Affiliate Marketing Blog by James Little

I’ve mentioned it on the affiliates4u forum and on the Altogether Ads blog so through I might as well go all out and put it on here as well!

There is just 22 days left to be part of the first prize draw of the Altogether Ads golden ticket campaign.

(Above is the Mazda RX8 - not the best photo of it but shown in white especially for Kieron)

To recap, Altogether Ads are giving away 15 golden tickets over the next few months.  The ticket contains a £200 cheque and a VIP ticket to an event being organised later next year where each of the 15 winners will battle it out on stage and one of them will walk away will walk away with a brand new Mazda RX8 to keep for life.

Altogether Ads believe it’s the largest value prize ever to have been given away as an affiliate incentive in the UK.

The first ticket will be given away in a prize draw to any affiliate that signs up by the end of November 07.

You can find out more about Altogether Ads at www.altogetherads.com

Matt, Claire, Chris and everyone else at who had a hand in organising the A4U Expo should get a massive pat on the bank for what turned out to be the best affiliate event that I have had the pleasure of attending (and I’ve attended a fair few).

Day 1

My roundup is potentially going to be quite different to others who went as I only managed to make a small handful of the actually talks throughout the day after being left with Ken (who did a fantastic job) to man the stall that we decided to purchase at the last minute.

It all started on Wednesday night when we left the office just after 9pm after managing to get our network, Altogether Ads (which I’ll talk more about in a further post) launched just in time for the big day.

As our office is pretty near to the Jubilee line we managed to make it to the Buy.at pre-event party about 10pm when it was in full swing.

Thank you to buy.at for the drinks and the party.  It was great to catch up with old friends who I’ve not seen in a while and enjoy a few beers with some familiar and non-familiar faces.  I ended up giving up at Canning Town search for a cab with some other people who had managed to miss the last Jubilee line and promised to myself not to do the same thing again the next day.

Day 2

So after a few hours sleep and arriving back in the office to pick up the last bits and pieces for our stall at 7.30am we managed to get down to the event at 8.30, setup and start talking about some of the things that as a company we try and do well.

The stands were an excellent mix of Merchants (Sky, Littlewoods Direct and BT to name a few), Networks (AltogetherAds, Buy.at, Affiliate Window, DGM, Affilinet, Affiliate Future, OMG, CJ and Paid on Results) and even Affiliates (UK Web Media had one of the best).

I managed to make it along to my first session of the day to see fellow Altogether Digital staff member Ciaran Norris, a man I never get tired of listening talk, and a close friend Lee Mccoy in €œLets get social€, a session aimed at encouraging both merchants and affiliates at thinking outside of the box and embracing the social media to help improve both traffic and online acquisitions.

Both Ciaran and Lee have their own very unique styles and it was in my mind one of the best sessions of the entire event and I certainly came away buzzing with ideas - if only I had not given up my affiliate sites recently!

Most of the rest of the day was spent at the stall but I did make it to the final session entitled Extreme SEO which talked about the values (or not) of paid links, negative SEO and a battle between the white and black hats.  The Q&A from the audience went well and the only grumble I had was when I managed to get the microphone to ask the final question I got heckled from some of the speakers themselves!

The event wrapped up around 6pm when most people headed down to the after party and awards event.

I’m going to keep my views on the awards short and sweet - the only comment I will make is that it was a complete and utter tragedy that:

a)    Fraser didn’t win anything after single handily helping the industry develop with his great series of podcasts and

b)    Next winning an award.  Anyone that voted for the high street store can I please remind you of the following.  (1)  How can they be the best new affiliate program when they have had one for a few years and (2) They have decided, in their great wisdom, to LOWER the commission values just before the Christmas rush - great for them that they have to pay out less but come on guys - how on earth is this setting a good sign?  I’d love to hear from anyone who voted for them for the reasons behind it€¦

Day 3

Whilst it is the 3rd day that I’m writing this blog post on (sitting on the bus home) I find it hard to write too much about this day as the only session that I managed to attend was my own, a discussion panel on if we would need networks for 2008.

The day was great and I managed to find the time to take a better look around the stalls and continue my Nintendo Wii dominance by winning Tennis on the UK Web Media stall!   Business was good and I found myself thankful that I once again got the opportunity to speak to a great mix of people while hurting my feet standing up all day.

3pm shortly arrived and I found myself slightly nervous and apprehensive on being included in a panel with some industry heavy weights.

The €œWill you need a network in 2008€ session went over a number of points but the one I was potentially more vocal about was the differences between large and small networks with David Hall (from Affiliate Window) managing to suggest that smaller networks suffered from Spyware, Duplicate Sales and a general lack of decent tracking.

I disagreed with this strongly and mentioned to what seemed to be applause from Clarke that the size of the network has absolutely nothing to do with the technical aspects that that the network can bring to the equation.

As I said at the time - in terms of staff numbers commission junction is much bigger than Paid on results, for example, but CJ’s only recent tracking innovation was to try (and fail) to introduce JavaScript links, while Paid on results became the first UK network to actively promote video banners.

Anyhow - after packing up the stall I managed just about an hour at the after show party before getting home to spend some much needed time with the wife and kids.

Congrats once again to Matt and the Existem team - every single person I spoke to agreed it was above expectations and I look forward to seeing this progress once again in the 2008 show, pencilled in for early October.

Welcome to my first edition of A Week in the Affiliate World, a new feature that I hope to do on a regular basis. If you are asking yourself what this is and the reasons for it, let me take a minute to explain.

As there are so many affiliate/search/social blogs around these days, I thought it would be a nice idea to give a bit of an overview of some of the key posts each Friday afternoon/evening - submissions are welcome but for now I’ll crack on with this weeks edition & in no particular order, here are my favourites.

Firstly a big congratulation to Fraser on the birth of Anna Edwards. Arriving with enough time for Fraser to get down to the a4uawards in a few weeks and pick up one of the awards he has been nominated for.

And talking of awards.. Super Affiliate John over at Lammo.net has launched the alternative affiliate awards, otherwise known as the aFuawards the worse campaigns and fuck ups that we have seen in 2007. I’m sure there are a few takers on this one!

Kieron has reported today that The Sun has launched a new shopping comparison site, Sun Shop, powered by Affiliate Windows new €œShop Window€ tool. It’s a big win for Affiliate Window and if memory serves me correctly will replace the site previously run by shop.com.

While we are on the subject of Kieron I would ask that if you have a few minutes to spare make sure you visit his post about the bloggers choice awards and put in your nominations.

Lee Mccoy has kept up with his blog marathon (where does he find the time to write so much?) and posted some great €œMeet the Network€ articles on Webgains and DGM.

In network news, Paid on Results have announced the launch of a new tool currently in beta testing . Similar to one that we have been developing for the new Altogether network it allows merchants to set exclusive discount codes that can be used both on and offline - kudos for being the first to do this and I’m pretty sure that other networks will be following suit.

Jason is slightly cynical about the a4uawards nominations and looks more specically at the Jessops affiliate program, asking how they were nominated for Innovation and is definitely worth a good read.

Over the over side of the water I would also like to congratulate Sam Harrelson from Cost per News on another arrival into the affiliate industry. Mary Hudson may have only entered the world a few days ago but I’m sure that the sleepness nights have already started.

If you want to forget about affiliate marketing for a few minutes then also make sure that you heard over to the person blog of James Avery. The official affiliate spokesperson for the torries has been spending far too much time watching Parliament TV but certainly has some entertaining viewpoints on some of the current failings of the Labour party.

For anyone that is interested I’m also happy to say that my Macbook is up and running again (albeit without much data) and I’ve not given up on Macs just yet!

I think that about wraps it up for now - I hope that you all have a fantastic weekend and with any luck we’ll arrive back in the office on Monday morning with news of wins for England in Rugby, Football & Cricket!

This is a strange one.  As I’ve mentioned a few times, we (Altogether Digital) are soft-launching our new affiliate network in a few weeks time and as part of this I had a query for the IT director at the provider we are using.

To give you a bit of background, we decided to use a new ASP based solution (NOT directtrack!) after weighing up a number of different ideas.

Anyhow - back to my point.  I spoke to the IT Director about some additional functionality that we wanted to add and as part of this it came out that this provider (who currently run a medium sized US network) work on a first-in cookie basis.

In other words, if a visitor visits a merchant via Affiliate A and decides not to buy, but goes back and purchases something after visiting Affiliate B’s site/ad (within the cookie period) then Affiliate A get the commission, even if they did not generate the sale.

This is the opposite to how all the networks in the UK tend to work and I did have to pinch myself and confirm that I was not mistaking things, in fact, I asked Pete at Affiliate Future to confirm that they worked on the last man in basis and was greated with the following reply:

Pete says: how long you been in affiliate marketing..lol

So maybe it’s a geographic thing, I tell myself.   I get back in contact with the software provider and tell them that as things stand we would not want to launch with the tracking set that way - we certainly don’t want to encourage cookie stuffing after all.  Luckily all is fine and they are able to change the tracking method for our setup but I kept wondering if it was a US thing.

I asked Shawn Collins to clarify:

Shawn says:  that’s odd - LinkShare, CJ, Performics, Shareasale, etc - all pay on last referrer - I don’t beleive there is even an option to go the other way

Shawn says: that’s really such a big risk being invited - I like how MYAP does it - they let you decide by afifliate with last referrer getting paid as the default. I set it as first referrer for some adware affiliates back in 2002 when we were debating whether they were cheating

Shawn says: so they would only get commission if they were the first and only referrer, as I expected, their numbers dropped big time

So it seems it’s not a location thing but Shawn does raise a good point about Spyware, something that due to the efforts of Clarke, Jess and a number of others has never been too much of an issue in the UK (unlike the US where it’s been a long term plague).

I’m really trying to think of other reasons for a network to work this way - the only other slight benefit I could see (if you can even call it a benefit) is that it may make things harder for brand name bidders but I really would be interested in hearing the views of affiliates, merchants and networks alike to if this kind of policy would make much of a difference to them.

E-Consultancy are reporting that Kate Burns has joined Buy.at to consult on how to establish more agency relations. Kate has an impressive CV which includes being the first employee that google hired outside of the US and has also worked with Doubleclick, Altavista, and Yahoo!.

Kate Burns adds, “I want to help buy.at get agencies more interested in affiliate marketing and understand how they can profit from it. This is a complex channel based on relationships, delivery and technology”

Seeing as I am an affiliate director at an agency I have quite a lot to say about this matter but I will keep it quite brief.

I like the buy.at system. I like their backend. I like their tracking. I like their account management. I like them. But there is a but. Agencies can charge a lot; sometimes far too much and some of us try not to overcharge our clients - if you want to get us (and other agencies with similar views) to use the system all you need to do is change one thing, your setup fee.

I’ve ranted about this before so I won’t repeat yourself but it’s the only thing holding me back from putting clients on the buy.at network & from speaking to other people in the industry is their objection too.

If you are an affiliate, affiliate manager, network employee or agency worker then the chances are that you are registered for the a4uexpo at the end of October.  The event is hosted on the 25th/26th October in the London Excel centre and looks by all accounts to be a right corker!

I’ll be standing around for most of the day on the altogether stall but aside from that here are some of the sessions I’m looking forward to attending..

Day 1:

11.30-12.30: Let’s Get Social

The Affiliate 2.0 Session. Uncovering how affiliates are uniquely placed to profit from Blogging, Viral and Social Marketing. Real life practical examples on facebook applications, bebo and second life. With an update on what’s hot this Autumn.

NB.  This one is with our SEO/Social Director, Ciaran Norris & the famous Lee McCoy.  A must.

13.00-13.45: Ad Exchanges & Ad Marketplaces Uncovered

This session will introduce you to the emerging world of Ad Exchanges & Marketplaces. Starting with an explanation on how ad exchanges & marketplaces work, the session will take you through how advertisers and to publishers can benefit from using an ad exchange.

14.00-15.00: Meet the Super Affiliates

Driving sales of over £500 Million for their merchants last year, these super affiliates answer your questions on strategy and hot issues within the industry.  Ask the questions you’ve always wanted to!

15.30-16.30: The Interactive Insiders’ Guide to Selling Your Web Business

Join Duncan Jennings & Sean Lafleur as they share their complementary experiences in selling & buying web businesses (with more or less success).

17.00-18.00: Extreme SEO Q & A

Extreme SEO Q&A session on Search Engine Optimisation, with both black, grey and white hat experts from SEO.

Then of course there is the a4uawards in the evening

Day 2

09.30-10.30: £2bn & Growing. Where Next for Affiliate Marketing?

Leading industry figures predict how affiliate marketing will evolve with this keynote session. Speakers inc. the President of Linkshare, COO of TradeDoubler, Chief Exec of Buy.at, and the CEO of Affiliate Future.

11.00-12.00 The Changing Nature of Search

The Internet is maturing at lightening speed and the very definition of “Search” is changing with it.

From “Google Universal” to “personalized search”, not only are the search engines changing the way they see search, but so are the users changing their search methods and in particular they are changing their perceptions of who they trust on the internet to point them in the right direction.

This talk looks at some of the roots behind these potentially seismic shifts in user search behavior and the search providers themselves to see the dangers and the opportunities that face both merchants and affiliates alike.

12.30-13.30:  Widgets, Blidgets and the Implications for Affiliate Marketing in the long term

How widgets and blidgets will affect affiliate marketing in the long term. Widgets, Blidgets this session won’t make you Fidget!.

14.00-14.45 -  Case Study - The Online and Offline PR Campaigns for the MillionDollarHomePage.com

Imal will be speaking on the topic of The Online and Offline PR Campaigns for the MillionDollarHomePage.com & The Mount Madonna School Raffle ( 2.9 million dollars raised).

Discussed will be: Public Relations and marketing strategy before launching a campaign, Global vs. Regional campaigns - how to make each a success, Positioning key messages in the media, How to be effective in interviews, Outreaching to the media both online and offline.

15.00-16.00 - Will you need a network in 2008

This session examines the recent trend of full service agencies establishing micro networks.
Some say designed to cream the top performing Paid Search affiliates. Here we compare and contrast these with traditional affiliate networks, and what this means for the sector and the traditional relationship triangle. I’m on this one - so please do come and ask some questions!

16.30-17.30 Paid on Performance Search - The Future?

Are traditional agency models such as charging a percentage of search spend viable in the increasingly competitive paid search space?  This session compares and contrasts them against benifits of paid performance search as popularised by Affiliate Marketing.

Phew.  I think that’s it - along with actually being on the stand it’s going to be a busy few days - look forward to seeing many of you there!

For anyone that is unaware later this month I will be soft-lauching a new affiliate network as part of Altogether Digitals continued expansion into the affiliate arena.

It’s an exciting time as while the aim for the network is not to compete with the TradeDoublers of the world it does mean that in certain cases we will be either giving affiliates more or charging clients less.

As part of this we are looking to create an “Affiliate showcase”, giving a few select affiliates the opportunity to show off some of their sites/campaigns and hopefully to eventually benefit from a decent relevant link.

If anyone is interesting in being part of this please leave a comment below and i’ll get in touch.   I should also thank Paul  and Steve for the suggestion.

Ignoring the fact that it was a travesty that I was not on the short list for the awards I thought I’d go over the final results and reveal my final votes.

Publisher Choice of Network 2007

Affiliate Future
Affiliate Window
Buy.at
Paid on Results
TradeDoubler

Has to be Affiliate Future here.  It’s fair to say that their software is not the best in the world, but the account management is certainly one of the best out there and the two trips with them to Barbados (even if I had to pay) may have helped guide my vote!

Publisher Choice of Agency 2007

Affiliate Program Advice
Equator
Existem Affiliate Management
RO EYE

Obviously it’s Altogether Digital here, but in the absence from the short list i’d have to vote for RO EYE.  I think agencies have come a long way over the past year or so and RO EYE is certainly one of the best.

Publisher Choice of Merchant 2007

3 Mobile
Buy a Gift
HMV
PrezzyBox
Sky

Wasn’t there a whole big palaver with 3 Mobile and unauthorized emails going to affiliates on Buy.at saying that they have closed down?  Anyhow - it’s a hard choice out of either Prezzy Box of Buy a gift.  I’ll pick Buy a Gift because if their excellent Christmas Competition though.

Merchants Publisher of the Year 2007

Allkids.co.uk
eStuff (holiday Watchdog)
Freebie Sites UK
Uk Web Media

My choice has to be UK Web Media here, purely as the industries I have worked with have not put me in touch with the others.

Innovation in Affiliate Marketing - Network Award

Affiliate Future
Affiliate Window
Buy.at
Paid on Results
TradeDoubler

Quite a touch one.  Affiliate Window launched the Shop Window tool which seems to have gone down well and certainly helps with getting landing pages sorted for the non-technical focused PPC Affiliates.  Paid on Results have a great backend, solid tracking and some excellent content units.   In the end Innovation does mean Innovation though so Affiliate Window pip it.

Innovation in Affiliate Marketing - Merchant Award

Amazon
Buy a Gift
Jessops
PrezzyBox
Pru Health

It’s between Prezzybox and Amazon.  Amazon release the widget recently which seems to have been taken up well but Prezzybox win my vote for their Video ads.

Innovation in Affiliate Marketing - Publishers Award

eConversions
Fraser Edwards
Nectar
Quidco
UK Web Media

Fraser Edwards gets my vote here - his podcasts have been excellent and he’s a top guy to boot.

Publishers Manager of 2007 - Merchant Award

Chris Bishop - Hotel Chocolat
Ennis Al-Saiegh - Jessops
Graham Keen - Buyagift
Naomi Brown - Firebox
Zak Edwards - Prezzybox

I vote for Naomi - she’s been doing all the right things (XML Feeds, Blogging, Events, Freebies, etc) but obviously Zak and Graham are both at the top of the pile.

Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2007

AffiliateStuff.co.uk - Kirsty McGubbin
AffiliateBlog.co.uk - Fraser Edwards
Here.org.uk - Kieron Donoghue
Mooseontheloose.co.uk - Paul Wheatley
MorleyMouse.com - Dan Morley

Hard choice.  I’ve already voted for Fraser and don’t think he should get both votes, so I’m going to vote Kieron on this one.  His content for the blog is always excellent and he was one of the founding affiliate bloggers!   If Lee McCoy was on the list he would have been my joint top choice!

Best Account Manager 2007

Fiona MacPherson - Equator
Hero Gregoraki - Webgains
Matt Bailey - DGM
Michelle Boxall - All Response Media
Sean Carter - MediaVest International

Matt Bailey gets my vote here.  I will publicly say that if I am not nominated next year then I’m going to quit my job though!

Best New Merchant of 2007

Arcadia
Childrens Rooms
Next
Setanta
Wickes

Very strange choices.  I’ll vote Childrens Rooms purely because of who runs it though.  Think there are other candidates who should be included here though..

Best New Affiliate of 2007

Dealpond
Maxafi
Smoolah

Not sure if I work with any of these.  Smoolah gets the vote for the most web 2.0 name in affiliate marketing though.

Best International Publisher

Clicks2 Customers
eConversions
Net Media Planet

eConversions for me!  A good bunch of people who I wish I worked with more.

Industry Champion Award 2007

Clarke Duncan
Fraser Edwards
Jess Luthi
Keith Budden
Matthew Wood
Nick Roveta

It’s quite obvious that Matt is going to win this.  Not sure how some of the others got on the list.

Overall I still find it quite a strange short list and wonder how many votes were counted - there seems to be quite a few “Community” choices rather than actual deserved applicants.

A big thanks to Affiliate Future for their Performance Booster event at Park Hall in Chorley on Friday afternoon. We ended up driving up and getting stuck in traffic (partly due to a pretty bad downpour of rain on the M6) and didn’t get there till 4pm - this meant that I missed the rides at the Theme Park (!) but managed to have a quick do on the dodgems and was not purposely aiming at Lee McCoy & Mary…. honestly.

The evening event did not disappoint - the product showcases in the dining hall gave a fantastic insight into some of the merchants on Affiliate Future and certainly gave some fuel to thought for new promotions on some of my sites. The fashion show by TightsPlease was certainly interesting and a few of the blokes seemed to be enjoying it and taking a few photos! The sit down three course meal made a nice change and after aiming to win both the Poker and Wii Tennis tournament I did manage to come away with a few prizes to take home (So thanks to Firebox for the Helicopters, The Hut for the DVD & Football Manager game and of course to Virginia Hayward for the £140 Christmas Hamper.

It was great to see some many friends from the industry and to meet some more fantastic people and truly was a great event for both business and personal pleasure.

Another benefit that I came away with was a better understanding of affiliate marketing for my wife who is now sitting down to concentrate on her freebie site again and hoping that as a fun time mum she’s able to make a bit of extra income to spend on shoes and clothes!

A final thanks to the organisers, however after producing such a great event there are many high expectations for the next one!

Working for an agency that offers affiliate management I tend to be having quite a few programs come in. Rather than have a special deal with any particular network we look at each campaign on a case-by-case basis and try and decide where we feel our client will get the best exposure.

One of the things that really grates me in this industry is how different the setup fees and monthly fees can be, lets look at an example..

I have a program which has a budget set aside for commission of around £10k per month - it’s a recruitment company who are doing some really cool things online once their site is re-development and re-branded next month.   As part of this campaign we are looking to build a widget that will integrate with the network tracking.  The client, as well as spending hundreds of thousands of pounds online in their initial three month re-launch is also spending just as much (or even more) offline.

I find a network where we can integrate our widget fairly easily, start talking to the business development guy about costs and am informed that their setup fee is a rather hefty £5,000 - this is probably the second largest in the industry.

Interestingly this same network refused to take on a program I was working with just over a year ago which turned out to be a huge success, they later said that they realised they were wrong to reject it at the time but their fee structure means they are likely to make the same mistake again

Have networks really forgotten what they are there for?  Personally (perhaps incorrectly?) I have always seen a network as a facilitator, something that is there to offer a robust / trusted tracking solution and handle the payment to a large affiliate base.  So why are these fee’s so high?

On another scale, we’ve launched a number of campaigns on another network recently that have all gone really well where the setup fee is just £500 - a much more realistic amount considering they are getting paid rather well with their override.

Obviously there are different levels of service offered by networks but it always tends to stager me that the costing structure can be so different.