your plan would bring you a commission.

You’d think that since your efforts brought Amazon that sale you’d get paid for it. But no.. Not if it’s after Feb1 in the UK. And don’t think it won’t start happenning here as well. I’m not a huge predictor of specific things but this is starting to fall into a disturbing trend. PPC is being penalized by Amazon (among others). Google is slapping affiliate links in PPC as well. Ebay is now judging your sites for “quality”. And now Amazon UK is penalizing your organic search results (if it’s an affiliate link). And as everyone knows… link cloaking isn’t exactly an accepted practice among a majority of networks and merchants.

I have a good idea that this will become a hot topic at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas this weekend. And for good cause. I do believe that everyone is going to be scrambling to figure out how to preserve their earned affiliate commissions that are the result of a natural search. The other thing I know is that whoever cracks the code and figures out where all these moves lead is going to be a huge superaffiliate in 2011.

The biggest headache with affiliate datafeeds is that every merchant has a different format.  Which has spawned an entire industry of various service providers that do nothing but transpose the datafeeds into a common format that makes it easier for an Affiliate Marketer to import.

But, paying big money just to have datafeeds isn’t economically smart for localized niche (i.e less than 125) product websites.  And finding the right plugins to import data isn’t a joy either.  Now, I’m not saying that PopShops, GoldenCan, etc. are bad.  They’re actually quite good.  But when your building five affiliate sites with less than 125 products it may be better to save the money, time, etc. and do it yourself.

RSS to the rescue!  The one common plugin available for Wordpress, Joomla, osCommerce, etc. is the ability to import data via RSS.  And RSS is very good at importing datafeeds of 125 items or less.  So it only makes sense that if you had a tool that would convert merchant datafeeds to RSS you could do alot more marketing with alot less work.

And since there’s an Open Source project for nearly every task, I went looking…  And I found Affiliate Datafeeds.    This little jewel is a very open, barebones (read flexible) set of PHP script that converts CSV and XML datafeeds into RSS feeds, uses RSS Category fields for mapping, and will even let you define extra (non-rss) fields for mapping the data into your CMS.

They provide a Joomla component too.  And for Wordpress you can use wp-o-matic or any other number of plugins to read the feeds in.  I’ve tested it with Joomla, Wordpress, and have additionally fed Squidoo, WetPaint, and yes FaceBook and MySpace with it too.  Pretty much if the site can read RSS, you can automate it.  And it doesn’t take alot of skill either.  Just a little patience and knowing what products you want to promote.

All you need is a webserver with PHP.  You do have a server in your home office, don’t you?  Go read about it HERE.   But if you don’t it’s okay.  As long as you have a hosting account with PHP available your good to go.  You can even push it to FeedBurner.  So no excuses, you can do this.

You can Download Affiliate Datafeeds HERE.

You can visit the Webpage of Affiliate Datafeeds HERE.

You can see real sites using Affiliate Datafeeds HERE.

TopSEOs ranked the Top Ten Affiliate Marketing Companies and it isn’t a suprise to see active AffSpot Forum members taking the top three positions!

Evan Weber’s Experience Advertising took #1 with Peter Bordes’ MediaTrust taking second and Heather Paulsons Paulson Management Group sitting at number 3.   And Michael Vorels VastPlanet is showing up at #9 on the list along with AffSpotter Brook Schaaf’s Schaaf Consulting rounding out the list at number 10.

Impressive to say the least.  Even more impressive is just how accessible all four of these leaders are.  I’ve either spoken with, twittered, emailed, or PM’d each and every one of these great people on a regular basis.  Always receiving a prompt reply that was personal, on target, and showing that they really are doing what they love.

Which is why they’re on the list in the first place.  They are doing what they know, and love to do.  They’re constantly evolving, growing, and building their organizations because it is what they love.  Someone, somewhere once said that if you do something you love you’ll never have a job.  Meaning that being passionate about what you do is an important thing.

For many in the Affiliate Marketing business this is precicely why they do it.  It’s not easy.  It’s not simple.  It’s filled with frustration, an ever changing playing field, and potholes.  But there are thousands upon thousands of Affiliate Marketers that are successful because they love the challenge, the industry, and the way of life it allows them to lead.

Which is why we love having them all at AffSpot.  Evan, Peter, Heather, Michael …  We at AffSpot are extremely happy for your continued success, proud to consider you all not only members of our community, but active examples of how to do it the right way.

We congratulate all of you and your talented teams of professionals that are making this such a terrific business.