Moose on the Loose

Bah Humbug! … Without sounding like The Grinch who stole Christmas what does 2009 hold in store for us. “As Another One Bites The Dust” (See Youtube Video Below) with demise of the The Mighty Woolies Mammoth, where my sympathies do not go with the company but for the 25,000 people losing their jobs, who else will follow rapidly in their wake? If it can happen to this Titanic it can really happen to any retailer like the Not So Savvy Zavvi (with their dependency on their supplier, the EUK distribution arm of the Woolworths Group, calling in the Administrators. Zavvi apparently owing them £126 million.) Yep the same merchant who wouldn’t pay commissions on Wii Fits & other items. It makes you wonder whether Richard Branson had some kind of crystal ball selling off Virgin Megastore.

However, with the recent announcements from a couple of networks changing the way commission are paid to affiliates, to protect their own interests, which is understandable to a certain degree, it still leaves a question of which gang is left at the end of the payment chain, it does seem it might be affiliates more so. I think we need statements from all networks in the current & forthcoming harder times (though with hard times does come new opportunities) on what their current status is with regard to how they invoice & collect payments from merchants, together with methods, processes & guarantees. Then affiliates can Pick ‘n’ Mix accordingly.

Such as:

• Which merchants pay in escrow (pre payment)? Perhaps this should be significantly increased.
• Clear & concise single page flagging systems to which merchants are late with payments of invoices. Even their track record.
• What guarantees does the network offer for unpaid invoices whether a merchant is still on network or just left network?
• With late payments do networks charge interest & fixed penalties to their client & are these subsequently passed onto the affiliate? In relation to this why can’t affiliates introduce their own fixed penalty & interest terms? After all it is all their cash flow & accruing interest which is affected too.
• When a merchant leaves a network with pending commissions, are these conveniently deleted & disappear into the abyss leaving no audit trail?
• There should be an archive for affiliates to refer to historical unpaid invoices when a merchant leaves a network or any suspected pending commissions which were deleted.

Networks, in their unenviable task, though this is partly why they receive over rides in commission, should show affiliates what efforts they have done to retrieve commissions & if all their avenues pursued fail, allow the affiliate if they desire to pick up the gauntlet & chase payments.

One question I do have though, is that if the network is a third party invoicing on our behalf, isn’t the network liable to pay the affiliate anyway, even if the merchant hasn’t? Or are they similar to a glorified factoring service. Is there mileage down a factoring route?

Next year, more so than before, perhaps we should be more selective with our  Pick ‘n’ Mix of merchants we deal with. With generous affordable commissions, lengthy cookies, good conversions, reliable & payment in escrow.

As some merchants will no doubt try and squeeze the cheese, and no doubt use the credit crunch / recession as a reason (whether a legitimate one or as an excuse) in seeking cookie shortening & commission reduction exercises over the forthcoming coming months making Scrooge look like a spendthrift, it seems that The Chain Gang of affiliates may well be first in line for any forthcoming eventualities & would like to see what affiliates (apathetic by nature) are generally going to do to ensure they are first to receive payments.

What I am basically saying is that we need to safeguard ourselves a little more. The barrier to entry for a merchant launching an affiliate program is low, but even more so on how low the barrier is on how merchants can dictact the terms. Big brands shouldn’t get special treatment or payment terms by networks as we’ve seen, and as we know doesn’t necessarily make it a better program & thus shouldn’tbe permitted to use their brand status on leverage on payments & other terms.

I also wonder which networks will be around end at the end of 2009 or even merge or buy out with each other.

More so will there be less pyjama affiliates & less cheques cut by a networks each month.

One thing for sure, affiliates should maybe be given a little more scope & unbound from some over zealous shackles. No doubt networks & merchants will dither on some of the current concerns regarding Voucher Code Sites, BBG’s, Over Zealous T&C’s.

One hard lesson I have learned this year is to no longer be selfless, but take a more selfish approach to the industry.

Merry Christmas One & All.

Why should the intent of SEO’ing for a brand be a taboo area of discussion, when there is just as much intent via SEO, if not it’s more visible to rank for a brand then that by way of PPC? PPC is not always obvious or deliberate to “appear” for a brand or hybrid phrase, where with SEO it’s pretty much in black & white before your eyes.

Much of this PPC stuff has stemmed from knee jerk reactions when the single display url was introduced by Google. It seems that PPC has mistakenly been tarnished as a dirty word for purists or practise, when SEO for a merchant brand does essentially the same thing, both having elements of costs.

Now I am not suggesting there should necessarily be draconian restrictions applied to SEO too, but something has been lost in translation in affiliate marketing, In my opinion the mind set towards PPC is a somewhat wrong.

If you are inclined to think that imposing restrictions on SEO is a bad thing, then by the same token it’s a bad thing to impose on PPC too. Also would a merchant prefer proactive affiliates representing them positively on both marketing strategies or instead negative consumer reviews & competitors occupying the space?

There are too many mindless sheep around who find it easy prey to finger point at PPC affiliates, because they are easy targets.

The recent discussions seem to be around a plethora of voucher code sites adopting old school / old style title tag stuff to extreme limits ie “Argos Promotion Voucher Code Argos.co.uk Discount Voucher Codes …” then keyword stuffing as much as possible on that page. Is that quality? Is it right to SEO for something that doesn’t exist, but still probably win the last cookie because the consumer is now on that merchant specific page. It seems to me that are are plenty enough practises in SEO which might be considered as poor too. That’s if it is?

“29th February 2008 : Stop thinking SEO & Paid Search are different entities, preventing a merchant from appearing in organic search to a certain degree is just as easy or hard. So why aren’t SEO affiliates having the same restrictions imposed on them, ranking reasonably on Paid Search or Organic Results has their own elements of individual skill.

Why not turn to a SEO affiliate and say no more meta tags or name=”robots” content=”index,follow” or forcing javascript or images to be used for wherever the merchants name, variation or misspelling is mentioned.

Totally unreasonable isn’t it! Then in the same manner so is forcing negative keywords on paid search affiliates!” and to push the envelope still further perhaps restricting brand bidding too could be argued “When it seems there is lack in equality of who is receiving all the slaps by the happy-slappers, when perhaps neither paid search or seo affiliates should be be getting slapped at all.

Part of the problem is the training & perception of many network employees & merchants” … even affiliates … “was incorrect from the start, so much so that it becomes ingrained as a bad habit, which needs to be reprogrammed, as bad advice was originally being given out. “

I have to disagree about enforcing negatives on brand name in a generic campaign as there are too many permutations. If there are 1000 merchants with restrictions does that mean you would have to put everyone (mispellings & variations too .. even those they don’t actually hold trademarks for, I bet your bottom dollar most merchants don’t hold marks for the variations) in every single campaign / adgroup you run, no matter who or what you are promoting. Impractical & impossible.

Put the boot on the other foot, would any merchants put 30,000 affiliate websites & names as negatives in all their campaigns and adgroups. Then we can come onto the discussion on whats the difference between ppc’ing for a brand & seo‘ing for a brand or appearing on a hybrid term becuase of the generic element. Absolutely ludicrous and doesn’t worth entertaining the 5 minutes of my life wasted in writing this paragraph.

Any merchant which tried to enforce “appearing on” , personally I wouldn’t be keen to be part of that program.

Yet again this could get really impeding to industry growth & draconian if networks started going down this route of trying to enforce the “appearing” avenue.

Basically any restriction placed on PPC (barring display url)  can be applied systematically to SEO = Sun Emanating from (_O_)  … the objective & intent is essentially the same … which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The industry really does need to be careful, part of affiliates skill sets are SEO & SEM, restricting either or both is restricting the growth of the industry , if merchants are unhappy with that then let them find another performance marketting channel as efffective & transparent as affiliate marketing, there are plenty enough merchants who are willing to play ball, whilst the others can be educated or left to fester if they are uncompromising.

At the end of the day, ranking well or bidding for good generics is more valuable than ranking for the brand.

What makes me laugh or rather bemuses me are merchants who introduce heavy handed T&C’s on “brand”, and there are lots of them … you know the ones where the number of searches for a very obscure longtail term which might get a couple of searches a month yields more searches than the merchants “brand”, why have I quoted the word brand as “brand”, simple they are not a brand yet, yet they wish to suffocate the program from outset and thus less likely to aspire to one.

Hopefully this blog entry will get updated through the month 😉 Though not expected it warms the cockles of your heart when you receive presents from generous merchants & networks, so I would like to give a hearty thanks to the following.

Thanks Paid on Results – For the Magnificent Hamper

Thanks Webgains – For the Lovely Hamper

Thanks Buyagift – For the Magnum &  Jeroboam of Champagne (but how do I open the wooden box without a crow bar?) & the additional 6 bottles of Bollinger.

Thanks Market Ace (Jackpotjoy) – For the champagne.

Thanks Search 123 – For the mouth watering chocolates

Thanks Existem – For the yummy Chocolates

Thanks OMG – For the Pimms & Mixer

Thanks to the school girls football team for the present (which I haven’t opened yet) and the booze. Still waiting from the boys school football team.

As a follow on to this blog relating to a queuing system for cookies in an attempt to ascertain feasible solutions to sales affiliates reckon they could be losing to voucher code sites, perhaps another possible solution is a dual cookie scenario.

Previous blog entry: Cookie Overwriting – Is There Any Mileage In A Queuing System.
The continuation below:

So a consumer visiting a site via an affiliate link is dropped two cookies, one primary cookie will be valid for the normal cookie duration and can be overwritten by another primary cookie. Whilst the secondary cookie (with a timer) is fixed for a limited period of time, whether it be an hour or a few hours, however … this cannot be overwritten and takes precedence over other cookies until the timer lapses and then the primary cookie takes precedence. This might be a possible consideration to eleviate concerns of those losing out to voucher code sites.

Not everyone wants to have a voucher code site, or currently or wish to adopt it with their websites, some affiliates are focused on paid search direct to merchant. Why should non-VC affiliates lose out? Is it fair or not? Or is it just the way the cookie crumbles?

Bringing Forward Previous Comment:

The Need For Unique Voucher Codes

However, I still feel that each code distributed should be unique for any individual affiliate. ie appending a prefix or suffix to the discount code with the affiliates ID or a network / affiliate ID combo. So if the voucher code was XYZ, the network (abbreviated) ABC and the affiliate ID 123, then it would something like ABC123XYZ.

This way we can trace who had the last cookie (and even the preceding cookie) and who’s voucher code was used, thus gaining a slightly better overview, with an insight into the understanding of customer / consumer habits.

Don’t you just love long cookie periods, generally it seems cookie lengths are gradually shortening with well mindless reasoning like “bringing into alignment with other programs within the channel” and so forth. Thankfully there are merchants who value the affiliates a little more and the value of the customer the affiliate sends them.

Lets take Buyagift, one of my favourite programs with good old Grey-ham as their affiliate manager, a top top bloke. The cookie length is a generous 9999 days! So tonight I looked back at last months sales and the click reports on Affiliate Window for Buyagift. There were a number of sales for 2007 which I thought was very good, as I scrolled further down there were also sales from 2006 and even 2005 .. superb I thought … then last of all there was one dated 2004 … 14/12/2004 (19:57:03) .. almost 4 years ago … absolutely Fanriffic!

I scoff at these other menial cookie lengths … 30 days or less .. bah humbug to you all .. but most of all thanks Buyagift, last month alone I am better off by a couple hundred of squid to stick in the cookie jar, and yet again another good reason to promote you more with these little fortune cookies.

Q. “The role of the traditional media agency. Should marketers go direct or not?

In the same way that they got to grips with search, media agencies are now becoming focused on the opportunities presented by affiliate marketing.

This has traditionally been an environment where brands work directly with affiliates, but is it time that media agencies got involved?

What value would a marketer get out of this?

Benefits: Gets dealt with alongside rest of digital media. Agencies will argue that having all your media together offers economy of scale, convenience etc

Cons: Another link in the chain; another cost?”

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Media agencies can’t all be tarred with the same brush, each has to be judged on their own individual merits though it is accepted that a significant portion have been weighed, measured and found wanting.

A rule of thumb I have established, is where the affiliate department or company is operated by a recognised affiliate (not just a previous network employee (s)) whom was previously or still does operate as an affiliate with grass roots experience & knowledge, this is a fairly recent trend which I am pleased to report is increasingly going upwards.

You’ll find that that these companies are more likely to have a mindset more attuned with affiliates and the industry, knowing what is required for the fruition of an affiliate program to achieve an optimum potential. Companies include the likes of Existem AM, APA (Affiliate Program Advice), Shine Marketing & Total Search Solutions . Though their client base may not be considered blue chip, they generally know how to communicate effectively and are professional in their approach. .

However on the opposite end of the spectrum you have a number of agencies who though may talk the talk, you know … the real wind bags with eloquent use of vocabulary with bells & whistles presentations, blind you with numbers, yet can’t walk the walk.

Affiliates are dynamic professionals, unlike some larger lethargic agencies, who effectively get down to the nuts & bolts in layman’s terms. Some Agencies can easily be perceived as setting their own agenda, by having really restrictive terms & conditions or disallowing usage of the display URL in paid search because they have an in-house search agency or sycophantic brand bidding groups milking the cash cow on low hanging fruit (and that is not just brand terms), leaving the unwanted christmas turkey giblets for affiliates to try and market. They do act as another layer or even a buffer between affiliate and the actual merchant, where really the circle needs to be complete with direct communication / dialogue between the merchant dmc (decision maker contact(s) & the affiliate, though some agencies & even networks are protective of this direct contact, even to the point of them chaperoning clients at affiliate events, avoiding the, well let’s say more vociferous affiliates.

I do see the point with reference to all internet marketing kept in-house, but though some claim to have the experience, they actually don’t, and I would recommend the merchant seeking alternatives like the aforementioned expert affiliate consultants when dealing purely with the affiliate channel. There are possibly a few larger agencies we might feel comfortable dealing with, others generally fairly lethargic at getting affiliate suggestions into action, maybe even claiming the idea themselves or getting the required reliable tools, promotions, incentives, voucher codes or product databases necessary for affiliate to market effectively.

Affiliate management definitely has a need for integration with other channels, for example manage search, online PR and PPC as well as AM for some clients and knowing what’s going on in each channel can arguably get positive results, but remember affiliates also deal with paid search & SEO and not just websites.

It’s not exactly rocket science, though ironically I have some experience in that subject, they simply need to provide affiliates the tools they request, reward them appropriately & affordably, treat them with respect, don’t have draconian t&c’s & you’ll find they will overall endeavour aim to portray the merchant’s brand in a favourably hue & in the correct manner whilst delivering cost effective results from the best performance marketing channel available. The downside though is that because some larger media agencies bring blue chip clients to a network, the network themselves (not all) can be too yellow bellied to stand up to the media agency (cos of a risk of losing future clients), but will quite merrily dictate & scold affiliates, using terminology like “abused” & “violated”, not very pleasant terms and words you would only associate with paedophiliacs.

Merchants maintaining affiliate program management in house is a nice ideal, but in reality most don’t have the resources to nurture staff or possess the required skill set, that’s why media agencies with staff / owners of sound affiliate grounding have the specialist skills and relations that an experienced affiliate manager will have. Clients (merchants) should focus on setting their strategy, positioning, and even down to the detail of the marketing calendar, then involve the experts to work their magic in their respective fields.

Merchants should also invite & speak with key affiliates first before deciding which media agency would be best to manage the affiliate channel. Please note : not a network’s pet affiliate. The proof of the pudding may also be which agencies will work purely on a CPA basis,especially in the current climate, with a nominal management fee, excluding brand bidding privileges to the agencies in house paid search team. These are just a few important points as part the decision making process.

Did you know that the Books Direct Incentive is probably the most generous CASH incentive there has ever mean in UK Affiliate Marketing history. So far the Prize Pool after Octobers Figures is a staggering £11,860.35 where a number of lucky winners already have their Golden Ticket.

There is still time left to win your Golden Ticket for the big prize draw.

So don’t be a BUB and get in with your chance one of those last few Golden Tickets.

Related Links

Books Direct “Golden Ticket” Prize Pool Incentive – Estimated £10000 Plus 

Sharing the Wealth – The Solution to Brand Bidding Groups 

The traditional payment model in affiliate model is one of ‘last referrer wins’ or ‘last click wins’, with the final site that pushes a consumer through to the purchasing site being rewarded. But this model fails to take into account the vast array of sites that can influence a consumer up to the point of purchase. These can include price comparison sites, voucher code sites, other retailer sites, forums etc..

Nowadays & in the near future, marketers will want to know the exact route of how a consumer reaches their end destination. Eg – From Website A > Website B > price comparison site > voucher-code site > retailer site. There are different touchpoints consumers have en route to an online purchase and the following questions can be asked:

• Should payment be shared around sites more evenly, to reflect the whole journey?

• Will this lead to more incentive to push web users through to brand sites? Will it lead to more online sales?

• What are the benefits of tracking in this way to a marketer? Is it worth doing?  How does it work best?

For the idealists it’s maybe the utopia, but for the realists it’s probably impractical. With different touch points consumers have en route to an online purchase, there will unlikely be a universal agreement as to which point of a consumers journey, truly influenced the purchasing decision and it would be too complex for networks to implement alternatives across the board.

One point I must raise are those merchants & agencies who already de-dupe & don’t credit sales from affiliates who were the last referrer because one of the previous touch points was another source. This needs to be eradicated, together with merchant / agencies own PPC activity on brand which ends up as the last click when the affiliate did the pre sell.

Last click referrer is now too engrained in a mature affiliate industry for it all to change swiftly & smoothly to a model wholly acceptable.

We read & hear a lot of discussion about what is & isn’t unique content & that one source should maybe be attributed more commission than the other. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and a lot of debate comparing one site to another is very subjective. Perhaps there should instead be more focus on when an affiliate link is clicked it actually pre-fills the shopping cart or basket on the merchant’s site, rather than the consumer being pre-sold twice, this might actually improve conversions.

In other words, the variables are too numerous, which raises another question of who possesses the data on all the touch points. This would probably be only the merchant if they had sophisticated analytic tools at their disposal or an agency. Multi point’s payments will potentially see the demise of cashback sites & first cookie would a stuffers paradise. If new models were introduced there would be potentially more possibilities for opportunists to take advantage of.

However an incremental step towards an acceptable solution would be the introduction of hybrid commission structures by including a CPC in addition to or factored within the CPA. This would reward each of the touch points, granted this could be open to abuse if distributed to all affiliates, but merchants & networks can easily offer this option to trusted affiliates, implementation is straight forward as well as recording since clicks since they one of the uniform statistics appearing on reporting interfaces. The downside is trying to persuade merchants, because they had previously been sold the concept of performance marketing where they only pay a percentage commission on sale completion.

Another alternative is a queuing system for cookies where one cannot be overwritten for say 7 days, but goes next in a queue until the previous one expires.  i.e. multiple cookies in place.

The whole discussion of this subject seems to have escalated since the rise & popularity of voucher code & cashback sites, but that is a whole discussion within itself.

Another problem is do affiliates trust some agencies? Media Agencies are not key to seeing commission splitting working as there does seem to be a white collar, blue collar divide & trust issues with some of them.

I was speaking with a network who I was surprised on how open & candid they were, they said “most so called bigger agencies may set a priority to how sales come in and will give more “value” to CPM and SEO than to Affiliates and that the software is kicking about to be able to do this. They are really only out to make money for themselves & affiliate revenue is secondary. The problem with some agencies who deal in snake oil is they need to show it has worth so if they “help” decide the customer path to give affiliates a percentage of commission then they will take some for branding advert campaings that cost thousands and are a total waste of money, for 50p a click PPC campaigns on brands that affiliates could do for 20p etc.. these people are smoke and mirror experts”

So to summarise perhaps we should look at queuing systems for cookies & hybrid commission structures, these are realistic and simplistic steps towards appeasing most parties in rewarding the various touch points of a consumers journey. For myself personally I would be considerably more incentivised if there were hybrid commission structures in place.

Hi, I hope everyone is well? We’ve now calculated the prize fund for September and its looking very good indeed!!

So far the prize pool stands at a staggering £9,454.87 with still 3 months to go! In addition to this there have been 10 winners of £50, each with a Golden Ticket into the Big Prize Draw. Hopefully we shall surpass the current prize pool size predictions which was £10,000 to £12,000,

Full Details can be found by CLICKING HERE

Just to give you the heads up, it will be announced shortly that there will be more Golden Tickets up for grabs for ths best solus landing pages created for Books Direct. Maybe up to 5 single Golden Tickets in total plus a £50 bonus each. So get your creative juices flowing to be in with a chance.

With Christmas encroaching rapidly, it looks like one of the three wise men has come early. That is off course Zany Zak at Prezzybox with what is a truly tremendous promotion incentive whereby there are potentially UNLIMITED PRIZES and if acheivable sales targets are met you are GUARANTEED TO WIN.

Prizes Include:

• Star Prize 1 : £25,000 Sales Target – Win A Holiday to Dubai

• Star Prize 2 : £17,500 Sales Target – Skiing Holiday to France/Austria
• Gold Prize : £10,000 Sales Target – Golf Weekend at the Belfry OR Spa Day OR Trip to Paris for 2
• Silver Prize : £5000 Sales Target – Ferrari Racing Day/Spa Day
• Bronze : £3000 Sales Target – Mishake MP3 Player
• Wildcard : £500 Sales Target – Gets 1 entry into Dubai Prize Draw

That’s right. They’re not limiting it to 1 or 2 affiliates. EVERY Affiliate who reaches one of the targets will win that prize.

That’s not all…

Every multiple of either Star Prize target value that you achieve can be traded for a holiday place.

For example, if you generate £50,000 of sales you can choose 2 places to Dubai or 3 places to Skiing and so on. If you generate £30,000 you can choose 1 place to Dubai or 2 places to the skiing holiday. And so on – there is literally no limit to how many places you can win and you get to choose where you go! … Bring the better half, a friend or a colleague.

They also have a wildcard prize too. Every Affiliate who generates £500 sales revenue will get 1 entry into the hat. The winner (who will be picked out of the hat at random) will win 1 place to in Dubai.

Whilst on the trips they’ll be giving you enough space to do your own thing, but will organise a number of group activities for the lucky winners. The only bad news is that you’ll have to put up with Zany Zak as a chaperone to make sure everything goes swimmingly.

Full Details Can Be Found by CLICKING HERE

In the immortal words of Hot Chocolate, I dedicate this You Tube Clip to what is an excellent & generous promotion.