Moose on the Loose

One day, an affiliate was speaking at a seminar to a group of non-affiliate business people who were curious why he loved the affiliate marketing industry so much, and, to drive home a point, he conducted a little experiment to illustrate to those business people something they will never forget.

The affiliate stood in front of the group of high-powered over-achievers … who said … “Okay, it’s time for a little quiz” and the affiliate pulled out a one gallon demijohn and set it on the table in front of them.

The affiliate also produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the demijohn. When the demijohn was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, the affiliate asked, “Is this demijohn full?”

All the high-powered business people yelled, “Yes.”

The affiliate replied, “Really?”

So the affiliate reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. The affiliate dumped some gravel in and shook the demijohn causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks.

The affiliate then asked the group of high-powered over-achievers once more, “Is the demijohn full?”

By this time the business people were on to him. “Probably not,” one of them answered.

“Good!” the affiliate replied.

The affiliate continued & reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. The affiliate started dumping the sand into the demijohn and it went into all of the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel.

Once more the affiliate asked the question, “Is this demijohn full?”

“No!” the business people shouted.

Once again the affiliate said, “Good.”

Then the affiliate grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the demijohn was filled to the brim.

Then the affiliate looked at the business people and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?”

One eager beavered clever ass raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things in it!”

“No,” the affiliate replied, “that’s not the point at all.

The truth this illustration teaches us is that …

“If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all” … “What are the ‘big rocks’ in your life? These could be time with loved ones & family, your education, your dreams, a worthy cause, your interests, your health & fitness, teaching or mentoring others?”

The Moral & Why I Love Affiliate Marketing

Remember to put these BIG ROCKS in first or you’ll never get them in at all. So, tonight, or in the morning, when you are reflecting on this short parable, ask yourself this question, “What are the ‘big rocks’ in my life?” Then, put those in your demijohn first.

Affiliate Marketing allows you make the lifestyle choice which best suits you for that quality of life.

I have only literally just returned from the a4uexpo event which excelled beyond the high expectations we were confident it would deliver.

Nadeem quotes “This was one event that lived up to and surpassed the anticipation and hype.”

I’m not particularly lucid at the moment, so I shall post comments & overviews later on next week, whilst I take a bit of rest & recuperation in Portugal with Shane & my son, reading & digesting the various blogs & forum comments from my peers. However, the creative juices are flowing even more from the buzz … post a4uexpo, so I’ll probably be formulating & ferosciously scribbling ideas in the pool.

I am currently sitting here slurping my usual pint of tea & reading one particular blog from Stephen Pratley.

And I would like to quote one of the several aspects / good comments from his blog …

“… More than ever, affiliate marketing in the UK feels like a cohesive and professional industry, rather than a collection of businesses with their own agendas and we should thank all those who gave their precious time and expertise this week for helping that feeling grow …”

This event did illustrate that a majority of people, even with differences of opinion, can simply get along & share the common goal, and that there really shouldn’t / needn’t be any problem in addressing & eradicating the nuisance aspects & issues well documented within the affiliate marketing industry.

Last night, even myself & Malcolm had a brief chat oustide The Fox (good luck in the US btw & live the dream) … as I looked over across to another table under one of the patio heaters on a cool Autumns evening … I had flashbacks of the Stormtrooper & The Limo Club Days, whereby nearly all those same friends were still there sitting around the table sharing a jar (or many) & laughing as if it was only yesterday. Obviously there was the company of other terrific affiliates too, let’s bring those days back where all parties simply got along.

For all those involved in organising the event (Matt, Claire and the rest of the A4UExpo Team) … Congratulations! You did yourselves proud.

And for those familiar faces whom overcame nerves & stood up in front on the industry, absorbing the limelight by presenting & sharing their wisdom & knowledge in a well honed professional manner (showing what professional really means) they too should be duly chuffed with themselves … well done indeed! As also for those who came from further shores, whether simply attending or presenting, cheers for making a visit to the first of what we hope will be many a4uexpo’s.

Right I am off to re-pack the suitcase & back up onto the laptop … boa noite.

Do you partake in PPC direct to the merchants website from paid search engines using an affiliate link?

Do you feel that your keyword databases are a precious commodity?

If your answer is yes to the questions above then read on …

Therefore, what are your thoughts to merchants being able to see / analyse not only the referring url of sales or clicks, but also glean the keywords you use from direct to merchant advertising from paid search engines? As this could be a dilemma we have been facing for a quite a while. Now, granted a merchant can already access this information via their own logs since the creation of the internet.

Unless, of course you send the traffic via you own site first through a redirect i.e. google adwords / adsense > affiliate site redirect > merchant, this can be prevented some of the time but not all the time, I guess it depends on how it is initially set up.

We need some investigation into what networks allow merchants to see on the interface from the client side & some direct answers from a network if politely asked. These will then be cross referenced by asking merchants we know & trust what they actually see from their side. I do wonder if any networks don’t actually have the ability to prevent this from being seen or haven’t stripped out the most important part of the search string … that being the keywords.

Not only that, but also the networks have this information at their disposal, there is bound to be one or two less scrupulous aprties whether it be networks / merchants / agencies / even member of staff who will use these keywords for their own material gain, whether to pass on to clients on a consultancy basis – or have their own bid management tools they have developed themselves or acquired (which has happened recently in acquisitions) to use the keywords to block off ppc for affiliate programs entirely – or pass on to their own closed groups – or insist on restrictions on certain hybrid or generic phrases that they wouldn’t have previously known.

Perhaps we might even need the extreme of networks signing a non disclosure for the use of our keywords.

Anyhow back on track, I guess this can be stopped some of the time but not all of the time or can it?

Maybe one way which is near 100% fool proof is to land on affiliate page and click … as automatic forwarding can sometimes send the information along … however … you can add a slight pause or load an image on forwarding page that stops the referrer from passing across, hey you could even pass the search string along saying “bugger off” or maybe more suitably “tut tut tut” or “oh no you don’t”. Going through a redirect is also better if you have bid management tools or monitoring data, etc. There are slighly more advanced methods.

One downside a network may argue, is that they need information for detecting fraud or there could be some comeback with a network not liking you hide your traffic source … “Well sorry Mr Network, we are not participating in this & my keyword database is a lot more valuable asset to me than any unjust accusations you may wish to through at me”. I appreciate dealing with fraud affiliates is maybe one of the hardest most time consuming jobs going, but surely there are other ways & means of detecting these? If so answers on a postcard, please.

Charity begins at home, I don’t think we are telling all the fraud affiliates how to hide stuff more than what is solved, because they probably have more advanced ways of hiding their scams anyhow.

At the end of the day, the ball is in your court …

Question 1: How precious a commodity is your keyword database?

Question 2: By not having the appropriate redirects in place, are you happy about handing things on a plate to your competitors?

What prompted me to write this article, well it’s something I have been meaning to post for a while but more recently I saw some sales on a network get rejected by a merchant, because I suspect they came from adsense adverts according to the referring URL’s the merchant provided.

We have just received some wonderful news via text message … and want to congratulate with all our hearts, our friends Fraser & Fiona Edwards on the birth of first child (Baby Shrek-ess). Weighing in 6lb 8oz is their beautiful daughter … Anna Elizabeth … “Welcome to the world Anna Elizabeth”

Wishing you both every happiness in the world with your new bundle of joy & welcome to parenthood & all the great joys your children bring.

There are numerous reasons why I am voting Paidonresults for both Publisher Choice of Network 2007 & Innovation in Affiliate Marketing – Network Award for the inaugural A4U Awards

Shop Window from Affiliate Window is a very good product with massive potential and quite rightly definitely should reaceive highly commended in the category of Innovation in Affiliate Marketing – Network Award. Thus, I duly tilt my hat to them.

However, perhaps you should really stop and think what else innovation in Affiliate Marketing is really about, as Paid On Results has been doing very innovative stuff, not just recently but for a few years now, way before some other bigger networks may have copied them with similar tools, then claim to have delivered it first by simply rebranding it with some fancy name.

You see, Paid On Results develop excellent products & solutions without the trumpeter’s fanfare & just get on with it, though I do wish they were more vocal in proudly announcing them sometimes, but perhaps humility is a postive attribute to have.

Take for example an innovation like customer base tracking which is available for all merchants if they wish to utilise it, or multi-merchant network tracking to track sales across different merchants within the network. Paid On Results invented this stuff and most networks have still not played catch up.

Then of course you have an excellent affiliate area with innovative reporting, on how many networks can you customise your report to show the information you want by removing data you don’t want to see? Not many I expect, and Paid On Results was the first I believe to offer the whole custom table features.

Paid On Results lead the way with making life easier for Affiliates, the highly innovative Deep Link Creator, featured here on this blog amongst others. And by no means least … least as I am sure … I have missed out many other industry firsts.

How about the excellent and reliable Advanced Content Units which are customisable & fully integrated allowing multiple pages of product content to be navigated though by the visitor without leaving the affiliates web site, while still making it easy to drop into any website?

Take a look Here for yourself & click on samples of content units in the left hand column.

What Paid On Results has done to push innovation in the market place should never be overlooked and certainly not under estimated,  what Paid On Results acheived 3 years ago is what you will start to see on other Networks today (if ever), they are true innovators, not bad for probably only being one of the only networks never to have had any significant investment money pumped into them.

We all know & appreciate the good things Clarke Duncan has contributed to the affiliate marketing industry on all fronts, though I would like to give a special mention to one of the unsung heroes at Paid On Results .. & that is Graeme Sandwell who is the Thomas Edison (who was a Scot by the way) of affiliate marketing & very much part of the hue of bright light responsible for the exciting things that emanate from Paid On Results.

On an affiliate customer support note, as some of you are aware I am fairly nocturnal, on the odd occasion I have a query, I might send an email at silly / stupid o’clock, lo & behold I might even get a response at some unearthly time whilst I am working, which for me this kind of around the clock support is impressive … does this guy Graeme ever sleep? I just hope one day he will attend one of the main A4U Affiliate Get2gethers. Paid On Results take a balanced approach to any problems which may need a resolution to & the result is always fair, as they seem to understand affiliate marketing from all angles & sides of the fence.

If that wasn’t enough just check this out! The Voucher Manager Tool which is launching soon.

When you look at the size of the technical team at some of the other networks & compare this with Paid On Results, how comes Paid On Results produce better stuff. I look forward to the day when some major investment company realise this and invests heavily in them for equivalent sized teams of the same quality as what is at POR .. Just imagine what they could produce then, I reckon it would go exponentially of the chart. The same applies to many merchants too, by requesting they take a closer look at Paid On Results whether they have an existing program & are considering going dual network or are fresh to affiliate marketing. Because you know you won’t get the unecessary sales speel.

Therefore, above is just some of the few reasons why I am voting for Paid On Results for both Publisher Choice of Network 2007 & Innovation in Affiliate Marketing – Network Award for the inaugural A4U Awards.

Good Luck

This article was brought to my attention on the Affiliates4u … My interpretations of which are below & immediately prompted me to give attribute it good old fashioned slapping.

One of the many side affects in the suggestion of enforcing generics as negative keywords is that a few networks will disregard general opinion & what is right for the longevity of affiliate marketing industry by bowing to the whims of a merchant / agency to simply get a merchant onboard for short term override gains & beefing up their portfolio .. & maybe a few generally less vocal affiliates will win favour with a network or merchant by being subservient suffocants.

This of course will be SPUN as strategic partnerships or complementing the clients existing paid search activity or being tailored solutions.

I make no apology & exclaim foxtrot oscar to any spin, as a suggestion perhaps we align ourelves & work more closely with those merchants & agencies who DON’T want to have their cake & eat it, by exploring opportunities with these existing programs which are in the majority to become the successful programs so that they supersede the ones with an acute holier than thou attitude.

With foresight on restricting generic terms, this would simply open Pandora’s Box and incite a free reign with an injection of ludicrous ideas to currently more open minded merchants / agencies to add to the ever increasing restrictions & operational envelope which affiliates can freely exert their marketing prowess on whatever front.

There are certain boundaries which are needed to maintained & not encroached upon in order to protect the affiliate & the longevity of our (all affiliates) industry, so that paid search affiliates are not left with deadwood terms & the unwanted giblets, to prevent a merchant being hand fed the terms which convert by the network or their own reporting logs, so that as a consequence merchant can add to an ever increasing list of restricted generic terms. Too many don’t at network, merchant & agency lelvel still have difficulty understanding broadmatch & contextual matching mistakenly sssuming all is black & white, generics will simply increase the confusion.

For anyone bowing to the merchant / agency on this, smacks with signs of desperation for those finding it more competitive in the paid search space by injecting preposterous ideas into the suggestion box.

The Case Against & Paraphrasing:

“A number of merchants have stopped all generic keyword activity which utilises their display URL, and that they would rather have the option to work with them and allow them to restrict those generic keywords they think are “low hanging fruit” … (magical spin) .. (than to not work with them at all, because a merchants in house or agency cannot always find untapped keywords which they’ve stopped through over simplistic optimisation or simply never discovered yet. “

I reiterate .. “let’s focus our attention & work more closely with those merchants & agencies who DON’T want their cake & eat it, by making the those existing programs the successful ones so that they supersede the ones with a holier than thou attitude .. ”

As an affiliate I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of my knowledge & databases being used against me plus the aforementioned reasons, calling even the simplest generic terms “low hanging fruit” doesn’t wash, it’s knowing what converts at a decent ROI.

I can see where the article is coming from & the case presented, but the answer is a resolute NO, but I know as well as you do that predominantly a few networks & agencies will not heed any advice & do it anyhow … it probably already is happening … Though as an affiliate all we shall see within the admin area is about url restriction, whilst the private arrangements will be made who are well … let’s not go there …

So far, there seems to been a firm line drawn in the sand on opinion with this subject, with generally networks/agencies one side and generally affiliates the other. This is like sneaking the EU Constitution through the back door without a referendum. You have to look at the bigger picture.

There is a plethora of merchants which don’t have url restrictions including big brands, or is there an incorrect mindset that only big brands convert. Personally I find that cherry picking smaller brands reaps the rewards. Big Brand doesn’t equate to good conversions.

In some ways this stems back to closed groups on some aspects, but that aside there are more than enough programs with potential that don’t have url restrictions & maybe we should focus our attention on those. I also wonder if some networks are worried about losing the bigger brands because of this? What with the bed they made for themselves with closed group circles & not being stronger from outset.

Perhaps some networks would like to publish a list of merchants who embrace ppc affiliates on ALL generic terms & don’t have a display url exclusion rule. Hang on I already did, there was one network I chased for a while by requesting their top ten programs who didn’t have a display url restriction and/or closed group, eventually they came back and said they didn’t have ten merchants … lol .. However on the whole we keep a list of merchant restrictions and at the moment most merchants don’t have a restriction on display url on generics.

Now where was that blog about Frostie & his perfect network.

Biatch Slap or Lick Booty … You decide … But think long term & what is right for the industry.

Whilst burning the midnight oil & hitting the exercise bike at about 4am, I recollected a forum posting from many moons ago. Now most affiliate networks may have a decent TrustRank, PR PageRank (what ever nominal value you wish to attribute to that) & generally good quality link backs to them overall.

Wouldn’t it be nice if networks created a suitable page to list brief information & thumbnails of carefully selected affiliate websites, apart from being able ro showcase these to their prospective clients, it might also offer quality one way links back to the affiliate website page of their choice.

It might assist a little, it might assist a lot .. what ever effect .. come on networks “Share The Luv !”

On that thought it might be worthwhile asking merchants too.

Each network presents their reports in their own individual manner, some are better than others, however one report which generally requires deeper drilling pertains to void or rejected sales & commissions.

I just think that these void / rejected sales should also show in an adjacent column running parallel with the columns for confirmed & pending sales, it would simply allow checking stats a smoother & easier process whereby we can infer these simultaneously at a glance … very much like how Paidonresults do it, where each value whether a confirmed, pending or void/deleted sale is hyerlinked for easier drilling down reports.

This would help easily identify those merchants which appear to have high rejection rates, so you can ascertain whether its the quality of your own traffic or an over zealous merchant pressing the rejection button saying to himself .. “one for you, one for me …. one for you, one for me” or simply that due to stock levels that merchant often has problems with fulfillments of orders or abnormally high return rates compared with other merchants in their sector.

Following which, how easy do networks make it for merchants to reject sales? Shouldn’t affiliates be given a written explanation for each rejected commission, rather than the simpler methods like a drop down box?

A possible solution to the above paragraph, is whereby more merchants should establish a commission structure where rejection rates are taken into consideration (as a side note i don’t think affiliates should have sales rejected if the merchant is out of stock). For example if a merchant offers 10% commission but the product returns / rejected sales rate is 40%, then simply reduce the commission by 40% to say 6%, thus the affiliate doesn’t suffer the disappointment of seeing sales rejected & can calculate their expenditure (ie ppc advertising) more effectively.

Hopefully we might see the introduction of the above in the future.

“Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”

The above was a nice little proverb my friend my friend (so good I named him twice) Shane told me, whom I am still waiting to launch his blog which I am sure will be quite humourous.

Earlier this week I was chatting about the thought with a couple of networks and this morning read the latest blog entry from Monetise This … Tell Me The Referring URL When I Get A Sale .

He is absolutely spot on when he says “there’s one thing that I’d always like to know: what was the referring page that caused that sale.” This of course gives you an insight into what webpages are working for you & which paid search keyword phrases are creating sales. “It could help us affiliates concentrate on the pages that DONT generate income, and leave those that do, to sit there on their own.” – Frostie

Hence … What they reveal is suggestive

Now, a few networks do have this information like Webgains & Paidonresults for example, some of it requires a little more drilling down within the navigation like say Buy.at or Tradedoubler.

However, and this cannot be done simply by elimination when you have a lot of webpages created or doing considerable paid search.

What we maybe forgetting is the referring url & search string & keywords for those clicks that DON’T generate a sale, for which I would like to know for every click where I don ‘t make a sale & have access to a simple spreadsheet I can download pertaining to each merchant, over whatever date range. This would allow me to amend non performing pages, by adjusting the content or merchants appearing on that page to be more profitable. With reference to paid search, most decent ppc’ers have a fair amount of negative keywords in their campaigns, but you never think of all of them, this would then help in creating additional lists of negative dodo phrases or deleting those which create a positive ROI… simply by looking at this data of non performing clicks.

Thus increasing CTR & conversion & consequently ROI … blah blah .. But saving money by trimming the excess fat is just important as those which actaully generated sales.

Hence … “what they conceal is vital.”

Thus …

“Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”

What statistics conceal can lend itself to so many things within affiliate marketing & hopefully some networks will move forward on this.

It often gripes me that when a program has closed on a network, at any point in time afterwards, an affiliate may have links in various places universally spread over the surface of the earth (their portfolio of websites).

Sometimes you don’t know if a program is closed or know where all your links are. In the former you may test the link for a closed program, yet it still goes to the merchants website, thus the affiliate falsely assuming that the program maybe still live.

For me I find that quite frustrating, it doesn’t matter if the level of traffic is insignificant or considerable, affiliates should maybe be given the option of the following, because why should a closed merchant get free traffic!

1) The network sets up a landing page of same categorised merchants, with that affiliates links on those listed.

2) Allow the affiliate to set a default destination url for each merchant, which the link redirects to for a closed program.

3) Or if an affiliate prefers, allow the link to continue to the merchants page, even though the affiliate will not earn any revenue.

In addition to above, I do feel all networks should have a tool set up whereby affiliates know the source of clicks from invalid links for closed programs, so that we can weed them out.

But just think about all the programs which have closed over the years where there are stray links and multiples more when you think network wide how much traffic is going via invalid links, meaning lost revenue to affiliate & on an even bigger scale lost revenue for the network. The same should also be applied to suspended programs.