Posts Tagged News
Impact Radius – What’s in it for affiliates?
Posted by Fraser Edwards in Affiliate Marketing on January 15, 2010
There has been quite a bit of coverage about Impact Radius in the last week but if you were like me earlier today then you might still be trying to work your way through the press release to actually figure out what’s in it for affiliates. Thankfully I’m just off the phone to Ricki Jones (ex Affilinet, CJ & Wheel) who will be heading up the UK office and so I’ve got a bit more idea of what’s going on now 
The company grew out of the realisation that often a traditional affiliate network could best serve their clients by getting out the way and letting affiliates speak directly to merchants. Even when networks offer a full affiliate management service to their clients it’s hard for them to know either side of the business as well as the people working in it each day. So with that in mind Impact Radius is about offering a solution rather then a service.
3 Key Issues for Affiliates
- Open Conact – Yellow Pages style directory with full contact information for both advertisers & affiliates (media partners in Impact Radius terms) This means it should be easy for both sides of the relationship to contact each other and to find relevant partners to work with.
- Pricing Structure – Impact Radius override fees are much lower than most networks with the highest level being 10% and sliding down with volume. The transparency means that you know the full costs to the advertiser of your activity and so for example you could suggest a higher CPA based on sending a higher volume of leads that would bring the override down.
- Negotiation – using the directory you would be able to find merchants and approach them with an offer of a commission rate that would be acceptable to you. This is managed by insertion orders back and forth which are all logged when the agreement is made. Up for discussion would be commission rate, cookie duration, minimum CPC’s, any performance caps, incentive tiers and any other specific terms and conditions required.
There are a host of other features that should also be interesting for example flexible payments (daily if required!) and also facilities to track offline activity through unique voucher code, pay-per-call and unique URL tracking.
Time will tell how it works out as aspects like the directory idea might be hard work to reach a tipping point before it becomes an “everyone who’s anyone” type directory. Overall though I think it’s a really interesting business and it will be intriguing to watch how it finds it place in the UK market.
eBay Partner Network – Quality Click Pricing
Posted by Fraser Edwards in Affiliate Marketing on August 19, 2009
This morning I had a chat to Julia Nisted who is European Affiliate Manager for the eBay Partner Network and she outlined some very interesting changes to the commission structure of the affiliate program planned from 1st September 2009.
Currently eBay pay out a CPA on new users and a percentage of revenue from sellers fees but from 1st September they are going to switch to a new concept which they have called Quality Click Pricing. As the most simple level this is a switch to CPC payouts which may seem like a strange step at first but the CPC payment is going to be based on the quality of the traffic and vary for each publisher on a daily basis.
The quality algorithm is based on both the short term and long term value of the click to eBay with various elements deciding an EPC on a daily basis. For example sales completed closer to the click time would be valued higher as there is more direct evidence that the click contributed to the sale. In some ways this is an attempt to vary the ‘last click wins’ approach that is currently in place with most affiliate programs and to help content affiliates and others who produce quality sites. Since eBay can tell what a click from a specific affiliate is normally worth to them then it’s a creative way to pay appropriately.
Julia said that the motivation for this change was to see their good affiliates rewarded with higher payouts and their bad affiliates to earn less as an incentive to improve. eBay believe that some of their smaller affiliates are providing some of their best quality traffic and so this allows them to invest in growing that side of the network. During the beta test they also found that it encouraged some affiliates to work on improving their traffic either through developing their own sites or looking at their traffic sources.
More info is available on the eBay blog including the official press release.
From my point of view it seems a bold move and I hope it’s one that works out well. It’s nice to see a creative approach to solving a problem and they seem to have avoided the Adsense approach which leaves you without a clue about why some clicks earned so much more than others. I’d be really keen to hear in the comments any other opinions or from people active on the eBay Partner Network about how you think the change will affect you.
As a side note we also discussed that eBay doesn’t seem to be talked about much in the UK affiliate marketing community and I wasn’t totally sure of the reasons behind this. Are many of you active on the eBay network? Given that eBay.co.uk’s unique audience was over 17m in June this year it seems we are all buying and selling there but not talking about the affiliate program!
Bigmouthmedia BABE Award
Posted by Fraser Edwards in Affiliate Marketing on April 22, 2009
Just a quick post to make sure people are aware of this new award courtesy of Bigmouthmedia. The B.A.B.E award carries a £1000 prize for “the affiliate blogger they feel has contributed the most to the affiliate community in the last year”.
Now given my lack of blogging time due to spending more time being a dad in the last year I’m not really expecting to be in the running although the archive of podcasts do still get downloaded regularly. Strangely after going over the last few months of stats I still seem to be getting through 10 gigs of data transfer every week with about 60% of that going to China. Would love to know what’s going there if anyone has any clues!
But anyway the point of my post was to suggest a few blogs likely to be nominated, in no particular order here are the blogs I’ve paid most attention to in the last year.
- Lee McCoy – Some great analysis of different methods and tips on newer approaches like twitter etc. Twitter For Affiliate Marketing? Like Shooting Fish In A Barrel
- Kieron Donoghue – always popular & consistently blogging when the rest of us drop off for months at a time. In amongst the Spotify chat which I love there are also posts like Twitter for Affiliate Networks
- Jason Dale – again consistently blogging great stuff but calling a spade a spade while at the same time coming up with the best headlines of any affiliate blog. Are We Really Eating From The Same Cookie Jar?
- Self Made Minds – Scott & Al haven’t been as obvious in the A4U community so mistakenly I think they have been overlooked in previous awards shortlists. Posts like Scott’s Domain Buyer’s Guide have generated a lot of comments, discussion and are full of good info.
- Kirsty McCubbin – depending on which country Kirsty is living in during the week of judging I’m not sure of her eligibility but it is very much a UK blog so posts like Smart Thinking is More Profitable Than The Hard Yards in Affiliate Marketing! have been offering some great insights over the past months.
- John Lamerton – John will soon have his hands full with fatherhood so getting reading now before he runs out of spare time
Topical posts like What sells during a recession? have made for great reading. - Chris Frost – although Chris is out of the country so much on holiday I’m not sure if he qualifies as a UK blogger Please Stop Pigeonholing was a great post about a very current issue.
Now at this point I’m sure I’ll realise I’ve forgotten someone obvious so I apologise in advance and say that there are loads more great blogs out there but these are just a few that I think will be in the running