EBTM.com Affiliate Program Update
EBTM.com Affiliate program is firmly entrenched into the affiliate community, when you think about music and fashion affiliate programs, EBTM.com is amongst the first affiliate programs that people think about. Its great to see a real rise in US affiliates monetising their UK traffic but what is even more great is that they are advertising some of British Fashion Brands that can’t be bought in the US. But this is a trend I have started to see over all across the affiliate marketing space. We will know soon enough and AffiliateProgramAdvice.com will be revisiting the UK Affiliate Census and discussions are underfoot with e-consultancy.com and we are hoping to include a US comparison.
Approximately 37% of EBTM.com affiliates (weighted more via POR then CJ.com) are using data feeds. For those that don’t know what a data feed is, it’s a csv (can be xml) file containing the entire product range of EBTM.com, affiliates can download this feed and upload into their own software example can be found here TagMyDog.co.uk
As we know this is one of the most targeted routes to new customer acquisitions and repeat orders the data feed has got to be right. We set about working with EBTM to sort their data feeds out back in January, now we are going to push them to add multi currency. At the moment the feeds only display GBP, but if my assumptions are correct that US affiliates are increasingly tapping into EBTM.com then it makes sense to incorporate USD and EU into the data feed, so there is no barrier from customers buying from abroad or affiliates targeting and monetising their traffic using IP (Geo targeting apps)
We saw the launch of EBTM.com digital catalogue last month. PaidOnResults.com have added this as a text link for affiliates to grab, no commission leakage as PaidOnResults.com are superb in tagging up sub sites and sub-links. You can see that the digital catalogue link is not www.ebtm.com/digitalcatalogue but a completely independent url that sits on the site and powered by a third party. PaidOnResults.com have taken that url and integrated as part of the EBTM.com affiliate program so affiliates don’t lose example is in the following link EBTM Digital Catalogue
The growth of the affiliate program has been consistent and growing at a healthy rate, with their most popular brands Atticus and Lowlife
There can be no doubt we ALL love these brands and my favourite of course is Atticus. 
That logo is awesome and it’s connections to the character from the book “To kill a mocking bird”, Harper Lee (I feel a book review coming on, Ill spare you, but it’s a classic and Ill add it was on the English GCSE exam in the UK for many years so most UK folks would already know the character, Atticus Finch. But the fashion brand the clothing just hits the spot every time and with every one we can see this in terms of a % of attributed sales. Of course Lowlife is tremendously popular.
We are seeing home page images are greatly improved, good strong designs and clear messages. The changes have been gradual but are and will continue to aid conversions and the success of the affiliate program and EBTM.com conversions are dependent upon each other, although it should be noted that the affiliate program conversions are a bit higher by contrast to over all site conversions and can be attributed to affiliates sending more targeted traffic. Merchants should be interested in number of clicks but it’s conversions you should be focussed on, if you get 1million clicks to the site and you can’t convert that or you have very low conversions, then the only thing your site maybe good for at that moment in time is a third party add server like adviva.
As a by the by and off topic a little, I have been playing around with crazyegg it is a nice little usability tool and of course good old google analytics, have a look at your bounce rate, the number of people who came to your site and left immediately what is the %? If you think its high bounce rate, Clue.. look at your referral sites how are they promoting you and if their message about you to their visitors is wrong, look to see if you’re the problem, perhaps your message on the site about who you are and what you do is not clear leaving the path open for misinterpretation. A clear statement about who you are, what you do and your unique USP is standard yet you would be surprised how many merchants are a bit confused, confusion just leads to problems.
Overall we are pretty pleased with the way this program is growing and should be a real case study to prove that you do need to have the expertise to get all the cogs in the machine working in harmony rather then in conflict.
Merchants do need to remember that what they do on ther website will have an immediate and direct impact on their affiliate program. Its always going to be about site conversions, to get those its about product demand/appeal, how you get to and display those products and ease of check out and that all important how to get your customers to purchase again and again and again.
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