Affiliate News

Culling inactive or even ineffective affiliates is back in the spotlight this week thanks to Ann Summers on Tradedoubler and an excellent discussion over on Affiliates4U. All affiliates who make one sale during February will be invited to remain on their program, whilst all others will be told adieu unless they can satisfy those in charge that there’s potential to do business in the future.

Apparently this clean up will allow them “to look after you better and really manage the relationships the way they would like to”. My general feelings on this kind of activity has already appeared here on OLD – Purge Inactivity To Get The Best From Your Affiliates!, and to be brutal those feelings haven’t changed. I think this kind of thing does more harm than good.

Look after us better?

For us the vast majority of affiliate managers look after us simply by sending us an email once a week/fortnight/month/year. That’s it. Not that I’m complaining, I don’t want 100s of AMs contacting me all day and every day. So with that in mind am I a drain on their resources? No!

Let’s assume there are several other affiliates paddling along in the same boat, all receiving the same standard email each week, that will go out to unculled affiliates. How is removing them going to save anyone any extra time or facilitate better relationships? It’s not!

Ok, perhaps it’s fair to remove affiliates who haven’t logged in to their affiliate account in years or who haven’t done a click ever or whatever other stat that can be dragged out of the management interface to show total inactivity (you AM guys and girls do have access to these kind of stats, yes? And you contact those specific affiliates without annoying everyone, yes? If not, why?)

And yes, there’s an option to plead our case to the merchant when these things happen, and fair enough most are pretty understanding. However, in my opinion this culling process has a real negative effect on affiliates. Including those who aren’t effected. Plus the time and energy devoted to kicking people out would be better used cajoling them to make an effort instead.

So why remove those who can’t perform or satisfy at the moment (there’s some irony here that we’re talking about Ann Summers) but who perhaps are promoting you, developing sites or are just happy to get on with things regardless and do not impede on their affiliate manager’s time.

I guess it could be cost (i.e. merchants pay networks by click or banner show) or that the tools to manage affiliates by groups aren’t available. I know that Paid on Results have such a facility, meaning you can group up your top affiliates, inactives, and others accordingly – and assume that other networks offer such tools?

However, one reason, and this seems to be cropping up more (Will Our Conversion Rate Ruin Your Affiliate Program), in my opinion is that affiliates who don’t conform with high clicks/no sales or high banner shows/no sales make a mess of statistics like conversion rate, EPC and what have you.

Perhaps I’m biased here as an affiliate and also as an affiliate who actually doesn’t give two hoots about statistics. One figure matters to me and that’s the one after the £ sign! I don’t care if I make one sale after 10 clicks, or 10,000 clicks simply because I’m not paying for traffic.

I’m working within the ts&cs of the program and as I’ve posted on A4U already I’ve yet to see one program that says “we will remove you if you make a mess of our stats, conversion rate, or any other number thing to make us look bad”. It’s me who’s suffering because of low conversion as it means I make less cash so why is it a big deal to the merchant?

I’m getting more and more concerned that merchants, agencies and AMs are getting more driven by statistics, but perhaps not in the right direction… and for an affiliate who really doesn’t care about EPC etc it’s a major worry that in the long term we’ll not be able to include merchants on our sites.

Personally I’d rather see an email from a merchant, worried about lack of activity or conversion, incentivising and encouraging me to promote them, not trot out lines like looking after me better when the reality is we’ll still be getting the standard network email a week anyway.

Finally, it’s worth noting that if Ann Summers do cull you, then you can always promote LoveHoney instead. You may still not get any sales, but LoveHoney do offer 16% commission compared to 10% with Ann Summers (which to be fair is a lot more generous than I expected).

So the 2010 a4uawards are nearly upon us, and today the team have announced that nominations are open for the “community choice” element of the awards. Somewhat disappointingly, only five of the 25 awards up for grabs will be decided by the coalface workers of the Affiliate Marketing industry, with the remaining 80% of the awards decided for us by a “panel of experts”. That’s why it’s even more important than ever to ensure that your voice is heard by nominating your favourite people for the following awards:

Community Choice (Publisher) – This is a new award for 2010, and one that I think could do with some narrowing of the criteria: on what grounds should we be nominating/voting in this category? Should we be looking to reward the best newbies who went from £0 to full time in 2009? Or the affiliates who took time away from their own businesses to help others out tremendously (think Smingle)? Or will the networks be voting en masse for the names that appear on the top of their balance sheets?

Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2010 – This is the category that I was somehow shortlisted in last year, although deservedly I was nowhere near the winning post, with the excellent Affiliate Stuff scooping the top prize, and Lee McCoy getting a highly commended. It’s going to be hard to dislodge those two from the top – could newcomers Affiliate Doctors or Mark Boyd get your vote?

Publisher’s Choice – Account Manager at a Network – IIRC, this was a combined network/agency/merchant award last year? There was certainly some confusion with a similarly titled award I seem to recall. Anyway, it’s clear as day this year – What account manager has gone the extra mile for you?

Publisher’s Choice – Affiliate Manager – Who’s your favourite Affiliate Manager (not at a network)? In fairness there’s at least 10 affiliate managers I can think of who would be thoroughly deserving of this award, going well beyond the day job and help make their affiliates’ lives easier.

Publisher’s Choice – Affiliate Network – Can anyone topple Affiliate Window and stop them winning for the fourth year running? I can’t see it myself, but then perhaps you think differently?

If so (and that goes for any of the awards), then you need to make your voice is heard – and the only way to do that is to nominate your favourite affiliate (sorry, I don’t agree with “publisher” but that’s a debate for another day), blog, network account manager, affiliate manager and network to ensure they make the shortlist.

Of course once the shortlist is announced, then the annoying “vote for me” campaigns begin in ernest. Now I’m not convinced that such campaigns have any effect at all, as I believe that most people cast their votes based on their own experiences and opinions over the previous 12 months (I know I do!) rather than obeying a mass email/banner/facebook campaign demanding “vote for me, even though I’ve done bugger all for you in the last 12 months”

So, get your nominations in now – you’ve got until the 1st March to do so. If you don’t nominate your favourite person/company and they’re not shortlisted, then you’ll only have yourself to blame!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

a4uawards nominations now open – make sure your voice is heard!

Related posts:

1. A4uawards 2008 – Who I voted for and why
2. a4uawards: Who I voted for and why
3. a4uawards – Last chance to nominate

An affiliate is in need of good product feeds as much as Portsmouth FC are in need of a couple of quid. The latter merchants probably can’t do much about (sorry Pompey dudes, hope it works out) but why the heck are product feeds still a flaming problem? Does anyone look at them? Check them? Care about them?

First the good news – things have improved. There does seem to be better descriptions, product names, manufacturer codes etc – and on the surface everything in the garden looks rosy! That is until you start looking for something and the following two examples have been encountered far too often of late…

New Products On Websites

An affiliate spots that Merchant X has some wonderful tshirts on their site and thinks “hey that could be a nice central point for a blog post”. They head over to their clever little feed tool or perhaps easy content units (who will have the same feeds) and search for those wonderful items. They’re not there!

So where are they? OK let’s allow 24 hours for an update! Days pass and still those products don’t appear.

Result: Merchant doesn’t get promoted!

Items In Emails

Quite honestly this gets right on the proverbials. You receive a wonderfully crafted email from a merchant. The items are screaming “promote me! promote me!” and so you set to work. Is it in the feed? Oh dear, no it isn’t. Again let’s be patient. In the words of Annie “ya gotta hang on ‘Til tomorrow” as it’s only a day away. But no, sadly those items don’t appear.

They’re pre-order items and therefore aren’t going to be in the feed!

Result: Merchant doesn’t get promoted!

So here’s a February challenge to all who are charged with managing product feeds for their clients.

1. Go and check the product feed and make sure it’s up to date
2. Check the images and links. Can an affiliate use them?
3. Check that the feed is being updated daily (or as frequent as required)
4. Make sure it’s being updated. Do spot checks!
5. See if new products on site appear in the feed.
6. Make sure old products are being removed.
7. Do tests on downloads. Are the feeds usable in both XML and CSV.
8. Do tests on putting CSV feeds and XML feeds into a database.
9. Make sure all site items are in the feed and are properly categorised.
10. Go back to 1 and repeat.

Now, it’s appreciated that some of the above is a faff and some may not have the technical know how to check some of suggestions, but in simpler terms – please check the feeds and if you see they’re not right, get it sorted!

And please don’t send emails with products to promote that aren’t in your feed! Just because they’re on site doesn’t mean affiliates can get to them via your feeds. We have tools, whether they be our own, third party like ECU, or networks and if your items aren’t right, up to date or in the correct format you’re losing out on promotion.

Even worse for you… if your competitors are up to date and have brilliant product feeds then they’re going to be used instead!

Emails from merchants often spark various reactions, but one last week left me more than a little bit baffled. Now we’re pretty much open when it comes to some of the affiliate marketing we do! Whilst every man and his dog are screaming finesse and niche, we’re pretty much in the “using a steam roller for your pastry” department for some aspects of AM. It’s not pretty but it can be effective.

It is targeted traffic – to a point! Our users want to win stuff, a retailer is giving stuff away, we send them traffic. If we can use an affiliate link at the same all the better. The downside is that we don’t get paid for doing that, but the chance of no commission is better than no chance for no commission and we just have to hope that the retailer is doing a grand job promoting products, offers, discounts etc at their end.

What this means, for retailers, is we end up (occasionally) sending high traffic with low conversions. They end up with people visiting their site, competition entrants, brand awareness, low conversion rate and occasionally an affiliate manager who thinks we’re up to no good.

And it’s the latter which has had me baffled over the last few days.

They said that “having such a high click through rate and low conversion rate isn’t great for the overall program”. I’m still trying to figure out how our CR has any bearing on the program at all. OK in stats it may skew things, but under “lines of best fit” we’d be an anomaly. We’re also an anomaly that can be accounted for!

Now it’s appreciated that some retailers look on people who want to win things disdainfully, but they do (well some do) buy online and they are very web savvy. They’re the kind of people who will search for and use discounts, look for cashback (grrrr) and do all those wonderful money saving type things. Our problem is that they tend not to buy right at the time we send them to find competitions to enter.

So how can you help improve our conversion rate?

Well firstly you could pay us for leads to your competitions. Now this will probably never ever happen, but if it did our CR would look a lot healthier, as would our commission levels on networks. Hooray!

Secondly, know your website. What we’re finding is that quite often the AM isn’t actually aware what is happening across the entire site that they’re managing. They may know that skirts are down and trousers are up but not if a prize draw has ever appeared. If they did then they’d probably realise why there’s a sudden spike of traffic from duckland.

Thirdly, make sure your competition mechanic is better!

Take Buyagift as an example. For Valentine’s Day you could win a trip on The Orient Express… cool! You enter and all you see is “Why not check out our great range of Valentine’s Day gifts”. It’s better than nothing, but it screams out for “you’ve got a discount code” or “today’s offer, buy now or miss out”.

There’s just nowt eye catching there for anyone! An improvement in these kind of areas may not have any influence on our CR, but for other entrants/visitors it may help more than just a “click here” link.

Finally, please don’t kick us off your program because we have a low conversion rate as it really doesn’t ruin your program (or at least we hope it doesn’t). We do promote retailers in more targeted shopping related ways including price comparison, content, blogging, vouchers etc and are constantly working on new ways to improve our conversions.

Lee,

When will you be bringing out your book on internet marketing and the social media? The one all about 'how to....' that takes a complete novice through the hows and whys in a step by step format, such as:

• How to set up a blog
• How to write SEO relvant blog articles
• Where to publish your blog
• How to chose blog articles to write about
• How to make Facebook work for you
• How to make Twitter work for you
• How to set up your first twitter account
• How to choose the twitter topics to write about
• How to choose the facebook topics to write about
• All about google adwords
• How to choose relevant adwords
• How to organise your google adwords account to make it efficient and effective
• Where to link your adwords to your website and why
• What about other social media sites - what are they, are they useful

Then the advanced course - how to take all this info and turn it into a strategy for doing it for paid clients - how to find clients, what to charge, what to offer on a regular basis etc, how to write a proposal for the clients etc

If you could do it on a step by step basis, taking someone through from scratch how to sort it all out, with screen shots for each step, I think you'd be onto a winner.

You've probably got a lot of it written already, so you could get a £19.99 (or whatever) ebook going - back it up with a £199 course, and a £9.99 a month newsletter with the latest info and what you should be thinking of doing on a monthly basis.

Can I buy the first copy/newsletter subscription please?

PLEASE launch it asap, help me out and make yourself another great stream of income.

[Anon]

Why is it that so many people want to get into affiliate marketing? Common reasons include the lure of a working week that may potentially require just a few hours input for a huge return; the chance to work from home, to make your own hours and to fashion an online empire whilst wearing your pants and eating toast.

The great part of this idealised vision is that for many people it can become a reality with determination, skill and a little luck. However, the deciding factor that makes most people give up the day job and stick with affiliate marketing is the day job itself. Relatively few people who work in an office all day enjoy their work and affiliate marketing provides for some the ultimate escape route to do what they love every day, to wake up to something that’s as stimulating and exciting as it is frightening and adventurous.

However, it’s just as easy to get rid of the day job and then start an affiliate marketing venture that ends up becoming just as much of a chore as your previous job — only now you’ve got to rely on yourself for your income. This will cause the sense of escape and self reliance that you began to feel to drift into the crushing apprehension of yet another tedious, unlovable routine. Must it be like this? No.

There are many reasons why people end up quitting affiliate marketing because they’ve become disinterested or disillusioned by it at an early stage. This is usually because they’ve attempted to do something that a) they don’t enjoy and b) has already been done a million times by countless other affiliates with varying levels of success. For this discussion let’s use the example of voucher code sites. They’re currently a popular focus with new and existing affiliates alike, in no small part due to the relatively simple set up process and because the web is swamped with ready made ways in which to build them.

However, is there anyone out there who can say that running a voucher code site would inspire passion and interest in them? Doubtless a tiny percentage of those running them. And is there anyone who genuinely thinks that they could start a site which would be able to fend off intense competition in battling its way to the top of the search engine rankings in an already saturated market? The answer is almost certainly no. This goes for other similarly popular affiliate ventures such as shopping directories and cashback sites. Unless you have some REAL competitive advantage coupled with an all-consuming passion for these areas, consider other options.

The main point here is that there are plenty of great affiliate ideas out there already, but to avoid simply jumping on the bandwagon only to fall off and be crushed beneath its wheels, you must realise that each and every one of us has the potential to think of some original, unique and above all profitable angles of our own. The best way in which to do this is to sit down with a pen and paper and write down your main interests/hobbies/distractions or indeed vices. From the list, look at each and try to think of one or two decent affiliate ideas, then see if anyone else has thought of them.

It’s all about finding a niche in the market and filling it before someone else does. Once you’ve hit upon an idea in this way the chances are that building a site, doing the necessary research and recruiting link partners and merchants to feature on it will not just be easier, but it will be enjoyable too. If you’re already passionate about a subject and you base an affiliate site around it then adding content which is interesting and unique won’t require much effort as you’ll already be brimming with ideas and information. The key to making an affiliate site that will perform is, after all, not just to have the idea in the first place but to follow through on it.

We are not for a moment suggesting that absolute uniqueness is the only route to success. Many a good affiliate has identified existing markets where the level of competition is manageable and has simply created a site or sites that improve on those of the competition by a margin, often relatively small. Clearly for an affiliate site to be viable, there must be consumers and merchants so the market place must already exist. In many cases it is therefore about a creative approach to an existing market. Your passion and commitment to the subject may, in many cases, be the factors that distinguish you from your rather more average competitors. Visitors will recognise this, as may well the search engines over time given the ever greater importance of time on site and click-through ratios.

For many, the real prize may be nothing more than being there at school home time or being the only working parent at your toddler’s first school play. The sleepless nights over finances, the regular questioning of your own abilities, the frustration of the many failures along the way: all of these count for nothing at these moments. At the end of the day affiliate marketing can be a viable alternative to the ‘real’ world of employment and should be as much about enjoying your work as it is about making money. Many of us frequently try and define ’success’ in an affiliate marketing context. The real answer can be found quite easily by looking in the mirror each morning.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Do what you love.. Love what you do

Related posts:

1. Why I love Affiliate Marketing
2. What’s a Super Affiliate, and how do I become one?
3. Commission Junction died a slow and painful death many years ago