Archive of ‘affiliate marketing’ category
Here’s an intriguing query from Sarah:
“I’m a ebay powerseller and getting into the niche marketing vibe.
Judging by the number of high dollar earnings screenshots I’m seeing, I’m planning to go into the internet marketing niche.
I worked hard to build my ebay business and am sure I can replicate the same in internet marketing.
Can you give me any suggestions?”
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My answer:
That’s the great thing about Internet Marketing, the ability to continually expand your focus and the ebay stats screenshots you sent me were pretty impressive too.
You might like to check out Super Affiliate Amit Mehta’s post “Selecting a niche is everything in affiliate marketing”
As an affiliate or a product creator, the biggest constraint you will face is time.
Like it or not, even outsourcing the bulk of your projects, you’ll need to (more…)
Missy Ward and Shawn Collins’ Affiliate Summit West 2008 from February 24-26, 2008 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, looks like it’s shaping up to be yet another successful conference.
They’ve secured Jim Kukral as the MC.
According to Shawn’s post “Speaker Submissions for ASW 08”:
The submission deadline is October 26, 2007. Read through all of the information on the speaker submission page. submissions failing to follow the instructions and/or adhere to the deadline will not be considered.
…Accepted speakers will be notified no later than November 16, 2007.
Due to the volume of submissions, we will not notify applicants if they have not been accepted. Therefore, if you have not been contacted by November 16, 2007, your proposal was not accepted.
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The speaking proposals are evaluated on the basis of:
How are speaker submissions selected?
The speaker submissions are reviewed by the Affiliate Summit Advisory Board and selected on a number of factors, including speaking experience, industry reputation, and attention to detail (failure to follow instructions on the form will count against you), etc.
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Here’s an interesting idea from a year ago for ASW 07 (held in January this year)
If you are interested in speaking, one thing that would help evaluate your proposal is if you also send a video (just fire up a Web cam to shoot it) and talk about what you’ll be speaking about at the conference. (Potential Affiliate Summit Speakers – Send Us Your Videos)
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Although taking the effort to put together a video – scripting, shooting, editing – will take (more…)
In case you’ve missed out on making it to the recent Affiliate Summit East in Miami, the event’s co-founder Shawn Collins has posted the videos up.
Aside from the speech by Ze Frank which I understand had the audience rolling in the aisles, almost every other presentation is available for free.
I’ve watched about half of my buddy Amit Mehta’s Super PPC Affiliate presentation, and am looking forward to checking out the other Super Affiliate session with Jeremy Palmer, Vinny Lingham and Ros Gardner, as well as Wil Reynolds andKris Jones too.
Conservatively if I were to put a value on this material, it’d easily run into the thousands (more…)
This is a follow up to my “What Happens When Merchants Don’t Play By Affiliate Marketing Rules?” post, which I believe affiliate marketers will be keenly interested in.
I called the merchant and talk to them, and what they told me surprised me.
But first, a summary: With a gap in a web service merchant’s affiliate commission payouts on an affiliate network and their in-house program, I was keen to hear what veterans in the affiliate industry had to say. The commission payout through the affiliate network was about 50% higher, compared to the merchant’s in-house program.
Communicating with the merchant was certainly a key point in addressing this issue and some might say the information gap was being unfairly used in this instance:
“That’s retarded. Tell them to retroactively apply the network rate to your in-house sales from the date they started that network rate. If they won’t, dump them..” – Geordie Carswell, RevenueWire EVP.
“I attribute the fault in this to the affiliate manager/team handling your account. It is he or she’s job is to make sure affiliates (super or not) are taken care of. That person should have given you the choice as to which network you promote their program through, or at least told you about both offers. You are a well known affiliate and blogger and you should have been informed of both options. The affiliate marketing managers of Pepperjam are in constant contact with the affiliates who make a difference our programs. We build and form relationships to gain trust. The affiliate manager who was assigned to you did not do that.” – Robyn Martin, Pepperjam Affiliate Marketing Director.
“Before I began working for LinkConnector Affiliate Network, I was the affiliate manager for a few different companies. I considered it one of my responsibilities to keep our payouts consistent between the in-house program and the network programs. If anything, our in-house program sometimes had a higher payout because no additional fees were involved. I would never have considered that disparity between commissions – that’s just shooting yourself in the foot.” – Jeannine Crooks, LinkConnector.com Affiliate Sales Manager.
“I personally feel strongly that bigger and pro-actively managed programs SHOULD offer 2 versions.
In-house and a good network. TYPICALLY, but not in this case the in-house commissions would be a little higher, possibly longer cookies, etc. to make the in-house option more attractive and offset network costs…a possible scenario hit me that COULD make sense of this situation. Not saying this scenario would make the situation any easier for you to take but…
If the merchant, like many are was clueless and the affiliate program was not being tended to properly and they hired an OPM.” – Linda Buquet, 5Star Affiliate Programs Founder.[See the 5Star discussion thread]
Which is in-line with what I would expect. An in-house program would have lower operating costs and could give out higher payouts, but the opposite scenario is at work here.
And Chickenfeed AKA Millnic Media‘s Jason Bailey chimed in with:
“you got hosed and it is your own fault. This IS the standard practice and fully within the marketers code of ethics. (I can see the shit flying at me already…)…In House programs are notoriously low payers. They are also usually the most poorly managed of the places you can pull a particular offer from. CPA networks have schwacks of experience with a wide variety of offers, merchants and publishers. In house affiliate managers are often the webmaster as well, and quite possibly the night doorman to boot (not always  **dodges shit** –)…
You got hosed. If you were doing well at $60, think how much better you’ll at $90. Hell if the CPA network is offering at $90 on the street and you can push some volume, I’ll bet the can get $95 no sweat. Suck it up. Don’t make that mistake again. Lot at the bright side – You just got a $30 pay bump!..Join all the big networks and shop around. Get them fighting each other for your traffic. You have to be the squeaky wheel to get the big payouts. Logging into CJ to see what is new doesn’t cut it.
And as Share Results Network affiliate manager (more…)
For the first time in its history, Affiliate Summit will be travelling outside the continental US to the UK (United Kingdom) and I had an opportunity to find out more about the event from Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins.
Founded in 2003, Affilaite Summit brings together affiliate marketers, affiliate networks, vendors and merchants. The event has been going gangbusters with this year’s Affiliate Summit West and Affiliate Summit East nearing or breaching the 2,000 attendee mark.
I had a chance to talk to Shawn about the upcoming Affiliate Summit UK. Aside from a June 2004 Affiliate Summit held on a cruise ship from New York City to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, this’ll be the first time (more…)
As an affiliate marketer, I have to deal with challenges (or you might view them as opportunities) during the course of your campaigns, but when happens when you find out a merchant has been sticking it to you?
A case in point, I’d be promoting web services for a merchant through their in-house affiliate program. It paid about $60 per customer who signed up for their services.
And I discovered a couple of days ago that they’re running the same offer on one of the biggest affiliate networks and paying out $90 a customer.
Boy, I was fuming.
I can understand a $5-10 gap differential when the same offer is listed across various affiliate networks (the networks might be willing to cut out a chunk of their profits to give more to affiliates).
But when there’s a near 50% commission payout gap I feel it unconscionable.
There is an unspoken affiliate marketers’ code of conduct, but there isn’t a formal regulatory body which presides over affiliate networks and merchants.
In other words, who watches the watchmen?
Some might say that in a capitalist society, you are welcome to vote with your feet.
I tend to view business as a series of long term business relationships with real people.
I can only guess that:
- The various marketing/ad departments within the merchant or the network aren’t talking to each other, such that you have a 50% gap in affiliate payouts.
- The service provider faced some stiff competition and upped their payouts in real-time to remain competitive. But wouldn’t you be talking to your in-house team too?
- Affiliates? Who cares.
For the purpose of this post, I prefer not to name the merchant, nor the network, nor the type of service and focus on the core issue instead: Trust.
So does that mean affiliates are going to (more…)
