That the ’last click wins’ model that affiliate marketing is premised on continues to prevail underlines the inherent problems the industry faces in finding a credible alternative.
 
As affiliate marketing becomes more complex so industry players have been debating whether a multi-attribution model, that is apportioning parts of one overall commission amount to the affiliates involved in that sale, would better reward all touchpoints.
 
In theory this makes this sense. Understand the consumer’s path that leads them to the ‘buy now’ button and reward retrospectively for the multiple marketing efforts that influenced and guided their buying decision.

But delve a little deeper and a multi attribution model throws up more questions and subjective dilemmas than there are answers to.

An advertiser may find that two or three affiliates may be involved in a typical sale. Do you apportion the commission accordingly (by halving or dividing by three in this case) or do you weight it subject to a possibly arbitrary scoring system that attributes a ‘value’ to individual affiliates? What would then be the basis for this system; individual affiliate performance such as new customer acquisition numbers, average basket amounts, frequency of purchase?

From an affiliate’s perspective there are obvious concerns. If you run a cashback, loyalty or reward site and need to publish a commission rate what do you advertise when you don’t potentially know what you’re getting? What about affiliates working in the paid search space who need a guaranteed rate of return so they can account for their click costs and work their campaigns profitably?

By all means try to understand what value your individual affiliates contribute at various stages to your sales but rather than talk about dividing a commission according to an arbitrary click measurement why not just try to appreciate the value of each of your affiliates; both the volume drivers and by affiliate categorisation?

As multi-attribution continues to pose more questions than it answers many advertisers are getting on with the business of running their campaigns. The savvier are taking a step back, understanding the wider picture and apportioning commission rates that reflect the perceived or actual ‘value’ of their different affiliate types.

And ultimately that’s what performance based marketing is all about.

Guest Post by: Kevin Edwards of Affiliate Window.

Since the credit crunch first reared its ugly head, tongues have been wagging around the affiliate world, with one main concern spilling out of people’s minds; was the looming cloud of a recession gilded by the sweetest of silver linings?

With every penny ever more precious, with every cent being counted, would the greater focus by merchants on return from marketing spend see an industry seeing significant year on year growth make the shift to a dominant mainstream channel? Or would overall reduced marketing spend mean affiliates would suffer along with press, radio and TV?

For a while it seemed that affiliates were at least safe, and were at best coasting to a better, and richer, future. As one might expect, merchants were increasingly enticed by the idea of a channel that only pays out on a tangible return. However, overall reduced marketing spend has seen a more significant shift as merchants have shifted focus on other media to CPA and ROI targeted campaigns. Aggregators, PPC and traditional display-based advertising are delivering on CPA and ROI based models that have begun to return lower CPAs than affiliates and higher ROI.

There’s a simple lesson to be learnt from this; it is no longer enough to simply drive sales. Whilst this represents a sea change in thinking for many, for affiliates to capitalise on the current economic condition it is imperative that two things are addressed, and soon:
Quality of traffic
Costing Models

Without a significant increase in the quality of traffic, or the way that traffic is handled, the opportunity that is available to affiliates, that sweet silver lining, is likely to evaporate. By changing the overall perspective of a volume driving channel to one that is linked to profitability, ultimately doors will be opened rather than shut.

This is not to say that fundamental upheaval is necessary. However, publishers need to accept that positioning and potential will need to be increasingly tied to the needs of the merchant rather than CPAs and EPCs as merchants become more educated.

A simple example of this would be loyalty sites, a group that have seen huge successes in recent times, but who have also left a bad taste in merchants’ mouths that have been burnt one too many times. Simply by developing offerings that tie into the LTV of a custome, for example an insurance bounty that only pays out on renewal of a policy they can create a harmonious model that would make significant steps toward realising the huge potential growth for affiliates that is currently available.

The affiliate channel currently sees itself at a fork in the road; partially through its own impressive and intrinsic growth, but also through unforeseen global economic changes. By acting quickly and sagely, it can make the move from being a specialist part of the marketing mix to something that consistently sits at the heart of all merchant’s overall media strategies.

Guest Post by: James Atherton of Vizeum.

There is a big unanswered question in affiliate marketing today – how can we give credit for an online sale in such a way as to reward all of the sites that played a part in it? Surely that would be fair but as yet there is no workable answer.

Imagine I’m buying a Pay As You Go mobile phone. First of all I’ll probably read reviews of two or three new handsets I’ve heard about (for simplicity let’s say I’ve visited one review site, although in reality it may be several), clicking through to retailers and back in the process. Having decided I want the new Nokia I’ll then go to my chosen comparison site to find the best deal on it, before clicking through to the merchant. Wait a minute though, here’s a box in the checkout for a voucher code… I’ll just pop back to Google to find a current code for that merchant, which will involve clicking on the site and hence dropping a voucher code cookie, which will win the commission for the whole sale. Wouldn’t it be great if the merchant could store the three cookies (this is possible) and then automatically split the commission three ways on completion? I guess it would be more popular with the review sites but then they probably work a lot harder to put their content together than the voucher sites anyway.

I’ve deliberately omitted another stage of the buying process here, the cashback or reward site. The problem is they need to know what the CPA is in advance in order to offer it to their members, so it would seem they would need a different set of rules altogether – and they may be the sites who prevent this idea from ever getting off the ground. The other problem with this method if it became the norm is that it’s open to abuse. What’s to stop unscrupulous affiliates linking to merchants using a link that momentarily visits another of their own sites, because if the commission is going to be split they might as well bag another share to make sure?

I don’t know the answer to this big question, but I look forward to the debate.

Guest Blog by: Richard Buckton of Digital TV Advice

Most of you have undoubtedly played the field, some have found the perfect match, some have chewed their arm off. Finding the perfect match in life is hard because you don’t know if your choice is going to continue to be the beauty queen that everyone hypes her to be or she’s going to be the one that leaves creepy messages for you saying Call me, Call me. Affiliate Marketing is like that, sometimes it’s exciting, other times it’s Mrs. Chucky time.

In the Day to day world of an Affiliate publisher it’s very similar to being at closing time on a Saturday night – who should I commit all of my charm and resources to? Sometimes that choice becomes more difficult because your friends are giving you the nudge, nudge and hyping the beauty across the room. Trust me on this one, look past that one a little further before making your decision. Be a playa’, enjoy life a bit more.

If you’re going to date the Cleansing twins – Acai and Colonia – you have to at least once in your life - find out what else is available and then date them all. A little speed dating action if you will. Shortly you will see which one is your Mrs. Chucky and which one will make you brag to your friends. Just the other day I saw a clear example where a publisher followed the hype, jumped in with both feet with an offer – while throwing little at a comparable offer – and made (chewing their arm off) LESS by running the hyped offer. A LOT LESS. Don’t let this happen to you. Ask for the full roster in each offer category and then do a little speed dating. The one that performs the best in a head to head competition is the one that you should marry your traffic to.

Don’t be blinded by the highest payout, play the field, try different channels, check your head to head EPC’s and laugh all the way to the alter – and bank.

Guest post by: Mike Carney of MediaTrust.

Many of us were around when the concept of affiliates was a new thing – the market has grown tremendously since then – not only in reach and influence but also in marketing sophistication. The largest online retailers in the world now count on performance marketing as a key part of their marketing portfolio.

Traditionally affiliates often focused on a single category, like comparing online dating sites, and included complete details and comparisons. Or they focused on a single merchant site like travel savings offers. Both remain successful business models.

Vertive recently launched Offers.com which was the first Web service of this type to combine complete details on over 340 services with over 1000 stores and companies. Each service offer includes the latest promo or coupon code, complete details, reviews and side-by-comparisons written by a team of in-house editors. The site is off to a solid start after its February launch.

It’s clear that today’s consumer is looking for useful information when they land on a site, information that may help them with a purchase decision. And today’s merchants are looking for performance marketing sites that are professional, include useful content and features and are well designed and reliable.

This industry is likely to show additional strong growth and we think it will be an interesting space to see develop further.

We are very pleased to let everyone know about the new Affiliate Convention taking place in Denver, Colorado from June 17th to the 20th. The convention is free for all working affiliates with sessions planned to help grow your affiliate business. You can come and me me in person, I will be speaking on a couple of panels.

Affiliate Convention has a diverse line up with sessions for all affiliates from beginners to advanced sessions for seasoned affiliates. Unlike other conferences, Affiliate Convention believes it is fundamental that an affiliate should not pay to attend the event. Affiliate Convention provides the greatest opportunity to learn from your peers, find better commission deals, and explore new products to offer. With admission being FREE, can you afford to not be there?

Affiliate Convention will focus on how to optimally run and improve your affiliate marketing business. Along with two days of intensive content, Affiliate Convention features an exhibit hall, general sessions, targeted skills sessions, networking opportunities and WebmasterRadio.FM’s AffiliateBash. To further enhance the learning environment, Affiliate Convention will also have several focused workshops running throughout the duration of the conference.

“Can’t miss” sessions include; Developing and running Pay Per Click campaigns, Alternative Search Engines and Marketing Venues for Affiliates, Landing Page Optimization, Creating Higher Conversion Rates, along with many more. You can see the agenda for Affiliate Convention here.

Affiliate Convention will be officially kicking off Wednesday June 17th with a charity Golf Tournament. Tee time is 1:30 and as we can only take 18 teams of 4, limited space is available. Cost per player is $80. If you are interested in being on a team or registering a team, please contact Aunesty Janssen at aunesty@affiliateconvention.com.

For those of you interested in exhibiting at the show BOOTH SPACE IS VERY LIMITED and running out quick.

Register now for the inaugural Affiliate Convention. As an added bonus, those who register before May 15th will be entered in a draw for free transportation and accommodation!

For more information or to register, please visit the Affiliate Convention website

We look forward to seeing you in Denver, June 17 – 20.

Commission Junction has a new page on their site to keep affiliates and merchants updated on the Internet tax laws many states are attepting to get passed. Everyone in the affiliate community needs to get involved in combating these new laws which threaten the affiliate marketing industry. Now is the time for people that are respected and looked up to in the industry to get really vocal and organize against this proposed legislation. It’s good to see companies like Commission Junction and Linkshare trying to fight against this.

I wanted to redesign cost per news, to add some ad units and other groovy features. I hope you like it. Let me know if you think it needs anything. I’d love to hear your feedback. It still needs a bit of tweaking, so any ideas would be great.

Computers and the Internet have finally come full circle for the average American looking to make money through promoting products and services online. Blogging and site building has enabled many more people to earn money through affiliate marketing. I don’t know about save the economy, but affiliate marketing can definitely provide a means for more Americans to earn income online. Currently, there are several states that want to impose taxes on merchants with producing affiliates in those states, as is the case in New York. This can only be a bad thing and counter-productive to the growth of affiliate marketing as a vehicle for more people to earn money online. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of this happening, but people in their local states can protest and petition against this happening and get angry about it. It definitely has a negative effect on affiliates as merchants may choose to not working with affiliates in those certain states, which I don’t think is the answer at all. The merchants will just have to restructure their own margins to accommodate this change and make it work. The various affiliate networks seem to be stepping up and fighting this impending legislation more vigorously, so thats good. Everyone in the affiliate marketing world needs to mobile to fight this. The states are just looking for revenue anywhere they can get it.

Affiliate marketing truly is a vehicle towards earning income online by promoting various online retailers and websites. There are many supposed affiliate marketing gurus that novices come across, but they only want to sell you something themselves in the end by telling you how to make money through affiliate marketing. Stay away from anyone considered a guru! Affiliate marketing is very much about content, writing, and putting a heck of a lot of time in on your keyboard getting work done. I would venture to say that typing speed is one of the most important factors in how much content you can produce online. So I always recommend to work on becoming a faster typer. Doing a lot of reading online is also a good way to improve your own writing skills, which will help you craft better, more intresting content for your site visitors.

Blogging and blogs have really opened up the doors to many affiliates that struggle with creating their own sites in HTML. Now anyone can create a blog, put up the affiliate banners, and start writing. This is why I created the free affiliate site builder for the affiliate programs we manage. It allows you to get up and running with a .com or free subdomain site is under a minute. Everything is hosted for free and you can build as many site as you would like. There are other site building tools as well you can use like Synthasite. Once you are up and running with a niche site or blog, you can go to work adding articles and other useful/interesting information without worrying about building the pages in HTML and FTPing them to your server.

Content is one biggest part of affiliate marketing because sites with good content rank well in the search engines. Leveraging pay-per-click or PPC keyword marketing is also a great way to generate traffic to your site or in some cases directly to the merchants site, but more and more merchants are moving away from allowing that. So affiliates need to have their own niche sites or send the traffic to a dedicated page on their site which pre-sells for the merchant. A good pre-sell page can really help convince the consumer that they should buy from the merchant and maybe even promote a coupon code to increase conversion likely hood. Making PPC work is not easy at all but affiliates do make it work so it can be done successfully. I always recommend a very slow, controled experiment with about $100 to see how many sales occur and if any ROI is present. Testing out 100s of keyword niches in this manner may leave you with 20 or 30 that are profitable and can be run effectively to create a profit channel. Using PPC and organic SEO together is the best approach towards creating sustained long-term traffic and affiliate commissions. Make sure to make your site “stickier” by adding newsletter sign-up, Twitter follow, email this page, bookmark this page, etc.

Affiliate marketing is still a growing industry that is really seeing more interest due to the current economic crisis. As people look for way to generate additional revenue, they will be turning online. Affiliate marketing is the best way for the “average American” (I only mean that in the most general sense) to generate income by marketing products and services online. This industry needs to be supported and embraced in order for it to really flourish for more people. So yes I do think affiliate marketing can save the economy! This was more of a ramble than a well-constructed piece, so take it for what it’s worth. I’d love to know your feedback and thoughts! Happy Easter!

There are so many possible ways of driving traffic to your website, it’s hard to know where to focus first. This article will attempt to explain some of the best ways to drive traffic to your company’s website, including: organic search (SEO), pay-per-click search advertising, affiliate marketing, and database re-marketing. All of these methods are effective and must be done properly and with gusto. These concepts are in no particular order, but equally important to your overall Internet marketing mix.

Organic traffic or SEO is as old as the the Internet itself. I remember formatting the meta-tags on my web pages 10 years ago! Guess what…good, complete meta-tags still matter to your organic rankings, so make sure they are completely filled out on EVERY page of your site. There are basically 2 main aspects of organic optimization you need to focus on initially: meta-tags and on-page content. Like I said, every page of your site should have complete, unique meta-titles, meta-descriptions, and meta-keywords filled in. On-page content also has a huge amount of importance for gaining search rankings. I have sites that ranking organically just off the content on each page alone. If you are able to expand you content on certain pages like your category pages and product descriptions, you can potentially gain more search traffic off those pages, maximizing what you are currently doing with your site.

Pay-per-click search marketing is probably one of the most necessary, yet misunderstood types of campaigns you can run. All companies, in my opinion, should be running a good amount of PPC search in order to drive targetted traffic to their sites. Whether you handle this internally or outsource it, you should keep a very close eye on the performance and management of your PPC accounts with Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Your PPC accounts should be ever growing, as you test different groups of keywords to see what converts and what doesn’t. What converts you run with and what doesn’t you eliminate. The goal should be to attain the best ROI possible. Of course, your landng page should be as good as it can be to best convert the traffic into sales or leads.

Affiliate marketing is my favorite topic and where you should be focusing a great amount of resources and money. A well-managed affiliate program should always be growing in the number of participants and active producers. Many companies launch affiliate programs and just expect them to grow on their own. This will occur to a certain degree, but plataeu quickly without good affiliate management and a good affiliate growth strategy. Companies should be trying their best to make it as lucrative as possible for affiliates in order to get the most production possible. Again, having a good converting website is key to ensuring your affiliate traffic will convert and produce commissions for your affiliates. Affiliates should be treated with the utmost respect and given as many tools to become success as possible. At all times, affiliates should be worked with and motivated to produce more revenue, as well as new affiliates should be recruited into the program to grow the number of participants. If either of these 2 things aren’t going on, you are not maximizing the growth of your affiliate channel.

Re-marketing to your database is one of the most powerful ways to generate revenue for your company. You can send promotions, deals, and coupons to motivate your database to purchase for the first time or re-purchase more products. Re-marketing to your database at the right interval and with the right message is essential to getting a good response. Subject line is everything! Getting people to open your email promotions is key to getting them to act, so make sure to make your subject lines compelling. Email content is also improtant to getting your database members to move into action.

Once you have a good strategy in place for all of these traffic driving methods you are ready to make it happen! Make sure to have the right people or companies handling these tasks for you, as they are extremely important. Don’t assign a new employee to manage your PPC or affiliates, you will suffer the consequences or just not grow like you should. I hope this mini-article was an enjoyable read. I couldn’t mention everything, but you get the jist. If you would like to have a conversation about these concepts make sure to email us or leave your comment below! Now get out there and drive some traffic!

I just got done with the Commission Junction Coupon Code webinar and I thought it was really good. Very well prepared and full of information and good ideas. Here are some of the highlights from the couopn code webinar:

- Coupon codes are gaining popularity based on the bad economy, here are the latest percentages of where web visitors are going on the Internet: Search 37%, Coupons 25%, Comparison sites 17%, Auctions 17%

- Coupons are the fastest growing category on websites, boasting
#1 in the top 10 website categories
- October 2008 to November 2008 up +32%
- Unique visitors to coupon sites are up almost 50% over a year ago
- Coupon Sites in general are up 34% year or year growth
- 62% of US shoppers are using coupon when shopping online.
- Searches for “coupon” doubled to 19.9 million, while “discount” rose 26% to 6.3 million searches.

Strategies for merchants using coupons effectively with affiliates:
- Plan for Success
- Add negative match to search policy
- limit redemptions
- Purchase threshold
- Beware coupon stacking

Coupon Code’s viral nature: Coupons can be great because they get spread around to firends and family.

How to maximize coupons so they don’t hurt your margins:
- Coupons aren’t all or nothing
- Choose higher margin products
- Coupons can be product specific
- Use coupons to clear out inventory
- Use custom codes and links
- Create exclusive coupons
- Use vanity coupon codes

- Recent studies are showing that online shoppers are shopping specifically because of special offers and coupons.
- Coupon codes create urgency

Regarding whether coupon codes create long-term customers or not:
- Coupons create customer engagement
- Customers love the “treasure hunt”
- Loyalty is built-up over time

Disspelling the myth that coupons destroy the brand:
- Holiday Season 08 - coupons really went mainstream
- Even high-end stores are in the game
- Have a good strategy when rolling out coupons

Advice for affiliates on how to use coupon sites and make their site more valuable. Goal should be to have a site visitors bookmark and share with their friends. Check and see how well the coupon is performing on your site. Put your coupon codes into your newsletters. Develop long-term advertiser relationships.

Advice for merchants:
- Not just a discount strategy
- Great for new customer acquisition
- Coupon code traffic sticks

Questions and Answers:
- Can coupons be offered without codes? Yes they can. Doesn’t have to be a code, could be free shipping, or new product launches, and gift cards.
- What are the best perfoming offers for coupons? Percent or dollar off. Answer: some sites see dollar off and some see % off converting better. Recommendation to advertiser is to test different strategies and maybe a combination. Research shows that dollars off the sale are more effective, but it depends on the nature of the business/offer.
- What is the negtive match aspect about? Answer: advertisers should make clear in their SEM policies whether they want the affiliates to show up in search for your trademarks with the word coupon.
- Will the affiliate receive the commission if the link isn’t click by the buyer. Answer: is to embed to coupon code within the text link or banner ad.
- Vanity codes are higher converting and affiliates like them too!

All and all, I think it was a good webinar. They covered most of the hot topics and there was a good amount of statistics to back it up. I personally think all affiliate merchants should be using coupon codes to their benefit. I’d love to know your opinion on coupon codes best practices for affiliates and merchants. Thanks!

Everyone knows that Google and the other search engines look at the number of inbound links you have going to your site as one of the factors determining your website’s search rankings. There are many ways to acquire more inbound links to your site, but the one that I find works well, and is enjoyable, is blog commenting. There are literally millions of blogs out there that you can go and comment on. When I am looking for new blogs to comment on I usually do a Google Blog Search. This will pull up lots of recent blog posts under a particular search phrase. This method is particularly good for finding niche blogs to comment on. Once you find some good blogs to comment on, you can add their RSS feed to your feed reader to get their latest blog posts instantly. When you post a blog comment you are asked for your website url, which is where the click-thrus and link juice comes from. Not all blogs are “do follow” however which means the search engines spiders are following those links, but I tend to not worry about that because just posting a lot of comments is good no matter what.

Another cool aspect of blog commenting is that at the bottom of most blog’s comment box you can choose to be emailed when someone replies to the comment or comments on the blog post. This is great because it reminds you of the conversation and allows you to go and post another comment quickly and easily. When you have done a bunch of blog commenting, it will pretty much self-perpetuate itself. When you are getting 50-100 emails a day from various blog conversations, consider yourself as having arrived! Always make sure to post quality blog comments or your comments won’t be approved and therefore not posted on the blog.

When getting heavily involved in commenting on blogs, often times you will be introduced to the blog owners and that can turn into a great friendship. Often times blog owners will email you or comment reply to thank you for your participation. The blog owners want you to post good comments to add content to their sites and keep the conversation lively.

Blog commenting is one fantastic way to build your website’s inbound links, thereby increasing traffic and rankings. It does have to be done in abundance to get a good effect, but every little bit helps! Like most things in online marketing it’s a volume game, so the more effort you put into it the more you can get out of it. Let me know your thoughts about effective blog commenting strategies. I look forward to hearing from you!