Affiliate Marketing Blog by James Little

Yesterday I headed across to the buy.at speakeasy for their daytime and evening event. It was the first time I’ve managed to make the daytime part of Speakeasy and I’ll try and give an overview from the parts I can remember (should have taken notes!).

Firstly the Keynote was from a guy called Ian Jindal.  I must admit that as much as I follow the “Web2.0” world I haven’t heard of him before and will keep a lookout in the future.

Ian was a very good speaker – he engaged with the audience well and cracked some jokes to keep the audience entertained.  One of the things that I perhaps took the wrong was however is that Ian seemed to contradict himself by one minute saying that he felt that the country was in a recession and then later suggesting that clients should be spending money on Flash enhancements to their websites, citing this as an example:

Martin + Osa

I would have thought that if we were in a recession the cost of items would be an important factor. We’ve already apparently seen that the clothing retail market is constantly lowering it’s prices because of the level of competition and surely if (as suggested) more sites concentrated with features like on the Martin + Osa site it would drive the costs up?  The main question that this raises is if enhanced features like this have a real effect on the conversion rate.  I’m not convinced but would welcome some examples of where it may have happened.

There were some other neat things raised in the presentation – AMPL (attention profiling mark-up language) could have a big effect on the future of shopping in the future (perhaps another few years down the line) and the use of Microformats on google maps is something I would like to look more into.

The other interesting thing that Ian showed us was a demo of Pronto – a social shopping website.  The firefox plugin was slightly concerning from an affiliate point of view - here is how it works:

1)    You download their Firefox plugin
2)    You visit a site like Amazon.com and view a product
3)    A popup will then appear suggesting that the price can be found better elsewhere

Hopefully this won’t catch on too well as it could effect a sites conversion rate and send affiliates traffic elsewhere!

Have half-written a blog post about some of the other points so will try and get it up tomorrow.

The short list is out for the A4UAwards Community Choice and there are a couple of interesting ones that stuck out for me.  You can see the full list on the a4uawards site.

Publisher (affiliate) of 2008

• Click Angel
• Net Media Planet
• Quidco
• Spear
• UK Web Media
• eConversions

No chance of playing a spot the content affiliate here.. I have nothing against PPC affiliates at all but I did find it very interesting that these were the choices.  I guess it’s a funny one to vote for; most of the community that vote are affiliates and would find it hard to work out who to vote for - would be interesting to see a vote count for these.  With that being said - congratulations to each of the affiliates that made the list.

Publisher’s Choice Of Network 2008

• Affiliate Future
• Affiliate Window
• Buy.at
• OMG
• Paid On Results
• Webgains

Should not be suprised that there is no CJ in there, but no TD is very interesting indeed.

Good luck to everyone who made the list!

I was going to leave it a few weeks before posting the details about this but as more and more people seem to know  it’s probably better to do so sooner rather than later!

Some news from the streets.. I have recently handed in my notice at Altogether Digital and my last day here will be on 27th May.  On 28th May I will be joining Affiliate Future in a very exciting new role.

Ultimately the decision to leave was an extremely tough one to make and the reasons for making it will remain personal but it’s a really exciting time at Affiliate Future and I am relishing the opportunity of working for a network that I have been a client and affiliate at for a number of years.

The Affiliate Management Solution that Altogether Digital offer, as well as Altogether Ads will keep going without me and I’m sure that once it’s been officially decided an announcement will be made about the new management of this area.  I will of course be there for just under a month to ensure that this transition is a smooth one.

I would like to thank everyone that I’ve worked with since starting at eyefall/Altogether about 18 months ago for making it a great success and an enjoyable time!

If anyone has any questions about the transition please feel free to get in touch the usual way!

I’m finally back from holiday after two weeks out of the office and have managed to get around to organising the next London Affiliate Dinner, to be held on 30th May 2008.

It will be held at the Archduke near Waterloo station and you can find all the information on the affiliate dinner uk website.

Look forward to seeing some of you there.

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to our latest blog interview, this time with one of Scotland’s finest, Chris Clarkson – co-owner of online travel agent Sunshine.co.uk.

You may have read my complimentary post about Sunshine.co.uk recently and you can find out more information about their affiliate program at the Sunshine.co.uk affiliate center – I have voted for them in the A4UAwards and really do hope that they are rewarded with an award for the time and effort they have put into their program.

So on to the interview…

Chris – thanks for taking part in the interview. You’re a well known figure in the industry but for the unaware readers why don’t you firstly start by giving a bit of background info on who you are and perhaps how you got into affiliate marketing…

2003: I was a Championship Manager addict and decided my time in front of the PC could be better spent. I bought a domain and some hosting in January, messed about with some HTML, moved onto PHP in the May; I hooked up with my business partner Chris Brown through A4U in June/July; we re-built HW from Aug and launched it on the 5th December. All from a standing start of knowing absolutely nada about anything internet.

You’ve obviously been doing travel stuff for a long time, what has been the best travel experience that you have had and where were you?

Well that would be a rugby tour to Newcastle in 1995 but I can’t really share the experience! Our first company “conference” in Tenerife was pretty special, as most of our friends and families were there too, as we’re firm believers in nepotism!

You recently sold Holiday Watchdog to Tripadvisor – have you made any exuberant purchases since the sale?

Funnily enough, the first thing we bought was Timeshare! Chris B and I both splashed out on the Disney Vacation Club as a present to our kids, and possibly our grandkids.

Sunshine.co.uk is a new entrant to quite a crowed marketplace – what makes it stand out from the crowd?

No sales pitch here, try it yourself and see. We were affiliates and know what’s required to squeeze out conversions.

With your affiliate experience I think it’s fair to say that you’ve been producing one of the best programs around; you seem a big lover for affiliate incentives, recently giving away a Macbook and now offering a couple of trips away to the Affiliate Future Barbados event. Did you find that as an affiliate you would give a program more of a boost if they were running a good incentive?

Show me an affiliate that doesn’t like winning stuff! The incentives are great for affiliates if they win, but they are obviously there to give our affiliate programme exposure. We’re working hard and shouting loudly to make sure people know we’re here and I’m 100% confident we have the programme to back it up.

That may have been a sales pitch.

As I just mentioned – you are currently in the process of giving away two tickets to the Affiliate Future Barbados event, can you give our readers a little more information about how to get involved?

We were keen to make the incentive as open as possible to any affiliates, so we set aside two tickets for our “Daily Dose of Sunshine”, where I get to set missions that anyone can complete and get themselves in the draw for Barbados.

Some of the missions will be used to walk you through building your first travel site, others will just be fairly random and we’re also going to throw in some other holidays as part of the fun.

We also have a draw for one ticket for affiliates who do over 100 sales and every 5 more gets them another entry in the draw and…wait, did you find yourself nodding off? LOL

Will you be making the trip across there yourself this year to take part in the festivities?

I’m afraid not, and Alan and James (who went the in 2006 and 2007 respectively) are a bit gutted that as merchants we won’t actually win any tickets this year!

And finally… I’m told that your alcoholic preference is a bit girlie. Isn’t it time you took up drinking something a bit more manly?

Let me explain. In my twenties my rugby club was based in the town centre, across from pubs that were “young”. Alco-pops had just arrived and they were always on 2 for 1’s. As you know, rugby players like a drink, especially a cheap one. Vodka Red Bull became a firm favourite as you could buy it in jugs; jugs are bigger than pints; follow my logic? I do actually like a Guinness, so I’m comfortable in my metrosexual drinking habits. Pass the woo-woo.

Thanks for taking part in the interview and good luck to all the affiliates who take part! Remember that if you want to take part in the incentives or find out more information on the Sunshine.co.uk affiliate program then visit the Sunshine Affiliates Site.

I’m on holiday at the moment (nowhere exotic - just spending time with the family) but wanted to take a quick break out of the day to say a big congratulations to Chris and Rob at CK Net who were purchased by Logicserve today.  Press release here (get a HTML version guys, PDF’s are so non-user-friendly!) for anyone interested.

I really like Chris and Rob and in our past dealings they have been really pro-active and helpful and I hope this acquisition brings them every good luck in the world.

It’s been debated in the past about if affiliate incentives, be them performance related or not, work.  I’ve always been a big advocate of them and suggest them to all of our clients, here are a few of the prizes that I’ve had a hand in giving away.

• 2 Trips to Barbados
• Weekend break (with helicopter transfer) to Monte Carlo
• Alienware PC worth about £2k
• £1,000 Prize draw
• Plasma TV
• Higher CPA’s!

To bring this point home, I thought I’d do a small blog about my affiliate experience with incentives and if they work after Chris (who just sold Holiday Watchdog to Trip Advisor) set one up for his new site, Sunshine.co.uk

About Sunshine.co.uk

Sunshine.co.uk is an online travel agent, selling cheap holidays to a UK audience.  It was created by Chris Clarkson, a well known figure in the affiliate space after successfully setting up, and then selling, holiday watchdog.

The Incentive

Rather than write my own version, here is the details of the competition posted by Chris on 11th March:

To give you a push to get your links to sunshine.co.uk up and running, we’re going to offer a rather nice incentive for March.

Drool
We’re giving away a rather stunning MacBook Air (the 1.6GHz model).

Cool, how do I get my grubby polluting paws on it?
Simply add our links to your site and email me with the URL(s) - each site featuring sunshine links = 1 entry in prize draw!

AND

Make 5 sales in March (yes, including sales already made) = 1 entry in prize draw!

So you can have multiple entries = more chances to win the coolest laptop out there.

Huh?
Every sunshine.co.uk affiliate who enters has an opportunity to win the prize draw for the MacBook Air, no matter how big or small!

Get Signed Up
If you haven’t done already, you’ll now be itching to join our programme on Affiliate Future

T&Cs
Closing Date - 31st March 2008
The winner will be drawn randomly - this decision is final. The draw will take place on the 1st April.

Contact
Please send your URLs to the email address given in my sig below. Anyone who’d like any more info about our programme please get in touch using same email.

And now why I think it works

Here are the reasons it was always going to work:

• It’s available to everyone, all they need to do is get up a link
• It’s a decent prize, relatively expensive and brand new
• All you need is a website, it’s not industry specific

On a personal note it has spurred me on to do something with my travel orientated domain name, online travel offers.  Not only have I now got a site up (that I’ll post more on once my server backup is complete tonight) but I’ve also started a competition to help build up an email database€¦ the competition itself has got over 300 applications in just a few days and runs till the end of the year, so I have a few months to earn enough to pay for it!

And lastly, to top it all off, the program is run extremely well - within 24 hours I had some new creative and a top selling product feed built from scratch after asking for them to be setup.

So well done to Chris, Happy and the rest of the team for their work and not only will I hopefully end up with a new Macbook Air to replace my broken PC at home, I’ll also hopefully end up with enough sales to justify the 20+ hours that I’ve put in so far working on it!

Last but not least, if you are thinking about going on holiday somewhere nice, make sure that you use Sunshine as it will give me a higher chance of winning!

There are a couple of affiliate articles in today’s NMA that I thought I would share with my blog readers and comment on..

(Click to enlarge)

I won’t go too much into my letter that has been published as I’ve said it all before but if you do have any comment on them then do feel free to post a comment below.

In terms of the black list article - this is a massive, massive step forward for the industry. I’ve kept my comments on it to myself since the last IAB meeting but now it’s out in the open have decided to discuss it in more detail.

Essentially this has been led my Affiliate Window and TradeDoubler and the idea behind it is to ascertain what the white, gray and black areas of affiliate marketing are. Should toolbars, perhaps from cashback sites, that automatically use affiliate links when customer go direct to site be allowed to do this?

Whilst some have been critical of the IAB in the past this is in my mind one of the best things that has come out of these meetings to date and based on the suggestions it’s open to all networks, not just IAB members.

All this shows just how well the market is starting to mature and hopefully the IAB will continue to be a channel to fuel this development.

I should make it clear from the start that I do not have a problem with the idea of voucher or cashback sites - I often use them myself when I do my online shopping and ensure that when topping up my house insurance I use them to get some great CPAs!

But whilst networks, merchants and the affiliates themselves are happy seeing the sales come in, more and more affiliates are seeing a negative effect on their sales as customers €œget smart€ and cookies are overridden by these sites.

So is there a solution?

There have been a couple of suggestions.  One is that merchants should set up their sites so that if the visitor comes via affiliate traffic a discount code field is not available or that across the board discounts are not needed for returning customers.

Another mentioned a few times is that networks should create the ability to ensure that cookies are not overridden when visitors use cashback / discount code sites but this has yet to be implemented as far as I am aware.

In an effort to restrict my own views I thought it would be fun to ask a few affiliates what they think about the issue.

Wardy, a popular character in the industry said he has concerns about it all;

€œI think that all it does is benefit the minority and the majority get shafted by such sites€, so what would be the solution? €œIf there was a way that if one affiliates cookie was replaced by a voucher site cookie within a small time frame then there could be some split commission€ he continued.

Peter Dickenson from Affiliate Future had a very different view;

€œI think it’s more an issue for merchants than affiliates.  Customers are changing their buying word of mouth as people are looking for more discount codes and returning customers are costing more€

Mark from myvouchercodes.co.uk - one of the larger voucher code sites had a bit to say about the matter:

€œI do feel that voucher sites provide sales without taking other affiliates last cookie etc, because we have nearly 200,000 people subscribed to our email newsletter, 2 million unique visitors a month, customised email alerts etc a lot of our visitors are return visitors, so they come to sites like mine as a way to shop online, not as a simple last minute look for a discount code€

In summary

I’d love to see some more comments from all areas of the industry about what they would do (if anything) to resolve this issue.  I really do think that technology is the key here and I expect to see some changes over the coming months from pro-active networks that see this as a real issue.

If you managed to catch yesterdays article focused around brand name bidding then you may remember that the second part of the article was still to come and on another hot topic in the affiliate industry - merchant de-duping.

For those of you that are unaware it’s potentially worth reminding us all what I mean by de-duping before going on to talk about how I feel that it’s a disgrace that networks let merchants get away with it.

Imagine for a moment the following customer journey€¦

A web user, who we’ll call Bob, decides that they are in the market for a widget and goes searching on the web for different widget reviews to find the right one.  After spending a long time finding what he feels is the right widget Bob eventually clicks on the link to widgetstore.com.  He decides that he is not going to pay straight away (maybe he does not have the cash till pay day, maybe he wants to check with his wife, Margret first - who knows).  A few days later Bob decides to go ahead with it but as he didn’t bookmark the widget review site he searches for widgetstore.com and clicks on their PPC advert.

Bob pays for the item and is happy to find out that his item will be delivered in just a few days time.  Bob is happy, Widgetstore.com is happy but all of a sudden the Widget review site owner is not.

What happened, I hear you cry?  Well the agency that looks after the widgetstore.com marketing has decided that the sale did not originate from the widget review site, even if the cookie triggered, they have decided that it was of course their hard work in bidding on the widgetstore.com brand name that got the customer into buying mode and rejected the affiliate sale for that very reason - makes their CPA look a little bit lower too.

I may use a little comedy above but the reality is far from funny.   As merchants and agencies €œget smart€ more de-duping is done both network and client side and it’s not just brand terms in my mind that are unjustifiably causing affiliates to lose out on commission.

Yes - we all know that the last click €œwins€ is an industry standard but the issue here is massive and brings more questions than answers, here’s a few that I have..

1)    Why should content affiliates who spend hours and hours every day writing quality comparisons like the ones on widgets suffer and lose out because of multiple activity occurring.
2)    What kind of response do you think you would get from google if you tried to claw back the valid fees because of de-duplication?
3)    Why should affiliate networks sit on their back and let this happen?
4)    Why do affiliates have to put up with this crap.

I work in an agency and would never dream of doing this.  Here is an example of how we work it.

We work on an affiliate campaign and a huge PPC campaign with a sports retailer.  As part of the reporting process we look for duplications of order numbers across both the affiliate and PPC campaign.

We report back to the client on this happening and explain (quite rightly) that affiliates should not be screwed over just because the customer was not in €œbuy€ mode.  We explain that if we were to start reversing sales then less and less content affiliates would be in business and eventually it would get harder to get the sales in the first place.

Report - do not punish!

So how does it get sorted?

I think networks need to take a stance here and stop letting the retailers think they can get away with this; perhaps there is a better level of tracking required to stop it from causing problems and perhaps the last click wins needs to be revisited.

At the very, very, very minimum I think that the industry needs to ensure that the situation above in relation to widgetstore.com does not happen - perhaps de-duping will never go away but it should not happen on the brand name level like it is now.