Speaking of Joel Comm, he recently launched a url shortening/vanity service focused on Twitter called TwitPwr (to accompany his book, Twitter Power).

Jim Kukral and I went back and forth over the service on last week’s GeekCast. Basically, my point is that Joel’s service doesn’t add much for users besides the vanity factor. I argued that bit.ly is a much much better product, has an API, and is more robust for serious users who don’t need the ego stroking.

But this morning, after trying to blog about Joel’s Twitter study in the previous post, I realized something else that is a deal-breaker for me when it comes to TwitPwr:

Once someone uses TwitPwr to link to a post or site from Twitter, you can’t get the original URL of the site. The TwitPwr wrap or frame stays on top of the site. And the TwitPwr wrap or frame stays with you whereever you go past that point (until you close that Tab or Window). So, whether you’re blogging or passing on the link, you’re stuck with the TwitPwr shortened URL if you’re clicking around. Not cool.

That might be kosher for a few of you, but for most affiliate marketers, that could be a big deal since the URL has a great deal to do with conversions in terms of link names.

On the other hand, bit.ly immediately drops off after it does its original job… shortening the linked URL from Twitter or an email or a post, etc.

Not to mention, bit.ly has a very nice API. That’s a big difference.

If Joel is going to keep pushing TwitPwr and if influential people in the affiliate marketing space are going to use the service, I hope they are aware of this pretty serious flaw in the service. Otherwise, this is more MLM than affiliate marketing.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Joel. He’s a nice guy and I consider him a pal. However, I also have a big place in my heart for Twitter and have to speak up when I see goofy things like this happening.

The TwitPwr “How It Works” page includes this language:

WHAT IS TRUE TWITTER POWER?

Is it really the number of followers you have, or is the ability to get your followers to Take Action?

When you use the TwitPwr short url service, we track the number of clicks that you drive via the Twitter API, and give your account a Power Rating.

Your Power Rating is not only the unique traffic that you generate, but it’s also based on how many Twitter users you refer to our service.

Those referrals you generate will also play apart in driving even more traffic to your site.. Stay Tuned!

If that is Twitter Power, then blessed are the meek.

I’m sticking with bit.ly for my url shortening and spreading needs.

The next episode of FeedFront is up and ready for your viewing pleasure via PDF. Or you can wait to get it in your mailbox or at the Affiliate Summit next month…

Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins: “Issue 4 can now be downloaded in PDF format.”

Glad to see the magazine is doing so well. Hats off to Missy, Shawn and all the contributors for making it better every month.

Ashley from CJ wrote and wanted to pass the word about some of the recent positive trends CJ is seeing this holiday shopping season as number continue to roll in:

Below is Commission Junction’s same store retail sales growth for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in comparison to comScore’s recent announcement on e-commerce spending.

Nice job to the affiliate marketers, merchants and CJ who contributed!

Merlin Mann brings the funny and effective yet again:

The Merlin Mann Amazon Store Blog: “Welcome to the Merlin Mann Amazon Store Blog. This is a new site where you can buy a fucking camera.”

Good idea.

It puzzles me that “online ad spending” and “online marketing” are seen as one large homogeneous block by pundits and analysts.

Surely, this sort of thing is true for the Madison Ave crowd that relies on display and CPM advertising/marketing for their bottom lines:

eMarketer Cuts 2009 Projection for Online Ad Spend to Single Digits | Epicenter from Wired.com: “The revised projection data puts online ad spending at $25.7 billion in 2009 — a mere 8.9% over the $23.6 billion that will be spent this year and down from the 14.9 percent estimate it made only three months ago. In 2010 eMarketer estimates growth will barely return to double-digits — 10.9 percent — and that it will not be until 2013 before it hits 13.5 percent.”

However, what about performance marketing?

I have a feeling that as the economy continues to sour with no end in sight, performance marketing will increasingly be the “goto” for large companies and advertising agencies seeking shelter from the storm.

Nonetheless, I’m daily puzzled at why this isn’t happening sooner.

I’m not a huge fan of business books, Seth Godin, teleseminars, sales letters, etc.

However, I just listened to this podcast from Jim Kukral with Matthew Scott and it’s really good.

If you’re looking for some info-business type stuff to listen to over the weekend, I highly recommend checking this out:

Podcast: Good Sales & Marketing Wins!: “The Biz Web Coach talks with sales and marketing veteran Matthew Scott of LifesWorkGroup.com about how you can become a better salesperson and marketer. “

StumbleUpon is one of those sites that everyone uses (or should) but never really talks about. However, as Shawn and I talked about on GeekCast 44, SU has a ton of potential for driving quality “sticky” traffic to sites as well as creating community around them.

If you’re involved in affiliate marketing and not using StumbleUpon, you’re missing out.

And it looks like they are prepping for some major upgrades soon:

StumbleUpon Readies for Another Version Release | Brent Csutoras: “Around 8:00 pm last night, November 19, 2008, StumbleUpon made an announcement in their Beta Group discussions area that they have rolled the majority of their users back to V2 ‘to prepare for upcoming changes that will add new features and optimize many existing ones.’”

I’ll review them when they show up in my account. Head over to Brent’s site and get all the details of what is in store.

If you’re a (thin) affiliate marketer, take notice.

To quote the bard Bob Dylan, “things should start to get interesting right about now…”

Google SearchWiki brings custom search results | Webware - CNET: “Google’s SearchWiki is a feature that lets people elevate, delete, add, and annotate search results. Google remembers the changes a person made to search results, so repeat searches will show the same customizations and notes.

Google has been offering SearchWiki as an experimental feature to some people for months, but starting Thursday it will become available to anybody who’s searching while logged in with a Google account.

‘This is a search feature that gets a user more control over their search results,’ said Cedric Dupont, Google’s SearchWiki product manager. “

Head over to CNet to read the whole piece, but what do we make of this as an affiliate marketing community? Sign of things to come from the repository of the world’s knowledge or just some tinkering to placate the Digg crowd?

I’m thinking it’s a sign of things to come as Google recognizes that the concept of “search,” much like life itself, is subjective and personalized.

If you create good content and are a sticky affiliate, this is good. If you are a thin affiliate that relies mostly on PPC, count ye rosebuds while ye may.

In the future (generic, I know), the bulk of affiliate marketing will be driven by mobile devices and mobile transactions. Start building for that.

The new rage for some of the shopping-centric affiliates and publishers is crowd source comparisons. Looks like BeatMyPrice.com is doing well with the model.

There is a nifty ajax interface, lots of options and the inevitable selling feature of the “deal feel.”

People Powered Price Comparison » BeatMyPrice.com

1. Find the best price you can online

2. Visit beatmyprice.com

3. Enter the details

4. See if someone has found it cheaper elsewhere

5. Save! (otherwise your price becomes the one to beat)

I expect to see more and more of these as the deal space heats up with the faltering economy.

AppScout also has some info on the site.

Say what you’d like about Microsoft Cashback, but they seem to be getting the numbers right…

Microsoft Cashback: The Traffic Needle Is Still Stuck, But The Ads Are Rolling In: “Microsoft is reporting that according to Comscore, Live Search referred 12% of all commercial transactions across the web - a number that is much smaller than Google’s referral share, but one that is also significantly larger than Live Search’s market share, which hovered around 9% during the same period. This makes the Live Search user base very appealing to advertisers, as it shows that they’re more likely to purchase goods than their Google counterparts.”

I’m still not sold on the long term veracity of the program since Microsoft faces two serious challenges to Cashback if it is going to be seen as a reliable income stream: 1) affiliates doing this are smarter, more nimble and will eat into Cashback’s market share little by little every month 2) this won’t get (or sustain) the “Oprah crowd” that makes cashback sites successful because the lack of a community and/or branding for that purpose (I’m not being a Microsoft hater… just saying).

Still, the numbers are impressive. Glad to see Microsoft using Jellyfish for it’s potential and perhaps this will spur more companies into investigating the direct response space as the economy continues to stumble around like a stoned hippy at a Grateful Dead show.

Mozilla is best known for Firefox, but for fans of open source, sanity and alternatives to Outlook (or Evolution on Ubuntu), Thunderbird is a popular choice.

And now Thunderbird has an affiliate program to spread the good word (although you get points and pride, not cash… so it’s more for the fanboi’s than the serious affiliate business person).

Affiliates Home | Mozilla Thunderbird - Reclaim Your Inbox | Mozilla Thunderbird - Reclaim Your Inbox: “SpreadThunderbird offers a simple affiliates program (Beta) that enables members to support Thunderbird and earn fame and prizes.

SpreadThunderbird’s Affiliate Program is not the only program to help drive Thunderbird downloads.

We’re also interested in seeing more of these kinds of affiliate programs and if you’re interested in starting a similar program, please contact us”

I’m glad to see something like this, even if it is geared towards the diehards and fans.

I’ve been an off and on user of Thunderbird over the past few years and it is a viable competitor to Apple Mail or Outlook. While it doesn’t have native support on these platforms, the features often outweigh those costs.