Just got another email from Linkshare peddling ShoeMoney tools! Thought it was funny (but not funny) that they are trying to make money off their affiliates! You know Linkshare is making an affiliate commission on the $79/month price tag (that magic price point charged for supposed Internet stuff). Woopie..you get the first month for $3.95. Most of these tools are available for free from other sources. Affiliates should never have to pay for tools to help them be better affiliate marketers. Linkshare should put together their own suite of tools instead of reselling ShoeMoney’s tools. They must think he’s so great, but I don’t see it. It’s also funny that they are offering the same deal ShoeMoney offers to his newsletter subscribers and for the first 50 that respond…classic cheesy marketing!

Linkshare UK looks like they are doing some really informative stuff to try to help Advertisers get more savvy about facilitating and motivating their affiliates. They are running some live webinars and have some recorded webinars you can check out. They have been good in the past so there is no reason the next one focusing on “How to Run A Publisher-Friendly Program” shoudn’t be quite good. Should be interesting at the very least! I find the Brits to be very advanced with affiliate marketing techniques and management, probably due to the small, focused region everyone operates in. While here in the U.S. everyone is all spread out and most of the networking is done via email, chat and phone. In a smaller region you can really meet up in person and get more accomplished.

In a bold and seemingly smart move, Linkshare announced that they have inked a partnership with domain name giant GoDaddy.com to add affiliate tracking capabilities to GoDaddy eCommerce storefronts. This would seem like a really great idea because it will get more merchants involved in affiliate marketing and open up some new niches that affiliates can participate in. But, at the same time, it’s going to push a lot of clueless merchants into the space with most likely little direction. And what are the set-up fees and monthly minimums? If the program doesn’t grow very fast, the merchants will be in a state of bewilderment and confusion. I have seen many merchants whose affiliate programs, where ever they were placed, languished and didn’t grow. And certainly not reach their fullest potential that comes with good affiliate management. Another aspect is a lot of these Godaddy eCommerce sites aren’t brilliantly designed, so affiliates could be working their butts off with little to no conversions. Nothings worse than that! We’ll have to see what happens with this one.

I thought it was an April fools joke at first glance, but it appears that Linkshare is having Joan Rivers as the host of the Linkshare Golden Link Awards! Is this a reflection on Linkshare as a network?? Nah, should be pretty funny most likely. I’m actually somewhat of a closet Joan Rivers fan, I think she has talent.

Linkshare has released a deep linking interface which allows affiliates to link directly to any page of a merchant’s site. This is a really cool feature Linkshare as added. Many affiliate request the ability to promote or review a particular product. There are tools, link Popshops, which allow affiliates to pull the product code from any CJ, Linkshare or Shareasale merchant with a datafeed. This new Link Share tool could really enable more affiliates to get productive! We’ll see how it goes…let me know your thoughts about Linkshare’s new deep linking tool!

There is some talk about California adopting a similar law to the NY state affiliate tax law. Linkshare has just put up a page to address the questions about this issue. Here is the link: http://www.linkshare.com/advertisers/ca_state_tax/

I really hope states think about the affiliates best interests when looking at these issues. Let me know what you think!

I just received an email that the Overstock.com affiliate program is moving from the Linkshare Affiliate Network to the Commission Junction Affiliate Network. And guess what? They email had no From in the sender as has been the cases for ages with the Overstock.com affiliate newsletters. That has always irked me! I even pointed it out to them but they couldn’t seem to get it fixed. I’m sure they will better luck sending emails properly through Commission Junction. Here is the main information in the email I received:

We are delighted to announce that the Overstock.com Affiliate Program will be transitioned from the LinkShare network to the Commission Junction network. As many of you are aware, we have had a long and mutually successful partnership with LinkShare, but feel at this time it is in the best interest of our Affiliate Program to make this change. We look forward to and appreciate both networks’ commitment to ensuring that it is a smooth process for our publishers. The transition to Commission Junction will begin within the next three to four weeks.

It goes on…in other news…and proceeds to list out a bunch of specials. Going for one last promotion push before bailing Linkshare! Hope the transition from Linkshare to CJ goes well, this can be a very difficult thing to accomplish.

Must read on affiliate marketing’s real value in the sales chain during these tough economic times from Scott Jangro (aka Jerry Maguire).

Be warned… this is not a cheerleading piece.

The Year Affiliates Saved Christmas, Really? | Jangro.com: “As affiliate marketing gets a larger and larger percentage of retail sales, and taps more and more into ‘already had’ customers, it becomes devalued. For the health of this industry and channel, these things need to be understood and addressed.”

Way to go, Jangro.

LinkShare is making good use of its new blog with the announcement of a series of upcoming publisher training web seminars:

Publisher Training Web Seminars | LinkShare Blog: “LinkShare now offers interactive web seminars for our Publishers. These sessions will cover Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced level training to help you make the most of your LinkShare partnership.”

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, or LinkShare, this could really be a helpful series. Or if you’re an old hack and familiar with their “1.0″ interface but still have some questions over the new interface that was implemented earlier this year (like I do), this could be a big help.

I’ll try to listen in on a few of these and report back here.

In an email to affiliates / publishers this week, LinkShare’s co-Presidents (seems to be a popular trend with affiliate networks these days) laid out their plans to address the past downtimes and what the network is doing to head off any possible troubles during the holiday rush.

Even though this holiday shopping season is not expected to set record amounts of sells by any means, the November to January time frame normally is the boom time for affiliates and online merchants (especially in terms of retail merchants).

The full email is below…

Dear Valued Partners:

At this busy time of year for all of us, we wanted to take a moment to update you with some important information on how LinkShare is prepared to handle the expected increase in transaction volume in November and December.

Over the past several months we have experienced intermittent challenges with the performance and presentation of data in our reporting systems. First, we want to say thank you for your patience and your understanding as we have worked through these issues. Second, we want to emphasize that our core capability to capture and track clicks and transactions continues to be the most robust and precise in the industry.

We are happy to report that we have made great strides in all areas. Here is a summary of our current progress:

Account Access
We recently identified and resolved a database problem that was preventing user access to our systems during peak usage times. Since implementing and monitoring this fix last week, we are confident that prolonged, unannounced downtimes are unlikely.
Data Quality
The intermittent downtime we were experiencing contributed in many cases to inconsistent data in our reporting systems. The interruption in sequence and flow of data from the main database (MainDB) to our reporting servers created a lag in the system’s ability to present the most up-to-date information. Now that data access issues have been resolved many of the reporting issues will also be resolved.

However, there are currently some infrequent, yet persistent inconsistencies in the data in SynergyAnalytics that we are investigating. We are also improving the performance of Traditional Reporting and working to resolve remaining data inconsistencies. We expect to make swift progress in these areas in the coming weeks.

Investing in the Future
Over the last 10 months, we’ve made significant investments in our systems. We have replaced our data center networks, reinforced our database systems, upgraded our ad and click servers, assigned additional servers to existing services to allow for increased capacity and automated fail-over, and installed a new software system to monitor and report on performance. These investments have prepared us to handle not only the additional load we expect in November and December, but well into the future.

In our effort to be as transparent as possible, we want to make you aware of some upcoming scheduled maintenance windows over the next few weeks:

Thursday, October 23, 2008 5:00pm - 9:00pm EDT (GMT-4) - Regularly scheduled software release.

Thursday, November 6, 2008 5:00pm - 8:00pm EST (GMT-5) - The last scheduled software release of the year.

On behalf of the entire team at LinkShare, we truly appreciate your business and your patience. We look forward to building even stronger partnerships and wish you strong sales during the 2008 holiday season.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Levine
Co-President

Yaz Iida
Co-President

Yes, she did say it. Evidently it went over pretty flat. More people need to listen to GeekCast, dammit!

Congrats again to Lisa AND Jangro. My wife thinks Scott is my most normal “internet friend” if that means anything (which it does). We give you lots of heck on the show, Jangro… but we do love you and you’ll always be the fifth Beatle in my book.

First, congrats to my pals Lisa Picarille and the FabulousSavings team for winning Linkshare Golden Links last night. Also, a big congrats to the excellent nominees like Mike Allen, Scott Jangro and Stephanie Agresta.

Second, this year’s Linkshare awards event was made possible by the live tweeting of people like Missy Ward, Stephanie and Lisa P. That was a tremendous service and all of us following you thank you three for doing that. It’s amazing to me how events like the Linkshare awards take on more of an industry wide communal feeling because of something like Twitter. Now, just fast forward a couple of years into the future when we all have live streaming video capabilities on our phones and we’re live broadcasting from events like that (or is that even kosher?).

Nevertheless, boundaries are falling and Twitter has become a big hammer between that wall of attendees and remote viewers who wish they could be there.

Third, Shawn, Lisa, Jim and I made a friendly wager on this week’s GeekCast regarding the results of the Linkshare awards. Needless to say, I won (since I clearly know more about the industry than the others on the show):

Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins: “Prior to the awards, Jim Kukral, Lisa Picarille, Sam Harrelson, and I shared our predictions for each category on the weekly GeekCast show.

Below are the picks each of us made, as well as the winners (in yellow).

* Jim: 8 for 14
* Lisa: 7 for 14
* Sam: 9 for 14
* Shawn: 5 for 14 “

So, it looks like free drinks for me in Boston on behalf of the other GeekCasters. OR, if you’d like to get tons of exposure for your business, you can sponsor GeekCast for that evening and we’ll mention you a few dozen times during a live taping. Get in touch with any of us if you’re interested. Great chance to get your name out there!

And of course, thanks to the Linkshare team for putting on what sounded like another great event.