Make Money Online

“You can’t put the genie back into the bottle” or so says the idiom. The issues surrounding adware have certainly been a “genie” for affiliate marketing.  We may have the opportunity to see if that genie really can be put back into the bottle, at least for a sub-set of adware applications, toolbars.

Yesterday Brian Littleton, CEO of ShareASale, announced a Toolbar Roundtable Discussion for next Tuesday.  The purpose is to receive input from the community for establishing guidelines for toolbar behavior within the ShareASale network.  This is a shift from the historical policy of ShareASale which has not allowed software in the network. Not unexpectedly, there is some heated discussion around the announcement in the ShareASale Forum on ABestWeb.com.

Many people mistakenly think that I am opposed to adware. This isn’t the case. Adware is just technology, which isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s just technology…ultimately a bunch of 1’s and 0’s strung together to elicit preplanned behavior from the computer of the end user.

What I have opposed over the years is the manner in which many adware applications generate revenue in the affiliate marketing channel.
I have been exceedingly frustrated at times by technology being abused to the point of causing schisms within our industry and stigmatizing the technology itself which, in reality, could have been positive for the affiliates, merchants, networks and consumers it was meant to serve.  On more than one occasion I have stated that adware does not have to be an issue within affiliate marketing.  For years now I have worked outline a model for adware behavior. Not once have I been asked the details of that model, at least until now.

My view is broader than just toolbars. I personally feel that it is possible for any adware application to be respectful of the rights of other internet businesses, benefit the consumer, and generate legitimate revenue, directly and/or indirectly, in the affiliate marketing channel. I now have the opportunity to share some of my views and thoughts on how this can be achieved.

There is a glaring reality that we cannot afford to overlook: the technology is here and it’s not going to suddenly go away. The genie isn’t going to just disappear. My contentions have been with the policy, both written and how acted upon in reality, for how adware is allowed to behave in the affiliate marketing channel. My mantra is behavior, behavior, behavior (to the point I get tired of hearing it myself!) not toolbar, widget or desktop app. I don’t have a problem with Google’s toolbar, but I do have a problem with most software generating revenue through the affiliate channel.

To this point, there has been two primary types of policy by networks and merchants regarding how affiliates can use software in the affiliate channel: not allowed at all (the parasite-free policy) or allowed under a set of conditions that are far less restrictive for affiliates than marketing through other means (the COC/Addendum policy). I have always been opposed to the COC/Addendum policy because I feel it allowed revenue generation that facilitated unfair competition and diminished the overall value of the affiliate channel. I have longed for a working policy (policy that is actually being used) that would address how software can be legitimately used within the affiliate channel sans all the controversy. Indeed, I strongly believe it is critical that our industry be able to produce such a working policy.

Why? So we can demonstrate our ability to self-regulate and foster the healthy growth of our industry. All established industries need to demonstrate this ability for long-term success. To this point, I don’t think we have been able to demonstrate an ability to effectively self-regulate the very technologies our industry depends upon. Affiliate marketing is a technology business after all.

There are currently various technologies used by affiliates in their marketing efforts.  Web sites, email, video, widgets and many other forms of technology are common.  Guidelines for acceptable use have been established for promotion though most of these technologies. Granted, there may be an occasional debate regarding a new way these technologies are used, but none have been as problematic as downloaded software. Nor has a policy of all or nothing been applied to defining their use by affiliates.

Any and all of the technologies used by affiliates can be potentially abused. Questionable revenue generation tactics as well as more malicious behavior can occur through any promotional method. We certainly don’t say that affiliates cannot use web sites, email, and video or social media technology as promotion mechanisms because the technology can, and at times is, abused. Of course we don’t! We set guidelines and then we work towards enforcing those guidelines.

Enforcing a policy for toolbars will not be without its own challenges. But all monitoring of promotion comes with unique challenges. There are millions of web pages, owned by the affiliate or by someone else, where bad behavior can occur. However, once policy is established for promotion through a web site, protocols for monitoring are developed.

While practices may not always be policed by some companies to the degree some desire, we all understand that ultimately it’s a matter of survival for our livelihoods to have a certain degree of self-regulation within these technologies.

The landscape has changed dramatically since 2002 when the COC/Addendum policy was released by the major networks of the time. There is no longer a huge cost barrier for any affiliate having downloadable software and there are several sources for acquiring your own toolbar for free or at a very low cost. Distribution channels are available that do not require bundling, especially for toolbars. This has resulted in literally tens of thousands of toolbars available for download.

Of course, not all of these operate within the affiliate channel, but there is an increasing number which do. Toolbars can engage in a very wide range of behaviors. I don’t feel that a global policy of   “X is not allowed” to be an adequate manner with which to address issues facing our industry in regards to a technology that is not going away.

Brian Littleton has outlined a starting point  on the ShareASale blog for this policy discussion. As someone who has always focused on how adware can behave with regards to revenue generation, I am intrigued by his initial points. He appears to be envisioning toolbar technology used as a marketing vehicle versus a customer service vehicle. Marketing practices would use the toolbar for direct revenue generation, which is the most common use seen to date. Customer service would involve behaviors focused on the consumer experience, thus building branding, loyalty, and visitor retention for the affiliate’s own business. This form is a more passive marketing of the affiliate’s own business and does not tie the toolbar directly to  the affiliate link for tracking a commissionable sale. While I still believe software can behave “nicely” and be used for more direct revenue generation, I find Brian’s outside of the box thinking on this issue very interesting.

We need to show that we are up to the challenges of regulating the very technologies used to enhance and bring value to the affiliate channel. I’m excited to see a company with a track record and reputation as established as ShareASale’s stepping up to the plate to undertake the task of presenting meaningful policy in regards to toolbars. I look forward to having a policy in use that I can point to as an example of how software technology can be used in a harmonious and productive manner.

Will ShareASale be able to put the genie back into the bottle? I don’t think the technology can go back into the bottle. But can we have the benevolent genie? I think so. The real challenge will be whether or not ShareASale can overcome the stigma that has become attached with downloaded software, turning what has been somewhat of a black eye for affiliate marketing into a positive.

I will definitely be at this Roundtable that Brian has facilitated. I encourage any and all who care about the policies driving our industry to attend as well. I’m hoping to see as many merchants as affiliates in attendance as this is not an affiliate issue but an industry issue which impacts all parties in the equation.

Read more from the original source:
Putting the Genie Back Into the Bottle

Okay, here is a quick one with a long quote of Jessica Luthi from AffiliateProgramAdvice.com before I am heading off for Las Vegas to Affiliate Summit 2009 West. The quote summarizes everything pretty nicely. I could not have it said better myself. I filled out the survey a couple minutes ago and suggest that other affiliate marketers will do the same.

Shawn Collin’s AffStat reports provide interesting insights into the affiliate marketing space from an advertiser’s perspective.

Peter Figueredo from NETexponent released last November their first AffiliateBenchmark research report, which already provided some interesting insights into the affiliate marketing space.

I was yelling two years ago in January 2007 “Where is the Affiliate Benchmark Guide 2006“. Now I am hoping to get what I was asking for back then. The survey only takes a few minutes and you will get a free copy of the results, two more reasons why you should do it.

AffiliateProgramAdvice.com and E-Consultancy.com both companies are independent and impartial and trusted.

Last year e-consultancy.com (largest independent UK Data Research company) and in association with AffiliateProgramadvice.com made UK Affiliate Marketing History by producing the first ever UK Affiliate Census which can be downloaded here http://econsultancy.com/reports/uk-affiliate-census-report .

The UK Census came about due to the lack of transparency for Advertiser and Affiliate Networks in terms of who are “affiliates” Very little is known about the very people who contribute billions to our online economy. Affiliates/publishers also have little or no information about each other in terms of what is the average revenue an affiliate makes, what do affiliates see as a threat to the industry, what is the best method of promoting a merchant/Advertiser, how many networks does an affiliate belong to?.

This year it’s now time to turn our attention to the USA too. This census will be a first for the USA so a bit of USA Affiliate Marketing history is in the making, all too exciting and for the UK we already have historical data so we can now plot changes/trends. We intend to do a US an UK comparison too, is the US any different to the UK? Does the UK do it better? (cheeky grin)

We believe this Affiliate Census will be the biggest piece of research in understanding “who are the affiliates and what do they do and how do they do it”? But… we cant do this without the entire industry getting behind this and pushing this out so here is what we need for you to do.

For Affiliates
The survey is for affiliates and takes less then ten minutes to complete by way of thanks to all those who complete the survey, we will send you the results, there is an option at the end for you to add your email address for when the report is published, this is optional. Please be aware this survey is 100% confidential, we do not ask for any personal information and the questions are fairly generic, by all means walk through it first.

We have a US survey (aimed at US Affiliates) can be seen here http://bit.ly/VG5N

We have a UK survey (aimed at UK affiliates) can be seen here http://bit.ly/pNPQ

So if you are a US affiliate please follow the US link and if you are a UK affiliate please follow the UK link.

For affiliates who are neither UK or US, you can still participate, example if I live in Germany but promote UK Advertisers, you would follow the UK survey link.

Cut off is 27th January 2009

Thank you so much in advance and if I could be a little pushy, when you have completed the survey, pass this on to anyone you think would be interested. You rock!

For Agencies
Please grab any information from the above and just email anyone you think would be interested in this as you will want to see the published results too.

For Affiliate Networks
You know you want to see the published results and if you email your entire network of afiliates by way of thanks, drop me your logo jessica at affiliateprogramadvice.com and we will add this to the published report with a link to your network.

For Merchants/Advertisers
We know you will want to see the results of this survey, so any direct partnerships you have in place with any one in the affiliate marketing industry, please point them to the survey.

See you in Vegas!

Carsten

Original post:
Affiliate Marketing Census Report 2009 – Your Help is Needed!

I am not participating in discussions like this one at ABestWeb.com, even if I am contacted directly with the request to comment.

The debate whether or not publisher A is legitimate or not, if his business model is based on incentivized traffic, is irrelevant in my opinion. If the publisher uses desktop software or browser plug-ins does also not matter to me, regardless if that publisher honors the “affsrc=1” URL parameter or not.

Technical Fit <> Business Fit

I stated repeatedly in comments and blog posts of mine that I do not consider publishers who are using any type of incentive to drive business to an advertiser to be an affiliate. This includes coupon sites.

Those publishers are using the affiliate tracking technology for their purposes, because the existing technology does everything they need to run their business. That the technology works does not mean that the business model fits too.

The Purpose of your Affiliate Program

It is not what advertisers are being sold about affiliate marketing and what it can do for them. Most advertisers launch their affiliate program with goals in mind like customer acquisition, pre-sale and moving potential customers a step forward in the buying process, extension of reach and branding.

Incentivized traffic on the other hand fit more the purpose of customer retention and increase of customer loyalty overall. This is a perfectly valid and good purpose, but it is not what advertisers have in mind, when it comes to the marketing channel “affiliate marketing”. This difference in type of traffic and referred business is often ignored or not understood. Advertisers allow incentive publishers and coupon sites into their program and eventually find out that a lot of their existing traffic is diverted as a result of it. Then they talk about that affiliate marketing does not work and that it cannibalizes their other marketing efforts and eventually shut the whole program down, because it “failed” to deliver what was promised.

Like Membership Rewards Programs

The incentive traffic has to be viewed at like a membership rewards program that many retailers already have in place. That traffic would be an extension of this type of promotional vehicle. As the in-house membership program is tracked and measured independently from the affiliate program, so should the incentivized traffic.

Affiliates are being paid commission on top of any rewards of any membership system that the retailers might have in place. The cost of an in-house membership and rewards program does usually have its own budget and its effectiveness is reviewed independently and not as part of the affiliate program, search marketing campaigns and display advertising activities. Maybe email marketing is included sometimes, especially if special mailers are sent to existing customers promoting the membership program.

Suggestions

Incentive publishers, like cash back shopping portals such as eBates.com and FatWallet.com, charity sites like uPromise.com and ShoolPop.com, as well as coupon sites should be tracked and reviewed outside of the regular affiliate program. The same platform might be used, but it must be ensured that tracking of those traffic sources does not interfere with the tracking of the core affiliate program.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of those methods have to be reviewed independently and decisions about whether to continue a partnership with a publisher or not also needs to be done separately. You cannot do that, if you are using one tracking system for both of them. You are also not tracking your PPC or Email marketing campaigns via affiliate tracking links for the same reasons, don’t you?

Not separating the two channels blurs the numbers and impossible to gauge the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of each of them, resulting in decisions that are made based on wrong assumptions and misinterpretation of existing data.

The two channels overlap a little bit, as virtually all other marketing and advertising channels do today. If you do advanced web analytics already and even consider multiple touch-points with a customer in the entire conversion path, then you probably already separate the different types of traffic by the different types of your affiliates, even if you use the same tracking platform for both of them. The separation of the two would end the debate about parasites and how they steal commissions of regular affiliates, because you track them independent from each other.

You then can make much better educated decisions about the value of individual incentive publishers and the cannibalization of your other channels, including your affiliate program, your search marketing campaigns, your email newsletters to existing customers, your social media and viral marketing activities and your display advertising campaigns.

Cheers!

Carsten Cumbrowski

Internet Marketer, Blogger and Entrepreneur
Internet Marketing Resources Portal at Cumbrowski.com

Read the original post:

Read more

I walked out the Performance Marketing Alliance (PMA) Q&A session at Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston, MA just a few hours ago, full of frustration and a bit of anger. I had to calm myself down first before I started writing this post. The subject is important and emotional for most of us, but emotions will not solve our problems and only make it harder to come to agreements and finding solutions that benefit every single one of us.

PMA and the New York State Law Issue

I realized that many people who attended the Q&A had no idea what the PMA is and does and what it is not and cannot do. There was a lady from New York who is actively involved in organizing affiliates to work against the recent legislation that had dramatic impact on the business (and life) of affiliates from New York state in a negative way. She asked why the PMA did not reach out to them, but uses the incident as a reason for the formation of the PMA.

The PMA is not…

Let me be straight and blunt. The PMA is not able to help the New York affiliates. There is no entity in this industry that is able to help them. The PMA is not an entity at all. The PMA is NOT an organization and has no voice about anything but creating the foundation for an organization for the affiliate marketing industry that needs to be founded (whatever the name of that organization might be).

This does not mean that anybody who is voluntarily involved with the PMA and the formation of an organization is not involved or not supporting the New York issue. Some individuals are more involved than others, including individuals who could care less about this specific issue, such as marketers from California who are not affected (this time) by this. The state of California already stated that it will not follow the New York State example. However, every single supporter and active participant of the PMA put their mouth where their time (=money) is. They sacrifice time they do not have for an effort which intention it is to help everybody in affiliate marketing, including them but not exclusively.

Using a Metaphor to Illustrate

I am not an American and you (should) know your own countries history better than I do. The PMA could be compared to the founding fathers that drafted the U.S. constitution, which became the foundation for the establishment of the parliamentary system that was to govern the country to be known as the United States of America. We are just past the step of declaring independence and demanding the recognition as an industry with its own rights. The constitution is not drafted yet, only the committees at the constitutional convention were just formed.

The New York incident might be the affiliate industries “Stamp Act“, which lead to the “Boston Tea Party” and everything that happened after that. I am not aware that all or any of the Founding Fathers participated in the “Boston Tea Party“. Also, not everybody involved in the Declaration of Independence was involved in the creation of the U.S. Constitution and the specification of the structure of the United States Government. The Unites States of America was unable to act against the “Stamp Act“, because the United States of America did not exist yet at that time. The New York affiliates are left alone to have their very own “Boston Tea Party“.

Them versus Us

Like during the past attempts to found an industry organization, folks from the industry started to refer to the volunteers who commit their time (they do not have) for the effort in third person. “Them versus us (or me)” and references to the yet-to-be-found organization as “your organization” were made.

“Them” are people in your industry who are not only talk, bitch and yell, complain and whine, but sacrifice time, money and energy in creating something for them and for you… for us, affiliate marketers. They do not and do not want to own that organization, because what good is an organization that only represents them and nobody else, like you and me, who are also part of the same industry? How representative would be such an organization and why should anybody outside the industry recognize the opinion expressed by such organization as the opinion of the affiliate marketing industry as a whole?

Putting your Money where your Mouth is

Everybody who is complaining about the PMA is invited to participate, provide feedback, suggestions and sacrifice his or her time to make sure that the result of the PMA will be an affiliate marketing association that will be truly representative of this industry. Anybody who refuses to make this sacrifice will not be in the position to complain about the results and how the organization will look like, because you refused to take part in the process and control its destiny. I hate people who come and take advantage of things that were created by the community and complain about it, but refused to contribute a minute or a single penny for those things when they were created and the community asked for help and support and to participate directly in the efforts to make it as good as it possibly can be.

Wrong Signals

I was disappointed to see Haiko de Poel Jr. from ABestWeb leave the Q&A early before clarifications could be made to explain the idea and goals behind the PMA.

It sends the wrong signal to people in this industry. It signals to hardcore ABW members that the PMA efforts should not be supported and to supporters of the PMA that ABW is not interested in the formation of a representative body for the affiliate marketing industry. I know Haiko well enough to believe that this is not true and that he is interested as I am myself and many others to have an organization to represent the industry one day. Problems will not be solved if influential players in the industry ignore or boycott any efforts that are made to come to some consensus that will be acceptable by all relevant groups of individuals and businesses in the affiliate marketing industry. This includes affiliates, merchants, networks, third party service providers and third party vendors as well.

I hope that Haiko will reconsider and re-join the discussion and efforts made by others. Haiko, nobody who is part of the PMA is against ABW and who it represents. The PMA needs you and if you seriously think about it, then you probably realize that you need the PMA as well, like the rest of us.

Final Notes

It is sad to see that an industry where trust is an important part of the business itself is so much filled with mistrust among the people. What is even sadder than that is the fact that this mistrust is not entirely irrational and based on real-life experiences made in the past.

People suspect hidden agendas and conspiracies behind any actions and activities regardless of who it is and what the stated goals might be. Anik Singal from Affiliate Classroom sponsored the salary for Rebecca Madigan that she will be able to work full-time on the administration of an organized attempt to form an affiliate marketing association. This raised suspicions of course.

Rebecca stated that she does not plan to make herself available to become elected into the leadership of the future affiliate marketing organization and that her job ends when the organization was established. I recommend putting this statement in writing and to overcome the urge and encouragement of PMA supporters for making yourself available to the Organization. I know that it would be a great sacrifice, but it would refute any statements that claim to know about a secret agenda behind your work for the PMA.

Putting my Money where my Mouth is

To demonstrate that I am including myself when it comes to showing people that I am putting my money where my mouth is, some facts that you might did not know about.

1. I was trying to trigger the formation of an affiliate marketing organization myself in fall 2006, where I spent a lot of time and resources on to support it and to get it off the ground. It failed for several reasons. You can see relevant blog posts of mine to this subject here, here and here at ReveNews.com.
2. I provided ideas and suggestions to Rebecca Madigan, who I contacted myself directly, after I heard about the launch of this initiative called PMA. I volunteered for the advisory board and made myself available for election into the board. I was not elected, but that does not mean that I will not continue to spend time that I do not have on working out details and overcome problems during the formation process of an affiliate marketing organization.
3. I offered the donation of 11 domains for the use by the PMA and a future affiliate marketing organization. The lack of existence of any legal entity that represents this new organization, the actual donation could not be made yet, but my offer remains and I repeat this offer again here in public. The offered domain names are:
   • AFFILIATEMARKETINGORGANIZATION.COM
   • AFFILIATEMARKETINGORGANIZATION.INFO
   • DATAFEEDSTANDARD.COM
   • DATAFEEDSTANDARD.INFO
   • DATAFEEDSTANDARD.NET
   • DATAFEEDSTANDARD.ORG
   • WWAMA.COM
   • WWAMA.NET
   • WWAMA.ORG
   • WWAMA.INFO
   • WWAMO.ORG
4. There will be working groups that will work on the drafting of much needed standards for the industry. Due to my long personal experience with affiliate products data feeds, I am going to become actively involved in such working group, directly, if I will be accepted as official member, or indirectly via comments and suggestions, if I am not accepted.

Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?

Do not tell me, show me!

Cheers!
Carsten Cumbrowski

Source:
Performance Marketing Alliance (PMA) Q&A at Affiliate Summit East 2008

I walked out the Performance Marketing Alliance (PMA) Q&A session at Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston, MA just a few hours ago, full of frustration and a bit of anger. I had to calm myself down first before I started writing this post. The subject is important and emotional for most of us, but emotions will not solve our problems and only make it harder to come to agreements and finding solutions that benefit every single one of us.

PMA and the New York State Law Issue

I realized that many people who attended the Q&A had no idea what the PMA is and does and what it is not and cannot do. There was a lady from New York who is actively involved in organizing affiliates to work against the recent legislation that had dramatic impact on the business (and life) of affiliates from New York state in a negative way. She asked why the PMA did not reach out to them, but uses the incident as a reason for the formation of the PMA.

The PMA is not…

Let me be straight and blunt. The PMA is not able to help the New York affiliates. There is no entity in this industry that is able to help them. The PMA is not an entity at all. The PMA is NOT an organization and has no voice about anything but creating the foundation for an organization for the affiliate marketing industry that needs to be founded (whatever the name of that organization might be).

This does not mean that anybody who is voluntarily involved with the PMA and the formation of an organization is not involved or not supporting the New York issue. Some individuals are more involved than others, including individuals who could care less about this specific issue, such as marketers from California who are not affected (this time) by this. The state of California already stated that it will not follow the New York State example. However, every single supporter and active participant of the PMA put their mouth where their time (=money) is. They sacrifice time they do not have for an effort which intention it is to help everybody in affiliate marketing, including them but not exclusively.

Using a Metaphor to Illustrate

I am not an American and you (should) know your own countries history better than I do. The PMA could be compared to the founding fathers that drafted the U.S. constitution, which became the foundation for the establishment of the parliamentary system that was to govern the country to be known as the United States of America. We are just past the step of declaring independence and demanding the recognition as an industry with its own rights. The constitution is not drafted yet, only the committees at the constitutional convention were just formed.

The New York incident might be the affiliate industries “Stamp Act“, which lead to the “Boston Tea Party” and everything that happened after that. I am not aware that all or any of the Founding Fathers participated in the “Boston Tea Party“. Also, not everybody involved in the Declaration of Independence was involved in the creation of the U.S. Constitution and the specification of the structure of the United States Government. The Unites States of America was unable to act against the “Stamp Act“, because the United States of America did not exist yet at that time. The New York affiliates are left alone to have their very own “Boston Tea Party“.

Them versus Us

Like during the past attempts to found an industry organization, folks from the industry started to refer to the volunteers who commit their time (they do not have) for the effort in third person. “Them versus us (or me)” and references to the yet-to-be-found organization as “your organization” were made.

“Them” are people in your industry who are not only talk, bitch and yell, complain and whine, but sacrifice time, money and energy in creating something for them and for you… for us, affiliate marketers. They do not and do not want to own that organization, because what good is an organization that only represents them and nobody else, like you and me, who are also part of the same industry? How representative would be such an organization and why should anybody outside the industry recognize the opinion expressed by such organization as the opinion of the affiliate marketing industry as a whole?

Putting your Money where your Mouth is

Everybody who is complaining about the PMA is invited to participate, provide feedback, suggestions and sacrifice his or her time to make sure that the result of the PMA will be an affiliate marketing association that will be truly representative of this industry. Anybody who refuses to make this sacrifice will not be in the position to complain about the results and how the organization will look like, because you refused to take part in the process and control its destiny. I hate people who come and take advantage of things that were created by the community and complain about it, but refused to contribute a minute or a single penny for those things when they were created and the community asked for help and support and to participate directly in the efforts to make it as good as it possibly can be.

Wrong Signals

I was disappointed to see Haiko de Poel Jr. from ABestWeb leave the Q&A early before clarifications could be made to explain the idea and goals behind the PMA.

It sends the wrong signal to people in this industry. It signals to hardcore ABW members that the PMA efforts should not be supported and to supporters of the PMA that ABW is not interested in the formation of a representative body for the affiliate marketing industry. I know Haiko well enough to believe that this is not true and that he is interested as I am myself and many others to have an organization to represent the industry one day. Problems will not be solved if influential players in the industry ignore or boycott any efforts that are made to come to some consensus that will be acceptable by all relevant groups of individuals and businesses in the affiliate marketing industry. This includes affiliates, merchants, networks, third party service providers and third party vendors as well.

I hope that Haiko will reconsider and re-join the discussion and efforts made by others. Haiko, nobody who is part of the PMA is against ABW and who it represents. The PMA needs you and if you seriously think about it, then you probably realize that you need the PMA as well, like the rest of us.

Final Notes

It is sad to see that an industry where trust is an important part of the business itself is so much filled with mistrust among the people. What is even sadder than that is the fact that this mistrust is not entirely irrational and based on real-life experiences made in the past.

People suspect hidden agendas and conspiracies behind any actions and activities regardless of who it is and what the stated goals might be. Anik Singal from Affiliate Classroom sponsored the salary for Rebecca Madigan that she will be able to work full-time on the administration of an organized attempt to form an affiliate marketing association. This raised suspicions of course.

Rebecca stated that she does not plan to make herself available to become elected into the leadership of the future affiliate marketing organization and that her job ends when the organization was established. I recommend putting this statement in writing and to overcome the urge and encouragement of PMA supporters for making yourself available to the Organization. I know that it would be a great sacrifice, but it would refute any statements that claim to know about a secret agenda behind your work for the PMA.

Putting my Money where my Mouth is

To demonstrate that I am including myself when it comes to showing people that I am putting my money where my mouth is, some facts that you might did not know about.

1. I was trying to trigger the formation of an affiliate marketing organization myself in fall 2006, where I spent a lot of time and resources on to support it and to get it off the ground. It failed for several reasons. You can see relevant blog posts of mine to this subject here, here and here at ReveNews.com.
2. I provided ideas and suggestions to Rebecca Madigan, who I contacted myself directly, after I heard about the launch of this initiative called PMA. I volunteered for the advisory board and made myself available for election into the board. I was not elected, but that does not mean that I will not continue to spend time that I do not have on working out details and overcome problems during the formation process of an affiliate marketing organization.
3. I offered the donation of 11 domains for the use by the PMA and a future affiliate marketing organization. The lack of existence of any legal entity that represents this new organization, the actual donation could not be made yet, but my offer remains and I repeat this offer again here in public. The offered domain names are:
   • AFFILIATEMARKETINGORGANIZATION.COM
   • AFFILIATEMARKETINGORGANIZATION.INFO
   • DATAFEEDSTANDARD.COM
   • DATAFEEDSTANDARD.INFO
   • DATAFEEDSTANDARD.NET
   • DATAFEEDSTANDARD.ORG
   • WWAMA.COM
   • WWAMA.NET
   • WWAMA.ORG
   • WWAMA.INFO
   • WWAMO.ORG
4. There will be working groups that will work on the drafting of much needed standards for the industry. Due to my long personal experience with affiliate products data feeds, I am going to become actively involved in such working group, directly, if I will be accepted as official member, or indirectly via comments and suggestions, if I am not accepted.

Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?

Do not tell me, show me!

Cheers!
Carsten Cumbrowski

Go here to read the rest:
Performance Marketing Alliance (PMA) Q&A at Affiliate Summit East 2008

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

Yesterday I did read following post at Linda Buqets 5 Star Affiliate Programs Forums in the Newbies forum. 

Hello Linda,
I am yet to be making $100 per day. I am still very far from it. Could you, please, let us into some of those programs where one can earn up to $100 per day?
Thanks in advance,

Linda provided a brief and correct answer and I wanted to elaborate on it via a post response myself.

And as it happens so often when I am indenting to write a “short” response, the things gets longer and longer and eventually decide to make it a full blog post of its own, because I believe that it is too precious to get lost in the vast ocean of messages in a webmasters forum.

I will post a link to this post at the forum instead. Linda is fortunately not against linking to highly relevant posts and articles on other websites and even encourages it. The emphasis is on “highly relevant” somewhat distant related does not qualify, except for the qualification as spam.

Down to Business

Okay, now back to my answer of that post.
$100 in profits per day from a single program is not that easy.

If it is a revenue share offer you have to do the following math to find out the amount of sales you need in order to make $100 in profits.

$ Profit + $ cost

-------------------        = $ Sales

% Commission / 100

Now we have to assume that you spend less than $100 for every $100 in commission, because if that is not the case, then you are losing money and not making a penny.

$ Profits = $100, $ Cost = $0 – $99.99 (let’s assume you are doing PPC and a cost of $50 for every $100 in commissions, = $100 in costs in order to make $100 in profits). I will assume a 10% commission by the advertiser for this little example.

Based on that equation would be the sales that you have to generate for the advertiser to be $2,000.

Now look at the average order size of the merchant, which really depends on the type of products the merchant is selling. DoubleClick reported $139 as average order value (across the board) in Q3 2004. Let’s be pessimistic and assume $125 per order. That means that you would need 16 orders to make $2,000 in sales.

Conversion Rate Considerations

Conversion rates differ from merchant to merchant. Everything less than 1% of the clicks resulting in a commissionable transaction is poor and should make you think about if it is worth to promote the merchant. Everything above 1% is good. Anything in the double digit range is terrific (if not accomplished by brand bidding or other methods that might/probably be prohibited by the merchant).

Since PPC and organic search as well, is “pull” marketing where you provide an offer for something that the user is searching or looking for, conversions tend to be higher than the 1%. A study by WebsideStory from 2006 shows a median order conversion rate of 3.4% for paid search listings and 3.13% for organic search listings).

Let’s take the 1% as measure (to be conservative).
1/100 converts and you need 16 conversions = 1,600 clicks.

Now you have a figure to work with as a rule of thumb. Details vary of course per industry. You can redo the calculation for any combination of merchant and industry.

Higher commissions and higher sales tickets usually cause the market to be a bit more competitive than for smaller ticket items and lower commission niches. This is specifically true for pay-per-click.

To extend the calculation to pay per click campaigns, consider that based on a MarketingSherpa survey from 2004, the average click-through rate for PPC ads the asked advertisers were getting was 3.6%, which means that you need about 45,000 ad impressions (give or take a few hundred) to get to the 1,600 clicks. That’s a lot of searches on a single day and chances are good that the PPC positions are well filled with ads by others already.

The bid price is probably high as well and you as a beginner will have a hard time to compete with some of the pro’s up there who not only know what they are doing, but probably also have a much older and trusted account to get around some of the issues and penalties a new account can become subject to.

The Backdoor Approach

So you have to go long tail and search for phrases that are relevant (the less relevant, the lower the conversion, if the ad is not skewed to make it seemingly more relevant than it actually is. If it is skewed, then you click through rate will remain high, but your conversion rate will suffer, because people will find out that the advertised product is not really what they expected and were originally looking for.

You can do the same calculations for organic search, only that you have the disadvantage there that it takes a while to get any results back and to find out if the keywords and phrases you optimized a page or site for is actually driving the amount of traffic that you hoped it would. Not to mention to find out, if the phrase is really relevant for your potential buyers of the advertised product(s) or not.

You can do some research with the numerous free and commercial keyword research tools. I have a large list available on my site for every need and budget. However, figures from such tools are only educated guesses. How good the guess is depends on the quality of the source of the data that are used by the tool. The higher price for the more expensive tools is usually justified by the fact that their sources are much better (and usually cost the tool provider a lot of money) than any of the free tools is able to provide.

$100 per Day is Not That Easy!

You see, $100 profit per day is not that easy, even for experienced marketers. If an affiliate makes $100 in profits with a single merchant, chances are good that the affiliate deploys multiple methods to generate traffic to the advertiser, from PPC, organic SEO, and social media, Email marketing etc. If you would break it down to $10 profit per day, per advertiser, you might be better off, because the requirements to make the $10 are much easier to meet than for the $100 profit goal. If you figured out a way to make the $10 profit, find out, if you can replicate the same methods used for the one merchant to use it with another merchant in a similar (not the same) or entirely different niche.

Many successful internet marketers are successful, because they are able to figure out certain methods that seem to work well and apply them to several different merchants. The details of the methods used might be different and for an outsider is maybe no similarity to recognize between one and another campaign by the same marketer, but there is one and that is exactly the edge the successful marketer has over the beginner and inexperienced one.

They learned those things by trial and error and I can tell from my own experience that I am not able to quantify everything to provide you with a detailed description of how I do it, even if I would want to do that. You might want to call it instinct or gut feeling. That instinct was developed naturally over the years. All the mistakes and errors made play into this as well as the successes. More the mistakes I would say, because my instincts tell me more often that I should not go a certain route than they tell me to go with one particular one.

Conclusion

Use this guide as a check list to calculate potential for an idea and to double check if it is worthwhile to spend time and energy on something or not.

You have to figure out the details for yourself. That is what makes up you, the marketer. If there would be a one guide fits it all system out there, you as marketer would not be necessary, because then the merchants could easily follow that guide by themselves and cut you out of the action.

In cases where specific details for an offer etc. leaked out for some reason, only a few were able to leverage it and make a decent profit, because the place becomes crowded quickly and everybody is doing the same thing, which changes the factors in the above equation again and make it quickly look not so good anymore.

That is the reason why no marketer will tell you any specifics for something that is profitable for him, unless he is out of his mind or has a different reason for telling you this. Once he tells somebody, the avalanche was put into motion and makes the nice and cozy space to advertise a lot more crowded and much less profitable.

Good luck with the discovery of your profitable methods and specific campaigns, merchants and products.

Cheers!
Carsten Cumbrowski

References

• Conversion Rates PPC vs. Organic – WebSideStory Statistic from September 2006, via ClickZ News
• Avg. Order Size, Double Click Q3 2004 E-Commerce Trend Report via ClickZ News
• MarketingSherpa, IT Marketing Survey Results 2004
• All Data researched via e-Consultancy’s Internet Statistics Compendium

More here:
How to Make a Benjamin in Profits/Day

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) made a revision to the original Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (called CAN-SPAM or the Act) after three years considering public comments.

The Commission received 152 comments and suggestions on the NPRM and 13,517 comments and suggestions on the ANPR from representatives of a broad spectrum of the online commerce industry, trade associations, individual consumers, and consumer and privacy advocates. The Commission vote to approve the Federal Register Notice was 4-0.

I decided to post about this update, because I like to point to the CAN-SPAM act as a good example for what you get as an industry, if you are unable to regulate yourself and specify any form of best practices to be able to distinguish themselves from unethical spammers. Although the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) was able to get some changes through before the final release of the act, but that you could best describe as damage control. The DMA was not involved when the act was originally developed. As you can see, the FTC was this time much more open to feedback and comments (I assume that one reason for that was the fact that the Act did nothing to reduce spam, but caused an outcry from legitimate advertisers instead).

If you are not familiar with the original CAN-SPAM act, here is a link to the document in PDF format at the FTC website.

The 4 points that were added to the original act address some of the practical issues that resulted from the original act, but none of them will have any impact on reducing the SPAM problem itself. If you hoped that you will receive less spam anytime soon, then you will be disappointed.

The FTC News release from May 12, 2008 summarizes the changes as follows:

1. an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;
2. the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements;
3. a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address” and
4. a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons

The full text of the Federal Register Notice can be found here (PDF).

MarketingSherpa released a short audio podcast with there Senior Reporter Chris Heine discussing the revision with Jeff Mills of eROI. Kenneth Corbin published on May 13, 2008 an article titled “FTC Tightens Up CAN-SPAM Rules” at InternetNews.com, which includes comments by Matt Wise of Q Interactive and Janis Kestenbaum, a staff attorney with the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Matt Wise said:

“Under the new rules, multiple advertisers collaborating on an e-mail campaign will have the opportunity to designate one as the sender, which will be required to identify itself in the “from” line.

The e-mails must contain a mechanism for a user to opt out of receiving future messages, which the designated sender will then be responsible for processing. “

Wise added

“that he hopes the new rules for multi-brand messages will streamline the unsubscribe process, with marketing companies such as his own taking on the responsibilities for maintaining opt-out lists.”

Janis Kestenbaum said

“Also under the new rules, advertisers will be able to satisfy the requirement for including a postal address with a P.O. box or a private address. Previously, they had to include a corporate street address in their messages. “

The update will also include language to simplify the requirements of an opt-out process. Marketers will not be able to require consumers to pay a fee or furnish any data other than an e-mail address to process an opt-out request.

Jeff Mills expressed some concerns that this might create a problem for advertisers who require their customers to log-in to their account to update their email preferences. I don’t think that there is too much reason for concern, based on the comments of Janis Kestenbaum who said that said the main impetus behind that update was to prevent companies from using consumers’ request to opt out as a springboard to extort more information about them. Similarly, marketers will not be able to require consumers to visit more than one Web site to process an opt-out request, she said.

If the customer has an online account with an advertiser already, then I believe that those advertisers need to provide the means for the customer to simply opt-out by entering his email address into a form or something like that. This form could be used by pranksters to opt-out friends, colleagues or other people where the prankster knows the email address and assumes that the person is a subscriber to a specific newsletter. The owner of the email address would become pretty upset, if he suddenly does not get his email newsletter anymore. If I should be wrong, I strongly recommend that advertisers put something into their FAQ saying that they cannot control who is opting out who because of the new legal requirements by the FTC.

On a side note, the FTC left the deadline for complying with an opt-out request unchanged at 10 days.
The new rules will take effect 45 days after the FTC publishes the update in the Federal Register.

Here is a list with some additional legal resources that are relevant for internet marketers.

Cheers!
Carsten Cumbrowski

Read the original:
After Three Years: FTC Approves Revision to CAN-SPAM Act from 2003

I’m here at ad:tech at the keynote by Jeff Hayzlett, CMO of Eastman Kodak where he related great stories about what he has been doing.  He is an entertaining speaker and does a good job of telling a story.  One of his points related to a few rules he gave his team when he arrived at Kodak.  He wanted the team to come up with new ideas and gave them a few rules to govern their ideas.  Number one: is anyone going to die?  If not, go to the next step.

Go here to see the original:
Is Anyone Going to Die?