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?

It would be simpler if they would all just say that their network/system/widget was the best thing since…..

But they’re not.  A network is nothing but a tracking system.  An OPM is just a management company.  A “method/system/formula” is nothing but an outline, and it seems that the only thing new I see out of most of these is the hype surrounding them.

And it really doesn’t and shouldn’t be this way.  If a new network is truly different then they should clearly say why they are different.  “Bigger Better Offers with High Conversions and Fast Payouts” doesn’t cut it.  OPMs need to distinguish what it is about their firm that is different and better.  People selling SEO software should make it clear about how using their product is an advantage.  Otherwise, they’re just celebrating the 82nd anniversary of the invention that all other inventions are measured against.

I firmly believe that by evidence and action that some networks are far superior to others.  I also know for a fact that some OPM firms bring tangible results for their Merchants and Affiliates in superior ways.  I have historical tracking to show that some tools I use for SEO and organic ranking simply work better.  And in every case not one of them told me why they were superior outside of self promotion equating to the equivalent of comparing themselves to the invention that all other inventions are measured against.

Soon…  And I think sooner rather than later, we’re going to see serious consolidation in the OPM arena.  And it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it’s a network that starts rolling up OPM firms in order to distinguish themselves from other networks.  And it is my hope that this will be heralded for the competitive advantage it would give both Affiliates/Publishers and Merchant/Advertisers instead of the usual hype.

Because on July 7, 1928 the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri introduced Sliced Bread.  And although many inventions can be said to be “The Biggest Thing Since Sliced Bread”.  The equevalent hype in our industry simply cannot stand up to just simply telling what you have and why it’s better.  Even if it is the biggest thing since sliced bread.

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.

Are you using “Human Herding” techniques in your Affiliate Marketing efforts?  What’s that?  A simple concept really.  And more than likely your using Human Herding without realizing it.  But it’s a powerful way to generate sales, clicks, and there’s nothing wrong with the concept.

As an experienced Cattleman there is an analogy that fits.  If a cattleman is out checking his herd and there are a bunch of calfs with their mothers it isn’t unusual for most (if not all) of the “momma” cows to head on out to the pond for a drink.  And all the calfs are left with the rancher.  Kind’ve like the herd deciding that the cattleman is the designated babysitter.  Which is essentially how Human Herding techniques work for Online Performance Marketers.

Implementation, however, can be problematic.  You see, in order to use Human Herding techniques you need to first identify who you are and what your about.  In detail.  Then you give freely on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Ning, etc. and slowly build your “herds”.  It takes time, patience, and hard work.   And here’s the part that’s difficult for most.  You have to inspire and trust your “herd” to work on your behalf for nothing more than their desire to share with others what you are sharing.  Simple Word of Mouth advertising with the goal being to increase the herd.  Not to generate instant sales.

But there is a big payoff.  As your various social media, blog, and website “herds” begin to grow it is essential that you change NOTHING about how you continue to give to the herd.  Keep pumping out the articles, posts, e-book giveaways, tips, tricks, advice, whatever it is just keep doing it.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a good herd of cattle so don’t expect anything different when your employing Human Herding strategy.  The temptation is strong to make everything about you and generating money for you.  But herds are full of skittish flighty animals so don’t spook them.  Nothing is worse than being caught either in the path of a stampeding herd, or, having your herd run away from you.

In other words, monitize intelligently.  Use paid contests (where an advertiser pays you to give their stuff away).  Mix your affiliate links in just as you would with a blog (only products and services that will be of interest and benefit your “herd”.  Don’t slow down the giving of your time, attention, and interest in your “herd” and at some point they will trust you rather than simply follow you.  And you’ll see that in your performance advertising commissions.  When there is a big spike that stays up for more than a month…  your most likely there.

But something else happens as well.  Opportunity.  As your “herds” grow, follow, and then trust you for what you do for them they may wander off…  And leave behind something they love and trust themselves…  their friends that they introduced into your “herd”.  Which acts first as a reason for someone that’s losing interest to stay…  And then if they wander over to the pond a reason to return to the “herd”.  A built in mechanism for maintaining a large group of people that trust you in your chosen niches and that will do more than click a link and go on their way.

They’ll “return to the trough” over, and over, and over again.  Which is what you want, isn’t it?  solid, dependable, repeat business.

How are you building and maintaining your herds?

Strange things pop into your head when your mind is on business and you see something pop up to interrupt you.  Like a world map broken down by which Social Networks are dominant where…

Which is pretty important data if your focusing some effort outside of the US and Canada…  In an article on Gawker today they’ve identified some trends:

• Orkut leads in the Indian subcontinent, as well as Brazil;
• Facebook is stronger, internationally, than Myspace, with surprising strongholds in the Middle East;
• hi5.com is the most international of all the social networks, leading in Peru, Colombia, Central America, and other, scattered countries such as Mongolia, Romania, and Tunisia;
• both Bebo and Skyblog follow colonial patterns, the first strong in smaller English-speaking countries such as Ireland and New Zealand, and the latter in Francophone countries;
• and Friendster, the original social network, leads all across Southeast Asia.
• Fotolog, a photo service defeated in the US by Friendster, has re-emerged as the dominant social network in Argentina and Chile.

Pretty cool stuff.  With this (and their handy dandy map,  you could just about identify the least path of resistance to focused landing pages for links on social media outlets country by country.

How’s that for a “thought out of nowhere”?  It’s not a complete strategy.  But it’s a good start and sure saves alot of time wasted testing various social media outlets in each country.

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/2010/04/google-patent-on-status-updates-raises-affiliate-questions/ http://blog.affspot.com/2010/04/google-patent-on-status-updates-raises-affiliate-questions/#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:13:58 +0000 scottm http://blog.affspot.com/?p=379

Aardvark is a service that lets you ask a question, then various forms of Social Media are queried to elicit a response from a person with the answer.  Basically, a social media powered search engine.  Founded by former Google employees (well, former, now employees again) Google bought the company about a month or so ago.  And they’ve filed for a patent.

The patent covers automated status updates when you join a service.  So, for example, if I enabled the AffSpot Affiliate Marketing Forum with a couple lines of code I could have the AffSpot Facebook, Twitter, etc. drop in a status update that says “SuperAffiliate Clark Kent Just Joined AffSpot!”.  And this patent (if approved) would mean that I would either need Google’s permission (or pay a license fee) in order to do this.

Perhaps the most obvious form of this is “Share This”, “Tell a Friend”, and “Refer a Friend” type links on your Affiliate Websites.  Think about it.  The ability for your customers to refer your affiliate sites to friends would be potentially restricted by Google.  And you know just how valuable word of mouth advertising is.

You see, software and process patents are a double edged sword.  And although things that are obvious (for example, the man that invented the WeedEater lost his patent because it was declared obvious that having a motor spin a string around would cut grass) are generally not patentable…  Many “obvious” things in the software/process world are allowed patents.  For example, “One Click Buying” at Amazon.com.  Which is where the double edge of the sword comes in.

If this particular patent is approved it would be possible for Google to declare “Share this Post” and “Tell a Friend” refferal mechanisms violate their patent.  Which could hinder your ability to make it easy for your customers to refer their friends to your sites/offers.   And the result would be that Affiliate Marketers could lose a valuable tool and a terrific source of word of mouth advertising.  It may also be that Google is just trying to protect their investment in Aardvark and that your promotional activities would just be left alone too.

Patents of this type raise serious questions for Affiliates..  And software and process patents of this nature need to be paid attention to closely.

The AffSpot Affiliate Forum is delivering as promised.  The AffSpot application for Android Phones is released today. AffSpot for Android is also totally FREE and available in the Android Market.

The AffSpot for Android application is a mobile friendly version of AffSpot with full features.  Grab the latest posts, start a new thread, search for items of interest, even upload images to your gallery and utilize the Private Messaging system.  All from your Android Phone with all the features of the previously released AffSpot on iPhone application.

As we hope you’ve figured out by now AffSpot is more than a forum, more than this blog.  AffSpot is all about bringing the full mix of conversation, crowdsourcing, information, and news about Affiliate Marketing to you how and where you desire.  Whether your site of choice is the AffSpot Affiliate Marketing Forum, Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, or on your iPhone or Android device.  AffSpot is bringing the best of Affiliate Marketing right where you want it.

Android apps at AppStoreHQ

For those who like to get their AffSpot information on the go, we’re pleased to announce the launch of the AffSpot Affiliate Community iPhone app. It’s designed to let you use the full feature set of AffSpot on your iPhone (without having to use your mobile browser).

It’s fast, easy to read, easy to post with, and efficient. And, like the AffSpot Web site, designed to deliver the full AffSpot Affiliate Marketing Community that you have come to expect.

You can browse forums, threads, and posts.  Share your favorite posts on Facebook and Twitter, read and send Private Messages…  All while your mobile with your iPhone or iPod Touch (yes, it runs on the iPod Touch too).

It’s all part of our effort to make sure you can enjoy AffSpot, day or night, on whatever platform you use — at your desk, in the car, at the airport, or strolling around the city.

The AffSpot iPhone app is just the first of several smart-phone apps we’ll be launching this year. And it supplements the access you already enjoy from AffSpot.

To download the free app, go to http://itunes.apple.com/app/affspot-affiliate-marketing/id359373443?mt=8# or search for “AffSpot” in the iTunes App Store. Please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Here’s some screenshots that Stacey Farooqui left for us on Facebook:

At the AffSpot Affiliate Forum I get alot of Private Messages…  A whole lot of PMs.  And a trend I’ve seen of late is the number of questions I get about the FTC Guidelines for Affiliate Marketing (or blogs, tweets, etc.).  I also was watching the SXSW session about this very same thing (by following the tweets of someone from the FTC at the event along with some liveblogs). So rather than answering a pile of PM’s, here’s the info as I understand it.

If you get paid, you have to declare it.  Not on a global “disclaimer” page, on every article, post, etc.  If you get a free sample, discount, demo product, commission, etc.  You’ve got to declare it.  Now, you can be creative in declaring it.  But you have to declare it.  It’s that simple.  Doing anything less is asking for trouble.

Here’s a few other points I gathered and put into a simple “bullet point” format for you.

• If you mention that you like the Google NexusOne it’s okay.  You don’t have to declare anything if your just giving your opinion.  But if Google gave you one, you got a discount for blogging about it..  Receive a commission for every one sold?  Then declare it.
  
• What the FTC is looking for is transparency.  If your getting money, discounts, free product, etc. Just say so.
• You can be creative in your disclosure.  It doesn’t have to be a boxed “sterile” legalistic disclaimer.  As long as your site visitors will discern that you got money/products/services/discount, etc. then your good.
• You must disclose somewhere in the actual post/article/tweet/status update. It is not enough to post a blanket disclosure in the About section or sidebar of your site. The same applies to tweets. You must disclose in each tweet (but #add #spon is okay).

Here is the FTC disclosure page with revised guides and consumer education videos

And here is the WOMMA guide to disclosure