Affiliate Marketing Articles
Is there good cause for an affiliate association in the UK?
There have been many debates in the past about the pros and cons of an affiliate association. Who should run it? What would it do? How could it benefit affiliates and merchants and affiliate networks? Could independents become involved? Who is responsible and for what? What we will not escape from is the fact there is and will be deep divisions of opinions. Individualism versus collectivism.
The US used to have an affiliateunion.com set up by some of the guys at revenews.com, I see the website is no longer there but AffiliateFairPlay.com seems to up there and happening with a heavy emphasis upon a best practice and education approach. Aimed at the affiliates, for the affiliates and is run by an affiliate and this is probably the way I could see any such organisation working.
Here in the UK the IMRG.org uses this model, The IMRG.org have members consisting of online retailers and auxiliaries and whilst their main objective is to raise the profile of internet shopping as a business model, there are elements that address best practice approach for merchants.
E-consultancy.com is another site where you can download reports providing information, training and events on best practice online marketing and e-commerce.
Looking at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/affiliateunion
Should an affiliate association be set up by affiliates and for the affiliates?
Who are the people who want an affiliate association?
What is apparent is the lack of any transparency with regards to terms and conditions from either merchants or network. As an affiliate when you join an affiliate program what are the contractual obligations, who takes responsibility when things go wrong as was highlighted in this recent court case about trade mark issues out-law.com/page-6721 Follow the debate here. What happens in situations where by a merchant simply can’t pay their bills, where does that leave affiliates.
Industry standard linking methods is a topical subject too, a lot of affiliates rely on data feeds also known as product feeds. The quality of these xml or csv files varies so greatly from the astonishingly poor to top notch. Will the UK have to rely on spidered.co.uk which I doubt is free? But the concept is great. Or the equivalent in the US GoldenCan.com
Why should affiliates need to use a third party? Of course there are many reasons why merchants cant produce a decent data feed and will benefit from the likes of spidered.co.uk and if you ask me, the networks should be using their services.
The mistrust and deep divisions between affiliates, merchants and network seem to stem from that gaping hole where historically trust has been compromised and lost due to merchants absconding without payment, going into receivership or running out of affiliate marketing budget the latter a good example can be seen here when affiliates got this email
“Hi All, I am writing to inform you that the Empire program has been suspended today for budgeting reasons.
Due to your hard work and success, the campaign has performed extremely well over the last two months, and as a result the budget originally set by the client has come to an end more quickly than expected. We are currently liaising with the client, in the hope of reinstating the campaign if and when we receive notification of new budget.
Please accept our apologies for the short notice and any inconvenience this may cause. We will notify you as soon as further budget becomes available.
Meanwhile, please ensure that your links are suspended from the Empire program, as all sales after 11am today will not be validated.
If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact me directly.
Kind Regards
__________________
Name removed for her career’s sake
Affiliate Manager
Quantum Media
50 Marshall Street | London | W1F 9BQ
Tel: 020 7287 8768 | Fax: 020 7287 8769 | www.quantum-media.co.uk
What role should affiliate network have played in the above?
This posting by Wayne Porter at Revenews.com got me thinking
“It brought back memories of AffiliateUnion a turn-of-the-century movement where affiliates were banding together to try to negotiate fair and open contract disclosure. Now the tides have shifted and the momentum is clearly in the hands of the powerful affiliates. No need for Unions anymore, affiliates who can frame their thoughts as professionals will find that they too can influence the market.” Whilst this is just one aspect of why the affiliate union in the US did not go on to fulfill it’s potential the concept in itself, I have to say is still a great one. If networks are completely controlled by their top affiliates and top merchants in terms of the economics involved, then are we to believe that they have their smaller affiliates and merchant’s best interests at heart?
Affiliates have to take a leap of faith each time they join an affiliate program, will the merchant be honest and not claw back legitimate commissions. Will the merchant validate their sales in a timely fashion? Can the merchant see my key words and not use them to their own advantage?
Has the merchant knocked their tracking code out? Will I be recompensed for loss of earnings?
Merchants on the other hand have also a trust issue
Not all affiliates play fair, the financial industry is a great point in case. Pay per lead programs here are ripe for some dodgy affiliates to seize the opportunity in attaining commissions on a fraudulent basis.
Some affiliates are not adverse to ppc (pay per click example google adwords) using the merchants name and sending the consumer to a competitors site. Paid search, brand bidding is such a grey area that even the savviest of us all can find themselves knee deep in politics.
There are issues with affiliates not updating their merchants promotional material, discount vouchers codes (coupons) where they are expired but not displayed on the affiliate’s website.
Networks seem to be in the firing line when it comes to trust. Because affiliates some times don’t have a merchant contact email or number, affiliates are obliged to contact the network. Because of the volume of queries, networks can be slow to respond. For merchants the sales pitch they got seems to fall short of what is being delivered.
But there are good affiliates, good merchants and good networks, and perhaps we should highlight them, put a spot light on them with a strong message of how it should be done.
Could an affiliate association be part of that? Could it award a certificate for best practice and immediately signaling to any affiliate, this merchant has followed a code of conduct?
My personal opinion is, we do need some standardisation within the industry, terms and conditions need to be transparent and in laymen’s terms. There does need a body that can represent affiliates in terms of loss of earnings through merchants absconding, in terms of legal issues they have found themselves in. I do believe that there should be some accountability from all sides of the fence. I do feel we should all be working together on common goals that could only benefit every one. Idealistic,La la land or good idea?
Jessica Luthi
AffiliateProgramadvice.com
Created 15/04/2006
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I Want My Lolly
Until you become an affiliate it is incomprehensible to understand what you have to do in order to make a living. Some merchants take a dim view of affiliate marketing. The negative myths and rumours that maybe circulating, I can guarantee have come from merchants who simply don’t understand affiliate marketing have limited technical skills or have poor performing programs, don’t understand the complexities of the internet or have limited online marketing expertise, worse case they have a product that no one wants. There are a number of reasons why some merchants take such a grim view of affiliate marketing and are happy to vent their frustrations and skew findings to their fellow colleagues and other potential merchants about to take the plunge into this industry and I can promise you in each case there will be an underlying reason why their programs have or are failing and I promise, its not the affiliates that are the problem.
Affiliates are by and large business people making a living out of promoting merchants. They use a myriad of methods to drive sales and leads. Some of those methods involve technology, some use their own website loyalty, some use their own cash to use on pay per click, some use email marketing and some are turning to traditional marketing and some use organic SEO. Some affiliates may have their own website or combination of websites, some may not have a website at all. Affiliates may use one or a combination of different marketing approaches of the afore mentioned. All are time consuming and heavy on human resources. The financial rewards can be poor or great depending on the affiliate’s level of expertise, time and money. Example www.tagmydog.com is my website. It is product feed driven. Because there are no industry standards for product feeds and the majority of networks don’t check their merchant’s data feeds, merchants are allowed to upload any old format or what ever they can scrape from their back end software. In order to promote a merchant on tagmydog.com I must first ensure that the datafeed is in the correct format. I kid you not when I say it takes me a morning to work on just one merchant’s data feed just to get it in a basic format. Now I am not an affiliate for the simple reason, if I had to do what they do every day and cope with the following, I would be bald from pulling my hair out. Have a look at the following… this happens every day, it’s a wonder we have any affiliates at all and could explain why Grecian 2000 sells well!
Merchants remove pages from their website without even thinking that affiliates could be sending traffic to this page. Answer: Don’t delete the pages, put a redirect.
Merchants looking at affiliates websites from their office computer then get a call and have to take an order over the phone. Affiliates think yes, nice one and then become annoyed when you claw that commission back. Answer: Clear your cookies if you know that your computer is used for manual transactions.
Merchants start their affiliate program with big huge commissions then reduce them when they start realising that their budget is running out or that its cutting into costs. If you have done this and are still wondering why no affiliates are promoting you…Answer, talk to your accountant, if you have no accountant talk your affiliate network find a commission that you can stick to comfortably, rather do this before the launch of your affiliate program rather then after a few months. Example: If I gave you a whole lolly and just as you were about to eat it, I took it back and gave you back just the stick, would we still be friends?
Merchants hosting company goes kaput for a day or two cos Larry’s pot noodle ended up in the plug socket of your dedicated server (it can happen). Annoying to the merchant in terms of lost sales, not nearly as annoying to affiliates who find out that they are sending their traffic to a page can not be found. Just because the merchant’s sales are affected there is no contract to say affiliates should not be given the opportunity to swap their links for the interim period. Answer: Communicate with affiliates, tell them what’s going on and what you are doing to try and fix the problem. I guarantee affiliates will give you time to sort it out before they swap links.
Merchants decide that not only are they going to sell their own products but they want to sell the other merchants products too, hey they get a 10% kick back from placing a merchant affiliate link on their home page or other pages. Scratches their head when Mr PPC affiliate after spending £x in sending traffic to the merchants website, finds that their paid traffic is being sent off to another merchants website then ceases to work with the merchant. Answer: You have a thank you page, this is probably the best spot to do a business to business promotion.
Merchant with ACCCD (Affiliate Commission Clawback Clicking Disorder)
This is when merchants think that there is no one watching and goes a little too far in clawing back commissions even when they know that the sale or lead is legit. Merchants like these have lost even before they start. Affiliates do test sales with their own real money. Answer: If you think you can get away with it, an affiliate program is not for you.
Even if you really do have high returns, its down to you to get those returns down.
Jessica Luthi
AffiliateProgramadvice.com
Created 14/04/2006
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I think that an affiliate association is absolutely necessary. Next to that it would help the UK affiliate industry up to the next level.
At the moment there is not an awful lot an affiliate can do if she / he feels treated unfairly or has a dispute with a merchant or network. What an affiliate can do in a situation like this depends a lot on her or his status within the industry but also on their financial status would it be necessary to take things further.
The affiliate association has been discussed in depth several times at the a4u forum and there were probably as many visions on this issue as there were participating affiliates in the threads.
An affiliate association would most likely benefit the smaller “weaker” members in the association just like in unions and associations in other industries. And I think that’s the way it should be. With that I don’t mean to say that a large affiliate should not be able to reap rewards from an association, everyone should benefit from it.
In the threads mentioned above on several occasions members of the forum were argueing about who should be part of the association and who should not. Some felt any party (affiliate, merchant and network) should be part of this whilst others felt that networks and / or merchants could not be part of this association.
For my own feeling it should be set up that every party in the industry should have a say in an organisation like this. I think it is time to leave the them and us mentality behind as we should all strive to propel the industry forward. If the association would only exist of affiliates there would still be a them and us mentality and there will always be the risk that networks or merchants would not accommodate any guidelines or ‘verdicts’ issued by the association as they would be (rightly or wrongly)tainted in favour of the affiliates.
Within the casino industry there are several ‘associations’ that take care of aspects of the industry. For example, you have the GPWA.net and CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com that look after the interests of gambling affiliates whilst you have other sites where players can come with their grievances.
When you look at the GPWA and CAP you will notice that these not only have affiliates participating but also affiliate managers and representatives of the casinos.
It was suggested that the Affiliates4U forum was the ideal vessel for a UK affiliate marketing association. Of course it could go under the umbrella of Affiliates4U but the decision with regards to that is not up to us to make, Matt Wood certainly should have the final say in that.
I would love to hear other peoples views on this issue.