Congrats to all the winners and congrats to ShareASale for being so awesome:
ShareASale Blog » ShareASale Performance Awards: “This marks the inaugural announcement of (to be) annual ShareASale Performance Awards.
While we reserve the right to add awards in the future, it was our goal this year to keep things pretty simple so we have designated 6 specific awards.”
Evidently, we’re all going through an 80’s thing in affiliate marketing (see previous post):
ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » ShareASale Under the Stars (Like Totally) Party
Sunday January 11th
Time: 8-12PM
Drinks (including 80s ‘spiked punch’), light appetizers, party favours, disco balls, etc…
DJ will play us our favourite 80s tunes all night.”
One can only hope this madness ends soon.
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Brian Littleton, head of ShareASale, was in NYC for Ad:Tech and sat down with Shawn Collins, Missy Ward and Connie Berg to discuss a few topics including the network’s interesting “3 Strikes” PPC policy on AffiliateThing…
ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » Ad-Tech NYC, the Affiliate Thing Podcast, and the PPC “3 Strikes” policy: “I was also lucky to have the opportunity to speak with Shawn Collins on his ‘Affiliate Thing’ podcast at the Affiliate Summit booth. Also on board were co-Affiliate Summitter Missy Ward, and Connie Berg. We had a good time talking about some industry news, issues, and it gave me an opportunity to talk about our PPC ‘3 Strikes’ policy as well. Since September 1st when the policy became active, we’ve received a great amount of feedback and reports. I would also like to thank all of the affiliates who have really stepped up their efforts to make sure that they are in compliance with the rules at hand. I know how difficult it is to keep up with so many policies, and your effort is very much appreciated. We know there will always be mistakes, hiccups, etc… and will continue to do our best to determine the difference between an honest mistake and a continued violation. So thank you…. “
The show really is a good listen.
Here’s the mp3 or head over to GeekCast.fm for the streaming version.
Follow Sam on Twitter and FriendFeed for More!Must read from Scott on why some affiliate networks “get” social media (or just social participation on the web) and some fail every time:
Affiliate Networks and Social Media | Jangro.com: “Commission Junction is, again, the only one missing from the party. Surely if Todd Crawford, Lisa Riolo, and Brian Caldwell were still there this would be a different story. Or me, for that matter.
It seems to me that the basic pre-requisite to a company attaining a successful social media presence is that they’ve got at least one person who is (a) interested and already heavily involved in social media, and (b) in a position that the company trusts them to represent.
How does that not happen at a company like CJ? This is not to judge (though I’m sure somebody will), but to ask the purely academic question, seriously, why?”
Personality, personality, personality.
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ShareASale has launched a really interesting new platform with the Gift Cards Database. Let’s face it… gift cards are the gift to give when you have no idea what to give. Plus, merchants love them given that the cards are such a money machine.
I’ll be interested to check in with the SaS team after the holidays and see how popular or successful this becomes. I have a feeling it could be a huge hit.
ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » Gift Cards Database: “Thanks to a wonderful suggestion from our annual ShareASale Think Tank held a few weeks ago in San Diego, we’ve created a Gift Cards Database. Merchants are able to upload specific creatives that direct consumers to specific landing pages designed to sell Gift Cards - a popular item this time of year!
In similar form to the Deals Database, Affiliates can access these creatives from inside their Affiliate Interface as well as through RSS feeds and downloadable databases. Affiliates can also search for specific types of gift cards - and find/join programs that they might not have already been a part of.”
Additionally, it’s these sorts of platforms that will continue to make affiliate marketing more “mainstream” as large publishing sites turn away from CPM ad deals towards performance marketing given the economic slowdown. In a potentially bleak holiday selling season, this could be just the thing to make things a little cheerier for publishers.
Nice work, ShareASale.
Follow Sam on Twitter and FriendFeed for More!The pics from ShareASale’s party at Affiliate Summit West back in February are finally up on Flickr.
Lots of great shots of affiliate marketers (and lots of shots of Todd Crawford pointing at people)…
ShareASale Party set on Flickr: “”
Follow Sam on Twitter and FriendFeed for More!The ShareASale Blog has a new look with a tag cloud, Twitter updates and easier navigation.
Looks great, but how about some Disqus comments?
Hats off to the ShareASale team for making such a commitment to blogging and open communication with the affiliate community!
Follow Sam on Twitter and FriendFeed for More!I noticed from one of brianlittleton’s tweets that ShareASale is putting together an “open source” PPC policy creation template…
Open Source the PPC Policy Creation - ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum: “One of the things that we will be doing is providing a list of things that a Merchant should and must consider when generating a ‘good’ PPC policy. For example, some Merchants consider things like their ‘domain name’, or ‘TM’, but don’t consider that same word in conjunction with another term such as ’special’ or ‘vs. a competitor’ …
So - I am here offering and asking for a collaborative effort to generate a template/wishlist/helpsheet for Merchants who want to generate a policy.”
Lots of great stuff going on in that thread at ABW and it’s awesome to see a network reaching out to both affiliates and merchants in such a manner. Go over and participate if you have thoughts on the issue (and who doesn’t?!).
As always, nice work, Brian.
Follow Sam on Twitter and FriendFeed for More!There has been much hand wringing in the world of affiliate marketing over the so-called New York state “affiliate tax.” However, as Trust points out on ABW, it doesn’t seem that 99% of merchants running affiliate programs care much…
How Are Merchants Finding Out About This? - ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum: “Looking at this list and I only see about 40 merchants (so far) which is maybe at most 1% - 2% of merchants with affiliate programs who have dropped NY affiliates. So was wondering if we have a whole bunch more coming and if all the merchants know about this or what. Or if it’s going to be an overall small percentage that drop affiliates.”
Is that a symptom of poor communication by New York state legal authorities, legal counsels, affiliates…or is this really not that big of deal?
There have been a plethora (literally) of blog posts in the affiliate-blog-osphere about the issue ranging from Shawn Collins and Linda Buquet’s respective reporting to ReveNews coverage to Peter Bordes at Relevantly Speaking chiming in to our discussions on GeekCast to even networks like ShareASale offering strong and well thought-out advice for merchants.
However, merchants really don’t seem to be paying too much attention to all of this.
Once again, I defer to Trust on ABW:
I guess I was expecting a whole slew of new drop notices today, haven’t seen anybody post anything new. In the end if it winds up only being about 1% - 2% then that’s really not much at all. I guess we’ll have to wait to see how this turns out but at this point not as bad as I thought it would be. Time will tell.
Is this just the latest Froogle?
I’m not so sure. I do think there is a considerable need for affiliate marketers to educate and inform merchants about the viability and importance of the performance channel in terms of their bottom line, but “affiliate marketing” as we know it is SO wide ranging and dispersed at this point that it would take Microsoft creating their own loyalty program to get us to organize… oh, wait.
In other words, our conception of “affiliate marketing” (in my opinion) is rapidly evolving away from just the network/affiliate model that has served us well (and badly) for the last decade. “We” are moving into video, lead gen, offline, mobile, widgets, social media, search and all sorts of places that we didn’t envision a decade ago. I would venture to say that at least 75% of the people doing affiliate marketing don’t even know they are doing affiliate marketing.
I’m not arguing for a name change or anything of that nature. However, I do want us to realize that while the NY affiliate tax has certainly caused its share of fear and loathing, we need to realize that this industry has fractured and continues to move away from anything resembling an industry. Coming up with an organized group to represent its needs and views may be as difficult as getting merchants to address the NY state issue.
So here’s my take: Merchants are letting legal figure this out (if they even need to). We should be proactive but realize that interstate commerce is a very complicated subject and requires highly skilled lawyers (and such) to grok. I doubt if NY state’s tax will survive the appeal process based on my understanding of what’s happening, but I’m no lawyer.
In the meantime, it looks to be business as usual.
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So even though I now work at Motive Interactive, I think this is a great promotion by the ShareASale team. Nicely done and I’d wager that you will definitely be copied on the idea!
Follow Sam on Twitter and FriendFeed for More!Commission Junction is currently sending out this very legal sounding email to publishers encouraging them to perform due dilligence with a link to a PDF from NY state’s tax office…
As you may already know, the State of New York recently enacted new legislation that addresses tax registration, collection, and other time-sensitive obligations. As with all laws, this law may or may not apply to you and your business. We are actively monitoring the law and will use reasonable efforts to protect ourselves and our publishers as we deem appropriate.
The application of the law is dependent on particular business and factual circumstances, and Commission Junction is not in a position to provide legal and tax advice regarding this law. However, we encourage you to perform the appropriate due diligence as it relates to your business.
For your convenience, we have provided a link to a memo from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Office of Tax Policy Analysis, Taxpayer Guidance Division that addresses the new legislation:
While certainly not as personal and emphatic as ShareASale’s response on their blog or on the ABW forum, it is a little heart warming to see CJ addressing the issue.
I was hoping for more of a “these are the steps we will take to educate merchants and protect our publishers” type email, but it looks like this is all we’re going to get from CJ at this point.
Follow Sam on Twitter and FriendFeed for More!Brian Littleton of ShareASale weighs in on how his network plans to address the delicate situation surrounding the NY state tax on affiliate revenues and provides a nice model that other networks may want to consider (both in terms of practice as well as openness with the affiliate community):
ShareASale Blog » NY State and the “Affiliate Sales Tax” Law…: “Our plan at this time, is to treat any case where a merchant wishes to terminate NY affiliates with great care and caution. If a merchant requests to do this, there is little we can do to stop them - but ShareASale will be performing the task so that merchants aren’t accessing information which traditionally is considered private within the network.
There is a chance that this plan will not work. My hope is that we can warn merchants that terminating NY is a bad plan - and one that needs rethinking. If our plan doesn’t work - and we end up needing to provide more information to merchants, we may end up having to do so… I say this as a heads up to affiliates because while we don’t like to give out info, we also don’t want to put merchants in a place that makes it difficult to adhere to the laws of their state or others.”
Great job for addressing the situation and letting us know your thoughts from a network perspective, Brian and team.
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