AffiliateProgramAdvice.com
Affiliate Marketing Best Practice 2008

WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING?

In layman’s terms, affiliate marketing is about the relationship between you (the merchant/Advertiser), the affiliate tracking software provider (The Network) and the affiliates (publishers). It is ultimately a loyalty program between you and the affiliate with the network operating as a facilitator and intermediate. Your affiliates will become your virtual sales force driving new traffic, new customer acquisitions and ultimately sales through a variety of tracked linking methods. You pay your affiliates only when a sale or lead has been generated. In essence you are only ever paying for results.
WHY IS AFFILIATE MARKETING EFFECTIVE?
Everything can be tracked back as it is all transparent right down to the last penny. Advice, get a good analytics package and look beyond google analytics 
• Affiliate Marketing increases brand awareness
• Brings your products and or services right into the homes of your target audience
• Your affiliates are your partners and some will become champions of your products and or services.
• Affiliates have cross over skills in their own marketing and technical experise.
• Good old fashioned relationship building

What is affiliate marketing best practice?
In an industry where there is very little written about affiliate marketing best practice, “best practice” can and does mean different things to different people. From an affiliate’s perspective it’s about being paid on time, it’s about clear terms and conditions, it’s about being given the right tools and information to assist them.

From a merchants perspective, it’s about affiliates adhering to their terms and conditions, it’s about how affiliates are promoting them or should be promoting them and its ultimately about getting new sales and or leads but at no risk to the their brand or existing marketing initiatives.

For affiliate networks, its about facilitating merchants and affiliates ensuring their technology is reliable, payments in and out is swift and providing a service that can accommodate the growing demands of an expanding industry, in a nut shell best practice is all about procedures and ethical marketing.

You may be quite surprised to hear that there is no mystery or marketing psychobabble to have to decipher, 99% of best practice is good old fashioned common sense and remembering who our end user is, consumers and affiliates alike.
But if there was one single piece of advice I had to give any merchant coming into our industry, if your website does not convert overall, then affiliate marketing is probably not what you should be focusing on as no amount of additional traffic is going to fix the real heart and soul of your business, namely your website and or demand of your products or services.

There are very few clear guide lines out there and some even conflict with others. The consequences of this renders the industry exposed to ambiguity and open to multiple different interpretations, further to add, each guide can lean more in one direction depending on which ever side of the fence you happen to be sitting on.

What we have seen develop in recent years and in the absence of a definitive best practice, is a pattern of “best practice” being initiated by experienced industry authorities from all sides of the fence. In essence the industry has regulated itself to a greater or lesser degree and no better example can be made, then in the case of combating spyware in the UK. In fact, best practice guides can be traced back to the first affiliate marketing white paper in the UK written specifically for e-consultacy.com in 2002 by yours truly. Since then we have seen quite a few publications emerge and exploring best practice.

When the IAB announced it was coming into the affiliate marketing space, it was a bitter sweet moment. On the one hand those that had been working in the industry immediately recognized this was a clear signal that affiliate marketing was not longer the poor relation to other marketing initiatives and that it had come into its own. How ever one feels compelled to ask questions about motives and in who’s best interests were they looking after? Their subscribers or the wider industry at large? However whatever the motives at least there are big companies trying to get some industry regulations in place which can only be seen as positive. Many of them come from the affiliate networks themselves. The political climate still battles with “its one thing writing about best practice but its an altogether different matter enforcing it.”. The writing has been on the wall for a long time and we advocate and would support any kind of affiliate association set up by affiliates for affiliates with an independent and impartial authority can accommodate more then just its own members. Until we come together collectively the industry still remains fragmented but a lot less so then ten years ago.

Best Practice
When setting up an affiliate program merchants need to set up the rules for affiliates to follow. We call these terms and conditions. Terms and conditions is a vital element of any affiliate program. It is the first port of call for affiliates to understand what they can or can’t do. It’s the one piece of information that will protect all parties. It’s the one piece of information that merchants and affiliate networks can refer to in the rare cases of an affiliate in breach of the terms and conditions. In the same way your customers have to adhere to returns policy, affiliates need these guide lines too. Do you need to seek legal advice? Your affiliate network or agency can help you put this together for you, but a word of caution, if you make your terms and conditions too restrictive or too lax, both scenarios could cause you problems down the line. The first could render your affiliates to be confused and will assume they can do XYZ when really you only wanted them to do XY & Z has you pulling your hair out, probably best not to lock the door after the horse has bolted. By contrast, a too restrictive terms and conditions could deter affiliates from joining your program altogether, or end up providing our industry bloggers with fodder to highlight the fact that you don’t get affiliate marketing. A good true example of a restrictive clause “affiliates must not rank above us in the search engines” and here is another little gem, “Affiliates must not bid on the term Flowers”, from a well known florist.
It’s ok not to know, but it would be unwise to bury your head in the sand, there are thousands of people all wanting to help you and here is a tip, why not ask the very people who will be promoting you? A good example of terms and conditions

Tools
Industry sized banners
There are many that would argue the point of banners at all, indeed if we look at our stats we know the majority of leads or sales do originate from text links. How ever we have been monitoring the effectiveness of good strong quality banners and if they really do yield any impact on sales or leads. Without hesitation, they do drive leads and sales as well as raising or re-enforcing the brand.

So what size banners should you offer. The most popular is 468×60, 88×31, 125×125, 234×60, 120×600.
We also supply the following to cover all bases. The majority of affiliates will find at least one suitable size banner. Note keep your domain name extension off the banner, why? Affiliates deem this as affiliate commission leakage. They would rather their visitor clicks through the banner link then type the url directly into their browser. The rationale here is that the visitor would not have known about the merchant unless the visitor had visited the affiliate’s site first, quite right too!

Banners & Buttons
Banner Size Banner Type
468 x 60
234 x 60
125 x 125
120 x 240
120 x 90
120 x 60
88 x 31 Full Banner
Half Banner
Square Button
Vertical Banner
Button #1
Button #2
Micro Bar
Rectangles & Pop Ups
Banner Size Banner Type
300 x 250
250 x 250
240 x 400
336 x 280
180 x 150 Medium Rectangle
Square Pop-up
Vertical Rectangle
Large Rectangle
Rectangle
Skyscrapers
Banner Size Banner Type
160 x 600
120 x 600 Wide Skyscraper
Skyscraper

Text links
This really speaks for itself, the best converting text link is in fact, your domain but without the extension. Example BadboyMMA

Deep links
I have always found merchants who don’t allow deep linking to a product and or category a little short sighted. We know the consumers search for products, product numbers and product brands. I always thought this restriction was done through lack of understanding, but recently, I became aware that some resellers in the USA are not allowed to promote certain brands via the affiliate route and therefore they disable deep linking to this product and or category. If there are no such restrictions in place then allow affiliates to deep link.

Data feed
A data feed is a file that contains all the products you sell in your online shop. This file is in a standard format that can easily be read by an affiliate’s script to display all these products on his or her website including an affiliate link to the specific product’s page in your shop. This link directly to the product specific page on your site is called a deep link. The most used formats for product feeds are text files in either CSV or Tab delimited format. In a CSV formatted files the various fields of the product record are separated by commas and text is enclosed by apostrophes (example “product number”,”product name”,”product description”, price,”URL”,”image URL” which with data would look like this: “P123N”,”Green widget”,”Our green widgets…”,25.00,”http://www.thewidgetshop.co.uk?prodid=P123N”,”http://www.thewidgetshop.co.uk/images/green_widget.jpg”). In a Tab delimited file you have the same data as in the previous example, but instead of commas and apostrophes each field is separate by a which is a special character in a computer’s character set.

Clear information
Don’t assume anything. The amount of affiliate programs that have been launched without any demographics of what type of customer the merchant is looking for, its so prevalent and what this does is make the affiliate stop and think, do they really want to go out and do the research on your products? Your audience?
Affiliates are brilliant at sending targeted traffic, they are experts in organic search, they are wizards with technology and spotting new trends and their analytical skills are second to none, but their one weakness, they cant read your mind! You need to provide clear information, who, what, where, when and how. Would you allow a complete stranger to promote you without giving them any idea about your business? So why would this be any different for affiliates.

Affiliate News letters, should contain news.
New in
Promotions
Best sellers
Copy
Campaigns
Graphics
Off line PR
Above all campaigns specifically created with affiliates in mind.

Clear payment terms
When will you validate a sale or a lead? When will affiliates get paid? How will affiliates get paid? Will you be doing claw backs. A claw back is taking back affiliate commissions, example on a fraudulent order? Perhaps on returns? Or affiliate abuse?
A word of caution, if your returns are very high, most likely affiliates will not continue to promote you if you claw commissions back. Maybe this is a case where by the problem lies squarely at your door step?

Affiliate network own terms and conditions.
Don’t’ forget, affiliates and merchants are also bound by the affiliate networks terms and conditions and your own terms and conditions should not conflict with the affiliate networks terms and conditions.

Paid Search and brand bidding

Firstly, if no one is looking for you in the search engines, you are not a brand, you are actually trying to build a brand. This is a term that is misused a lot. So if no one is searching for your name, it would not be advisable to implement a no brand bidding policy. You may decide to do your pay per click in-house, in which case you would ask the affiliates not to bid on your name, or not to compete on terms. You may even decide to have a total ppc ban. But you need to weigh up the pros and cons. Affiliates front the cost of the click, they take the risk and the only time you pay out is when a lead or sale has occurred. But affiliates will need to make a return of investment, so you are back looking at your website conversions. Some affiliates are experts, in fact most affiliates that we know who do paid search are better then the big Paid Search Agencies.

Merchants who have trademarks, the rules have changed slightly. Once upon a time in google, you could protect your name from competitors and as an extra measure to ensure affiliates don’t brand bid. How ever google once again shifted the goal posts, Helen Deehan of Tigerstep.com says “The recent change in Google’s trademark enforcement policy has caused a stir in affiliate marketing circles. Google’s justification seems to be that if a user is looking for a given company then they are most likely to go to that company whatever competing adverts are shown for a particular search. As long as an advert does not explicitly infringe a third party’s trademark rights, Google see no need to unilaterally deny that advert. They also see no need to act as some kind of unpaid internet trademark police. The big question, of course, is what impact this change is likely to have on both trademark owners and advertisers of all sizes. The immediate change is the sudden appearance of a plethora of new ads by competitor companies bidding on searches involving third party brand names. The incentive here is easy to see.

Imagine a budget holiday company, looking to take market share from their biggest rival. Why not pay to get your advert shown when someone is searching explicitly for the rival? After all, a customer in the market for a budget holiday of the type you and your rival supply might be just as interested in your offering as that of the company they are actually searching for.

Or imagine a vacuum manufacturer suddenly free to bid on the word ‘Dyson’. A trademarked term, yes. A customer interested in vacuum cleaners? Probably. Worth a few pennies in advertising? Of course.
Annoying to Dyson and Co? Absolutely.

The next obvious change (and of course the real reason Google have implemented this) is the upward impact on CPC prices. If you and only you are allowed to bid on your trademarked brand name, then the ad that gets shown is your ad, and it will only cost you a penny. If your main rivals are now also free to bid on your trademarked term, they will naturally bid up the cost of advertising on that term in order to take the coveted top spot away from you.

Merchants who have previously implemented brand restrictions are now faced with something of a dilemma. Do they leave their T&Cs unchanged try to force affiliates to ‘keep off the grass’, or do they try and let affiliates absorb some of the new extra cost associated with protecting the brand against rival merchant bidding by relaxing the conditions and reactivating brand bidding?

Before this change, the incentives to restrict keyword bidding were obvious – the merchant had an easy way of controlling the cost of the most effective advertising they were likely to see – their own campaign on their own brand name. Where a retailer was also running an offline or PR campaign which naturally drove increased searches for their brand via search engines, this was massively important. The alternative of allowing affiliates to bid on brand terms effectively meant paying out again via commissions, an increase in marketing costs almost impossible to justify.

You need to see who exactly is bidding on your brand name. If it is affiliates of competitor programs then perhaps you should explore opening a dialogue with your competitor counterparts. Putting into place revised Terms & Conditions which state affiliates are not allowed to bid on competitor brand terms using your trademark and affiliate tracking URLS associated with that trademark. In return
for which your competitors would also implement the same T&C’s.
While this may help reduce some advertisers I doubt it will clear the pitch.

In the past I have tended to operate 2 policies that allow brand bidding via an affiliate program. The first is that the affiliate has to increase coverage for your brand via an agreed list of more generic terms, offsetting the return from so called ‘easy’ brand term sales against increasing coverage on more challenging ROI terms. The other option is to discuss with your network the option of allowing affiliates to bid on your brand name but reducing the commissions for those terms.

At the end of the day the decision is down to each individual Merchant. I would advise all companies operating an affiliate program to republish their Terms & Conditions so affiliates are reminded of their particular position on Paid Search activities.

If you have an open policy, then you need to ensure that Affiliates who are bidding on your brand name or misspellings, or who are using your brand name in their ad copy, funnel that traffic direct to your URL. Remember that it’s almost always better to try and sort out problems with brand bidding affiliates in an amicable way.

Finally, if you have implemented brand bidding restrictions you need to make it crystal clear which terms affiliates cannot bid on.

Each merchant will be different, some will attract more attention from competitors than others. Whatever policy you decide to implement do not be bullied into opening up brand bidding if you still feel it is not right for your company. You should be undertaking regular checks on the search engines at various points during the day and week and should review your position on brand bidding as required.

Multiple affiliate programs
If you have multiple affiliate programs a visitor can technically have visited your site through more than one affiliate cookie. For example when the visitor searches for one of your products in a search engine and clicks on several of the search results. Some of these results belong to some of your affiliates in affiliate network A, some of them to your affiliates in network B. On the order confirmation page you have implemented the tracking codes of both networks. When the visitor arrives on the confirmation page and because he / she is tagged by both networks the sale will appear in both networks.

To prevent these double registrations you can work with a local cookie. When the visitor comes to your site through an affiliate link the affiliate network can, if asked, pass on some extra data in the URL. This data includes a code to indicate the affiliate network and most of the times also the affiliate ID number. You can then based on the code indicating the affiliate network set a cookie that stores this code. This cookie should be set on any page where an affiliate can direct a visitor to. On the order confirmation page you can then read the data (the affiliate network code) from the cookie you set and based on the code display the tracking code of that affiliate network only. Normally you set the code for the affiliate network of the last referring affiliate. But ask your affiliate network what their policy is on this.

Conclusion
It’s not rocket science, it’s about being proactive and fair. Sometimes it’s about compromise, some times it’s about holding your hand up and saying “hey I don’t know” be aware there are thousands out there ready to help you make the right decisions and you end up being respected. There is and can be no room in this industry for arrogance or egos, certainly not when you start to work with the people who know this space intimately. Remember affiliates in some cases will know more then you in areas of search, be ready to accept this, but no one knows more about your business then you do! Affiliate marketing is about partnerships, all three players all working together to drive your business forward. Remember you only ever pay for results.

Written by Jessica Luthi

If I was coming into the industry as a newbie today, here is how I would do  and I wouldn’t need to have technical skills or even a website. This is how to become an affiliate using simple blogging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

An affiliate is, to reiterate, someone or company like you may become. They/You will get visitors looking for your blog and coming to your blog because you are writing about a subject that is interesting or has some relevance to what your potential visitor is searching for. Once you get visitors to your own blog then you, the affiliate, should promote relevant/complimentary service and or product a product and or service that you will endorse and promote. For example, if you were to write a blog article about skinny jeans, then it would be ideal to promote an advertiser who sells skinny jeans. If you were writing about football, then a complimentary advertiser/merchant could be sporting events ticket agents who have their own affiliate program. An affiliate/publisher is usually someone/company that does not have a shopping basket on their website, is not e-commerce enabled, does not sell directly to their own visitors, rather they refer their own visitors to another website that sells a service and/or product. So if you went to all the trouble and effort to get a visitor why would you want to send them off to a merchant/advertisers website to buy anything? If your visitor clicks on one of your advertiser/merchant affiliate text link or affiliate banner link then goes to the advertiser’s site and makes a purchase, you the affiliate gets a percentage of your referred visitors purchase. (Note: text links work better than banners.

How to Begin

Find a subject that interests you, no point in choosing something you are going to get bored with easily, this is why some affiliates go by the way side. I wonder how many websites/blogs have been started but never finished. Be inspired, get creative, and get those thinking caps on. The great thing about affiliate marketing is you can write about anything and you will nearly always find an Advertiser/Merchant with an affiliate program that is selling a relevant product or service. Tip: go for the long tail! What do I mean by the long tail? Let’s use the subject of Fashion as an example. Let’s say I wanted to write about fashion; fashion is the generic key word, to find long tail search terms look below.

Fashion – Generic term

Mens Fashion

Mens Ties

Mens Stripe tie (long tail)

Mens Stripe Bow tie (long tail)

Womens Fashion

Womens Skirt

Womens Mini Skirt (long tail)

Womens Pink Mini Skirts (long tail)

Childrens fashion

Childrens Tops

Chidrens Jumper (long tail)

Childrens red jumper (long tail)

Every generic word has a long tail, Cheese > Blue Cheese > Blue Stilton Cheese > English Blue Stilton Cheese > English Blue Stilton Cheese delivered > English Blue Stilton Soft Cheese delivery.

Each phrase is a search term that someone is typing this into a search engine, someone is looking for these search terms, I know I just looked

You could register the domain names for long tail search terms, these should rank you at No.1 The search engine result for the domain name, is also a real search query by people. Example: womenspinkskirt.com was available as of today 18^th December 09. How many people are searching for it? According to Google Results, there are 1 – 10 of about 12,100,000 listings for this search term. If I were starting as an affiliate, I would register the domain name womenspinkskirt.com and write a blog all about what? (I’m just checking if you are still awake) Women’s pink skirts of course!

For those who are not technical and don’t know how to make a website, don’t worry, if you can write then you can get by with a blog. In my personal experience, I have found blogs to yield better conversions then a standard website simply because a lot of end users are researching products before they buy them.

Here is a list of blogging tools you can use. My advice for newbies would be to use www.blogger.com. It is one of the easiest to use in my personal opinion and you can get started immediately; all you need to be able to do is research and write your own unique content.

Another popular blogging tool is www.wordpress.com 

Where do you find affiliate programs?

So you have the content or idea for your first blog article, how do you go about finding a suitable affiliate program to join? There are a number of ways and the most popular is via an affiliate network.

Popular UK Affiliate Networks

www.paidonresults.com

www.Affiliatewindow.com

www.webgains.com

www.affiliatefuture.com

www.linkshare.com

www.brandconversions.com

www.DGM.com

www.cj.com

www.buy.at

www.tradedoubler.com

www.clixgalore.co.uk

www.profitistic.com

www.filinet.com

Popular European Affiliate Networks

www.tradetracker.com

www.tradedoubler.com

www.zanox.com

www.webgains.com

www.cibleclick.com

www.onlinemediagroup.com

www.cj.com

Popular Canadian Affiliate Networks

www.shareresults.com

www.linkshare.com

www.cj.com

www.adcanadian.com

www.canadiansponsors.com

www.shareasale.com

Popular US Affiliate Networks

www.mediatrust.com

www.linkshare.com

www.pepperjam.com

www.cj.com

www.shareasale.com

http://www.amwso.com/usnetworks.php
(Thanks to Chris Sanderson for letting me link to his comprehensive US affiliate network list)

Ctd from http://www.affiliateprogramadvice.com/index.php/2010/01/31/how-to-begin-as-an-affiliate-step-by-step-guide-excerpt/

People who bought the guide said…
“Really clearly written and covering all the fundamentals. Takes away the mystery and tells you exactly what you have to do. Also provides a host of resources and essential links. This is everything you need to know to get started – I thoroughly recommend it.”

“I just wish I had read this when I first started my first niche site. A must have for anyone looking to make some money from online marketting.”

The guide costs $8.73 buy it direct from Lulu.com publishing http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/affiliate-marketing—how-to-begin-as-an-affiliate—a-step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-break-into-affiliate-marketing/8218631

A step-by-step guide on how to break into affiliate marketing.

The following is an excerpt from the fast track guide on how to begin as an affiliate. The guide has been written aimed at people who know almost nothing about the industry or how to get started.  This guide walks newbie affiliates through the very basics just to get them started in generating revenue. The guide is filled with resources and tools and information using blogging methods by way of example for those who may not know how to get a website together. I have opted to charge a nominal fee of $8.73 for the complete guide which can be downloaded here
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/affiliate-marketing—how-to-begin-as-an-affiliate—a-step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-break-into-affiliate-marketing/8218631

I never understood and still don’t understand why so many people never looked at this industry to supplement their income. Affiliate marketing is ideal for people on low incomes, the disabled, parents who want to stay at home and look after their children or simply to supplement their income. Affiliate marketing facilitates the opportunity to work from home and enjoy what you will be doing.

I know that it will always be easy when you know how, but even I had to start somewhere and I am still learning after all these years. This article is intended for anyone coming into the industry that has little or no understanding about affiliate marketing. This is specifically aimed at anyone wanting to become an affiliate/publisher.

What is affiliate marketing? Some call this performance based marketing, some call it referral marketing, some call it revenue sharing, some call this loyalty marketing and I have heard it being called partner programs, associate programs, all these terms are correct. Affiliate marketing is predominantly on-line advertising whereby the affiliate is paid a small commission for referring their own website traffic to an online store. Affiliates get rewarded based on an action performed by his/her referred visitor, the affiliate remuneration (referred visitor action) can be based on cost per click, pay per sale, CPA, CPA (2) can also mean pay per lead (example, insurance quotes).

“A system of advertising in which site A agrees to feature buttons from site B, and site A gets a commission on any sales, clicks or leads generated for site B. Affiliate Marketing is on line advertising where the advertiser (Merchant) pays for advertising purely on results. All affiliate campaigns are based on a revenue share or hybrid commission/leads deal.”

          Source: Jessica Luthi, E-Consultancy.com (Affiliate Marketing–A Buyers Guide April 2004)

Do people really make money from Affiliate Marketing?

“High-level findings from USA Affiliate Census… At the hobbyist end of the spectrum, nearly a quarter of affiliates (23%) generate less than $50 per month in sales for their merchants, and a further 7% generate between $50 and $100. At the other end of the scale, 17% of affiliates generate more than $50,000 a month in revenue for their merchants”

          Source: http://econsultancy.com/reports/us-affiliate-census

Reported in the United Kingdom Affiliate Census, “the UK affiliate market was worth £3.82B in 2008, a 22% increase from £3.13B in 2007. An estimated £227M was paid last year in commissions and fees to affiliates and networks.”

          Source: http://econsultancy.com/reports/uk-affiliate-census

Please keep these figures in perspective; whilst there is big money to be made in this industry, the figures should not mislead you into thinking that you can give up your day job in a week. The report is to show you how much money some affiliates earn. I can tell you the majority of affiliates work very hard to achieve a sustainable income.

One problem with this industry that I have found is that it can be vague when it comes to information on how to do affiliate marketing from an affiliate’s perspective. The problem of ambiguity seems to stem from the fact it is an individually defined kind of sector, meaning it’s based upon the affiliate being seen and operating as an individual. Each affiliate will have their own level of understanding about the technology, marketing, how the internet works to name but a few. However, there are some basic rules to follow. Tip: walk before you can run, start off small, and get it all working before reaching for the moon.

When do you start making money?

Realistically, by month three you could be looking at double figures and depending on the subject/topic you chose, you may even reach three figures, (this is also subject to many variables) I can tell you if you have reached double figures by month three, you have something viable to build upon, don’t give up. What this will show you is that you are on your way and what you are doing is working, just some further fine-tuning may be required. There is no magic wand, there is no such thing as a sure thing, and it all takes time and effort. If I was coming into the industry as a newbie today, here is how I would do it and I wouldn’t need to have technical skills or even a website. This is how to become an affiliate using simple blogging

 To buy the guide
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/affiliate-marketing—how-to-begin-as-an-affiliate—a-step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-break-into-affiliate-marketing/8218631

Sponsored by My Rock City.

Affiliate program on Paid On Results the award for Best Album is always highly contested.

Here’s a full list of all the evenings winners…

BEST BRITISH NEWCOMER: In Case Of Fire
Presented by Relentless Energy Drink

BEST INTERNATIONAL NEWCOMER: The Gaslight Anthem
Presented by Criminal Damage

BEST SINGLE: The Prodigy – Omen
Presented by Red Stripe

BEST VIDEO: Mastodon – Oblivion
Presented by Rival Colour

CLASSIC SONGWRITER: Linkin Park

SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE: The Wildhearts

ICON: Alice In Chains
Presented by Orange Amplification

BEST ALBUM: Metallica – Death Magnetic
Presented by My Rock City.com

BEST LIVE BAND: Slipknot
Presented by Marshall Application

INSPIRATION: Machine Head

HALL OF FAME: Limp Bizkit
Presented by: Russian Standard Vodka

BEST BRITISH BAND: Bullet For My Valentine
Presented by Roadrunner Records

BEST INTERNATIONAL BAND: Slipknot
Presented by Guitar Hero

My Rock City pays on 1st order 30% commission on a 90 day cookie with 15% on recurring sales.

The superb marketing profile engaged by My Rock City has drawn close attention amongst the music industry and the fashion sector.

So what’s next? Well My Rock City intends to promote a number of gigs and festivals throughout the UK and is also exploring promotions in the USA. One of the longer term aspirations is to sponsor an award at the MTV Music Awards, so MTV if you are reading this, then get in touch real quick.

"Are we nearly there yet?"

Example three:
Merchant A has to post out orders to their customer.
Merchant B has to do the same.
What if both parties set up a promo and printed it on to a flyer and used as an insert?
Good old fashioned swapping.

This is one of the best examples of how to use the voucher code system that most ecommerce platforms have, enter promo code xyz, this way you can track the success of all the above examples.

For affiliates, you are already utilising ad space on your site via affiliate marketing and or media buys (CPM, cost per impression, CPC, cost per click, CPA, cost per acquisition). But unless you have a high volume of traffic, the latter my not be enough to wet anyones whistle to part with any money, but this does not mean to say you cant barter with your ad space with specific reference to complimentary (non compete) affiliates.

If you have limited budget then spend that wisely, the above can be 100% no cost involved, except the time it takes to go out there and make contact, set up the deal, track the effectiveness of the campaign.

Be prepared, some campaigns will be better then others and would be a wise move to do a reciprocal small sample test first.

Landspeed buy Thirteen at Dinner video Franklyn video

Before I proceed, yes the merchant removed them after explaining about affiliate commission leakage and yes also aware that there are scripts that can be run to remove telephone numbers from merchant’s websites. But here is the thing. I went off to do my research on proof that having telephone does increase sales. I went to a lot of websites including econsultancy.com to go and find anything that could even point to the fact that consumers decision to buy was based on the fact there was a telephone number on every page. What I found was that the majority of sites I visited who advocated a telephone number on every page had nothing to back up why this should be. A common belief is that this aids consumer confidence in the company. Of these sites that recommend telephone numbers on every page, not one made any reference to there being an exception to the rule when it comes to a merchant having an affiliate program and offering advice on how to get around this. Another thing I spotted was that none of the sites used the arguement that of giving the end user a choice, which is what I would have expected to see.

So is there any data out there that proves sales will increase if there is a telephone number on every page of a merchant’s website. If there is none, does this mean it’s a metric that no one wants to know about, if I was a merchant, Id want to know.

Of course there will be occasions where by a phone number on every page is necessary for example very high priced items. But the norm should be every merchant should be shouting about their secure payment methods and on the static nav bar “how to contact us” opens in a separate window which lists the telephone number there.

For merchants with an affiliate program here is why we do not recommend that you have a telephone number on every page. Its called Affiliate commission leakage. Affiliates aggregate targeted traffic for you, costs them money, they direct their traffic to you to make money from sales (leads). Now pop on your affiliate hat and step into their shoes. If a percentage of referred traffic that are going to buy by picking up the phone and placing an order via this route, the affiliate has just lost his/her commission. As an affiliate Im thinking why should I refer traffic if I run the risk that some will pick up the phone, Ill just go push a competitor that understand affiliate commission leakage. Chances are the affiliate will already have done their pre-check on you and wont even bother joining your affiliate program. Can you have your cake and eat it? Well yes.. but will depend on your affiliate network or in-house tech guys. Most affiliate networks can now offer the facilities for merchants to be able to hide the phone number when a visitor comes through an affiliate link. Some networks even offer pay per call meaning that affiliate referred visitors who like to pick up the phone, the affiliate is still credited with the commission but I find this all a bit messy.

So show me the stats that say sales were made as a direct result of having a phone number on every page, I feel a new survey coming on :0)

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For the record and any dooms day prophet out there, the economic down turn will not affect the fashion sector so badly, how do I know… History shows us this. Dedicated followers of fashion will always have money to spend on clothes and music. In some ways it’s a religion a cultural uniform if you like that defines who we are, which fashion group (youth tribe) we belong to and who we aspire to be like and all spurred on by the media and our peers. We will ALWAYS have money for those jeans, t-shirts, brands and such like, history and stats show us this. No war ever halted the evolution of fashion and no economic crunch will either.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s release Boohoo.com has seen a surge in overall business growth since it launched its affiliate program in January 2009 and whilst AffiliateProgramAdvice.com would like to take full credit and coo from the top of the dot.com tree we know its all about the relationships, logistics, margins and we all have our parts to play in the one common goal which is to increase new customer acquisitions, customer retention bottom line to make money.

We were chuffed to receive this email from Simon Booth (Marketing Manager at BooHoo.com)
“Just so you are also aware of some of our progress since we all started working with Boohoo the site has gone from being the 33rd most trafficked clothing retailer in the UK to the 17th – according to Hitwise. Much of this is due to the extra traffic that has been pulled in from the affiliates as well as Boohoo’s increased investment in PPC and the increase in PR that is starting to be generated in key mags like More, Look etc.

buy Save the Last Dance In addition the affiliate campaign has helped to increase the no. of links to Boohoo and this has seen us jump to positions 1-4 for key terms on good old Google such as ‘womens fashion’, ‘women’s clothes’, ‘party dresses’ etc. (without being able to optimise the site either !)

All of this has seen the average daily traffic to the site jump from an ave. of 18,000 uniques per day in Oct 08 to an average 33,000 per day in Jan and still growing.

All this and we’re spending less on marketing than the company was before we started !!
So once again thanks for your help”.

For sure APA and BooHoo.com still have much work to do in terms of affiliate commission claw backs, but we are working to resolve that and we will with the help of super star tech guy, Chris Lacey.

The key to a successful affiliate program does not start with affiliate marketing. It starts with the client in terms of their own business, knowledge of product and demand, understanding their target audience, competitive pricing, website conversions, good key personnel that know what they are doing, technical know how and logistics even, once you get those metrics right, then let the marketing initiatives begin.

Stigmata dvd The relationship between all parties, BooHoo.com, Affiliatewindow.com, APA and of course the real stars of the show in this article, the affiliates.. are all working together, collectively and smoothly, we all listen to each other and accommodate where possible, now that’s what I call team work! Proof that affiliate marketing does and will have an impact on your business and if done correctly, the only way can be up.

About BooHoo.com

BooHoo.com is one of the UK’s leading online fashion stores showing the latest catwalk inspired women’s fashions at amazing prices. You can invest in stylish treats, perfect for a purse-friendly shopping splurge with all our items at a fashionably affordable £45 and less!

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We’re the women’s online shopping website that has it all! Everything from signature party dresses to sassy platform heels; we’ve got all the styles that are red hot this season. Snap up our gorgeous BooHoo creations and stay one stiletto ahead of the style game. Get statement accessories and be a chic city strutter with our collection of bags and belts and stay on-trend with our stylist’s latest looks! Launched in 2006, BooHoo offers a daily fashion update to its site ensuring that the hottest styles are available for next day delivery – straight to your door!

In our short history we’ve also notched up some great accolades including:

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• BT Online Retail Excellence Awards 2007
• Top 10 Online fashion website award 2007 Cosmopolitan Magazine
• Top 10 – Heat Magazine top online retailer awards 2008

BooHoo.com offers affiliates:
• A generous 8% commission on all referred sales
• 90 day cookies

• Updated product feeds
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• Industry standard sized banners
• Dynamic content links
• Affiliate newsletter with tips, news and the latest offers.
• Last referrer gets the commission

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• Program is managed by AffiliateProgramAdvice.com
• Contact Catherine at AffiliateProgramAdvice.com
Via the Affiliate Network AffiliateWindow.com

Caraselle on Paid On Results is one such retailer offering an astounding range of clothing after care products and clothing storage solutions. You can join Paid On Results here or join the program here if you are already a Paid On Results affiliate.

Whether it’s handbag storage, shoe storage, under bed storage, portable clothes rails, suit covers or wedding dress protection then there’s loads to select from. With over 1,000 products designed to protect and look after your clothes, Caraselle is the only program of its kind available.

Caraselle are not just about storage and clothes covers. Oh no. Caraselle also has a large inventory of clothing care products including highly popular yet absolutely essential pet hair removers, moth deterrant, scented sprays and sachets plus a fantastic range of lint rollers and more.

The Simpsons Movie movie Their products for Students are great including all important clothes washing bags and other necessary laundry room essentials.

Caraselle is a unique niche program but is absolutely great as a supplementary program for all clothing and specialist fashion affiliates. It’s why the program is proving popular with affiliates in the UK and why as more affiliates continue to join, the program shall continue from strength to strength.

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However Caraselle is passionate about their products and they want affiliates to benefit as well. So here at Affiliate Program Advice we have arranged for Paid On Results to work closely with Caraselle to deliver over the coming months, a range of FREE products to affiliates to try them out for yourselves. This is because caraselle believes that the very best true content that affiliates can produce comes from affiliates who have tried the products for themselves.

So sign up today and we’ll be in touch with a bag of goodies for you to try at no expense.

Surprisingly, seven in 10 small-business owners who participated revealed that they would rather try to do their own taxes than start a paid search marketing campaign. In an effort to minimize the intimidation associated with initiating a campaign, Microsoft offers free* search marketing assistance for those looking to get started.

“Given today’s current economic conditions, small-business owners need more effective ways to optimize their marketing dollars,” said Brian Boland, director of adCenter at Microsoft Advertising. “By investing in paid search marketing, small businesses can track online sales and determine the return on investment for their campaigns, while at the same time boosting traffic and visibility for their Web sites.”

Despite the lack of investment in paid search marketing, the weakening economy and increased competition, nearly nine in 10 (86 percent) small-business owners surveyed felt that they could be missing opportunities to grow their business, while three in four believed prospective customers could be searching online for the type of service their business offers. Although most do not embrace the practice, the small-business owners who use paid search marketing are very satisfied, as 72 percent reported an increase in sales inquiries and 68 percent consider their paid search marketing efforts successful.

Among the participants’ chief concerns, most cited the common misconceptions of cost, time and complexity as major hurdles to conducting search marketing campaigns for their businesses. Other key insights included the following:

• Nearly nine in 10 (89 percent) feared keywords may become too expensive.

• Eighty-one percent questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets.

• One quarter of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.

• Twenty-one percent thought it would be too time-consuming.

• Thirty-five percent felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.

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“These opinions run counter to widely held marketing industry views on paid search marketing, which recognize the practice as one of the most cost-effective, easy-to-use, measurable and accountable forms of marketing,” Boland said.

The Microsoft adCenter QuickLaunch program offers free consultation with a search expert for advertisers that set a minimum monthly budget of $500. The program also helps advertisers manage their search marketing campaigns by providing advisory services, classroom-style training programs through the Microsoft adCenter Learning Center, and tools such as building keyword lists with the Microsoft adCenter add-in product for Microsoft Office Excel and finding your target audience. More information is available at http://advertising.microsoft.com/search-advertising.

The study was conducted by independent research company Kelton Research in April 2008. Microsoft commissioned the quantitative research of 400 small-business owners with 250 or fewer employees via an anonymous online survey consisting of a series of 38 questions designed to gauge their search marketing behaviors and attitudes.

About Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising provides world-class advertising tools and solutions for digital advertisers and publishers to drive brand and consumer engagement. The portfolio includes all of Microsoft’s digital advertising businesses: its global media network that includes MSN, Windows Live, Office Live, Xbox LIVE, Live Search, Facebook and more, and its global technology platforms and tools that include Atlas, AdECN, adCenter, DRIVEpm, Massive and ScreenTonic, which together create engaging digital advertising experiences for their consumers. Microsoft Advertising helps make buying and selling media simple, smart and cost-effective across media and devices in the Microsoft network of properties and beyond, which spans 42 markets globally and 21 languages. Visit http://advertising.microsoft.com for more information.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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APA Response:
What is coming over loud and clear is that all independent bodies in ecommerce are all reporting similar trends, if we can remind you about E-Consultancy’s report

, the trend here in the UK is the same as the US.

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The resounding reason why many Advertisers are deterred from this method of advertising is lack of education about this sector, human resources and the rise in click costs. AffiliateProgramAdvice.com have also noticed that those who do explore paid search seem to think the click starts and ends as google facilitating and dominating this sector. We have noticed that a lot of Advertisers don’t seem to know or understand that they have other ad serving choices which should be explored.

It should also be worth noting that volume of clicks does not always equate to volume of conversions, that some times its quality over quantity. We would even go so far as to say, some times google may not the right paid search platform to invest all the ad budget.

As for Microsoft they may not be the dominant ad serving company but they have proven to yield better conversions for some of the advertisers out there and affiliates. There is always room for complimentary advertising and where to invest your money? Advertisers would do well in researching other alternatives. If we look at MSN’s reach they still are a force with targeted end users. We would encourage advertisers in 09 to diversify their ad spend and not to put all their eggs into one basket, remember google is not the be all and end, have you seen Microsoft adCenter Labs?

Release Date: 11 December 2008

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-) Online PR still viewed as a technical and specialist PR function.
-) Limited resource and lack of skills holding back the PR industry.
-) Ownership of online PR strategy and implementation and measurement likely to be defining issues in 2009.

Many organisations are struggling to understand, resource and measure Online PR according to research published today.

These are some of the key findings from E-consultancy’s Online PR Industry Benchmarking report. The study has been undertaken to establish the importance of Online PR within the marketing mix, benchmark the percentage of PR budgets being spent on online activity, and define who is driving strategy and implementation.

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More than 300 UK marketers and PR professionals working for both in-house company teams and for agencies were surveyed to explore growth in the online PR industry and highlight the challenges that marketers currently face.

The most popular Online PR definition was “maximising favourable mentions of your company, brands, products or websites on third party sites”, indicating that current Online PR objectives are outreach and engagement-based.

Online PR is still clearly viewed as a specialist and technical PR function by many respondents. Two thirds of agencies surveyed (64%) have a separate Online PR division.

Online PR is clearly not ‘owned’ by PR specialists. The results show that when companies outsource Online PR to agencies or specialists, 51% of companies are using PR agencies but a significant percentage are using search marketing agencies (29%) and web development agencies (22%) to develop and deliver Online PR strategy.

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Levels of client satisfaction are not encouraging, highlighting that some agencies may need to improve their Online PR knowledge and offering. A fifth of clients (20%) are very satisfied with their agency’s level of Online PR knowledge, 28% are moderately satisfied, 19% are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, 15% are mildly dissatisfied and 13% are very dissatisfied.

Agencies who feel that clients fear social media and reputational issues will be encouraged to see that this hardly figured as a barrier to delivering Online PR. Nearly three quarters of company respondents said that limited resources (73%) was the biggest barrier followed by limited internal understanding (53%).

The top three reasons / barriers for agencies are limited client resources (48%), clients questioning the value of Online PR (48%) and limited client understanding (47%). Again, there is great disparity between agencies feeling that clients do not value Online PR (48%) when only 19% of clients state that lack of senior management buy-in is a barrier.

Michelle Goodall, Online PR and Social Media Consultant, E-consultancy, comments:
“Resourcing and skills appear to be the biggest problem for clients. The latter is a relatively simple one to solve with training support and defining what PR actually means to your organisation, the former is not so easy given the current economic climate.

“One of the key areas of concern for the more traditional PR agencies is that the Online PR budget holder may not always be their PR client and that budget holder has clear ideas about measurement and ROI in an online environment. This is one of the reasons why Online PR is being outsourced to search marketing and web development agencies who have developed their own version of Online PR metrics.”

The majority of respondents providing additional open comments indicated their main concerns relate to measuring Online PR and social media. The time, resources and costs can be prohibitive when viewed as a percentage of the total PR budget and the lack of industry standard ROI metrics for many prove to be a barrier.

Katy Howell, MD at PR agency Immediate Future, comments:

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“Measurement and results benchmarks are the key unlocking the real potential of Online PR. With defined KPIs [Key Performance Indicators], it is easier to rationalise the investment needed in resources and training. Until this knotty issue is resolved, companies will continue with integrated campaigns that purely focus on delivering the only brand metric that justifies a spend – favourable brand mentions.”

Measurement and metrics continue to be an issue for many agencies, and it looks like it could be one of the defining elements of Public Relations in 2009.

The full free report is available to E-consultancy registered users to download here: