Make Money Online

Imagine a site where you could define a project, application, or task you wanted to have completed and a global workforce of talent would bid on doing the project on an hourly or fixed cost basis.  You then get to review their qualifications, interview them, and see what other’s have said about the projects they have done for them.  You select your contractor to complete the project, and while they are working on your task you get screen shots of their computer screen as they go, so you know they are on task.

I have been telling a lot of people about this site.  oDesk has opened up a world of possibilities for me.  Here is are some examples of some tasks I had completed:

1. Identify all the flights available from British Airways can put them in a specified html format for tripzam.com.  For $2.22 per hour, my contractor in the Philippines completed the task in short order. See the final results of the british airways destinations.

2. Create a php script that shows my friends for afftwitlist.com so that I could show what people who are on the affiliate twitter list are saying on the site. Cost, $54 fixed price.

If you can define the task, you can find someone at oDesk to complete it for you.  oDesk charges your credit card and handles paying the workers.  They also have some more advanced features for bug reports, and code checkin, if you are running a more sophisticated programming outfit.

Like 99Designs.com for logo design, oDesk has been an eye opener!  Check it out!

Originally posted here:
Your Global Workforce!

I was updating and expanding my affiliate product data feeds and APIs resources at Cumbrowski.com, in particular the resources to the product feeds and store builder feature provided by the PepperJam affiliate network, which was launched about one year ago.

I liked what I saw overall, although some items were IMO a great idea, but then implemented half way only, probably without intending it.

Free? Hurray!

Product data are available to any affiliate without any cost directly via the PepperJam Network web interface. There is also a coupon feed available, in delimited format and RSS format (using some custom tags outside the RSS definition). They also have a tool called “store builder” (product show-case creator), which is similar to the tools available through third party tools providers like PopShops.com, GoldenCan.com, DataFeedFile.com or FeedShare.com.

Data Delivery via HTTP

Providing the feeds directly via HTTP, accessible via any web browser is a smart, efficient and cost effective solution. There is no need to charge any fee for setup or maintenance, because there is really nothing to setup. Via a, what you could call, “special page” are the product data rendered into the web browser in simple delimited text format, without HTML tags or anything like that. This is close to the format how the networks developer gets the same information out of their product catalog database, without the need for the developer to write a fancy, functional and error free user interface to browse the products.

The product information can be pulled and rendered into the browser in real-time.

Large Feeds

Since no FTP account needs to be created and no static product feed files created to be picked up by the affiliate via FTP client software, a whole new set of options become available and possible. No disk space is wasted on files that are not being picked up and no server CPU is spending a single cycle of processing power on it, until the affiliate publisher actually requests it.

True, there are some challenges, if you use HTTP as delivery method, if the amount of product s requested and downloaded is very large. However, 99% of all merchant product feeds do not fall into this category and even the merchants who have such large feeds (e.g. Buy.com, Overstock.com or Walmart.com) learned that it makes sense to break up their huge 1 million+ products big data feeds into smaller chunks, because it is never an easy undertaking to process over 1 million product records all at once, regardless if you download them via FTP or not.

Since HTTP requests can be handled and processed in real-time, the option to provide filters to reduce the amount of data returned, is now suddenly also (or should be) of the interest of the network.

It used to be an interest of the affiliates only (for the most part). I remember the time when I downloaded gigabytes of junk data every day, because there was only the choice between “everything” and “nothing”. Well, nothing was really an option, so you had to deal with all the overhead that you did not need.

Imagine the Possibilities

The real-time factor does allow the setup of virtually an unlimited number of filters. It is sad that affiliate networks who utilize HTTP for product data delivery are not making much use of this. A filter by product category, advertiser and keyword should only be the very least at the beginning.

When I was an affiliate manager in 2003 for a retailer who had the affiliate program with Commission Junction, the first thing I did was the creation of an affiliate intranet where publishers could create an account and pull product information and more. The intranet was initially created to solve the issues of not having contact information of any publisher (a CJ “feature”) , avoiding the $750 setup fee for the product catalog at CJ itself and the up to $250 setup fee for each publisher in our program that did not qualify for the free access to product feeds through CJ.

The intranet required a second registration, which is tough. We had to offer an incentive to do this. That was when we came up with features that were impossible to provide via the traditional network and the way how they did (and to some degree still do) things. For example it was possible to pull the top XXX number of best-selling products for the whole site or specific categories only and also the time-frame of the sales, ranging from “this month” to “all-time”. This enables the discovery of seasonal trends or sudden “hot” items that are new in the product catalog.

Those are only a few examples. Use your imagination and I am sure that the possible opportunities that come out as a consequence of it would be great, if at least some of the ideas will be implemented.

Web Services instead of Delimited Text via HTTP?

You might say that all this is what the new hot feature “web services” is supposed to be doing.

Yes and No. The border between web services and delimited feeds with several filter options provided via HTTP gets blurry, no doubt about that, but the technical details how similar they might appear are still different. The question whether to use a delimited feed or a web service (if available) still remains to be answered on a case-by-case basis. In some cases a combination of both does make sense.

Btw. as with web services, providing other data via HTTP beyond product and coupon data makes sense also, including reporting data or general program information about active or possible merchant/advertising partners.

One thing that PepperJam forgot over the nice and easy access to the product data via HTTP is the need for automated access to the data. HTTP is great and the link provided, updated based on my selections even better, but all this is of no use for many affiliates, if they have to be logged-in to the networks web interface in order to use the URL provided to them.

If I log-off and try the feed URL, no records are returned. Not good!

Automated Access without Login

PepperJam were not the first nor last who made this mistake. I remember LinkConnector.com having the same problem. I contacted them a while ago, suggesting to them to remedy this short-coming. I need to check, if they actually did anything or not. I could not send them sample source code as I did with Kolimbo (MyAffiliateProgram), where I could tell that they are using Microsoft Active Server Pages, where I am familiar with.

The affiliate network AvantLink.com did it right from the start. I wrote about it, when they launched, what they called their “AvantLink API Module“. Well, AvantLink had and has the reputation to be very knowledgeable about the subject of feeds and APIs.

You can have a look at their solution to see how they made it possible to provide access to the data in an automated fashion but at the same time doing it in a controlled manner without the option for anonymous access to the content.

If you do not want or like to see what another affiliate network is doing, fine, how about Google?

If you used the Google Calendar, you probably noticed the feature to pull your private events as a feed via an obscure URL provided by Google with the note that you must not give the URL to anybody, because it would give that person access to your feed as well. The protection is the obscure code in the URL that is virtually impossible to guess by anybody.

In the case that you think that the URL did leak out somehow, the option is available to render that URL invalid and generate a new unique and private URL for the same content.

I think you got the idea behind this.

PepperJam Sample Source Codes

Oh, btw the coupon feed provided by PepperJam Network does not require to be logged in to pull it. The lack of tags for start and end date of a promotion in the RSS version of the feed limits its possible uses, but I provided an example with source code for how to use it.

I also put the source code of a Visual Basic Script on my website that works around the problem of the need to be logged in to the web interface in order to pull the product feeds. I added a bunch of command line options to make it as flexible as possible for the use by affiliates to automate the pickup of product data from PepperJam.

Documentation? Configuration?

Last but not least. Is it really that hard to provide some notes about the general structure of the delimited feed (column and row separators, first row having column names or not, escaping of content that contains column or row delimiter) and to each column in the file about its use, possible values and format, which columns are required and always must have appropriate data provided by the merchant (and verified by you, the network)? Since the output data are generated on the fly, how about letting the publisher choose the format himself? We did that at our affiliate intranet too. The feed format preferences were simply stored with the affiliates intranet account. Some folks prefer tab-delimited, others pipe and there are even folks who like to deal with the mess that a CSV feed can create, if created improperly. The Linux guys prefer a simple Line-Feed after each record, the Windows guys a carriage-return plus a line-feed and the Mac guys just a carriage-return. Let each have it the way they like it.

I did as in almost every case educated guesses again by looking at actual product feed data from various selected merchants. But why should I do the guessing, if you are in the know and just forgot to write it down and share with your publisher base? “Should” and “Seems Obvious” is not good enough here. Once you automated the download, import, processing and publishing of a feed, having guessed wrong becomes more than a minor inconvenience, especially if it would have been easily avoidable early on.

Cheers

Carsten Cumbrowski
Internet Marketer, Blogger and Entrepreneur

Cumbrowski.com, the resources portal for internet marketers. The content is free, no strings attached.

The rest is here:
Affiliate Data Feed Delivery via HTTP

Ian Rosenwach, product manager at LinkShare, announced here at ReveNews.com in October this year the launch of the new LinkShare web service called “LinkShare Targeted Merchandiser API” and the feature by LinkShare that is based on that new web service called “Easy Links”.

This is only an addition to a set of different web services that are available to LinkShare publishers. The web service was silently launched months earlier already and this post was originally written, but not published in June, a few days before the soft launch of the service. I provided feedback back in June. I updated and expanded this post to incorporate changes and additions to the new features since I originally wrote it some five months ago.

This API is LinkShare first step into the realm of contextual advertising. The web service returns 1-X products of a LinkShare Advertiser, based on the content of a web page that was either specified in the API call or the referring page /URL (default), if no link was provided.

This is not a full blown contextual advertising service like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network, Amazon Omakase Links or eBay AdContext. LinkShare does not render any ads for you. You or somebody else (hint) needs to do this for you. Maybe LinkShare will offer something like this in the future, but nothing is planned to my knowledge.

The implementation guide lines for this API for developers can be found here.

A Look under the Hood

Let’s take a look under the hood. I had already a bunch of question after looking over the beta of their Implementation Guidelines. LinkShare did not get back to me yet regarding all the questions and comments that I had, so I decided to repeat them here in my post.

Using the vast number of products that are already available to LinkShare via their Merchandiser Service (Affiliate Product Data Feeds) is a good thing to do and something that I am talking about with people for a long time already. Making access to the product information as easy as possible for non-technical folks should be high on the priority list of advertisers. Existing and potentially new affiliates often like to promote a particular product they like and recommend. Being able to pull a product ad with affiliate link to get a commission for referrals is not as easy as adding an iLike widget on your Facebook or MySpace profile. It should be, but we are still a far cry away from this.

Access to the new API is cumbersome and not helping a lot with the mentioned goal to make it very easy to use. Advertisers decide for themselves, if they want to make their products available through the API or not. The advertiser must be using the LinkShare Merchandiser Service already though. Merchandiser enabled advertisers are not automatically enabled for Easy Links. You can find a list of Easy Links supporting merchants at the LinkShare Help Center here.

The affiliate itself also has to be enabled for the API and as far as I understand does this also require to be already enabled for the Merchandiser Service. The Merchandiser is not free to get access to for many affiliates. You either have to pay a setup fee or must be a good performing affiliate within the LinkShare network for several months already. But even if the Advertiser has the API enabled and uses the Merchandiser and you are an affiliate of that merchant and have merchandiser enabled for your account, does not give you automatically access to the API. The merchant has to manually approve every affiliate first. I don’t know if advertisers can enable automatic approval or not, at least for affiliates who were already approved to receive the advertisers product data feed via FTP.

Once you are approved for the API itself and for the access to the advertiser’s products via the API, you can start making API calls and use the new web services feature. Unfortunately is it necessary to specify with the API call which advertiser’s products should be used for the contextual matching. It does not work in the way that the more advertisers are enabled for the API for your account the more products will become available for the matching of your content. This is a huge drawback and something LinkShare will hopefully change soon.

The affiliate has to specify an advertiser’s MID with the API call and then only 1-x of the products available for that single merchant will be returned. This means that the affiliate has to pre-qualify the content of every page where you want to make use of the API first. If the page is about listening to music and not about making music, you should specify the MID of Apple iTunes and not Musicnotes.com to get a good match for example. This determination is a large piece of the matching already. If you need the API make some work for you, then I guess that you have to use advertisers like Overstock.com, Wal-Mart or Target.com who have a lot of different products.

I noted back in June in my feedback to LinkShare about the new web service, that the practical use for the API will be significantly limited because of the requirement to provide the MID of an advertiser for the contextual matching. Ads cannot be generated like an AdSense, YPN, Amazon’s Omakase, eBay AdContext or Microsoft Content Ad.

The “MID” is not something that a publisher specifies today on a page and ad unit level. He cannot reuse existing meta-data (keywords meta-tags etc.) and has only very few (and always ugly) ways of doing it. If you cannot find or program yourself a work around, the only option you are left with to limit the content of your whole website or website section to make sure that it always matched the product catalog of a specific merchant and then hard code the MID in your site template. I strongly suggest to make the MID optional and do a contextual matching across all merchants that are enabled for the publisher.

The updated developers guide also did not provide an answer to what results you have to expect in certain instances. I hope that the following question will be answered by the LinkShare web services team soon.

If I specify that I want 10 products back as a result, but you cannot find 10 products that actually match the content, what do you do? Do you return less than the 10 (only the ones where you have some kind of match)? Or are you filling the missing slots with products that you pick based on other criteria? What happens if there are no matches at all? I didn’t see an error message for that, which implies that you always return at least one product.

Web Interface and Widgets

In addition to the access to the Easy Links feature via web services, for the tech-savvy affiliates, LinkShare also offers access to the Easy-Links feature via an easy to use web interface. If you know how to create and implement Google AdSense ads into your website, you won’t have any issues with using the Easy Links widgets provided via the LinkShare web interface for publishers.

The Ad units provided by LinkShare are pre-defined, and are available in the standard banner sizes: 300×250 (medium rectangle), 468×60 (full banner), 234×60 (half banner), 120×240 (vertical banner), 125×125 (square button), 728×90 (leader board), 160×600 (wide skyscraper) and 120×600 (skyscraper).

The units can be customized to some degree. You can specify the border color, text color and link color and if you want to show the product name and/or product price. You do not have control over the product image and if or if not you want to show it. It also comes with a “buy now” button image, which cannot be changed. Also the link at the end of each product with the anchor “at Merchant Name” is static and not customizable.

Also not customizable are the background color of the ad unit, the font face, the font styles (bold, italic, size) and an alternative style for links if they are hovered over by the visitor. The border around the Ad unit cannot be suppressed, if you want to. You can only change the color to match your sites background as good as possible, especially if the background is not simply one color, but an image or gradient etc.

However, it’s a good start and most affiliates are probably able to live with the limitations. I also assume that the team at LinkShare will extend on the available options in the future.

The ads will not show the most relevant products right away. It may take up to 48 hours until LinkShare determined the most relevant products for your particular pages. LinkShare will show products that match the site category that you selected during registration for your web site until LinkShare completed the contextual matching process.

The Code to add to your affiliate pages looks like this.

<script type="text/javascript">
lsadunit_publisherId = 'YOURPUBLISHERID';
lsadunit_oid = '102327';
lsadunit_width = 160;
lsadunit_height = 600;
lsadunit_uid = '2004804';
lsadunit_u1 = '';
</script>
<script src="http://adnetwork.linksynergy.com/lsadunit.js"
 mce_src="http://adnetwork.linksynergy.com/lsadunit.js"
 type="text/javascript">
</script>

You can get additional help and information to this feature at the LinkShare Help Center for Publishers here.

Personal Comments

LinkShare also seems to be pretty confident that they are able to do a perfect job when it comes to the matching of products to the publisher’s page content. Even Google who has a much bigger pool of ads to chose from and several years for improving their matching algorithms (which still fails to produce good results in many cases), provides some means for the publisher to help them with the matching.

I am almost certain that LinkShare’s matching is by far not as good as Google’s nor do they have remotely enough ads to pick from for the matching, which makes it not always easier to find an ad that is actually relevant and targeted.

I suggested to LinkShare that the publisher will be provided with some overwrite options, e.g. a set of keywords that should be used. At the very least as a failover, if LinkShare’s content matching returns too few results or no results at all.

In addition to that they could use the proprietary HTML tags by Google or by Yahoo! for the specification, which (content) segments of a HTML document should be included for the content matching (the Google tag) and/or which segments should be excluded from the matching (the Yahoo! tag).

I am pleased to see that a few of my suggestions and comments that I made to LinkShare directly were actually listed to and changed, such as the inclusion of the Error Numbers in the developer guide.

Conclusion

Overall I have to say that I think that it was a move into the right direction by LinkShare, but that I am not impressed by the implementation of the API as it is now. Some might argue that you are better of using the existing Merchandiser Query Tool API, which is not very far-fetched, but they just started.

The least I want to do is discourage the folks over at LinkShare and stop with what they are doing right now. Consider this assessment as a well intentioned feedback. Let’s keep the stuff coming!

To learn more about the LinkShare web services and data feeds as well as web services and data feeds provided by other affiliate networks, check out the collection of resources and guides over here.

* Note to LinkShare Merchandiser Access
Request for access to Merchandiser Feeds – Online Form at LinkShare.com

Quote from their website:

• You have been active in the Network for at least 3 months, AND
• You have generated at least 50 orders in the most recent calendar month

LinkShare reserves the right to charge a one-time maintenance fee of $250 or discontinue access to the Merchandiser product.

Additional Information and Resources to Easy Links

• Easy Links Product Info for Publisher (PDF)
• Easy Links Feature Help at the LinkShare Help Center for Publishers
• Implementation Guide Line for Developers
• List of Easy Links enabled Advertisers
• You can also watch the recording of an educational screen cast from LinkShare about Easy Links here. You can also find additional recordings of seminars for Publishers at the LinkShare.com website here

Cheers!
Carsten Cumbrowski

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Somebody contacted me recently with some very specific questions about affiliate product data feeds.

“I have an Affiliate company with 1 other person and right now we have a little over 1000 SEO-based sites. We want to add product data from different Affiliate NW’s, particularly CJ, ShareASale and Pepperjam. We’re looking for a tool/application that will allow us to perform ‘Keyword Product Searches’ from these various Affiliate NW’s.

We want to store the product results in our database as we already have an infrastructure for basically everything, with the exception of adding these additional NW’s.I could take the time and write this code myself (I’m a Classic ASP developer) but we’d rather buy a tool, or pay a consultant to customize an existing tool, write something from scratch, etc.

The requirements are pretty basic although I would formally document them if/when needed: query the available APIs (starting with CJ’s Product Search API) and perform some straightforward logic processing (i.e. add new products if not in our DB, update for price changes/out of stock, etc)”

The question is very specific already, but I decided to generalize my answer a little bit to show also other options that this person might not considered yet, because he didn’t know that the options exist. I also address the advantages of the options that I do not recommend for this particular case, but which are relevant for other cases, where I would make a very different recommendation.

I hope that my response will also be useful for other folks with similar issues and questions.

I will not highlight or promote any particular service or network out there. Some were mentioned in the original question, which I did not remove. Another exception is also my notes for one case-scenario, where I don’t know of many examples myself, which is sad.

If you know about others, please feel free to tell me about them in the comments section of this post after the main article.

Here is my original response to the person via email.

There are multiple options. You can find examples and more info’s for each of those options here.
…. And also the subsequent pages it refers to of course.

Option 1 (not recommended)

This one works not very well for SEO though, at least not without some programming on your end. Third party providers (under “Affiliate Product Data feeds Tools and Services”) offer widgets and JS code snippets that return product search results for specified keywords.

Option 2 (recommended)

However, most of those providers also offer APIs (sometimes free, sometimes for a fee) to pull data from their huge and normalized data bases. You would have to write the API call and the rendering of the results yourself. Sample source code is also sometimes provided by those services.

For SEO purposes would this be the option to go.

I talked to some of them and they said that they also offer custom feeds to clients who are willing to pay for them. Just contact them. This would be the best option, if you have the resources to maintain your own product database server to feed data to your web sites. You must already have one, because I don’t think that you maintain your 1000+ websites all by hand vs. a centralized DB driven content management system.

Option 3 (recommended only if the limitations are not a problem)

Several affiliate networks provide access to product data of their Advertisers via web services APIs. However, you are often limited to only be able to search products for an individual merchant and not across the products of all your merchant partners. This could defeat the purpose if this feature is what you need for your Website.

Like for option 3. Programming on your part is required. I saw some networks providing “widgets” that render real HTML results, but none of those tools convinced me yet. Those are still in “beta” IMO.

Option 4 (not recommended, unless you have resources to spare)

Trust me when I say that you do not want to go with this one, unless you have the necessary one-time (and ongoing) resources available to do it. The lack of standards and the poor quality and errors in the available feeds are just a nightmare and the reason for the third party providers from options 1 and 2 to exist.

You can download the individual data feeds provided by advertisers yourself, normalize them and dump into your own product database. Then you can use those product data on your websites as you see fit.

This option gives you the most control and flexibility regarding the available product data. However, this flexibility comes at a cost that is in many cases to high for what it’s worth, but it does make sense for some folks.

Keep in mind that this option requires more than a one-time implementation. Feeds break, new feeds should be checked first (by hand), before plugged-into your system. There are some out of the box tools and scripts available that can help you with this task though.

Now some notes to elaborate the options and explain where the three options that I did not recommend for this particular publisher, would make sense for another publisher with different needs and premises.

Notes:

When I say that it is required to program stuff yourself, I don’t mean that YOU have to do it yourself literally, of course. As with many things in affiliate marketing, as an affiliate marketing who works on his own, outsourcing is important and almost impossible to avoid at some point, because nobody is good at everything and the idea of compensating the lack of skills with spending more time to get okay results (if that), becomes more and more unrealistic and unreasonable as your business matures and suddenly time will be the one resource that you will be on short supply on all the time.

I spent the time to collect resources and services to outsourcing. Sorry, but here went the “but how?”, “where?”, “who?” excuses for not doing it. hehe

Now some notes to the options that I did not recommend for the specific case from the email that I got, which could certainly become the right and recommended options for somebody else.

Option 1 is something that I would recommend to affiliate publishers that are looking for an easy way to get product data on to their websites or blogs and do not worry much about the lack of SEO (search engine optimization) benefits.

Those 3rd party providers often offer additional stuff, beyond product data, such as coupons and promotional offers available from your active merchant partners.

Option 4 is the option that I choose several years back, because there was no other option available. If I would have to make the decision again, I’d go with the extended version of Option 2 and pay a monthly fee to the 3rd party tools providers to give me access to a single, normalized and clean product feed for all my merchant partners who offer a product data feed.

Since those 3rd party providers are already doing what would be the most time consuming and on-going support requiring part of the whole thing, I’d rather pay them a monthly fee that I don’t have to do this dirty work myself.

The possible shortcomings are that the provider might not include columns that are special and something that I would really need or that they don’t have a particular advertiser included in their system yet. However, if you are a paying customer and your request is reasonable, making sense to the 3rd party provider etc, chances are good that this shortcoming will be eliminated by the provider, may be even free of charge, worst case, you have to cover the cost to implement what you need.

Option 3 has limitations, but the advantage that you are not required to store any (or only little, if you are doing some caching for performance reasons) product data on your own servers. You basically request information on-demand, when the user loads one of your web pages where you want to show this product information.

Another advantage is that the information are much more likely to be current than what you would have in your database, if you pull entire product feeds.

You cannot pull feeds all the time, because of the time and resources it takes to load and process them. A web service call to the source provides information as current and up-to-date as you are able to get.

More up-to-date could only be a web service call provided by the merchant himself (outside the affiliate network), but most advertisers do not have that. Exceptions that I know about are advertisers with an in-house affiliate program, like the Amazon.com or eBay.com affiliate programs.

Cheers!

Carsten Cumbrowski

Other affiliate and internet marketing resources in general that go beyond product data feeds can be found at my website Cumbrowski.com as well, resources like tools/services, books, podcasts, blogs, videos etc. to subjects SEO, SEM, eMail Marketing, Web Analytics, Copywriting, Domaining, Public Relations, Outsourcing, Legal Issues, Web Development, Industry Events, Database Development / Administration and much more. Access to the resources is free, no sign-up or membership is required.

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Options for Using Affiliate Product Data Feeds as an Affiliate Publisher

I am participating in the Association of Virtual Worlds, a new collaboration between 3D social and business explorers. The new organization has surpassed 2,000 members in only three months. As part of my research into 3D worlds I found a new site, Zoomii that offers a taste of what 3D browsing and Web Services can do when mixed together. The site is detailed on the Amazon Web Services blog and uses S3 and EC2. I think it is quite impressive. From the developer:

“ I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even have tried to build Zoomii without Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3; it would have looked too expensive, too daunting. And, of course, Zoomii couldn’t exist without access to a dataset like that. It looks like Amazon is growing a good business with its web services, but it’s providing far more value than it captures–you changed the equation for a lot startups and other projects.”

As Cyndy Aleo-Carreira of Profy points out- rather than blog about how cool Zoomii is why not just buy them instead? Zoomii is an excellent example of revenue sharing and the type of innovation that underscores the changes going on in affiliate marketing as people know it. The changes are going to come faster and faster.

Sam Harrelson points out with an apt historical metaphor around the ides of March (and on my birthday- thank you Professor Harrelson) about how the Assyrians failed to build better chariots and how this mistake cost them their post as a super power in the ancient near east. In Sam’s words:

“Or you could head over to the Oriental Institute at Univ of Chicago and ponder how, much like the consultants, false confidence in their own superiority (instead of developing better chariots) cost the Assyrian empire it’s position as a super power in the ancient near east. Both would accomplish the same thing.”

For those wondering what Sam and my babble about Snowcrash, science fiction as business metaphor, and virtual worlds have been about, let me put it very simply: Virtual worlds, web services and creative marketing are just some of the building blocks that go with building a better chariot.

One of the best places to learn about chariot building for the future is in the hallowed halls of history. Why? Because history tends to repeat itself. We are entering an era of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. We don’t have much history to go on, but we can use our fluid intelligence to solve these problems and cross-pollinate ideas from other disciplines e.g. Drexler’s, Engines of Creation (free).

Have you checked up on your chariots lately?

Are you prepared for the changes that are coming?

Is your mining operation set-up to strike gold or pyrite?

View post:
Zoomii, Virtual Book Browsing and Chariots

Subtitle: About Data Feeds, Web Services and the use of Interfaces (APIs) in Affiliate Marketing.

Slow progress is made when it comes to the utilization of data feeds and web services by affiliate networks and also by advertisers. The biggest progress is currently made when it comes to web services, which is a good thing.

The use for data feeds and web services by affiliate publishers might be similar to some degree, but there are distinct cases where they differ significantly. Web services cannot replace data feeds entirely, but they can and should replace some of the uses of data feeds today, where web services do a much better job and where data feeds were a poor (but in the past the only) choice to begin with.

Third party providers who aggregate and normalize data feeds will also not be replaced by web services and cannot be replaced by offerings from the individual networks either.

Each and everything has its own distinct role and purpose, its core strengths and its own weaknesses. The goal should not be to replace one or the other, but to leverage and support the strengths and reduce or eliminate the weaknesses.

Advertisers, networks, 3rd party feeds and widget providers and affiliate publishers all need to play their part and the right use and availability of data feeds and web services as interface between the four parties will ensure that everybody gets the most out of it and be winning at the end.

Theory
In theory is only the connection between advertisers and affiliate publishers relevant and networks and 3rd party providers are “only” a middleman that should be eliminated. However this is not the case in reality. Those middle men are needed and have to play a distinct role in many scenarios where a one-on-one communication between advertiser and publisher is impractical or impossible. The only option in those cases would be that the publisher develops himself the interface that is already provided by the networks and 3rd party providers. This is of course possible, but in many cases a waste of resources on the publishers side and a distraction from the publishers own core competencies.

Reality
If you want to use a computer, you don’t have to buy an operating system or software for it. You could write those things yourself and would keep the software companies out of the loop. Except for a few very specific applications is this scenario completely unrealistic and may sound like a funny joke to some. However, this is exactly what we are talking about, if you are talking about the elimination of the network or 3rd party middleman.

I created some diagrams to show the flow of data (information) from a merchant and advertiser to the affiliate publisher. I included more than just product data, because those are not the only information that an affiliate needs to get from an advertiser in order to make this all work. Some of the other information are often overlooked unfortunately, although they are at least as equally important as the product data and should be made accessible via feeds and/or web services too.

1. One publisher/affiliate has one relationship to a single advertiser/merchant only.

2. One publisher has multiple relationships with different advertisers and merchants that each provides product data, URLs, creative’s directly to the affiliate in the same or different formats and methods.

3. A network aggregates all the data from multiple advertisers and provides the data in one format and one method to the individual publisher.

4. The publisher has relationships with multiple advertisers via multiple networks. The networks aggregate for him the data from the group of merchants each network has a relationship with. The publisher has now the problem again that the different networks provide the data in different formats and via different methods to him.

5. 3rd party service and tool providers aggregate the data across multiple networks and/or multiple advertisers and provides them in one normalized format to the publisher via only delivery method.

Here is a link to download the full Diagram

The Roles
What you can see from the diagrams is the fact that networks and 3rd party vendors are playing the role of aggregators and data cleansers who provide data from multiple sources and possibly different format and delivery method to the receiver (the publisher or the 3rd party provider) in one normalized format.

Networks aggregate and normalize the data of multiple advertisers and 3rd party providers do the same but a level higher, across multiple networks.

The goal and result at the end is a one-on-one relationship with a publisher to make it as simple as possible to use the data to promote the advertisers products and services. That is what the affiliate’s core competence should be; reality is that affiliates are spending way too much time and energy on the aggregation and normalization of data from various different sources, in different formats and delivery methods.

Poor Job Done
The affiliate networks did in the past a very poor job when it came to the aggregation and delivery of normalized data to publishers who needed it. There are no standards, little or no documentation and limited to no access to the data by automated means at all. Even the networks own definitions and specifications were and are often too vague and sometimes even violated by themselves, due to the lack of validation of the data that the network received from the advertiser, often due to the lack or too vague specifications of the feed structure and delivery methods.

The use of standards in web services technology, like SOAP or REST help to reduce this kind of issues at least for the web service option that is still in its infancy and evolving.

The 3rd party aggregators took over and dealt (and still deal) with all that kind of issues for the publishers and provide data to affiliates in clear format or for direct use via widgets and gadgets.

Since networks are in many cases the one-on-one connection point for some affiliates, tools and services that are usually provided by the 3rd party services are and should be provided by the networks directly to the publishers.

Perfect World Scenario
In a perfect world (which should be everybody’s goal that you want to reach eventually, without never getting there, even if you think that you almost made it) things would be like this.

To make it easy for merchants (who provide the original data) and for 3rd party aggregators to get data through the network efficiently, standards should be defined and used by all players to avoid vague and incomplete proprietary structures, formats and methods, or simply said: Stop reinventing the wheel over and over again (and that more or less poorly to top it all of)!

This is another good reason for having an industry association (which we do not have today); the discussion, specification, agreement and documentation of standards like that.

3rd party vendors should concentrate on the means of delivery to the publisher and provide the highest flexibility and number of delivery methods as possible. Listen to affiliates suggestions and requests and then implement those.

Affiliate network could partner with 3rd party vendors to make the same tools and delivery options available to the publishers directly for the kind of publishers who decide to only work with one particular network directly. This would allow networks to concentrate on their core competencies, like the aggregation and normalization of advertiser data, affiliate tracking and fraud detection and supplemental services like commission payments to the affiliates on behalf of the advertiser and/or affiliate management and recruiting services.

Make access to the data available without the need to jump through several hoops. Show what you have and provide documentation and clear instructions, without the need for asking for this information. Agree on standards wherever possible to make everybody’s day easier and to free up time that you could spent on improving your core competencies.

Conclusion
All this is in no conflict with the ideas of a free market and strong completion. The global market is not localized and proprietary and so you shouldn’t be either.

I have a lot of ideas for tools and widgets that would be of great help for publishers and even help to expand your current perspective of who a publisher could be today. The problem is that those ideas (where I am probably not the only one who thinks of the same) all require that the data and information flow is efficient and streamlined that we need to spend less time on reoccurring/repetitive problems and implementing workarounds for shortcomings that shouldn’t exist and more time on implementing those ideas and have publisher do what their core competency is, being innovative in the ways they promote the advertisers products and services and reach into markets where the advertiser cannot or does not want to go or not even know that it existed at all.

To the Future!

For resources and information about the mess we are having today, see my affiliate data feeds and web services resources at Cumbrowski.com. They help, but do not solve the core problems that we have.

Cheers!

Carsten Cumbrowski @ Cumbrowski.com
Internet Marketer, Blogger and Entrepreneur

Here is the original post:
Data and Information Flow Hurdles in Affiliate Marketing

When all is said and done, the so-called Amazon Tax that has everyone so concerned about old-style affiliate marketing’s future spells nothing but opportunity to those (like Brad) who think outside of the box. The old affiliate model’s walls are crumbling and have been for years now. Yes, many will fight this misguided tax — and I believe they SHOULD fight it — but the tax is just speeding up something inevitable: Change. It’s just another sign of the times.

So what’s next? I believe there are a bevy of options for CPA-lovin’ publishers that are being overlooked. Let’s have a look…

First, the facts:

1. Affiliate networks are buying up publishers/affiliates, lead generation companies, advertisers (Valueclick+eBablyon) etc.
2. Large publishers themselves (think Fatwallet and eBates) are working directly with advertisers to wrap value-added services (non-CPA media placements, creative support, etc.) around their valued communities of buyers — bypassing networks. I say again, bypassing networks. Hence, #1.
3. Search Engines: Yahoo and Google are distributing deals & coupons (moving in on CPA affiliates and affiliate networks’ turf) and MSN is buying up performance-based innovators (publishers like Jellyfish.com). Are companies like Linkshare standing idly by? Hell no! They’re getting in bed with Redmond. But wait… MSN is stepping up the pace on competing dead-on with traditional affiliates and networks. I find this to be of more danger to networks, NOT affiliates who maintain user loyalty.
4. Advertisers (note: Amazon is not one of them) are cutting and running from affiliate programs… rather than face a more complicated tax scheme. This is reflective of their overall mood/attitude and value perceptions of their affiliates. Write or wrong, knee-jerk or not, some marketers who have pre-conceived notions and/or legitimate concerns about affiliate programs are bailing. Bad in every way for “affiliate marketing” — once again.

Regarding this new “Amazon tax” law…

“The law also states that a merchant needs to have $10,000 a year in affiliate sales from NYS affiliates to NYS customers,” says Deborah Carney of Team Loxley.

“Networks can’t provide this information without breaking privacy rules, so how will this be enforced? Plus networks don’t collect location information from the sales themselves. ”

It’s enough to make your head spin and these are just a few examples! What’s going on here? What’s next? Where’s the good news? A sense of stability?

We’ve been hearing about mobile and video for years now. I’ve been scouring the globe for good examples of innovation in this space — BEYOND NEW TOOLS (ie. ROI experienced by marketers). Where’s the beef on that front?

Affiliate 1.0
Despite what Michael Singer and a good number of my colleagues say (and they make some seriously unsubstantiated claims) about how Web 2.0 is super-charging affiliate marketing there is virtually no evidence that CPA affiliates are monetizing social spaces. It’s a lot of fun to talk about but it’s flatly not happening to the degree that it registers a revenue blip rivaling the status quo.

“Affiliate marketing has evolved and it’s difficult for newcomers to jump in without any capital and start making money,” says Chris Finken, of affiliate marketer OrangeSoda.com.

“Blogs remain a popular tool for affiliate marketing ‘on the cheap,’ but successful affiliates are still making great money without experimenting with video and mobile.”

Humph. ‘Nuf said perhaps. Finken also believes many marketers are turning backs on affiliates, viewing them as expendable. He warns that this practice may bite them in the rump. He believes some marketers will be back when they miss risk-averse affiliates who tend to pioneer (as they did in paid/PPC search).

“It’s hard to go back to the affiliates you’ve dismissed and say ‘Please be innovative and if it works I promise we’ll pay you’,” he says.

So what’s next?

Drop Shipping
Although the sector also (like affiliate marketing) suffers from an image problem, drop-shipping models are beginning to come back. Remember NexChange, ePods and the like of the dot-bomb days? Drop shipping (where the “affiliate” is actually a “retailer”) is a great idea but was a premature one. It was too early and affiliate marketing was just too easy for publishers and advertisers to implement back in the late ’90s. Aaah, yes… the Golden Age of media arbitrage.

Specifically, affiliates didn’t want or need “storefronts” or stores to succeed. They also didn’t need the headaches that go along with being the retailer (”merchant of record”). They didn’t need or want to facilitate the transaction nor handle customer service or shipping.

More importantly, the middle-men involved didn’t have the reputation piece figured out… that is, the reliability of drop-ship product suppliers. Would they actually ship? On time? Handle back-orders and returned items well enough to satisfy customers? The answer was no — but that was then. Today, companies like Shopster.com have emerged as leaders in the field of full service drop-ship solutions for advertisers.

These providers give publishers everything from storefront creation to managing suppliers, returns/cancels, back orders, etc. They do the heavy lifting involved in retailing so publisher’s can focus on what they do best — acquire traffic/visitors. More importantly these companies are negotiating product discounts on behalf of retailers (many of whom are old-style “affiliates”) and allowing them to set their own profit margins. Not at all like affiliate marketing of old days. Yes, supplier reputation is still a sticky subject and is difficult to manage — just ask eBay. That stated, drop shipping is catching on and is a viable option for publishers with valuable traffic.

Widgets, 2.0 Media, Affiliate Education & Subsidies!
Now before you roll your eyes, please hear me out. There IS progress being made on monetizing via widgets. As I said, it’s no way rivaling traditional CPA affiliate revenue generation and it isn’t worth the hype it’s getting at conferences. BUT… pay close attention to Facebook’s Radical Buy program. The program turns Facebook-ers into eBay style affiliates.

“… I think the Radical Buy application on Facebook is one of the most sophisticated application online. It also serves a very practical purpose — helping people sell their unwanted stuff and make a few bucks along the way.” says Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews.com.

“The one radical concept worth mentioning again here is that users can make a ‘commission’ by selling other peoples stuff simply by listing it on their profile page.”

Radical! What’s more, this isn’t just about one area of potential monetization. Facebook is expanding the program — with hopes of growing it outside of Facebook.com proper. Now THAT’S radical for sure.

Also… I’ve discovered serious investments being made both here in the States and overseas that aim to super-charge traditional (ie. search marketing) — and other innovative, 2.0 type monetization — by publishers:

1. Investments are being made by marketers themselves. Companies like Insurance.com are subsidizing affiliate /publisher education and even their search marketing costs. That’s right — marketers are funding affiliates’ marketing efforts and successfully so!
2. European networks and advertisers are banding together to invest in affiliate/publisher education (I’ll be traveling to London next month to participate in one such University for a large media company)
3. Overseas affiliate marketing networks like Zanox are making tremendous investments in “going open” (read more about Zanox GAP Campus) — what about U.S. based networks?!

I’ve given the community quite a bit to chew on here… so what say you?!

See the original post here:
Affiliate 2.0: Fact, Fiction & New Innovators

When all is said and done, the so-called Amazon Tax that has everyone so concerned about old-style affiliate marketing’s future spells nothing but opportunity to those (like Brad) who think outside of the box. The old affiliate model’s walls are crumbling and have been for years now. Yes, many will fight this misguided tax — and I believe they SHOULD fight it — but the tax is just speeding up something inevitable: Change. It’s just another sign of the times.

So what’s next? I believe there are a bevy of options for CPA-lovin’ publishers that are being overlooked. Let’s have a look…

First, the facts:

1. Affiliate networks are buying up publishers/affiliates, lead generation companies, advertisers (Valueclick+eBablyon) etc.
2. Large publishers themselves (think Fatwallet and eBates) are working directly with advertisers to wrap value-added services (non-CPA media placements, creative support, etc.) around their valued communities of buyers — bypassing networks. I say again, bypassing networks. Hence, #1.
3. Search Engines: Yahoo and Google are distributing deals & coupons (moving in on CPA affiliates and affiliate networks’ turf) and MSN is buying up performance-based innovators (publishers like Jellyfish.com). Are companies like Linkshare standing idly by? Hell no! They’re getting in bed with Redmond. But wait… MSN is stepping up the pace on competing dead-on with traditional affiliates and networks. I find this to be of more danger to networks, NOT affiliates who maintain user loyalty.
4. Advertisers (note: Amazon is not one of them) are cutting and running from affiliate programs… rather than face a more complicated tax scheme. This is reflective of their overall mood/attitude and value perceptions of their affiliates. Write or wrong, knee-jerk or not, some marketers who have pre-conceived notions and/or legitimate concerns about affiliate programs are bailing. Bad in every way for “affiliate marketing” — once again.

Regarding this new “Amazon tax” law…

“The law also states that a merchant needs to have $10,000 a year in affiliate sales from NYS affiliates to NYS customers,” says Deborah Carney of Team Loxley.

“Networks can’t provide this information without breaking privacy rules, so how will this be enforced? Plus networks don’t collect location information from the sales themselves. ”

It’s enough to make your head spin and these are just a few examples! What’s going on here? What’s next? Where’s the good news? A sense of stability?

We’ve been hearing about mobile and video for years now. I’ve been scouring the globe for good examples of innovation in this space — BEYOND NEW TOOLS (ie. ROI experienced by marketers). Where’s the beef on that front?

Affiliate 1.0
Despite what Michael Singer and a good number of my colleagues say (and they make some seriously unsubstantiated claims) about how Web 2.0 is super-charging affiliate marketing there is virtually no evidence that CPA affiliates are monetizing social spaces. It’s a lot of fun to talk about but it’s flatly not happening to the degree that it registers a revenue blip rivaling the status quo.

“Affiliate marketing has evolved and it’s difficult for newcomers to jump in without any capital and start making money,” says Chris Finken, of affiliate marketer OrangeSoda.com.

“Blogs remain a popular tool for affiliate marketing ‘on the cheap,’ but successful affiliates are still making great money without experimenting with video and mobile.”

Humph. ‘Nuf said perhaps. Finken also believes many marketers are turning backs on affiliates, viewing them as expendable. He warns that this practice may bite them in the rump. He believes some marketers will be back when they miss risk-averse affiliates who tend to pioneer (as they did in paid/PPC search).

“It’s hard to go back to the affiliates you’ve dismissed and say ‘Please be innovative and if it works I promise we’ll pay you’,” he says.

So what’s next?

Drop Shipping
Although the sector also (like affiliate marketing) suffers from an image problem, drop-shipping models are beginning to come back. Remember NexChange, ePods and the like of the dot-bomb days? Drop shipping (where the “affiliate” is actually a “retailer”) is a great idea but was a premature one. It was too early and affiliate marketing was just too easy for publishers and advertisers to implement back in the late ’90s. Aaah, yes… the Golden Age of media arbitrage.

Specifically, affiliates didn’t want or need “storefronts” or stores to succeed. They also didn’t need the headaches that go along with being the retailer (”merchant of record”). They didn’t need or want to facilitate the transaction nor handle customer service or shipping.

More importantly, the middle-men involved didn’t have the reputation piece figured out… that is, the reliability of drop-ship product suppliers. Would they actually ship? On time? Handle back-orders and returned items well enough to satisfy customers? The answer was no — but that was then. Today, companies like Shopster.com have emerged as leaders in the field of full service drop-ship solutions for advertisers.

These providers give publishers everything from storefront creation to managing suppliers, returns/cancels, back orders, etc. They do the heavy lifting involved in retailing so publisher’s can focus on what they do best — acquire traffic/visitors. More importantly these companies are negotiating product discounts on behalf of retailers (many of whom are old-style “affiliates”) and allowing them to set their own profit margins. Not at all like affiliate marketing of old days. Yes, supplier reputation is still a sticky subject and is difficult to manage — just ask eBay. That stated, drop shipping is catching on and is a viable option for publishers with valuable traffic.

Widgets, 2.0 Media, Affiliate Education & Subsidies!
Now before you roll your eyes, please hear me out. There IS progress being made on monetizing via widgets. As I said, it’s no way rivaling traditional CPA affiliate revenue generation and it isn’t worth the hype it’s getting at conferences. BUT… pay close attention to Facebook’s Radical Buy program. The program turns Facebook-ers into eBay style affiliates.

“… I think the Radical Buy application on Facebook is one of the most sophisticated application online. It also serves a very practical purpose — helping people sell their unwanted stuff and make a few bucks along the way.” says Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews.com.

“The one radical concept worth mentioning again here is that users can make a ‘commission’ by selling other peoples stuff simply by listing it on their profile page.”

Radical! What’s more, this isn’t just about one area of potential monetization. Facebook is expanding the program — with hopes of growing it outside of Facebook.com proper. Now THAT’S radical for sure.

Also… I’ve discovered serious investments being made both here in the States and overseas that aim to super-charge traditional (ie. search marketing) — and other innovative, 2.0 type monetization — by publishers:

1. Investments are being made by marketers themselves. Companies like Insurance.com are subsidizing affiliate /publisher education and even their search marketing costs. That’s right — marketers are funding affiliates’ marketing efforts and successfully so!
2. European networks and advertisers are banding together to invest in affiliate/publisher education (I’ll be traveling to London next month to participate in one such University for a large media company)
3. Overseas affiliate marketing networks like Zanox are making tremendous investments in “going open” (read more about Zanox GAP Campus) — what about U.S. based networks?!

I’ve given the community quite a bit to chew on here… so what say you?!

More:
Affiliate 2.0: Fact, Fiction & New Innovators

Mark Wielgus created last year in August a mash-up script for YouTube, Amazon.com and Ebay.com and released the code for free under the Creative Commons Share Alike licensing model at his blog 45n5.com.

I am interested into data feeds and web services myself and have extensive resources on my website about this subject available, including a reference to Marks script.

The script ceased working after the move of the eBay affiliate program from Commission Junction to in-house and Mark got several requests about updating the script to support the changed eBay API. He did not do it so far, but it gave him another idea, which makes a lot of sense to me.

I also get frequent requests for help with affiliate product data feeds and web services APIs from people who found my website and the already vast amount of resources to the subject. Feeds and API are very technical in nature and not as easy to learn like HTML for example. The goal is eventually to make those things easy to use for the normal person out there who has no degree in computer engineering and does not plan to get one either, just to do his affiliate marketing stuff.

There are services like popShops.com, DataFeedFile.com, GoldenCan.com, FeedShare.com and others that make product feed data much more accessible to average affiliates, however, the tools provided are usually somewhat limited, provide in most cases no benefit for organic search, since the widget code is JavaScript that pulls content on the fly for the visitor, but is invisible to search engine spiders, plus you have to sacrifice potential commission in some instances to the service provider in exchange for the service.

Mark decided to put his knowledge to use for a custom service type of arrangement. He announced at his daily video podcast today that he plans to provide tools and help to get mash-up sites, based on web services API and other sources up for you. You will not be held back by the technical requirements to work with those technologies and be able to focus on the website content and marketing ideas instead.

To keep the amount of affiliates manageable and also reduce the potential issue of competition between the affiliates he is going to support, Mark limits the number of people who will be able to sign-up for his service to 100. He is going to put up a community site at MashupMoney.com, where you can communicate with the other 99 guys openly and share tips and knowledge.

Mark said that the monthly fee for his service and the access to the community site will be $49 U.S. Dollars and that the goal is to make of course the $49 back in commissions for you and then some after that.

This sounds like a very fair deal to me, a bit cheap in my opinion ($4,900 before tax ain’t that much money Mark. It is an even better bargain for Canadian affiliates these days, because the $49 are U.S. Dollars and not Canadian ones hehe). Don’t expect that Mark will do all the work for you and you just pay the $49 and lean back watching commissions rolling in. He will take care of the technical aspects of things, but that alone is only part of the work that is needed to build something useful and eventually profitable.

If you were thinking about using web services and feeds in the past, but are not knowledgeable about web development and programming, this is your chance to get into it relatively fast, customized and without the need to become a programmer yourself, not to hire one for hundreds or thousands of Dollars.

Check it out! It’s not live yet, but you can subscribe with your email and/or contact Mark directly, telling him that you are interested. Keep in mind, 100 is the cap (which is no marketing scheme or trick to press urgency) and I assume that it will be on a first come first serve basis.

Cheers!

Carsten Cumbrowski

The rest is here:
Help with Mash-Ups for the Non-Tech Affiliates Out There