Make Money Online

AMWSO is very proud to have been short listed in the category for Innovation in Affiliate Marketing in the E-consultancy’s Innovation Awards 2008. The other firms short listed certainly make it a short list worth being on withthe full short list being :

• TradeDoubler
• sunshine.co.uk
• AMWSO Co Ltd
• Essence Media
• Digital Window

The winners of the award will be announced on December 2nd, by a panel of judges that come from a top tier selection of firms that include the BBC, Apple, Orange, Target Marketing, Whatif!, Internet Retailing, Dyson and Google.

Congratulations to all the firms shortlisted.

More here:
Innovation in Affiliate Marketing

Sports hunting has evolved online and no longer do we need to go around shooting lions and the like. Nope online there’s bigger things to hunt, and over the past year “Trade Mark Bidders” have become the primary target.

The issue is quite simple, it’s easier to make a fast buck bidding on someones trade mark than it is to try and actually add some value to the shopping process, add to which trade marks convert really well and we have a recipe to attract every layabout and lazy dog on the Internet. Granted their are exceptions but the majority of TM bidding is all “value take” not “value add”.

Online merchants expect their affiliate managers / management firm to audit their affiliates, make sure they are adding value and, more and more, that affiliates are not cannibalizing their Trade Marks. The issue then becomes one of time and resources, how does the affiliate manage monitor a multitude of search engines, especially when ppc can now be set to target consumers within specific time periods and within specific geographic locations. An affiliate manager working from 9 AM to 5 PM in LA, is not going to see the ads targeting consumers “only” in Seattle, nor the ads in LA that kick off at 6 PM PST. The affiliate manager could effectively spend 8 hours a day simply trolling the search engines in hope of finding violators. The chances are still slim that they will find the violators even if they are there as TM bidders have become sophisticated in how they hide their links and disguise how their traffic gets to a merchants site. Yes they have a nice looking “niche” site in their profile…too bad it actually drives no traffic at all!

Anyway, so what we have is a situation where the affiliate manager is spending more time auditing than doing their core job, or where they simply throw their hands in the air and declare the situation to be beyond their control, pass the buck and hope someone else will take care of it, or not notice that have stopped monitoring the TM bidding.

Last year we thought about developing something that would automate this process, but with other tasks to do that fell by the way side, and we’ve seen other firms try to launch products that will do the job, but ultimately have failed to deliver. This morning however I had a great call with David Naffziger of Brandverity, who appear to have a working solution and clear understanding of the challenges that affiliate managers face. While not yet perfect the system they have developed certainly does far more than most other systems we’ve had a look at to date.

As well as the core task of tracking down direct to site affiliate TM links it also records all forms of TM bidding to allow the affiliate manager to swiftly trace a bid to a landing page and tie it to an affiliate account or a competitor. It allows inhouse ads to be ignored and even has the ability to white list specific trusted PPC partners so that the reports will come through clear of approved / inhouse marketing.

A key mistake I made with their system was to only read the daily email report and not log into the site. The emails are fine, but are a little overwhelming, log in and the data is far more manageable and also deeper! Brandverity cover a number of key markets and search engines and are expanding constantly to cover new markets, and as David said, they are very keen to get feedback and ideas on how to make the tool better. Overall looks like this will be the solution that allows affiliate managers to get their focus back on helping value ad partners, and away from wasting time chasing down those out to take away that value.

More here:
Big Game Hunting : Trade Mark Bidders

A new tool is on the horizon for the Syntryx Solution Suite. While it’s always been easy to track down competitor publishers within the suite, review their data and the potential power that can be generated from working with any given partner, it has, till I saw this new tool, been quite a task to get a full picture of the overlapping nature of different relationships between merchants and their publishing partners.

With the amount of data such a report can generate, Syntryx opted for a visual representation, which will look like this :

Each color representing a keyword and each white dot a site, so what you’re looking for is where the most colors come together.

How does this work in practical terms? Well pretty much as follows…

With this tool I could for example compare 3 (or more) different merchants and then visually be able to see

* The overlap in publishing partners of all three merchants
* The overlap between pairs merchants
* Areas where there are no overlaps

I’m then able to drill down and see the data for any publisher working with any of the three merchants.

So if I was a new merchant (a competitor to all three for example) I could use this to data to perform a form of triangulation to discover what may be the “best publishers” or “most used publishers” by other firms. Or looking at it from another angle, I could see which publishers are heavily used (perhaps overused even) and find those little gems that only one merchant is partnered with and are completely under utililized used. Naturally finding out whether a publisher is over or under used requires that little extra digging and Syntryx has never lacked for digging tools or data to find!

Read the rest here:
New publisher mining tool from Syntryx

It was a rumour and now it’s fact. And rather than repeat what’s already posted in the ShareaSale forum, click here and read about the great new tool that allows affiliates to create and generate their own video creatives, and link them to multiple merchants throughout the video through the use of cue points. Meaning an affiliate can create a niche focused video covering five related products and promote five different merchants all in one video, darned cool!

See the original post here:
Shareasale launches “Affiliate Create a video”

While affiliates continue to look for ways to ad value to a merchants marketing campaign, they are often hampered by a networks limitations on what linking and tracking options are available. Most affiliates find they can only innovate as fast as their network partners allow. While video has been hot for a while and some merchants have had click trackable video available for a couple of years, it’s still not easy to support directly within most networks. Most solutions to date have used a work around system to avoid the complications or added expense of using an affiliate networks options.

So it’s great to see Shareasale once again step into the breach and release a video tool set to help merchants create and deploy videos for their affiliates to use.

The present system provides a way for merchants to set up videos in Shareasale, but it looks like there will be a system to support affiliate created videos too!

Check out a demo of the system on the SAS Blog.

Here is the original post:
Shareasale ads Video Support

RSS for marketers Guru, Rok Hrastnik… please pick up a blue courtesy phone (or better yet, fair reader, check out Rok’s ‘Unleash the Power of RSS’ book and encourage him to finish up his new book). RSS is frighteningly open-ended and innovation intense. The challenge is how to make it rapidly used by consumers! Then again, my mom, dad and I’ll bet your grandparents are using RSS today without knowing it. We all are!

Revtrax, formerly Oncard Marketing, is all about taking affiliate marketing to stores. That’s right, dirt world stores. They’re literally providing a means for advertisers to partner up with affiliates who have distribution outside of the Web – like stores or direct mail (think ad-stuffers that ride along with utility, credit card and other bills). Might you be able to tap into such distribution based on people you know at the local Rotary Club or business card exchange? I’ll bet you might! Talk about the Holy Grail of advertiser value!

Think also about successful CPA affiliate sites like Buzzilions.com – one of the first in our business to convince advertisers that wrapping customer-generated content (product reviews) around their products (distributed to them via affiliate networks and direct merchant relationships) was valuable. Was it new distribution for advertisers? You betcha it was.

Flexible, Performance-based Cost Models

Revtrax and other successful affiliate businesses – including those that remain family-run/owned like FatWallet.com or SheFinds.com – have one thing in common. That is, they’re diversifying themselves and, in fact, transforming from affiliate to publisher and finally to media company. This involves offering advertisers more than just commission-based placements. Look also to small business successes like Jellyfish.com who blend various performance payment models and customer-facing value. Don’t forget, the major comparison shopping engines all started as CPA only and migrated to CPC with some blending CPA+CPC today. Use your historical data with advertisers to your advantage. Negotiate other types of pricing based on effective CPA.

Of course, earning those CPM/fixed fee placement and/or cost-per-click (CPC) dollars isn’t easy. Doing so requires a high degree of professionalism and unique insight as to the demographic composition of your site visitors. It also requires a sales staff that can speak the language of other departments within marketers’ office… or interact with their external advertising agency. It often requires thinking and acting outside your comfort zone. Doing so is difficult but once you’ve overcome the fear, packaged yourself up and closed a few deals the fear goes away.

Denial is Not Just a River in Africa

Ever notice how things can smell like a skunk in affiliate marketing… but many pretend that everything is fine and rosy? Next think ya know, whammo. Affiliates get dished a raw deal… but ultimately they’re forced to swallow a bitter pill. Maybe an affiliate network stabs an affiliate in the back. Or maybe an affiliate turns around and bites the hand that’s fed it since childbirth. Other times affiliates themselves win the battle…but make no mistake, there IS a battle being waged. Let’s quit denying it and address the real issues. I’m not confident that affiliate networks are able to or actively addressing it on your behalf. Aaah, for the glory days of Commission Junction when it catered to affiliates first, advertisers second!

It’s sad but true: there are people who prefer to avoid talking about the fact that advertisers are asking for more. Are you one of them? I recommend getting off that train and now!

Although these battles create difficulty for affiliates they serve a purpose – to force change and create new opportunities. Will you be there “left holding an empty bag” or will you keep an “ear to the track” and listen to that train coming down the track before it pulls into the station? The choice is yours and in the end you need to take action that creates true value for your visitors first, advertisers second and, as a result, your business.

Jeff Molander is CEO of performance marketing consulting company, Molander & Associates Inc. where he provides executive-level guidance on digital marketing and media to multi-channel retailers, entrepreneurs and investment firms. He’s also a principal with The Partner Maker LLC, a new affiliate management system designed to drive increased revenue between affiliates and marketers. His background includes helping found digital marketing services company, Performics Inc.; today a division of Google. He can be reached at jeff*at*jeffmolander.com

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Affiliate Call to Arms: Add Value Now or Die!

This feels like it is the smallest eComXpo event I have attended so far , both in that there appear to be less exhibitors (thought I count about 120) and it is running for fewer days. That said the first day has been very good and I’ve picked up better contacts in the first day this year than I did in total at the past shows.

The event this year is kind of split into two sections eComXpo and eTailXpo though the two ’shows’ could easily have been combined into one, and were as far as the main navigation was concerned, making it easy to visit exhibitors from both sides of the show.

I’ve not been to any of the presentations yet, I’ll save that for tomorrow.

Excerpted from:
eComXpo : Smaller but better.

Rarely, a day goes by when I’m not creating a new page of content on one of my sites or blogs, and that’s usually swiftly followed by emails from the team correcting all my spelling and grammar errors. It’s become part of the culture “Chris Publishes content” followed by “Chris corrects content” and then “Chris corrects content again”. Mostly, it’s not due to me being awful at spelling, but that typing quickly leads to lots of errors, and sometimes my thoughts get ahead of my fingers.

Copying and pasting to word to spell check, or using web based spell checkers isn’t always ideal , especially copying from word as so much hidden junk code is also copied which can cause havoc in a blog. The average spell checker also does only that “spell check” and doesn’t add much value beyond doing the job. In today’s “value add” Internet I believe we all demand that a product do what it’s designed to do and add more value beyond.

On top of my own content issue, the fact is that well written copy is an important factor of any affiliate or bloggers content. Spelling and grammar errors can ruin a well put together pre sales pitch. So investing time, or money into preventing these issues is a good investment.

Anyway, I have for a couple of years come across the name WhiteSmoke here and there and constantly ignored it. Last month I was nudged into grabbing a copy to try out by one the team who decided he better things to do than spell check for me.

So, 3 weeks later, of testing the WhiteSmoke software I’ve been pretty happy with what I get for my money, a spell checker that can be used on any kind of document, software, web site or blog, pretty much anywhere. Select the copy I want to check (or allow WhiteSmoke to select it all) click F2, check copy and job done! In addition to that there’s the value add bits. The system offers recommendations on how to improve the copy, checks the grammar and helps me to put together better content with no errors. It also offers various levels of copy improvement, from general and business through to medical. While primarily built to plug in to IE, the software does work with FireFox.

The only issue I’ve had with the software is that it when you run the spell check on copy, any formating or links that I’ve embedded into the content are removed when the copy is reloaded after being corrected. A minor pain, but it just means adding the links and formating after the copy has been corrected and improved.

Wonder what the team will do with all that extra time they’ve got now they don’t need to check my spelling for me

Read more:
My Content Creation Issues

Twitter… I have to say, that I’m still in “what’s the fuss”, and “who cares if I woke up at 9:15 this morning and had 3 rashers of bacon, beans and two eggs (sunny side up) for breakfast”, then at 9:27 AM “had a shower a cup of coffee and cleaned my teeth”, though maybe I should break that down into multiple twitts, twerps, posts or what ever they are called to ensure no one thinks I did all three at the same time, maybe I did, I can’t remember, perhaps I need Twitter to help me remember what I did each day!

However it seems the rest of the world can’t get enough, and yes I admit, I do have an account, which gets update once every month when Google Chat says “Hey you haven’t posted on Twitter for ages bud!”, though it’s not nudged me for some time (perhaps it gave up on me) , worse I do have people who are fans, followers, tweetie birds, etc and follow my every move, I bet most of them believe I’m in traction!

I know Dave here at AMWSO (big Twitter Fan) did post some time back about the joys of communicating with affiliates via Twitter and the like, and I’m not one to bash any method of getting a message out, but heck, is anyone really sitting, watching and waiting for the next tweet message. Do they want business messages mixed in with “Woke up and have a headache after last nights pubcon!” Me no, I’m not a believer. Though perhaps if I was following the development of say, a piece of software, it would be useful to get updates via twitter. Or better yet if I can’t get to the football match, then someone can sms to their tweet account all the action for me to follow at home. Could always check the developer blog / web site, or watch the football on TV though, for far better results.

Anyway what brought me around to chatting about Twitter is some new tools around that make it easier to manage and track both your own and other people’s messages. As I’m a novice user and totally clueless as to which are any good I’ll not blather on any further, but suggest popping over to Sukosak’s blog and see what he has to say and recommend for those of you who are keen Twitter Users.

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Maybe I’m the odd one out?

It’s nothing new and has been around since the dawn of the Internet but deep linking is ever more critical, and if you don’t let your marketing and affiliates partners deep link then you’ re likely missing the mark, and losing customers, according to a new Nielsen report.

In 2004, about 40 percent of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60 percent used a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25 percent of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.

The report goes on to discuss how web users are becoming less patient and less distracted by sticky functions and want to get right to what they have come to do and then go elsewhere.

On the upside a greater percentage of users now actually complete what they set out to do, so if a merchant has a good site design and easy check out then the ability to drive a good conversion rate is now higher than ever, good news for merchants and affiliates!

Deep linking is very easy for the makority merchants to set up on their sites and for their affiliate programs, and is critical for sites that offer a wide range of products. That said there are still a number of affiliate programs than insist on forcing users to travel via the home page, either due to a poor eCommerce platform or a very misguided belief in what their site visitos should be forced into doing.

Read more from the original source:
Do you let your Affiliates Deep Link?