Pay-Per-Click or PPC in Affiliate Marketing Business

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click and is generally used when described paid search engine results. There are plenty of other per click payment metrics, such as CPC (cost-per-click) banner advertising, and even some affiliate programs. However, despite similarities in payment structure, when someone says PPC advertising they almost always mean paid search engine results.

There are four major PPC programs out there, Overture, Miva, Google, and Looksmart. While there is no rule saying that you can only use one, and in fact many people use all 3, what if you want to get the most bang for your buck? Which do you choose? This article isn’t going to answer that question for you, but it will give you the information you need to answer that question for yourself.

All of these programs provide tools for monitoring your listings, for picking good listings, and all around campaign management. So instead of focusing on those features I’m going to be focusing on effectiveness and cost.

Overture/Yahoo

Overture is the grand daddy of PPC search engines. They started out as Goto.com and after spending millions of dollars branding themselves they relaunched as Overture a couple years later. This change make a shift in their main promotional efforts. Previously, as Goto.com, they wanted to get surfers to visit their site to perform their searches. In other words they were competing with other search portals. Now, as Overture, they are more focused on providing their services to search portals that they once competed with. They have recently purchases AltaVista and Lycos, two former heavyweights of the search engine world. In addition to those two they also have distribution deals with Yahoo, MSN, and Infospace among others.

Overture works by allowing you to bid on a keyword, and whoever has the highest bid gets listed first, the next highest gets listed second, and so on down the line with the minimum bid being 10 cents. Usually Overture’s partners only show the first 3 or so results. This bidding can create bidding wars and in general advertising on Overture is more expensive than it is on Google or LookSmart. Additionally due to how the listings look and because partners often only take the first few being a high bidder is important if you want to drive a lot of traffic. Because of these reasons Overture is the most expensive option for a long term campaign. One more downside with Overture is that they’re partnered with Gator, which is an infamous spyware company that most honest webmasters do not want to be associated with. They also can take awhile to approve your listings and they require a minimum expenditure of $20 a month.

Miva

MIVA is the new name for the FindWhat.com Group. In 2004, FindWhat.com undertook an aggressive merger and acquisition strategy, bringing together numerous companies from around the globe, including Espotting, Miva Corporation, B&B Advertising, MVCool and Comet Systems.

MIVA provides partners with customized solutions to monetize website traffic. We listen to your needs and provide solutions which increase the value per visit to your website.

MIVA Distribution Partners benefits:

1. Solutions are Customized and branded that perfectly integrate into your site.
2. Dedicated to your success. We are the largest independent Performance Marketing Network.
3. Delivering more value per visit with a large choice of solutions which provide relevant information at the right time for the user. MIVA is passionately dedicated to customer service. The bottom line: MIVA delivers more revenue to your bottom line.

Google Adsense

When you display Google ads on your website, you’ll be maximizing your revenue potential. Google places relevant CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) ads into the same auction and lets them compete against one another. The auction takes place instantaneously and when it’s over AdSense will automatically display the text or image ad(s) that will generate the maximum revenue for a page — and the maximum revenue for you. With AdSense, you can monitor your ad performance with customizable online reports that offer details like the number of page impressions, clicks and click-through rate. You can track the performance of specific ad formats, colors and pages, and spot trends quickly and easily. Our flexible reporting tools let you group your pages however you want, so you can gain insight into your earnings by viewing results by URL, domain, ad type, category and more. And best of all, of course, you can check your earnings anytime.

When you display Google ads on your website, you’ll be maximizing your revenue potential. Google places relevant CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) ads into the same auction and lets them compete against one another. The auction takes place instantaneously and when it’s over AdSense will automatically display the text or image ad(s) that will generate the maximum revenue for a page — and the maximum revenue for you. With AdSense, you can monitor your ad performance with customizable online reports that offer details like the number of page impressions, clicks and click-through rate. You can track the performance of specific ad formats, colors and pages, and spot trends quickly and easily. Our flexible reporting tools let you group your pages however you want, so you can gain insight into your earnings by viewing results by URL, domain, ad type, category and more. And best of all, of course, you can check your earnings anytime.

It isn’t perfect though. One issue is that you’re drastically limited by the size of the back and must often be creative when trying to figure out how to write your ad copy with only a handful of characters of text at your disposal. Another issue is that they monitor performance and if your ads do not perform well they disable them – this can become annoying after awhile and expensive as well. Eventually they’ll charge you $5 every time you enable a deactivated ad. One final problem is that Google will not allow you to advertise a site that has popups. On the surface this sounds fine but they don’t care what the popup is. For instance I run a popup that is cookie controlled so that each user only sees it once, ever, and it advertises my newsletter. My Adwords listing was eventually disabled when a Google editor noticed this.

LookSmart

Their change from a pay directory like Yahoo to a PPC directory annoyed many webmasters. The main draw with LookSmart is getting into the primary results at MSN. See Overture provides MSN with a couple sponsored listings, then LookSmart provides primary results, and after LookSmart results (which can go on for pages) Inktomi comes in and provides secondary results. So for the time being the only way to get into MSN’s primary results is through LookSmart. LookSmart also differs from the other in that they don’t allow you to bid for keywords, everyone in the program pays 15 cents per click. This price fixing is nice because it prevents bidding wars like what you’ll find at Overture. It also means that you can get to the top of the listings if you know how to optimize for directories and still only pay 15 cents per click. You can also budget your listings with Looksmart and once you reach your maximum they’ll turn your listing off for the remainder of the month.

LookSmart does have its downsides though. It charges a high $29 setup fee, and you could still rejected. It also charges for listing changes and requires a minimum of $15 a month. However LookSmart does have one bonus that the others don’t, that is link popularity. Being listed in LookSmart gives you incoming links from LookSmart itself and from places that use LookSmart’s directory (such as AltaVista).

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Clickbooth.com handles extremely large volume and, as a result, we take the smallest margins and offer the highest payouts in the industry. As a Clickbooth.com publisher, you’ll take advantage of our ability to close large deals for higher payouts from the biggest companies in the industry.

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• Check specific URLs to see if your robots.txt file allows or blocks them.
• See if Googlebot had trouble parsing any lines in your robots.txt file.
• Test changes to your robots.txt file.

If you don’t currently use a robots.txt file, you can create one and then test it with the tool before you upload it to your site.

the robots.txt analysis tool displays the text of your cached robots.txt file. You can enter a list of URLs and check to make sure that file restricts or allows access as you expect. You can also modify the displayed robots.txt file and then enter a list of URLs to check so that you can see how changes to your robots.txt file would change Googlebot’s access to specific pages.

Once you are happy with your revised robots.txt file, make the changes on the version on your site. Note that it may take up to a day for the Googlebot to retrieve the latest version. You can always check when we last downloaded your robots.txt file at the top of the robots.txt analysis page.

What are URLs restricted by robots.txt errors?
Google was unable to crawl the URL due to a robots.txt restriction. This can happen for a number of reasons. For instance, your robots.txt file might prohibit the Googlebot entirely; it might prohibit access to the directory in which this URL is located; or it might prohibit access to the URL specifically. Often, this is not an error. You may have specifically set up a robots.txt file to prevent us from crawling this URL. If that is the case, there’s no need to fix this; we will continue to respect robots.txt for this file.

What are URLs restricted by robots.txt errors?

Google was unable to crawl the URL due to a robots.txt restriction. This can happen for a number of reasons. For instance, your robots.txt file might prohibit the Googlebot entirely; it might prohibit access to the directory in which this URL is located; or it might prohibit access to the URL specifically. Often, this is not an error. You may have specifically set up a robots.txt file to prevent us from crawling this URL. If that is the case, there’s no need to fix this; we will continue to respect robots.txt for this file.

What do the robots.txt file analysis results mean?

When you test a URL against a robots.txt file, you will see one of the following results:

• Allowed— Googlebot will crawl the URL.
• Blocked— Googlebot will not crawl the URL.
• Not in domain— This URL is not on the same domain as the robots.txt file and therefore, you cannot block it.
• Syntax not understood— Googlebot does not recognize this as a valid URL.

Additionally you may see the following message:

• Detected as a directory; specific files may have different restrictions— Although this directory is blocked or allowed, there may be other, more specific rules in the file that block or allow URLs in the directory, so you will want to check those as well.

If Googlebot has difficulty understanding parts of your robots.txt file, you will see one of the following parsing results, which you will want to fix:

• Accepted, but should be Disallow— You misspelled “Disallow.”
• Accepted, but should be user-agent— You misspelled “user-agent.”
• Accepted, but correct syntax includes a colon (Rule: path)— You forgot to put a colon between “Allow” or “Disallow” and the path.
• Rule ignored by Googlebot— This is not a rule that Googlebot follows (for example, “Crawl-delay”).
• No user-agent specified— You have rules that aren’t associated with a user-agent.
• Syntax not understood— Googlebot does not understand this line.
• robots.txt file does not appear to be valid— Googlebot doesn’t understand any parts of this file and therefore, doesn’t recognize it as a valid a robots.txt file.

This tool provides results only for Google user-agents (such as Googlebot). Other bots may not interpret the robots.txt file in the same way. For instance, Googlebot supports an extended definition of the standard. It understands Allow: lines, as well as * and $ pattern matching. So while the tool shows lines that include these extensions as understood, remember that this applies only to Googlebot and not necessarily to other bots that may crawl your site.

If a robots.txt file exists in the root directory of the domain, this tools lists the information that Google has about it, including:

• A link to the current robots.txt file on your site.
• When Google last downloaded the file – if you’ve made changes to the file after this date and time, our cached version won’t reflect the changes
• The status of the file – the HTTP response we received when we tried to downloaded it (If the status is 200, then we accessed the file successfully; if the status is 404, then the file doesn’t exist. You can learn more about status codes in RFC-2616.)
• The MIME type – if the file is a type other than text, we can’t process it
• If the robots.txt is blocking access to your home page or to any Sitemaps you’ve submitted.
• If we had trouble parsing lines in the file.

To analyze a site’s robots.txt file:

• Sign into Google webmaster tools with your Google Account.
• On the Dashboard, click the URL for the site you want.
• Click Tools, and then click Analyze robots.txt.

Our webmaster guidelines provide general design, technical, and quality guidelines. Below are more detailed tips for creating a Google-friendly site.

Give visitors the information they’re looking for
Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site.

Make sure that other sites link to yours
Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google combines PageRank (our view of a page’s importance) with sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google counts the number of votes a page receives as part of its PageRank assessment, interpreting a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. Natural links to your site develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links to your site are placed there specifically to make your site look more popular to search engines. Some of these types of links (such as link schemes and doorway pages) are covered in our webmaster guidelines.

Only natural links are useful for the indexing and ranking of your site.

Make your site easily accessible
Build your site with a logical link structure. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

Use a text browser, such as Lynx, to examine your site. Most spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Macromedia Flash keep you from seeing your entire site in a text browser, then spiders may have trouble crawling it.

Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages. If you create static copies, don’t forget to add your dynamic pages to your robots.txt file to prevent us from treating them as duplicates.

Things to Avoid

Don’t fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to “cloak” pages, or put up “crawler only” pages. If your site contains pages, links, or text that you don’t intend visitors to see, Google considers those links and pages deceptive and may ignore your site.

Don’t feel obligated to purchase a search engine optimization service. Some companies claim to “guarantee” high ranking for your site in Google’s search results. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site’s flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics in an attempt to fool search engines. Be careful; if your domain is affiliated with one of these deceptive services, it could be banned from our index.

Don’t use images to display important names, content, or links. Our crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in graphics. Use ALT attributes if the main content and keywords on your page can’t be formatted in regular HTML.

Don’t create multiple copies of a page under different URLs. Many sites offer text-only or printer-friendly versions of pages that contain the same content as the corresponding graphic-rich pages. To ensure that your preferred page is included in our search results, you’ll need to block duplicates from our spiders using a robots.txt file. For information about using a robots.txt file, please visit our information on blocking Googlebot.

To determine whether your site is currently included in Google’s index, just perform a search for your site’s URL. For example, a search for [ site:www.google.com ] returns the following results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.google.com+

Although Google crawls billions of pages, it’s inevitable that some sites will be missed. When our spiders miss a site, it’s frequently for one of the following reasons:

• The site isn’t well connected through multiple links to other sites on the web.
• The site launched after Google’s most recent crawl was completed.
• The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to effectively crawl its content.
• The site was temporarily unavailable when we tried to crawl it or we received an error when we tried to crawl it. You can use Google webmaster tools to see if we received errors when trying to crawl your site.

Our intent is to represent the content of the internet fairly and accurately. To help make this goal a reality, we offer guidelines as well as tips for building a crawler-friendly site. While there’s no guarantee that our spiders will find a particular site, following these guidelines should increase your site’s chances of showing up in our search results.

Consider creating and submitting a detailed site map of your pages. Sitemaps are an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google. With Sitemaps, you can automatically keep us informed of all of your current pages and any updates you make to those pages. Please note that submitting a Sitemap doesn’t guarantee that all pages of your site will be crawled or included in our search results.

Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to the efficiency of our search algorithm and partly to the thousands of low cost PC’s we’ve networked together to create a superfast search engine.

The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools.

PageRank Explained

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.

Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

Integrity Google’s complex automated methods make human tampering with our search results extremely difficult. And though we may run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a particular or higher placement). A Google search provides an easy and effective way to find high-quality websites that contain information relevant to your search.

These changes are typically automated. However, Google reserves the right to make the ultimate determination as to whether a website’s ranking increases, decreases, or remains the same. It is certainly our intent to represent the content of the internet fairly and accurately. To learn more about how Google determines sites’ positions in our search results, please see http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

Occasionally, fluctuation in ranking could be due to differences in our data centers. When you perform a Google search, your query is sent to a Google data center in order to retrieve search results. There are numerous data centers, and many factors (such as geographic location and search traffic) determine where a query is sent. Because not all of our data centers are updated simultaneously, it’s possible to see slightly different search results depending on which data center handles your query.

While we can’t guarantee that any page will rank consistently in our search results, or be included at all for that matter, our webmaster guidelines offer helpful tips for maintaining a Google-friendly site. In general, webmasters can improve a site’s visibility in our search results by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to it.

While Google doesn’t have relationships with any SEOs and doesn’t offer recommendations, we do have a few tips that may help you distinguish between an SEO that will improve your site and one that will only improve your chances of being dropped from search engine results altogether.

• Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue.

  Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

  “Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

  Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Google Sitemaps program, and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.

  Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or “throwaway” domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to “help” you.

• You should never have to link to an SEO.

  Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of “free-for-all” links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don’t affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines — at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

• Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar.

  Most such proposals require users to install extra software, and very few users do so. Evaluate such proposals with extreme care and be skeptical about the self-reported number of users who have downloaded the required applications.

• Choose wisely.

  While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html. While Google doesn’t comment on specific companies, we’ve encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.

• Be sure to understand where the money goes.

  While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they “control” other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn’t work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you’re considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.

• Talk to many SEOs, and ask other SEOs if they’d recommend the firm you’re considering.

  References are a good start, but they don’t tell the whole story. You should ask how long a company has been in business and how many full time individuals it employs. If you feel pressured or uneasy, go with your gut feeling and play it safe: hold off until you find a firm that you can trust. Ask your SEO firm if it reports every spam abuse that it finds to Google using our spam complaint form at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. Ethical SEO firms report deceptive sites that violate Google’s spam guidelines.

• Make sure you’re protected legally.

  For your own safety, you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee. Don’t be afraid to request a refund if you’re unsatisfied for any reason, or if your SEO’s actions cause your domain to be removed from a search engine’s index. Make sure you have a contract in writing that includes pricing. The contract should also require the SEO to stay within the guidelines recommended by each search engine for site inclusion.

What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know.We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.

• Links intended to manipulate PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?

It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest. In addition, submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.

If you’d like to discuss this with Google, or have ideas for how we can better communicate with you about it, please post in our webmaster discussion forum.

Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.

Some examples of cloaking include:

• Serving a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images or Flash to users.
• Serving different content to search engines than to users.

If your site contains elements that aren’t crawlable by search engines (such as Flash, Javascript, or images), you shouldn’t provide cloaked content to search engines. Rather, you should consider visitors to your site who are unable to view these elements as well. For instance:

• Provide alt text that describes images for visitors with screen readers or images turned off in their browsers.
• Provide the textual contents of Javascript in a noscript tag.

Ensure that you provide the same content in both elements (for instance, provide the same text in the Javascript as in the noscript tag). Including substantially different content in the alternate element may cause Google to take action on the site.

Sneaky Javascript redirectsWhen Googlebot indexes a page containing Javascript, it will index that page but it cannot follow or index any links hidden in the Javascript itself. Use of Javascript is an entirely legitimate web practice. However, use of Javascript with the intent to deceive search engines is not. For instance, placing different text in Javascript than in a noscript tag violates our webmaster guidelines because it displays different content for users (who see the Javascript-based text) than for search engines (which see the noscript-based text). Along those lines, it violates the webmaster guidelines to embed a link in Javascript that redirects the user to a different page with the intent to show the user a different page than the search engine sees. When a redirect link is embedded in Javascript, the search engine indexes the original page rather than following the link, whereas users are taken to the redirect target. Like cloaking, this practice is deceptive because it displays different content to users and to Googlebot, and can take a visitor somewhere other than where they intended to go.

Note that placement of links within Javascript is alone not deceptive. When examining Javascript on your site to ensure your site adheres to our guidelines, consider the intent.

Keep in mind that since search engines generally can’t access the contents of Javascript, legitimate links within Javascript will likely be inaccessible to them (as well as to visitors without Javascript-enabled browsers). You might instead keep links outside of Javascript or replicate them in a noscript tag.

Doorway pagesDoorway pages are pages specifically made for search engines. Doorway pages contain many links – often several hundred – that are of little to no use to the visitor, and do not contain valuable content. HTML sitemaps are a valuable resource for your visitors, but ensure that these pages of links are easy for your visitors to navigate. If you have a number of links to include, consider organizing them into categories or into multiple pages. But in doing so, ensure that they are intended for visitors to navigate the sections of your site, and not simply for search engines.

Google’s aim is to give our users the most valuable and relevant search results. Therefore, we frown on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones they selected and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines. Sites making use of these practices may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in Google search results.

If your site has been removed from our search results, review our webmaster guidelines for more information. Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.

If you’d like to discuss this with Google, or have ideas for how we can better communicate with you about it, please post in our Webmaster Help Group.

• Using white text on a white background
• Including text behind an image
• Using CSS to hide text
• Setting the font size to 0

Hidden links are links that are intended to be crawled by Googlebot, but are unreadable to humans because:

• The link consists of hidden text (for example, the text color and background color are identical).
• CSS has been used to make tiny hyperlinks, as little as one pixel high.
• The link is hidden in a small character – for example, a hyphen in the middle of a paragraph.

If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages. When evaluating your site to see if it includes hidden text or links, look for anything that’s not easily viewable by visitors of your site. Are any text or links there solely for search engines rather than visitors?

If you’re using text to try to describe something search engines can’t access – for example, Javascript, images, or Flash files – remember that many human visitors using screen readers, mobile browsers, browsers without plug-ins, and slow connections will not be able to view that content either. Using descriptive text for these items will improve the accessibility of your site. You can test accessibility by turning off Javascript, Flash, and images in your browser, or by using a text-only browser such as Lynx. Some tips on making your site accessible include:

• Images: Use the alt attribute to provide descriptive text. In addition, we recommend using a human-readable caption and descriptive text around the image.
• Javascript: Place the same content from the Javascript in a no script tag. If you use this method, ensure the contents are exactly same as what is contained in the Javascript and that this content is shown to visitors who do not have Javascript enabled in their browser.
• Flash: Consider placing descriptive text and site navigation outside of Flash.
• Videos: Include descriptive text about the video in HTML. You might also consider providing transcripts.

If you do find hidden text or links on your site, either remove them or, if they are relevant for your site’s visitors, make them easily viewable. If your site has been removed from our search results, review our webmaster guidelines for more information. Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.

If you’d like to discuss this with Google, or have ideas for how we can better communicate with you about it, please post in our webmaster discussion forum.

• Design, content, and technical guidelines
• Quality guidelines

When your site is ready:

• Have other relevant sites link to yours.
• Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
• Submit a Sitemap as part of our Google webmaster tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
• Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
• Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Design and content guidelines

• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.
• Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
• Check for broken links and correct HTML.
• If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Technical guidelines

• Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
• Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
• Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
• Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you’re using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google webmaster tools.
• If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.
• Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.

Quality guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It’s not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn’t included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

If you believe that another site is abusing Google’s quality guidelines, please report that site at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.

Quality guidelines – basic principles

• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines – specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

If you determine that your site doesn’t meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and then submit your site for reconsideration.

As an affiliate marketer, you are going to have to get used to listing. In fact, there’s not a time when you can send out your mailing to the A+ Marketplace where you won’t make $300.00. You can build your list with little to no effort to over 6,800 subscribers within five months and have over 35,000 subscribers by using some highly effective tactics. Let’s take a look at some of those tactics now.

1. Look for programs that offer to pay you over $10.00 per sale. If not that then at least search for programs that pay you $50.00 per month or more in residual income because just one customer can be worth $1,200.00 to you in 10 years.

2. Look for products to promote that don’t have more than one or two external links to that connect to other programs. If you’re going to pay good money to send people to a web site, you should at least make sure that you’re sending them to a good money resource and not a resource that has with 50 holes in it.

3. Look for products that have limited ordering options because you don’t want to send people to a site if you only get credit when they pay by credit card. The result will be that you will lose people because the site also accepts payment via PayPal and the average person doesn’t know how to integrate PayPal with their current affiliate software or some other more complicated payment method like direct checking.

4. Try to find sales sites. You can check out associateprograms.com and find five programs that meet the criteria. It will take some digging, but they are there if you look for them. Let’s say you’re promoting sneakers, for example. What you are going to want to do now is find as many applicable keywords as you can that are directly relating to sneakers. You can find lists of keyword variations for any products or services by going to jimtools.com and clicking the ‘keywords’ button at the top.

How this works is that you can do keyword searches and find every variation of the word sneakers that you can think of. If you save all your keywords in a text file you can place bids at all the major payperclick search engines. Here is a list of some of them:

http://www.overture.com They are very critical and will bring you the most leads.

http://www.findwhat.com delivers pretty good traffic

http://www.bay9.com

http://www.ahha.com

http://www.kanoodle.com

http://www.sprinks.com

http://www.searchandconquer.com This one is Free

http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com

There is a trick to making huge profits with payperclick search engines and one of them is to bid on as many keywords as possible. How it works is that you bid on a 100 keywords and it is the exact same thing as getting 100 links back to your web site. When you are submitting your listings, you must always be sure to put the price there as well. The key factor here is that you want everyone who clicks through your site to be prepared to divvy up some cash.

If you don’t do this, you’ll loose a lot of money from the people who are always seeking freebies every single time. With this in mind, say you submitted 350 keywords that are relating to sneakers to each and every one of the search engines above. If all of them are totaled together they will give you a combined total of 150 clicks per day. This is assuming of course that only one out of every 300 people make their purchases because this is a particularly popular item.

If you sell one pair of sneakers and make $10.00 per sale that’s one sale every two days. If your average bid is 10 cents per lead, it’s costing you $3.00 in
Advertising costs just so that you can make $10.00. So each month you could average $800.00 from just this one product in net profit per month. That is pretty good, but if you are pushing 5 different products you will have $4000 in one month’s profit.

The next thing that you have to do is try to find five products that are just like the first one. If a company/website doesn’t have an affiliate program setup, try calling them and asking if you could strike a special deal with them. The best part of using this marketing technique is that after you set up one income stream using this method, and you’ve tested it and it’s working, you can start on another one right away.

You can promote one or 100 companies if you want to it is really up to you. You can literally set your own desired income this way. Plus, by doing this, you get the chance to build long lasting working relationships with the owners of these programs most of the time. It is like out of nowhere, you suddenly have a network of people you’re working with.

If you follow this article closely you’ll be drawing more targeted traffic to programs that you promote than most of the high traffic sites that just have a simple link to the product in question. You can do all of this with little to no money at all in the beginning.

Once you start making enough money with the payperclick search engines, you can start investing some of your money in your own idea or business on the Internet that you want to start; which when you think about it just makes sense. You can simply take the easy way out and make more and more money promoting other people’s programs. As Internet marketing gets more sophisticated in the next few years, there will be more and more companies that are offering solid moneymaking opportunities to experienced resellers, so it is best that you do your homework and learn this stuff while you can because eventually everyone will be trying to cash in on this ‘then ancient’ method.

An effective promotion technique that I have found is to combine email with the ad article strategy. This generally means creating an ezine or newsletter promotion that visitors can sign up for that goes directly to their email inboxes. You can occasionally put a summary of a product or service; however, you should include just enough information to stir the curiosity of your readers in an ezine. The summary then contains a link to the ad article on our site. The benefit of this is not only that you have a good opportunity to promote the product or service, but while visitors are on your site they may also look at other sections at the same time This way you as the advertiser benefits through having highly targeted potential clients visit their site.

The reality of it is that many affiliates cannot deliver what they promise, and the companies are extremely aware of this. For you as a potential affiliate marketer, you need to implement their links and banners, go the extra mile with ad articles and other unique strategies, generate some sales and then approach them again better prepared. You’ll probably find that they’ll have a change of heart. Finding good affiliates is very difficult and if you are performing for these companies they will keep you.

Most forms of advertising take some time to kick into gear. Putting a link up for a couple of days and then pulling it down because it is not generating any interest may not be a reflection on the product, but just in the way that it is being presented to your web site visitors. You know how fickle they can be.

If you have run successful campaigns before, try to remember the elements that made it a success and implement them again. Of course, you need to remember that what works for one product may not necessarily for another, but it’s worth a try. Again, if you are having problems with promotion, contact the company. They will more than likely have thousands of affiliates and will know what strategies are working. A good advertiser may even go to the trouble of reviewing your site and provide you with some tips and hints based on their observations.

When you are selling your wares through a website, you will need as much help as you can get and that is why affiliation is such a good deal. It gives you and like companies the chance to market your wares in more than one spot. As the marketing affiliate, it is your job to get you and other companies together to do it. Most affiliates use their own sites and combine marketing strategies with others. Your website is likely not geared toward one thing in particular so affiliate’s who come in will gain a lot more from your services.

As the variety of goods and online services offered over the Internet has grown at an incredible rate over the last few years, and in response, so has the competition. Web site visitors need to have a very good reason for clicking on a link or banner. In most affiliate programs, you are offered a wide variety of banners that you can place on your site; all of them will be effective in getting attention from your target audience.

If you can gather a click through rate of at least 2%, then you are doing very well. It has been my experience, that highly colorful and picture filled banners do not perform as successfully as their simpler counterparts. The main reason for this is the time it takes to download it. If a banner is the last thing to load on your page and the banner ad is excessively byte “heavy”, by the time it has loaded your visitor may already have scrolled down the page already and miss it entirely.

Heavy banner ads can also slow down the loading of your pages, or even some of the critical elements of your page and you can lose your visitors altogether. This is why A graphically rich banner can also confuse the actual message because the artwork and marketing blurb can be imbalanced. For these reasons, I would recommend that banners you implement be no more that 15kb wherever you possibly can.

Banners that have a lot of animation in them, such as rapid flashing, are also something to consider very carefully before setting them up. While these do achieve high click rates, they are also highly annoying to the average visitor. If you do decide to implement this form of banner advertising, you have to use it very sparingly.

Whenever you begin selecting any form of advertising that requires graphics you should try and keep the theme of your site in mind. In general, while graphical ads are meant to stand out and catch a visitor’s eye, it shouldn’t be to the point that everything else on the page is ignored. Whenever you can, you have to make sure that all banner ads or advertising that you use uses a link that opens in a new window. That way, if a visitor does choose to visit one of your advertisers it is easy for them to return to your page and review what they actually came to your site for.

A lot of companies are now offering their affiliates the options of using pop up and pop under ads. However, the fact is they annoy most visitors and are usually closed before they even have a chance to load by automatic program blockers. It is for this reason that you should use pop-unders instead and preferably those that only display once per visit. I will talk more about pop-unders in a later section.

a) If you are going to go to the trouble of emailing a merchant and they don’t respond the first time, do not worry about it, be persistent because many merchants receive countless numbers of emails daily and take time to sift through them and weed out the spam. If they still fail to respond to your, think twice about continuing promotion on their behalf because a lack of communication can also be indicative of other problems such as payment or just plain disinterest. You should also bear in mind that some merchants work on the shotgun principle. What this means is that they make big promises, set a high payouts knowing full well that few affiliates will ever reach it. Next thing you know, they get as many affiliates promoting their products and services as possible which will give them the maximum exposure, with the minimum cost and effort on their part. It’s not a good business model for them to use in the long term and after a while affiliates drop away, but not before the company has raked in thousands. Many MLM (multi-level marketing) programs also work on this principle and only the guys at the top generate any serious revenue so you need to expect this and watch out for it.

A good way to protect your payments from merchants is to sign up for affiliate programs that are extremely well established ad networks such as Offers Quest or FastClick if you want to get paid for your work. When you are working with a major ad network means that even if you only make a few dollars from each program, those dollars that are generated will all feed a common account, accumulate rapidly which will allow you to reach the payout threshold in a shorter time period. Most ad networks work with merchants on a “money up front” or monthly “pay as you go” basis because this decreases the risk of those merchants who are suddenly disappearing with your hard earned commissions. For this to work, you need to demonstrate your web marketing prowess

b) Unless you have a web site that already generates high traffic, don’t ask the merchant for higher commissions in the first communication. So many affiliates do this and end up being totally ignored because most affiliates probably can’t deliver on their promises due to the fact that too many of their claims are unachievable. If you don’t have a solid sales record for the product or service you are promoting, you’ll need to prove yourself to merchants off the bat and put some thought into your promotion and rack up a few sales before attempting to secure higher payout rates. Be professional in your communications

c) When you are communicating with merchants, you have to make sure that you use a professional manner not the laid back style that you use when talking toy our friends. If you have suggestions of how a merchant could improve an offer that would convert into more sales, let them know, but be very polite and constructive in your feedback -not insulting by saying things like: “Your banners suck” because this will alienate them.

d) You have to remember that the Internet as a trading place is still very new in comparison to the business platforms of the last few millennia like regular advertising through television or newspaper ads. Some of the quality companies that are offering an affiliate program may be just breaking into this side of marketing and will appreciate any feedback you can give them.

e) A smart merchant understands that good affiliates can’t be found everywhere as is often assumed and hoped. Merchants need someone that acts business like and treats them with respect, assists with resources and provides prompt payments. Smarter affiliates understand that a merchant wants quality promotion and sales performance for minimum outlay. Successful merchant/affiliate partnerships happen when both parties understand these points and work together because that is when the money starts rolling in.

Nowadays, you can get millions of different goods and services on the Internet, advertisers look to individuals and companies to help them sell their products by using webmasters and others to spread the word. These advertisements can come in the form of banner advertising on affiliate sites, text links, reviews written by affiliates, direct email, blogs etc.

How it works is that the advertisers pay webmasters for displaying the ads, or for click throughs that are sent to them, (Called pay per click) which is a commission that is paid on any sales that happen as a direct result of a referral from their web site or email message or during each visit. I will explain more on this in a later section.

The fact of the matter is that you will likely not need to be bothered with a merchant at all if it weren’t for the money involved. The fact that affiliations can be used as a mass promotional opportunity for both sides that results in more money for both just adds icing to the cake. That is why the next section is about mass promotion through affiliate marketing.

When you ask the merchant for advice you are setting yourself in great standing with them and showing them that you understand their knowledge. After all, the merchant knows their product best right? They would also have a very good idea of the strategies that are used by other affiliates to boost sales. Don’t bother checking for this information on an affiliate site because you will not be getting to the nitty gritty of it.

By contacting the merchant yourself, you are also showing your enthusiasm for marketing their products and services and that you are working to become known as a “power” or “super” affiliate! Any merchant who understands affiliate marketing knows that over 90% of sales are generated by less than 5% of their affiliates. A good merchant will see your efforts and give you further information and resources and may even boost your commission fees as a result of your efforts and success. All of this means more money for you both!

To be more specific, even if you are going to a “like” website as an affiliate, you don’t want to approach a site that is selling the exact same thing as you because that makes you direct competition with you. For example, if you are selling designer clothing of a particular label, you do not want to try to go to a site that is selling the exact same items as you, but a like site that may offer the same brand, but not the same items. That way, both sites are selling the same label, but can push each other’s sites for the items that they don’t carry.

Once you know exactly what type of website you want to run and which web companies are actually offering you the right revenue sharing opportunities for products and services that complement your web site genre, you can’t just offer to put up banners and buttons on their behalf. It is best to begin by writing up a review page of the product or service and how it will definitely help boost sales, especially if you are recognized as being knowledgeable in your field.

One of the best ways to show that you know what you are doing is to offer articles and reviews on your website about your items for sale. Keyword articles are best for getting search engine to come calling. You can also put in a brief history of the product’s inception etc. Basically just put in as much information as you can about your product or service so that visitors and merchants will know that you are on top of things and know what you are doing. In the next set of affiliate tips I will give you some more things that you should do when dealing with potential affiliate programs that you are trying to do business with.

For this reason, you should make sure, where possible, to focus your information on how it impacts the markets in which your products will compete with theirs. That is how your report will stand out among the other marketing affiliates in a merchant’s eye. It should be included in your proposal whenever it is possible. I have listed the guidelines in sections to make it easier for you to read and then furthered the report guidelines for you as well for easier reading.

Please note each sub-section within a section will contain 1-5 sentences that explain the sub-section.

• General Company Information which includes name, location (headquarters, other locations of importance), website address
• Summary of the Business which includes a section that will summarize the company, business units and the general nature of the business
• Business Overview should include sections on the history, ownership structure, types of businesses, mission, strategy/objectives, and key executives
• Recent News/Developments such as important company developments within last 6-12 months (e.g., reports from news sources, press releases, financial statements)
• Financial and Market Share Analysis – includes sections on corporate performance, trends, market share for product
• Marketing in general should include sections on products and services that are offered, target markets, positioning, customers/users, pricing model, promotional efforts, sales force, and distribution
• Other Miscellaneous Issues like adding sections on technology capability, partnership arrangements, and intangible issues
• A list of your Competitors where you will list key competitors facing this company
• SWOT – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
   

Below, I am going to actually pin point what should be included in the market study like I did above, however in more detail and with explanation on how to write it. I am listing them in steps rather than points to make it easier.

1. The information that is provided in a market study should be based on the research that you have collected AND NOT on one’s own perceptions, guesstimates or other unsupported statements. This information should be based on fat alone! The only exception to this may be within the SWOT analysis; however, even most of this should be supported with some evidence.

2. If you are unable to find any specific bit of information it is probably a good idea to make this known so that the person reading the report would know of this potential limitation of the market study and be ready for it. Obviously you need to collect good research so you do not end up having too many of these statements.

3. It is generally a good idea to define the most important terms and concepts when you first introduce them so as not to confuse the reader. This will benefit those reading the report who may not already possess knowledge in this area. Alternatively, you can create a glossary or definition section in the Endnotes area of the report.

4. Wherever it is necessary you should explain how the research was conducted or how data was collected (e.g., explaining how survey was done). This just helps the reader to understand your methodology so that they can decide how trustworthy the information is.

5. Make note of any limitations of secondary research (research you obtained from other sources) that you used. Unless there are very any significant limitations you can generally include this as an endnote.

6. If you are investigating a new/different way of doing something with present customers, then you will need to provide a discussion of the cost/benefit of alternative options. That is, what will customer give up to use something new versus what they will get from using the new product?

7. Remember to reference as much stuff as you have to in order to get the best information. I would suggest using endnotes instead of footnotes of texts because this gives you the most accurate account. Endnotes appear next to the sentence, word, quote, number, etc. but usually not as a superscript and usually in parenthesis like this (1). The full reference would appear at the back of the report in an Endnotes section.

Once you have completed your market analysis and target audience, you will want to present it to the companies that you are looking to affiliate with. That is what the next section deals with. It is going to show you how to create partnerships with the merchants.

1. Your Objective to the Research

• Explain in one paragraph why the research is being done, what you hope to learn and for what purpose the information that you attain may be used

  2. Description of the Market

  This should be general like one paragraph

  Who is your Target Market(s)?

• Why you chose this particular market
• Get a complete profile of your market (e.g., demographics, psychographics, behaviors)
• What benefits does your market seek (i.e., what points-of-pain or problems are being solved)
• What factors can affect their decision to purchase or use your product/service
• What attitudes do they have about the products/services that are currently not on the market
• How is the product used Products and Services that appeal to the target market
• In general terms, what is currently so appealing to this market
  If there are no current providers, what types of products/services may appeal to this market in the future (i.e., what is used now to solve the problem).

  3. Market Metrics
  Get many Size estimates (current and future) for all of the following:

• Overall market
• Current size as it stands
• Potential size for the future
• Actual penetration of current products/service within the entire market

  Individual market segments

• Current size
• Potential size
• Actual penetration of current products/service within the total market
• Usage rates
• Frequency of product purchases
• Growth estimates (current and in the future) for:
• Overall market
• Individual market segments

  Competitive Analysis

  You must include a Summary of who your Current Competitors are

  Listing the competition by market share ranking (by each target market if possible) is a good way to size them up. You can also be more specific by searching for individual points listed below.

  Current Competitors – full analysis of top competitors including:

• Products & Services (e.g., description, uniqueness, pricing, etc.)
• Their Market share at current
• Current customers (targeted audience)
• Positioning and promotion strategies
• Partnerships/Alliances/Distributors
• Recent news

  SWOT Analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats

  It is extremely important to focus attention on the SWOT section of this report. While most other information in this report can be gleaned from company and secondary materials, much of what appears in the SWOT section is based on the researcher’s own opinions of the competitor based on the information that is collected. Consequently, this is often one of the hardest areas of the report to write as well.

  Potential Competitors (any competition in the future)

• You will need to get an explanation (though it need not be as detailed as Current Competitors) on who they are or maybe and why they are seen as potential competitors

  5. Additional

• Extraneous Variables
  o Discuss factors that may affect this market (e.g., technological, social, governmental, competitive, etc.)
• Market Trends and what is expected to happen in the future

  If you can follow these basic tips for finding and selecting your target market, you should be ready to search online and check out the competition and their rankings in the search engines. In the next section we will cover some general guidelines for you to follow in creating your competitive analysis which is the most important factor in being an affiliate marketer. Knowing your competition just as well as your audience is the key point which is going to keep you on top of the competition.

“When I first started searching for and implementing affiliations with various companies; it was one of the largest parts of time wasted during my day when it came to managing my website. I spent a disgusting amount of hours searching for suitable affiliate programs, implementing the links and then keeping track of what they did”.

If you are hoping that marketing a website affiliation is going to get you rich quickly, forget about it. You will have to spend a lot of time in your project if you want to make it work for you. Then again, all money making ventures do, just ask Donald Trump.

“Of course, the income that was generated from each program was actually pretty low at that time because at that time the number of visitors to my site was not high either. With this in mind, it was not particularly uncommon for companies to disappear on me without warning me about it and since most affiliate programs only pay out at around the $25 mark, I would lose a lot of revenue in the end.

Affiliate tracking can also a problem. After you have successfully applied to become an affiliate for a company, they will usually supply you with some personalized code or link. It is very important that this code is implemented correctly into your page; because otherwise you may be sending the company visitors without being reimbursed. Most snippets of code contain a unique user id; which is used by the company to distinguish which site sent traffic. Even if you do implement this code in the right way, it has been my experience on occasion for it not to function correctly”.

Having heard of these experiences, you can see why I would not really recommend that you hunt around and sign up without much research and thought first, when finding a good affiliate program. Your time is too valuable and could be better spent creating content and updating your site. But there are some excellent individual companies offering affiliate programs out there.

What I have discovered to be very successful is to take advantage of companies like Offers Quest or Google for text link advertising. Text links are a great resource as they are bandwidth friendly, and when they are implemented properly add valuable content to your site which can also assist in search engine rankings.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, you will also need to know how to conduct a market study because this is how you will find your target audience. Without a targeted audience, your marketing campaign will not be effective. In the next tip I have begun to give you an outline of what you should include in your market study. It is best to write it down; especially if you are hoping to entice someone else into investing in your marketing venture. It is also a good way to keep track of your objective and provides a good guideline of what needs to be done

Affiliate programs are an excellent way to generate income for your site or someone else’s, and it is a pretty good introduction into ecommerce, however it’s a numbers game. Basically, the more people who visit your site, the greater your chances become for creating a good income, especially if the programs you participate in are related to your site topic. Chances are you have probably come across many commercial sites that claim to offer the best affiliate program. What you will often learn is that this is simply not true.

So what exactly is an affiliate program, you might ask? An affiliate program is where a company offers to pay you a certain amount of money for either a click through from your site, or a fixed amount for a lead (where the visitor signs up for a newsletter, etc.) or a percentage of a purchase made by a visitor as a result of a click through. Even if the visitor does not make a purchase on the advertiser’s site right away, most programs will offer “cookie duration” of usually around 30-90 days.

What this really means is that as long as the visitor has the cookie in their cache; even if they return to the advertisers site one month later, you will still receive the commission from the sale. However, as in all things that are business related, cookie duration is not a guarantee when you sign up for an affiliation program and is something that you need to check for before signing on.

These spiders (like those that are used by Google) are able to follow the links present on web pages that are located by specific keywords. When spiders are searching for a new webpage, they copy all or parts of the text present on the page into their search engine database. Other spiders revisit these pages on a regular basis so that they can register changes or dead links. The wait time varies greatly from search engine to search engine. It is for this reason that your website should stay current.

The search engine will have hundreds of millions of web pages in its database. In order to deliver relevant results, the search engine companies have developed special ranking algorithms that calculate the order of search requirement results. The keyword or keyword phrase the visitor enters into the search form of the search engine will determine which web sites get picked up by the query. The pages the search engine find most relevant will be listed first. This will determine where you will be listed upon search requests.

For instance, if you are searching for “Beethoven,” and the search engine finds a main headline on that page containing the phrase “Ludwig von Beethoven,” it will assume that this page is fairly relevant to your needs. If, on the other hand, it finds the phrase only once, and it is buried in a long text, it will ignore it because it will assume that this is not important. That is why so many websites use special keywords more than once in a particular article or webpage, because that is how the spiders pick them up and place them higher in the results of a search.

What does this mean to you as a business person? Well…..this means that in order for you to even consider affiliate marketing; you must first have a website. If you want your website to get attention, you have to appeal to search engines first. Many potential affiliates will not want to associate with just anyone they will obviously prefer a site that gets traffic. Knowing about search engines and how to appeal to them will get you this traffic. I will offer more on traffic in another tip later. Right now I would like to get you started with affiliate website marketing because that is the purpose of these tips and I have already given the basics about marketing in general.

Target market is the group of potential customers that will be selected for the reception of your marketing strategy. It certainly makes it easier to develop your strategy if you know exactly who/how old/where people live when trying to sell things to them. If you are looking to segment the market, you need to determine the different target markets for each segment. For example, if you are selling tires, (which everyone needs) you will need to divide your market by knowing how people shop for tires, and who they are.

If you are selling high cost/quality tires, you have to market to a group that is likely to buy them such as middle aged and established consumers as opposed to teens and twenty-something’s who may not be able to afford them.

There are different means that are used by professional marketers that help you to find your target audience. You can use both of them that are within your means. Some of these methods include:

1. Researching the market through surveys, interviews, and setting up shop in a mall to see who questions you the most and to find out who would benefit the most from your product and be most likely to buy.

2. Host experimental sessions for people to try out your product and give their opinions for improvements, so that you can ensure that you are giving the people what they want or need.

3. Host trial websites that are geared toward finding the market by letting the market come to you. You can best do this by utilizing keyword centered articles that will let you know who is coming to your website.

It really doesn’t matter if you stand on your front porch and just ask people what they want in a product or service like yours or not, as long as you get a good handle on who your market audience is. If you are selling T-shirts, you will likely want to appeal to younger people who are more likely to wear them; which means that you should market your wares to those people. To do this, you will have to begin your strategy where you know you will find them….on the internet.

When you are using the internet to market any product or service, you must understand the basics of what internet marketing is. When you are marketing on the internet, you are looking to reach a larger audience and therefore, you need something that will catch their attention and bring them to you. In order to do this, you will have to bring these people to your website.

Once you have your website built, you have to work on getting people to visit not just once, but over and over again. You can start this by using your website to do more than just sell stuff. You should always try to host a website that is also informational. It is generally the website’s that offer up to date information as well as sell products and services.

It is through the information that you establish yourself as a trustworthy authority to your consumers. Doing this establishes trust with your consumers and brings them back again and again. Nobody wants to visit a website that is profiling outdated information in a month. It is the up to date website’s that get and keep clients. These are also the websites that the search engines find relevant during a query.

A nice tip for keeping your information up to date; especially if you are selling a product or service that is rarely updated is to keep a weather program or stock ticker program running on your website because the search engine spiders and robots will view this as new content and still return to your site on a regular basis.

If you are running a website that can sell products or services directly  and can accept payments, you will want to generate as many sales as possible. What this means is that you need to make search engines come to your site for a particular product or service before others. It is because of this need that search engines have to become your best friend, which I will explain in the next tip installment.

1. Personalized search simply gets better and better. You’re doing a great job of refining results to bring up stuff I like.

2. Web search still serves me well. Despite its faults, it’s still great. It gets me to helpful information all the time.

3. News search keeps me informed. Just like web search, news search remains a great performer to help me find current content.

4. Froogle rocks. I’m always looking for odd, unusual products. Personally, I’ve found Froogle is a good fit for my need to ferret out deals.

5. Google Maps changed the way people think about search. After years of people asking how else search results might change, it was great to see the map metaphor take hold. It’s hard to believe it’s barely a year old. Google Maps, especially mash-ups, helped people see how information might be better displayed outside of a top ten list. I can’t wait to see another breakthrough like this, whether by you or someone else. Plus, the maps aren’t bad, either

6. Gmail rocks. Download my email into a software client yet still have an infinite archive? I was sold. Yeah, maybe I’ll regret it in five years when the US Department Of Justice breaks into Google HQ or some rogue Google employee sniffs through all my posts. But I’m remaining optimistic. It’s certainly convenient.

7. Google Sitemaps continuing to roll out cool tools. Stats? A robots.txt file checker? Stop it! If you keep doing things like this that webmasters want, I’ll no longer be able to mock the usual “we’re always open to new ideas” response that used to be a code phrase for “maybe when hell freezes over we might do that.”

8. Matt Cutts, Marissa Mayer & Googlers In General: I name Matt and Marissa specifically because they are probably the two Googlers I spend the most time talking with. However, they epitomize what you’d find about Googlers in general. The love stories in the news are no exaggeration. They smart, dedicated and wanting to do big things that will help people in general. Google itself is getting bigger and more frightening in ways as it grows. As a counterbalance, the Googlers are imbued with a spirit you can’t help but admire and appreciate. And the good news is, their competitors have employees just as inspired and smart. It makes the entire industry better.

9. Pulling a Google and changing things: Gmail changed how we viewed email. Google Maps took mapping to a new level. I love when the company pulls out something new or puts a different twist on an old idea. Bring us more of this!

10. Giving things away for free: Yeah, giving things away for free was also on my hate list. So I’m conflicted. About two years ago, hardly anyone had decent, fast, cheap desktop search. Google’s entry now leaves consumers with a glut of choices. Running that new web site and want hot analytics? Have some for free on Google. It’s a great thing for that little mom-and-pop start up to have.

11. AdSense helping publishers: There’s a ton of junk that AdSense helps support, but it has also transformed the web in terms of supporting good stuff. Before it arrived, many small sites largely depending on hoping an Amazon affiliate link would generate some income. AdSense has definitely helped more people make a living from writing quality content online and spurred others to compete to reward these publishers, as well.

12. Returning search to its glory: Maybe we’ll see the current Portal Wars II cause Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL to lose focus on search in the way portals of the past did. However, I suspect not. Google’s rise proved that search was a feature, a key feature that could make you billions. They all, along with Ask, know that search has to remain supported. I love Google for revitalizing search in this way.

13. Google Desktop Search’s cache: Time and again, it’s helped me find examples of pages I’ve previously visited but forgotten to save, since I didn’t know at the time I might want to. Plus, it’s also helped me on occasions when I’ve accidentally deleted or lost some of my own content.

14. The Library Scanning project: I think they’re probably fine on the legal grounds of making an index of copyrighted works. We’ll see, of course. Certainly they’d have been smarter to start with the wealth of material clearly out-of-copyright. But ultimately, I’m glad they’ve kickstarted efforts to bring books into the digital age. The vast majority of our knowledge is locked in books, and so few of them are searchable. Google wasn’t the first to do digitize books, but they certainly accelerated it.

15. Personifying the importance of search: I started writing about search 10 years ago next month because I could see it was important, not just to marketers but also to those who depend on these amazing tools. Search gained attention over the years but never quite as much as it deserved, in terms of how much we all rely on it. If I said I wrote about search engines pre-Google, people would kind of nod their heads and show some interest. Google’s emergence as the wunderkind of search has boosted our own recognition of search in our lives. It became the poster child of search, the thing that everyone could identify with, that everyone had used. While I can also hate that Google is sometimes too much credited for search, I still love that it has helped people better feel a connection with search tools.

16. Translating the web: Google Translate wasn’t the first page translation tool, but it has continued to improve and add languages. The translations may also be far from perfect, but they can often help me understand what a page is generally about. It’s actually an amazing tool that I just take for granted when I need it.

17. Saving the internet’s early discussions: Google Groups is far from a Usenet archive these days, but I still love the fact that Google way back saved the Deja archives so that we can read early discussions of the internet that happened on the internet.

18. Google Earth: I don’t use the software. So how can I love it? From afar, from being able to see how many other people clearly love it, being able to fly over the earth and do virtual tours. If I didn’t spend so much of my day on the computer, I’m sure I’d be spending more time with Google Earth and flying the kids around with it.

19. Google Analytics: I sort of covered this above, but Google Analytics is a great tool that deserves a mention on its own. Yep, there are also other great tools out there such as ClickTracks, but there’s plenty for a webmaster to love — and love for free — with Google Analytics.

20. Picasa: OK, I opt for the fee-based Adobe Photoshop Elements still, but Picasa’s a solid product. I have no problem recommending it to anyone looking for a photo organizing and customizing tool, especially if they can’t afford to buy one. There’s plenty to love in Picasa.

21. Fighting The US Department Of Justice: Sure, there’s plenty of self-interest in Google going up against the DOJ in the case involving query logs. But I’ve got no doubt that a big part of it is because the government asked for too much, and I’m glad Google’s standing up to it.

22. Talking more: Google has come under fire for being closed mouthed or secretive, but I’d argue they are talking more in various ways than ever before. There are a number of official Google Blogs, and it’s not just corporate fluff on them. Google’s out at more and more to conferences, our own and others, plus individual employees are doing a ton of talking. The popularity of Matt Cutts’s blog has been phenomenal, for example. People are tuning in and, unofficial or not, a Google message is getting out.

23. Gmail’s conversations: Aside from loving Gmail archiving, it’s great being able to see all my related conversations on a topic automatically linked. I don’t always need this, but when I do, it’s a savior.

24. Searching my desktop: Sure, there are better, more powerful tools. Sure, I’d like to see Google Desktop evolve more. But it remains a dependable and low-impact way for me to locate material on my computer. It’s changed my work habits for the better.

25. The philosophy: OK, another item that was also on my hate list. Yes, I do think they need a more realistic philosophy. However, I’m also glad they aspire to higher things and things that aren’t necessarily related to money. I want a big company to pull that off, to be successful but not successful at any price.

Want to add your own loves? Disagree with mine? Please visit our What Do You Love About Google thread at the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan

Search Engine Watch

It sounds like a great idea. After all, it’s much easier to feed the crawler the content then hope it finds it on it’s own. But is a Google sitemap worthwhile? Is it even necessary?

When the Google Sitemap program first started my thought was “That’s kinda cool but what’s the real benefit?”

So, I thought I’d try it out and submit sitemaps for a few sites that I own.

When Google Sitemaps first came out it was very difficult to figure out what all the entries meant as well as how to actually create the sitemap.

Sure, it was XML based, and I could plainly see what they expected but when you have a large site, how do you go about creating this?

Then Google came out with http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html, a sitemap generator which is a program intended to help you create a sitemap for your site. This does help speed up the process but unless you are a developer it is a little difficult to implement.

Also, you need access to your server to run the script required to generate the sitemap. If you are unsure you should check with your web host to see if you have terminal access to execute Python scripts.

Personally, I’ve never tried the Google Sitemapper tool but I have used others. For example, on my personal blog which uses Moveable Type, I found a blog post which shows How to build a Movable Type Google sitemap template http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2005/06/google_sitemaps.html. And I’ve used Xenu and an Excel spreadsheet http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=199253 which works great as well.

Now that the sitemap creation is covered, let’s get into the question at hand. Is a Google sitemap really worth the effort?

A few months ago I would have said no, but lately Google has been adding features that make me think otherwise.

For example, if you’ve gone through the verification process (which is really just placing a blank HTML file on the site and having Google find it) and ensured your 404 errors are properly configured you can get access to a wealth of additional intel.

One such feature is the “Top Search Queries.” This tells you which queries were used when your pages appeared in the search results but may not have been clicked on.

In other words, these are actual searcher queries that were performed on Google where your site may have appeared but not had click-through’s.

>From a keyword research point of view, this is a huge advantage to you. By monitoring your sitemap stats you can easily see some of the terms people are using and perhaps determine what you need to do to rank higher for those terms so you too can get the clicks that your competitors are receiving.

If you don’t have ready access to log analysis or other stats, the Google sitemap can also tell you what terms actually drove traffic to your site.

In other words, these were searches performed on Google that actually generated clicks for your site.

There’s also a wealth of other information. For example, “Crawl Stats” shows you how Googlebot sees your site, errors generated by it, and even a PageRank distribution chart detailing how well PageRank is distributed.

So, if you are like me and wondering if a Google sitemap is worth it I’d say yes, it is. The information provided, while mostly technical, can help you troubleshoot problems as well as provide ideas to help you improve your positioning.

Submitted by Rob Sullivan SEO Consultant and Writer.

5 Ways Google Will Help You With Your Traffic

If you’ve ever had a severe drop in your Google rankings in search results, you may think of Google more of an enemy than an ally.

But if you knew what I do, you’d realize that there are tools provided by the search engine that help you learn more about your traffic, and may even help drive visitors to your site.

Here are five ways that Google provides free traffic assistance.

1 – Google will Help Your Pages Get Discovered with Google Sitemaps

Google Sitemaps is a program that gives you the opportunity to present your site’s pages to Google in XML or text. Google will then come by and spider the pages, getting you indexed faster.

Take note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that your pages will be listed for your favorite keywords, only that discovery will take place a lot faster than with manual submission. Google Sitemaps will also give you some basic site stats if you verify your site, such as the top keywords for discovery, errors it found when crawling, and the types of documents at your site.

If you find compiling your sitemap for Google in the correct format difficult, try the SOFTplus GSiteCrawler Google Sitemap generator. It’s my favorite Sitemap generator, free and easy to use.

2 – Google Will Talk To You or Your Webmasterwith the Webmaster Section

The Google Information Page for Webmasters should be your first stop when you want to know more about anything that has to do with your site and its relationship to Google and any of its many flavors of search such as Froogle. Particularly for new site owners or operators, checking this page first has saved many from needless anxiety.

Most of the basic information is in straightforward language, with links to details for geeks like me.

3 – Google will Tell You What It Knows with Web Page Information

If you type info:yoursite.com into Google, Google will tell show you a page that has your link at the top of the page, with a short description, and the following phrase “Google can show you the following information for this URL”.

This special page compiles several queries about your site including pages that contain your URL (all the pages Google knows of that are linked to you).

4 – Google will Help You Analyze Your Traffic with Google Analytics

After a recent purchase of Urchin Stats, a free online version has been made available, and re-branded as Google Analytics. This cookie-based invisible visitor tracker can give you information that go a bit beyond standard stats such as bounce rates, visitor loyalty, keyword discovery results for a single day, click paths through your site, and page views per visit.

With the ability to analyze your traffic, you can help learn where the holes in your site are, and how to keep them on your site for longer periods of time, as well as better ways to steer a visit towards a specific action, such as a subscription. Results come in flavors for the executive and the search marketer alike.

There’s currently a waiting list to use Google Analytics due to popular demand.

5 – Google Will Advise On Getting the Most from Your Traffic with Conversion University

Google Analytics also has two content sections that are available to all, called Conversion University. While the articles are decidedly slanted towards AdWords users, a prudent read yields many clues that can be applied to preparing for visitors who arrive through organic search discovery. One reference area is called “Driving Traffic”, the other “Converting Visitors.”

At the end of the day, the process by which your site gets ranked in Google search engine results is a computation of a complex algorithm, which means Google – the search engine – really isn’t capable of being your best friend or your worst enemy.

Meanwhile, Google – the company – also provides access to resources that will help give your site a fighting chance.

By Tinu Abayomi from Search Engine News and Analysis

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Yet Another Google Project

Earlier this year Google launched a free service, Google Sitemaps, which allows you to send them a map of your website in XML format. The Google crawler then uses this map to improve coverage of your content, according to the specific information you provide about page locations, modification frequency ,and more. Google describes its service thusly:

Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to help improve your coverage in the Google index. It’s a collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate directly with Google to keep us informed of all your web pages, and when you make changes to these pages.

The service is still in beta, and Google calls it “an experiment in web crawling,” but many recent developments on the web make it an especially useful idea. For one thing, with the rise of weblogs there are so many more episodic websites, which are intended to change frequently. It makes sense to tell a web crawler that it might want to come back for an update in, say, 24 hours (and perhaps to tell it not to come back before then, to reduce load). Of course there are other ways to provide such hints, including specialized HTTP headers, but Google Sitemaps are a specialized mechanism to fit the specific semantics of web-indexing software. Also, as the web is becoming more and more dynamic, with AJAX and other such tricks, there may be no obvious web of static links for a crawler to discover on its own. You might have to provide hints as to where the goods are in your sophisticated website.

What particularly attracts this column’s interest is the fact that Google also provides Python tools for creating Sitemaps to be submitted to Google. This article introduces and discusses these tools (think of it as using Python to allocate your Google juice), but first thing’s first, let’s look at Google’s XML format for Sitemaps.

Not Your Dad’s Robot File
The classic web method for controlling crawlers and other such automated agents (“robots”) is the robots.txt file, formally called the Standard for Robot Exclusion. It’s main purpose, however, is to tell crawlers where they may not go. Listing 1 is a robots.txt file that tells all crawlers to stay away from the top level private folder of the site.

Listing 1. Simple robots.txt Example
# Please respect our privacy
User-agent: *
Disallow: /private

The first line is a comment. The second indicates that the following headers apply to all crawlers. You can also specify the name of a particular crawler with the User-agent header. The last line tells matching crawlers not to access any URLs whose path portion begins with /private. You can learn more about robots.txt in the specification or the FAQ.

Google Sitemaps complement, rather than replace, robots.txt. They do not include instructions for excluding crawlers from directories. They can be as simple as a list of URLs that you do want the crawler to visit, and these URLs can optionally be annotated with information about the last modified date, the frequency with which the content changes, and their relative importance within the overall content of your site. The Sitemap Protocol Contents document contains the full scoop, but the example in listing 2 should give you a good idea of the format.

Listing 2. Sample Google XML Sitemap File

<!–l version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8–>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84″></urlset>
  <url></url>
  <loc></loc>http://uche.ogbuji.net/
  <lastmod></lastmod>2005-10-01

<priority></priority>1.0 
  <url></url>
  <loc></loc>http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/publications/
  <lastmod></lastmod>2005-10-03T12:00:00+00:00
  <changefreq></changefreq>weekly
 
  <url></url>
  <loc></loc>http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/4suite/amara/
 
Each url contains at least a loc element with the location being described. Each can have an optional lastmod (last modification time in ISO 8601 format), changefreq (controlled vocabulary expressing frequency of change), or priority (priority from 0.0 to 1.0 that the crawler should give the URL relative to your overall site).

Google Sitemaps allows you to submit files in other formats, including plain text (one URL per line), RSS 2.0, Atom 3.0 and Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), which uses an XML format based on the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). See this article for more on using OAI-PMH with Google Sitemaps.

A Little Help from the Tools
Google’s tool for generating Sitemaps is sitemap_gen.py. It’s an open source program (BSD 2.0 license) written in Python 2.2.

The Google Sitemap Generator is a Python script that creates a Sitemap for your site using the Sitemap Protocol. This script can create Sitemap XML protocol files from URL lists, web server directories, or from access logs.
I had a look at version 1.3 of sitemap_gen.py, which is hosted on SourceForge. It is designed to run from your site’s web server, but it provides a lot of options, and you always have the option of simply specifying the URLs in a text file. In this case, all the tool does is take a text file of delimited records and convert it to XML without any more special processing. You can also use it to trawl through your HTTP server access logs for URLs to add to the Sitemap, to consolidate multiple existing Sitemap XML files into one large one, and more. The documentation for typical use of the tool is very clear, so I’ll move on to how you would use it from other Python tools.

Once you’ve set up a Sitemap configuration file, it’s very easy to import Google’s tool and trigger a regeneration of the output Sitemap file (the output file location is also set in your configuration). Listing 3 is a simple usage example from Python code.

Listing 3. Using Google Sitemap Generator from Python

import sitemap_gen
CONFIG_FNAME = ‘/path/to/sitemap-config.xml’
sitemap = sitemap_gen.CreateSitemapFromFile(CONFIG_FNAME, False)
if sitemap:
  sitemap.Generate()
else:
  #Indicates an error in configuration
  pass

You could use such code to work Sitemap updates into your Python web application. As an example, if you run a weblog using PyBlosxom, as I do, you could touch up your Sitemap in your CGI handler. Doing so is a fairly expensive task, so it’s not something you’d want to do every time. I have a PyBlosxom plugin, task_control.py, which allows you to run Python scripts upon CGI request, but only if a specified interval has passed since the last run. You can run Listing 3 pretty much as it is from that tool. Of course you can also use cron to run Google’s sitemap_gen directly.

And Yahoo! Too
For a long time, Yahoo has offered services for submitting URLs for its web crawler. This was a free service with which you could only enter one URL at a time into a Web form. For bulk submission, you had to pay for the privilege. The arrival of Google Sitemaps prompted Yahoo to provide a free service with a similar option for specifying collections of URLs for indexing. In the case of Yahoo, you create a simple text file with one URL per line, publish it on the web, and submit the URL for that file to Yahoo’s submission form. Such a simple URL-per-line text file is also supported by Google Sitemaps, but Yahoo doesn’t additionally support the sorts of URL metadata that Google does. You can generate a plain URL list from a Google Sitemap protocol XML file very easily with XSLT, as in Listing 4.

Listing 4. Using XSLT to Generate a Yahoo URL list from a Google Sitemaps XML File

<!–l version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8–>
<stylesheet version=”1.0″></stylesheet>xmlns:gsm=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84”
xmlns:xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform”
><stylesheet version=”1.0″></stylesheet><output method=”text”></output>
<strip-space elements=”*”></strip-space>

<template match=”gsm:url”></template>
<value-of select=”gsm:loc”></value-of><text></text>

Wrap Up

As with all slick new ideas on the web, you have to be careful. Sometimes the need for a specialized Sitemap says something about the usability of your site, and what it says might not be complimentary. If you are losing or confusing traditional web crawlers, there is some chance that you’re losing human visitors as well. Of course, if your website is new, for example, you’ve moved a site to a new domain, it makes a lot of sense to make an initial submission to Google and Yahoo (and other search engines) to speed up discovery of the new site, but it may be best not to rely too much on the metadata for tuning URLs in Google’s service. It’s very unlikely that Google will ever subordinate its traditional Web crawler heuristics to such user-provided hints, and indeed Google is explicit about the ancillary role of Sitemaps in their overview.

[The Sitemaps] program does not replace our normal methods of crawling the web. Google still searches and indexes your sites the same way it has done in the past whether or not you use this program. A Sitemap simply gives Google additional information that we may not otherwise discover. Sites are never penalized for using this service.
Nevertheless, there is a lot of chatter on the various groups about sudden changes in Google PageRank after submitting a Sitemap, with a lot of complaints about negative effects (presumably if people saw positive effects they’d be less likely to make noise about the fact). Some claim they even suffered complete delistings from Google results after Sitemaps submission. It’s hard to know how much of this to credit because the Google Groups support forum for Sitemaps is more a hangout for search engine optimizers and other marketing professionals than for technicians of the web. I would recommend the Inside Google Sitemaps weblog as the most reliable source of evolving details about the program. Certainly submitting URLs to Google’s or Yahoo’s Sitemaps programs provides no guarantee of ranking for your pages, just a guarantee of inclusion into the index of pages for the web crawlers.

Google recently supplemented its Sitemaps program with some Google Mobile Sitemaps, which provides specializations for Mobile Web Search, Google’s search engine focusing on sites for small-format mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs.

In the following months I shall continue my exploration of the Agile Web. In Perspective on XML: What Is This “Agility”? I shared my thoughts on agile development tools and practices. My academic training (first Electrical/Electronic Engineering in Nigeria, and then a Computer Engineering program in the U.S. that was very close to its EEE roots) conditions me to have some caution regarding the quest for absolute agility. On the other hand, I’m a big fan of Python and XML, technologies that are, as I said earlier, oft-cited examples of an agile programming language and an agile data format. In this column I’ll apply this tension towards the analysis of the technological forces that are shaping the next generation web.

By Uche Ogbuji from XML Copyright

Naturally, it prompted an almost hostile reaction from certain quarters. Ken and I have exchanged email a few times regarding the subject during the course of the year. Generally speaking, I believe SEO is not quite nailed in the coffin yet. But Ken’s not far wrong in that “classic SEO,” as I often refer to it, is very much a dying art.

I can actually hear a division bell ringing in the distance between search marketers and the technical SEO types hanging on to the old systems and processes they’ve mastered over the years.

All the more, I personally find technology-speak to be less and less pertinent to SEM (define) efforts insofar as ranking is concerned. Ultimately, the goal is to position your Web pages in the top 20 results at major search engines, or you’re simply sitting in a search engine dungeon with a lot of other no-hopers.

As I emphasized in my previous column, getting indexed at search engines is not the challenge it was just a few years back. There are fewer technical barriers. And search engines such as Google and Yahoo are introducing newer methods, such as site maps, for indexing purposes. They’re going to make it even easier.

Here at my firm in North Carolina, for instance, we combine some of our proprietary technology with Google Sitemaps to make indexing easy-peasy. We use our spider to crawl our clients’ Web sites and retrieve every suitable URL for indexing. The URLs are then sucked into an XML format and uploaded to Google. It takes about 15 minutes, on average.

Recently, we took a client with only 8,000 URLs in Google’s index and almost effortlessly upped the total to 150,000 with this simple process. Of course, Google Sitemaps is still in beta, and this is a new process. But it certainly paves the way for less focus on indexing efforts and more on ranking. That’s where good marketing practices count for so much more than technology tricks.

It’s simple as this: it’s not in the code. The solution to getting that top rank has so little to do with code it’s hardly worth losing sleep over. Think link, think user behavior. Going forward, this is primarily what a ranking algorithm scores you on.

How does a search engine create what’s actually known as an inverted index? It works like the index at the back of a book. A word points to a page, like looking at the back of a medical textbook for “hemoglobin.” The textbook tells you “hemoglobin” appears on page 19. The search engine does the same thing. It keeps only one occurrence of each word. It would be a complete waste of space to index billions of occurrences of “the.”

Then, what’s known as a term weight pair can be created. A page has a weighted list of words, and a word has a weighted list of pages. The text from your Web page is parsed out of the code. Important words scope to important pages as determined by each search engine’s own weighting factors. The index is in tiers of priority, and, often, though your URLs are indexed, they may not have those important weighted words scoped at them.

That’s the indexing process. Now you need a ranking mechanism. And gaining a top rank within that mechanism has more to do with external variables such as links (and link anchor text) and, even more, user behavior data.

Not only that, a top ranking position is becoming more important as search engines test new methods of presentation, and organic (or natural) results are forced further down the page, below the fold.

Today, I searched for the Beatles’ “Sergeant Pepper” album at Google, which is now testing images folded into the top results. As my colleague Greg Ives points out, with three paid results at the top of the pile at Google (try a search for “halloween costumes”) and often with some Froogle results thrown in at the top (and maybe even some news results), that all important top 10 hit is rapidly becoming an all important top 5 hit just to be seen.

Once again, content is king. If you create great content, if you earn the respect of your peers so they acknowledge you as an authority and link to you, if users find your content sticky enough, you’re probably doing the right things to get that top ranking position.

What I’ve covered above depends so very little on code and technology. It’s more about quality marketing.

Years ago, many blacksmiths had to learn to do something else. Their specific skills were required less and less. I guess that’s what will happen to SEO experts in the future. I don’t think SEO is dead, yet. But as with blacksmiths, you’ll probably not find one on every corner the way you used to.

Maybe they’ll open PPC (define) shops?.

By Mike Grehan, The ClickZ Network

Can you give us a summary of how the new feed program will work?

Webmasters create XML files containing the URLs they want crawled, along with optional hints about the URLs such as things like when the page last changed, and the rate of change. They host the Sitemap on their server and tell us where it is. We provide an open-source tool called Sitemap Generator to assist in this process. Eventually, we are hoping webservers will natively support the protocol so there are no extra steps for webmasters. When a Sitemap changes, we support auto-notifying us so we can pick up the newest version.

Why are you doing this?

We want to index all publicly available information so we can offer better search results. However, currently web crawling is limited. Crawlers don’t know all the pages at a website (e.g., dynamic pages), when those pages change, how often to recrawl pages, how much load to put on a website. So they try to guess. We want to work collaboratively with webmasters to get a big picture of all the URLs we should be crawling, and how often they should be recrawled. Ultimately this benefits our users by increasing the coverage and freshness of our index.

What are the technical details? Just a list of URLs? An XML feed?

We defined a simple XML format that includes the URLs plus optional last modification date, change frequency, and relative priority. We do support a simple list of URLs as well, but using the XML format will help us crawl the sites better.

Do you need for me to prove in some way that I’m associated with the site I’m submitting for?

We accept all the URLs under the directory where you post the Sitemap. For example, if you have posted a Sitemap at www.example.com/abc/sitemap.xml, we assume that you have permission to submit information about URLs that begin with www.example.com/abc/.

Will all my URLs get in? Some? Any guarantee? And how quickly?

At this early stage, we cannot guarantee that we’ll crawl or index all your URLs. But as we understand the data better, we hope to get more of the data into our crawl and indices.

How does someone sign-up?

Go to Google Sitemaps and use your Google Account or create a new one to sign in. If you already use Gmail, Groups, My Search History, Alerts, or Froogle Shopping List, you already have a Google Account.

And this is all for free?

Absolutely. Also, this is an open protocol. We are hoping all webservers and search engines adopt this protocol and benefit from the increased collaboration

Any chance you may provide a reporting tool down the line, so people can tell what searches are sending them clicks?

We are starting with some basic reporting, showing the last time you’ve submitted a Sitemap and when we last fetched it. We hope to enhance reporting over time, as we understand what the webmasters will benefit from. If you have ideas on more of what you would like to see, let us know at the new Google-Sitemaps area at Google Groups.

How will you prevent people from using this to spam the index in bulk?

We are always developing new techniques to manage index spam. All those techniques will continue to apply with the Google Sitemaps.

If I don’t use the program, you may still find pages through the regular way of crawling, correct?

Yes. This program is a complement to, not a replacement of, the regular crawl. However, we hope that the hints you offer in the Sitemap will help us do a better job than the regular crawl.

Still have more questions or comments? The Sitemaps FAQ goes into depth on many more details. The Google Sitemaps team will be taking questions and responding all day at our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Google Sitemaps Now Accepting Web Page Feeds. Long-term, the team will also be monitoring the new Google-Sitemaps area at Google Groups.

Posted by Danny Sullivan from searchenginewatch

Last year at this time, affiliate marketing was a real hot topic. Companies like Amazon.com and Art.com crowed that it brought them big sales numbers at low cost.

These days, it’s mostly under the radar again. It turns out affiliate marketing is like a bear market: The trading is great for the brokers, the liquidity is necessary for listed stocks, but the investors get hosed. In this case, it turns out that very few affiliates make any money. Bill Lederer at Art.com calls it the “95-5″ rule – 95 percent of the money goes to 5 percent of the sites.

While the business is under the radar, it’s changing. New affiliate operators like Affinia, Vstore and Nexchange claim they’re working for the sites, not the merchants, by offering complete lines of merchandise built around the theme of each affiliate site.

The idea is that sites can’t figure out exactly what to offer, and they don’t have the expertise to create attractive pages around affiliate offers. By building stores around the sites’ trade dress, and using the data they collect to fine-tune the offers, the new affiliate operators claim to increase sales for the sites, making the game more even.

But is it more even, or are the new affiliate arrangements merely more sophisticated ways to grab a site’s traffic without really paying for it?

Writing in Online Ads for January 3, Joel Gehman of iRant.com speculates it’s still the latter. Affinia’s cost-per-click model got him just $30 for 500 referrals to merchants, he complains, although the system is easy to use. Vstore, on the other hand, can’t really be customized to a site “in terms of look & feel, or product selection.”

In any case, it seems that affiliate networks have decided that concentrating on small sites is a sucker’s game. Even being an affiliate seems to now be a job for the big boys.

That, at least, is the conclusion I get from the excited tone of Nexchange’s first release of the New Year. The news is a deal with nFront, which sells Internet banking services to 210 small banks.

Under the terms of the “partnership,” as the release calls it, Nexchange will put retail malls into each of nFront’s virtual branches – the banks become Nexchange affiliates, and nFront is their agent. The banks will earn commissions of 5-30 percent, depending on how much business they bring in, but will be able to customize their online malls with their own trade dress. Among the stores that now work with Nexchange are Just for Feet, Proflowers, eBags, and Ashford.com.

Merchants love affiliate marketing, but the best way to get affiliates today, even among the newest affiliate networks, is to get them in bulk. If any of you bankers feel hosed six months from now, will you drop me a note and let me know? This may be affiliate marketing’s last chance, and I’d like to get the story straight.

By Dana Blankenhorn, The ClickZ Network

Matt noted that even though the company has gotten much bigger, the culture hasn’t changed that much. “People still come to work in the morning because they love what they do, because they’re excited about building the eBay community.”

Online Offers

What’s even more amazing about eBay is that it really doesn’t offer visitors any incentive to join. No $5-off coupon. No free-shipping deal. People join because they want to. What’s more, eBay manages most of its online advertising in-house. There is no agency of record.

However, Matt was quick to steer the conversation back to affiliate-related developments. eBay is really pressing forward on the creative front, offering affiliates the ability to link to specific category sections. Matt added, “We’re getting set to roll out a number of SmartZones.” (SmartZones are a special banner rotation and optimization technology through Commission Junction[CJ]). Search boxes are on the horizon, too.

Affiliate Program Background

After a late start, eBay finally launched an affiliate program with ClickTrade in April 2000. It offered affiliates a commission of $3 per RU. That program is still live and has grown to about 20,000 affiliates over the past year.

On March 3, 2001, eBay launched a second affiliate program with CJ. At the same time, it raised its payout at both ClickTrade and CJ to $4 per RU. Over the course of its first weekend with CJ, eBay signed up nearly 3,000 affiliates. Six weeks after launch, more than 12,000 affiliates had signed up.

One week in May, its CJ program generated an incredible 500,000-plus click-throughs. Matt commented, “The pace hasn’t slowed. We’re just blown away at how quickly things are ramping.” At the same time, he conceded, “We are seeing some migration of former ClickTrade affiliates to the CJ program.”

According to eBay’s 2001 first-quarter earnings release, its overall average cost per RU was $14. No wonder the affiliate program looks so good.

Affiliate Team Structure

Matt said eBay breaks its online advertising into three buckets: Internet marketing, word of mouth, and public relations. The Internet marketing group includes portal agreements, niche partnerships, search engine placements, and affiliate marketing. The entire Internet marketing group is only about 15 people, including three in business development. Because the group runs so lean, it has to be creative.

Over the years, eBay has amassed over 400 niche partners, each with one-off RU deals. This means ongoing manual reporting, manual check requests, and lots of hand-holding. So far, Matt reports that the biz dev team has been able to move more than 200 of these partners — sites such as TheForce.Net — into its affiliate program.

Affiliate Recruiting

One of the other things eBay has done right is cooperate with its subsidiary Half.com, which has built a best-of-breed affiliate program on a shoestring. For example, as part of the CJ program launch, eBay and Half.com (see my review of Half.com’s affiliate program) were able to do some special engineering whereby signing up for the eBay program prompted affiliates to opt in to the Half.com program — and vice versa. The result was new affiliates for each.

Additionally, Matt is working with Todd Kevitch, Half.com’s affiliate manager on cross promotions in their respective newsletters. Another interesting recruiting angle is a new program inviting eBay’s “PowerSellers” who also have free-standing Web sites to join as affiliates. eBay’s move into storefronts opens up new possibilities for affiliate recruitment as well.

Matt’s goal: 200,000 affiliates over the course of the next 12 months.

The Future of Internet Marketing

As for the future, Matt expects “more of a shakeout. I think we’ll see a broader base of sites driving a higher percentage of the traffic.” Matt also envisions a new kind of affiliate. “I expect sites in the future will find new and creative ways to drive very specific users.” Sounds a bit like an e-broker.

Matt also had some keen insight on the struggle between acquisition and retention. He remarked, “Even with 30 million members, eBay still stresses the importance of our community at every level in the organization. We treat our community as if it were only 30 members, not 30 million. We don’t want to lose a single member.”

Results

eBay is perhaps the Web’s best success story. In the first quarter of 2001, it earned a profit of $21 million on $154 million in revenue; its users transacted just under $2 billion in gross merchandise sales.

Overall, the company added 7.2 million users during the first quarter, bringing its total RU base to 29.7 million. Moreover, eBay’s balance sheet remains very strong. The company ended that quarter with consolidated assets of $1.3 billion, including $850 million in cash and investments.

By Joel Gehman, The ClickZ Network

The importance of a strong personal network really hit home with me as I sifted through my reader email folder looking for patterns. Here’s what I found. Recently several readers have asked for tips on how to get started cross promoting other affiliate programs. Over the past few months, other emailers wanted advice on finding someone to run their affiliate programs, usually not from a big dot-com locale, making the recruiting tough. With the recent demise of so many dot-coms, a few colleagues have written for advice on job searching. Finally, one of the most enduring questions is about which conferences to attend.

Cross Promoting

Acquiring affiliates is a critical part of the success of any program. Although we’ve had numerous columns on tips and techniques — from the basics to the more specialized — one of the most effective techniques is building a personal network.

Several areas around the U.S. now benefit from groups of affiliate managers getting together on a regular basis. One of the more organized attempts comes from the somewhat officious sounding United States Affiliate Manager Coalition, founded by Shawn Collins. I suspect the name was really a function of available domain names because you can visit the coalition at USAMC.org. Although it started as a New York group, today USAMC links to loosely affiliated groups in other metros. If your area has a group, check it out. If not, start one.

For example, here in the Philadelphia area, I belong to an affiliate marketing group, the Tri-State Affiliate Managers, that meets about once a month to discuss trends, share ideas, and in general get a sense of best practices. For more info on TSAM, please drop an email to Todd Kevitch.

Seminars and Conferences

Want to venture out of your local area? A number of great conferences and seminars have arrived on the scene. This spring, AffiliateFORCE turns two years old. internet.com (owner of ClickZ) produces a number of one-day affiliate marketing seminars. The Institute for International Research offers a variety of related seminars; next up is its Online Allies conference in San Francisco.

Of course, affiliate networks such as LinkShare and Commission Junction offer their own conferences, attended by customers, affiliates, and prospects. Another option if you’re looking to save time or expense is to go online. More and more sites are starting to offer online chats and events around affiliate marketing topics. Recently I’ve hosted chats at CashPile.com and the L.A. chapter of WebGrrls.

Hiring and Job Seeking

Networking with colleagues locally and around the globe also pays off when it comes to hiring and being hired. The job market is still tough in lots of places. Of course, there are the usual resources, such as Monster.com, HotJobs.com, dice.com, HeadHunter.net, and the many other national job sites, but you knew that already. A better resource is often regional and specialty sites. techies.com and philly.com are good examples. USAMC.org is also a good stop, often featuring several affiliate-related postings. Finally, don’t overlook campus recruiting.

It’s a bit trite, but who you know can pay big rewards. Spend the time now building your network. Often the last thing you want to do is go to one more function, sit through one more seminar, or wade through a discussion list. Do it anyway.

By Joel Gehman, The ClickZ Network

In July 1996, Amazon.com launched the first affiliate program on the Internet. That’s the story in the Amazon.com Associates Program Frequently Asked Questions, at least.

As legend has it, Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, chatted with a woman at a cocktail party about how she wanted to sell books about divorce on her web site. After that exchange, Bezos pondered the idea and thought about having the woman link her site to Amazon.com and receive a commission on the book sales. This was the impetus for creating the “first on the Web” Amazon.com Associates Program.

But there are some problems with that claim by Bezos. According to Daniel Gray in “The Complete Guide to Associate and Affiliate Programs on the Net,” there were a number of sites that operated programs prior to July 1996. And that is just the mainstream side of it. There are also many adult sites that dabbled in the affiliate marketing concept before Amazon.com picked it up.

The Mothers of Invention

The big secret of the Internet is that the adult sites came up with many of the best (and worst) marketing concepts that are used in the mainstream.

Brian Clark, president of ReveNews.com and member of Affiliate Union’s board of directors, states, “I’m quite a fan of the adult industry — not a consumer of their product, by any means — but deeply respectful of how much of the innovation in online business models is really happening in that industry first and bemused by people’s reticence to give them the credit or even talk about the subject.”

“Not just affiliate programs, mind you. They’re also the cutting edge of streaming video, pay-for-view content, coercive click conversion, community publishing, etc.,” comments Clark.

Mark Hardie of Forrester Research concurs. “What I see when I look at this industry — putting aside any moral judgments about reprehensible content — is an amazing example of an industry that has banded together to protect its business, push revenue across the industry, and innovate cutting-edge technologies,” says Hardie. “I think there’s a lot here that can be applied elsewhere.”

The consensus of marketing folks and adult industry insiders is that Cybererotica was either the first or among the early innovators in affiliate marketing with a cost-per-click program.

According to John Distasio of CyberFoxes, none of the adult sites are running cost-per-click programs anymore. CyberFoxes, which has been running its affiliate program since 1996, started with the cost-per-click model, but because of the high volume of fraud, it now employs a cost-per-acquisition model. In the current program, which uses CC Bill for tracking and payouts, an affiliate earns 50 percent of a converted lead and a 50 percent residual each time its lead renews on the monthly subscription.

Before There Was Amazon.com

In February 2000, Amazon.com announced that it had been granted a patent (6,029,141) on all the essential components of an affiliate program. The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which was before most affiliate programs but not before PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and a handful of others.

“While I admire what Jeff Bezos did for the industry, he in no way pioneered anything,” said Brad Waller, VP of marketing for EPage.

“He popularized the idea, but he was a latecomer — by about two years. There is quite a bit of documentation on this issue, including assertions by Jason Olim and Matthew Olim, in their book about founding CDNow, that they had an informal program in 1994,” continued Waller.

Finding a Solution

Chris d’Eon, current VP of marketing – retention with Proflowers.com faced an early affiliate marketing dilemma when he was at an Internet start-up that was selling online backup solutions (@Backup, now called SkyDesk) back in 1996.

According to d’Eon, “The early challenge [of affiliate marketing] was to build a tracking system. We finally built our own, first using spreadsheets, then a full-blown system. We eventually spun this system off and recently sold it to ValueClick. In the early days, we did meet a few companies doing the same thing as we were… Alexa and Launch.com come to mind.”

The formal birth of affiliate solution providers came to be in 1996 with the launch of LinkShare and Be Free. Commission Junction started up in 1998 to round out what is considered to be the top three.

Directory Assistance

The landscape of affiliate program directories has become a bit overwhelming in the last year. An estimated 50 directories are trying to direct traffic in affiliate space, but it all started with Refer-it.com.

According to James Marciano, he founded Refer-it.com in October 1997 because he could not find one central place for affiliate programs to generate revenue for his site, TheSquare.com. He decided what was needed was a search engine for affiliate programs with ratings and details.

In January 1998, Allan Gardyne started up a one-page associate programs directory. He had hunted in every major search engine for an affiliate program directory and could not find one, so he started his own version. That one-page site officially became AssociatePrograms.com in February 1998. Other important players, such as 2-Tier, Associate-it, CashPile.com, and ReveNews.com, launched later in 1998.

Amazon.com helped bring affiliate marketing into the pages of business journals, but is the Amazon.com Associates Program the first affiliate program there was? I guess it depends on what your definition of “is” is. Just as Al Gore once stated, “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet,” Amazon.com claims that its program was “the first on the Web.” If you repeat a lie often enough, people will eventually believe that it is true… until you get caught.

By Shawn Collins, The ClickZ Network

Affiliate marketing involves revenue sharing between two web sites. The Affiliate site normally provides free advertising for an e-commerce site and compensation is based on performance i.e., sales, clicks, registrations, or a combination of all.

Affiliate Marketing is the new marketing strategy significant for the e-business world. The reason for the success is that the ‘Merchant’ (advertiser) pays only for the results rather than paying to reach the audience. ‘Pay-for-performance marketing’ is the other apt name for Affiliate Marketing. In addition, the ‘Affiliate’ gains an incentive by permitting the Merchant to post an advertisement on his webpage.

Functioning

Affiliate Marketing is a widespread method of promoting a website, wherein an affiliate is paid a commission by the merchant for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer that he provides the merchant through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder’s fees to the individuals who introduce new clients to a business.

Compensation may be based on a certain value for each visit (Pay-per-click), registrant (Pay-per-lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay-per-Sale). The Merchant offers to pay the Affiliate ‘x’ amount for either a click through from the link of Affiliate’s site, or for a lead (where the visitor signs up for a newsletter, fills in a form etc.) or a percentage of a purchase made by a visitor as a result of a click through.

Even if the visitor does not make a purchase on the advertiser’s site immediately, most programs will offer ‘cookie duration’ of usually around 30-90 days. This means that as long as the visitor has the cookie in their cache; even if they return to the Merchant’s site one month later, the affiliate will still receive the commission from the sale.

Core Components:

Members Involved

The e-Affiliate Marketing Program has a three-tier interrelated structure.

• The Merchant (the advertiser / publisher)
• The Affiliate Network (the intermediary)
• The Affiliate or the Partner (the website owner)

Here some important term about affiliate marketing.

• affiliate – the publisher/salesperson in an affiliate marketing relationship.
• affiliate directory – a categorized listing of affiliate programs.
• affiliate forum – an online community where visitors may read and post topics related to affiliate marketing.
• affiliate fraud – bogus activity generated by an affiliate in an attempt to generate illegitimate, unearned revenue.
• affiliate marketing – revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model.
• affiliate merchant – the advertiser in an affiliate marketing relationship.
• affiliate network – a value-added intermediary providing services, including aggregation, for affiliate merchants and affiliates.
• affiliate software – software that, at a minimum, provides tracking and reporting of commission-triggering actions (sales, registrations, or clicks) from affiliate links.
• exclusivity – contract term in which one party grants another party sole rights with regard to a particular business function.
• payment threshold – the minimum accumulated commission an affiliate must earn to trigger payment from an affiliate program.
• return days – the number of days an affiliate can earn commission on a conversion (sale or lead) by a referred visitor.
• super affiliate – an affiliate capable of generating a significant percentage of an affiliate program’s activity.
• two-tier affiliate program – affiliate program structure whereby affiliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program.

I’ve written here about how the accessibility and clever manipulation of data will have a bigger impact on advertising than anything we come up with on the front end. This conference seems to be deeply focused on the topic. While the actual content of the papers to be presented hasn’t yet been posted, the titles themselves seem to suggest a few areas are being explored.

So let’s take a look at this list and see if there’s anything we can guess at or try to predict, based on what appears to be happening down in the data-mining labs.

Contextual for Broadcast

One paper is rather clumsily titled “Finding Keyword from Online Broadcasting for Targeted Advertising.” The critical words here are “keyword,” “broadcasting,” and “targeted.”

Online video has been amazing. ClickZ’s conference (speaking of conferences) on the topic has been examining video’s growing influence, including events that certainly would qualify as “broadcasting.” Consider the Live Earth concert that took place in July. According the site, 10 million people watched the event, live online. OK, 90 million people watched the Super Bowl and 11 million people watched the premier of the “The Office” a few years ago. But a single event that size, streamed live, is clearly a major broadcast.

But how do you sell/place ads alongside a live event? These researchers are on the problem, it seems. A very fast speech recognition system may be able to capture the stream of words flowing out of a live event and re-order commercials in an upcoming pod based on the content of the show. This sort of fluidity could be extremely valuable for an online broadcast that may have a user-controlled component. If the audience votes for an ending where the couple fall in love, show the ad for chocolates. If the audience votes to have them breakup…well, show the chocolates anyway. But change the message a bit.

Sentiment Classification

Another paper is titled “Sentiment Classification with Interpolated Information Diffusion Kernels.”

Sounds good and academic. Let’s just pull three words out here: “Sentiment,” “Classification” and “Interpolated.”

The challenge presented by user-generated media has always been trying to sort it all out. That is, you can find tons and tons of the stuff for any given topic (or brand), but how do you decide what’s good for your brand and what’s bad? Then, how do you come to any strategic decisions, based on this big pile of unsorted content?

Sentiment, analysis, and classification are the goals here. Companies like Buzzmetrics have become experts at it, dedicating lots of really clever people and resources toward the challenge. But there’s always more to do, just as search algorithms can always get better.

As researchers get better at understanding how information is created and shared among consumers, the better their chances at turning all this content into real, usable data. “Interpolated” (in a mathematical sense) means to create a new number in a set, based on the other numbers that are around it. Who knows what “Information Diffusion Kernels” even are. But assumedly, if you know enough about a set of kernels, you can fill in a pattern, and that pattern can reveal how a group of consumers in conversation feel about a brand or a category.

This is pure gold to an advertiser either seeking to understand his consumers or trying to find a good opportunity to present them with an offer.

Cross-Cultural Research

Two papers that bear calling out: “Extracting Opinion Topics for Chinese Opinions using Dependence Grammar” and “From TV to Online Advertising: Recent Experiences from the Spanish Media.”

The cross-cultural mandate has been in effect online for a good long time now. We’ve been hearing about both opportunities in the titles of these papers: Chinese and Spanish. It’s worth noting as well that the titles focus on the language and the culture, not the places. In other words, they’re not necessarily talking about China, Spain, or Latin America.

The great, rich opportunity is often right in the country you lve in. Multicultural populations are moving online at extremely rapid rates. We have a tendency to think of the World Wide Web as an English-speaking medium, but that’s far from true. Savvy marketers are seeking to find ways to take the technologies that are making advertising more effective and looking for ways to leverage them with consumers who communicate in a language other than English.

Following the Message

Finally, there’s “Discovering Information Diffusion Paths from Blogosphere for Online Advertising.” What a title!

Information diffuses online like dye in a bucket of water. Along the way, the information sometimes changes, often is commented upon, and discussion pathways of a community are uncovered. The ability to follow this path, whether it’s live or after the fact, can be extremely valuable to an advertiser. Consider the case of an advertiser who wants to control a false and damaging rumor. Or on the flip side, he may need to locate the source of a positive product review.

If the paths that information follow can be charted this way, potentially they can also be leveraged. This is really the underlying notion behind much of this exploration: how can we begin to get a grasp on the data flowing around our space and use it to be much better at achieving our goals?

For More Navel Gazing

This was just a sample of the titles submitted to the conference. Again, we don’t even have the content. But when we’re asked to look into the future, sometimes it makes the most sense to look into the present — in unique areas. If you want to continue this thread, I suggest periodic searches on scholar.google.com. Take whatever you were going to search for (something like “advertising to teens”) and type into an entirely different kind of index.

You’ll be surprised by what some people are thinking!

By Gary Stein, The ClickZ Network

Active Athlete

Active Athlete is an online media company dedicated to advertisers wanting to reach the active consumer. The company brings Active Athletes to advertisers en masse, from the casual athlete to the competitive, participating in sports such as golf, tennis, running, rock climbing, snowboarding, cycling and a variety of team sports. They provide an opportunity for brands and advertisers to reach these people at their passion point through a network of publishers that consist of some of the Web’s most relevant lifestyle sports sites.

Active Athlete embodies one of the most desirable demographics advertisers seek, totaling an estimated 150 million active consumers in the U.S. Until now, agencies and advertisers have found it difficult to reach the highly sought-after demographic of Active Athletes as they’re segmented across many niche Web sites with no audience data, metrics or advertising technology to support their marketing objectives. Active Athlete Media aggregates these disparate users into one place and uses proprietary technology to garner user data, offering marketers targeted access to users and increasing their return on ad investments.

For more information contact info@activeathletemedia.com or 415-287-3591.

RealTechNetwork

RealTechNetwork was formed in 2004 with offices in the United States and Europe. Our network specializes in all forms of Internet media such as in-page creatives, pop-unders, interstitials, streaming video, behavioral targeting, contextual targeting, mobile ad placement, pre-, mid-, and post-rolls.

The network itself is comprised of more than 5,600 publisher sites and over 900 advertiser campaigns. In addition, RealTechNetwork is completely transparent in terms of where campaigns are placed within the network.

Publishers and advertisers have access to account management tools within their customized control centers. In terms of optimization and targeting, RealTechNetwork offers pixel optimization, worldwide geo-targeting, channel/category targeting, date, and time targeting. Advertisers have the ability to manage their campaigns directly, or can have our system optimize their campaigns for them.

RealTechNetwork offers competitive CPC and CPM pricing on all mediums available within the network.

RealTechNetwork — Your revenue synchronized.

Please contact 1-888-324-1097 or visit http://www.RealTechNetwork.com for more information.

Remix Media

Remix Media believes that every impression is valuable -– at the right price. Utilizing dynamic pricing across an auction-based platform, Remix Media operates one of the largest and most efficient online ad networks (over 20 billion impressions monthly) for advertisers with direct response goals. Remix Media Network is the first open, auction-based online ad network where each impression’s price is determined by its underlying value to you, the advertiser.We’re focused exclusively on serving brand and direct advertisers and interactive agencies through combining innovative online advertising solutions with dedicated, experienced professionals. As a division of Right Media, we leverage its real-time optimization technology to deliver superior campaign performance.

Remix Media partners with hundreds of marketers who run successful, large-scale campaigns every month to generate online transactions, revenue, conversions and qualified leads.

If you’re looking for a fresh approach to meeting campaign goals and objectives, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact VP Media Sales Garret Vreeland at 212-710-3639 or at info@remixmedia.com, or visit us at www.remixmedia.com.

JumpstartAutomotiveMedia

Jumpstart Automotive Media, Inc. partners with leading Web publishers to create the Internet’s largest and highest quality community of car shoppers. Jumpstart is the only advertising network exclusively focused on the automotive industry and counts every automotive manufacturer and more than one thousand automotive dealers as customers. Since 2000 Jumpstart has been dedicated to delivering exceptional results for its advertisers and maximizing revenue for its publishers.

The Jumpstart Contextual Auto Channel with its sites, including NADAguides, Vehix, Consumer Guide (Autos), J.D. Power, and Shopping.com (Autos) reaches over 5 million car shoppers each month, and allows advertisers to target advertising by consideration stage, category, make and model.

The Jumpstart Behavioral Auto Channel has partnered with leading Web sites and ad networks to use behavioral targeting to track and serve ads to in-market car buyers across one of the Web’s largest aggregated distribution bases including ValueClick Media, Burst Media, Blue Lithium Media, Collective Media, Tribal Fusion, and more.

Founded in 2000, the company is privately held and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA with additional offices in Los Angeles and Detroit.

www.JumpstartAutomotiveMedia.com

Travel Ad Network (TAN)

Travel Ad Network (TAN) (www.traveladnetwork.com) is the leading advertising network in the online travel vertical reaching 10 million unique users across nearly 50 Web sites, including RealTravel, Lonely Planet, Igougo, Pilot Guides/GlobeTrekker.tv, BootsNAll.com, FareCompare, AreaGuides.net, EuropeForVisitors.com, Rough Guides and many more. TAN uses industry expertise, geographic targeting and exclusive publisher relationships to give marketers unrivaled access to an untapped audience of affluent, early-stage thought leaders visiting both travel planning an niche booking engine sites.

In 2006, the number of sites in TAN grew from 30 to 50 delivering a monthly audience of more than 10 million unique visitors. At some point this year it will surpass Yahoo Travel as the largest travel planning audience online. At present they are in the top 10 travel audiences online and the No.2 largest travel planning audience online.

Founded in 2003, the company is privately held and is headquartered in Tribeca, New York City with branch offices is the West, Midwest and Southeast.

Burst Network

Web publishers, advertisers, and media professionals alike rely on Burst Media to deliver consistent, bankable results. We’ve met our promise through a combination of technology, focus, and commitment to special-interest content and communities.An online media and technology company founded in 1995, Burst Media provides products and services for Web publishers that help them attract and meet the needs of advertisers.

The Burst Network sells the value of over 3,800 specialty-content Web sites to brand-focused advertisers. Burst Direct aggregates and optimizes inventory from a larger field of publishers for large scale direct marketers. Through its technology division, Burst markets its ad management solution, AdConductor, to Web publishers.

Burst publishers and advertisers enjoy a transparent environment, with control over where ads are displayed. We also maintain demanding criteria for network membership, and conduct continuous quality audits of our sites. The Burst Network, Burst Direct, and AdConductor are certified by BPA Worldwide, assuring advertisers, agencies, and publishers that our data tracking, data processes, and systems are 100 percent accurate and reflect accepted auditing standards.

Contact information: Please call 1-800-876-4352 or visit www.burstmedia.com for more information.

NetShelter, Inc

NetShelter, Inc. (www.netshelter.net) is the leading site representation company for premium content technology websites. Since its founding in 1999, privately-held NetShelter has pioneered the concept of the vertical ad network assembling over 150 websites into the largest technology-oriented audience network in the world. Its Content Network serves banners ads across 60 content categories in 5 tech channels: IS/IT Computing, Tech & Gadgets, Consumer Electronics, Developer and Games reaching 13.5 million monthly unique visitors in the US. NSBN currently enables advertisers to buy site specific combinations of 27 top branded technology websites. Through its award-winning publishers the company receives over one billion monthly pageviews, providing total market coverage ; from IT decision makers and small-medium businesses to tech enthusiasts, consumers and hardcore gamers.

AdOn Network

AdOn Network is one of the largest keyword-targeted ad networks online, providing innovative advertising solutions to advertisers and publishers.

AdOn Network delivers over 5.5 billion search queries and 155 million unique users per month and provides advertisers with keyword, behavioral and contextual targeting solutions as well as site-specific ROI tracking. AdOn Network also features turnkey ASP solutions for Search Sites, Publishers, Agencies and Ad Networks which enable them to acquire, create, manage and distribute advertiser accounts. For more information, visit www.AdOnNetwork.com

ad pepper media

Founded in 1999, ad pepper media is an international interactive media, direct marketing, and technology solutions sales and service organization. Its goal is to enable advertisers to successfully and cost-effectively execute their online strategies and help site publishers maximize their online advertising revenues. It markets its services and marketing solutions worldwide through branch offices Europe and the U.S., enabling it to execute national and global interactive marketing campaigns across its representation network, reach network, proprietary opt-in email program, and opt-in email messages and newsletters.

OrangeFeed

OrangeFeed connects advertisers with publishers looking for content-relevant RSS ads.

Publishers

Add your RSS feeds to OrangeFeed’s systems, and they’ll deliver relevant, contextual ads onto your feed, creating a new revenue stream for your site. Publishers will receive comprehensive reports with advanced reader statistics, including impressions-to-clicks. Choose how to display your feed and how many ads you want to show and other variables.

Services included:

• Free setup and activation
• Free live tracking
• Free customer support

Advertisers

OrangeFeed will help buy targeted ads in appropriate RSS feeds. Services include:

• Free setup and activation
• Targeted ads
• Automatic ad serving
• Multiple-campaign management
• Low CPCs
• Live ad-impression tracking
• Reports that include CTRs and ROI

Google poached Berndt from Ogilvy & Mather’s New York office, where he was co-president, to fill a dual creative role at the company. One area of responsibility will be to provide in-house creative support for marketing initiatives around Google’s own products and services globally. The other will be to work at a creative level with agencies that are running client campaigns across Google’s network. He’ll start later in the year and report to VP of marketing David Lowry.

While Google has touted its creative consulting services for larger ad clients since 2006, the company hasn’t yet formalized the offering into an operating unit. The hire of Berndt, who will be based in New York with global responsibility for Creative Lab, is a step in that direction. Yet while some have characterized Google’s creative services expansion as a move into the agency business, a Google spokesperson denied that’s the case.

“We’ve done it in some bits and pieces, where we’ve helped agencies put their creative talent against our products,” a spokesperson told ClickZ News. “We are not in any way setting up our own agency. We want to be very clear about that.”

Among the richer ad products Brendt and his crew will help agencies package for advertisers are Google’s new Gadget Ads. Gadget Ads are in some ways a mash-up of all ad formats, targeting methods and pricing options available on the company’s ad network. The units can combine data feeds, images, video and Flash elements into a single execution that can be delivered based on contextual, geographic and demographic factors, as well as by Web site. Pricing options include both performance-based and CPM models. Developers can build the ads in either an HTML or Flash environment.

Beta advertisers testing the format over the past several months have included PepsiCo’s Sierra Mist, Intel, Honda, Six Flags and Paramount Vantage. According to Google, the ad clients’ take on the Gadget Ads has been “overwhelmingly positive,” and a couple of them offered prepared statements saying as much. For instance, an Intel Global Marketing Manager said Gadget Ads helped it “enhance visibility and engagement with the consumer while taking in key learnings of Google’s evolutionary advertising offerings.

Advertisers can optimize their campaigns based by tracking “dozens of actions” within the ads, Google said. Additionally, in what could be seen as a sign of YouTube’s influence on Google advertising, Web users can syndicate Gadget Ads to their own sites or Web pages.

By Zachary Rodgers, The ClickZ Network

In its assessment of spending changes in each channel channel, Nielsen said Web ad dollars were up the most, but national magazines, outdoor and spot TV markets were also among the categories gaining over the first half of 2006. The firm found local and national newspaper display ads were down, along with network and cable TV and network radio. Advertising spending across all media categories tracked by Nielsen in the first half of the year dropped 0.5 percent below the same period in ‘06.

The top ten online ad spenders from January through June 2007 were Experian Group Limited, NexTag, InterActiveCorp, Low Rate Source, AT&T, Verizon, Netflix, Countrywide Financial, Monster Worldwide and Vonage. Together, those advertisers plunked down about $5.2 billion in Web ads during the first half of the year. Nielsen did not provide the total amount spent in dollars across media or online only.

The top spending advertiser verticals in the first half of this year according to Nielsen were Financial Services, Web Media, Retail Goods and Services, Telecommunications, Public Services, Consumer Goods, Automotive, Travel, Entertainment and Software.

The top five ad spenders across all media categories measured were Procter & Gamble, General Motors, AT&T, Ford and Johnson & Johnson. All reduced ad spending in the past year, according to Nielsen. The top ten ad spenders in 2007’s first six months spent $8.3 million, a drop of about 7 percent compared to the first half of 2006.

In reporting online ad spending, Nielsen referred to data collected by its Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance service, which only takes into account CPM-based display ads. That leaves out huge chunks of what Web advertising offers, including pay-for-performance ads, e-mail, in-stream video spots and paid search advertising, which accounts for the largest portion of online advertising.

“Not only are they not counting search, they’re not counting classifieds,” said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer, a firm that aggregates market data from multiple sources including Nielsen. Classified ads also account for a significant portion of Web advertising.

Nielsen is not alone in missing some forms of online ad spending. Recent data from TNS Media Intelligence on online ad spending in the first half of the year also tracks Internet display ads only.

Discrepancies in measurements of online ad revenue growth from report to report abound. While Nielsen pegs growth in the first half of ‘07 at 23.6 percent higher than the same period last year, TNS is more conservative, marking growth at 17.7 percent.

In comparison, the recently-released Jack Myers Media Business Report projects Web ad spending will grow 20 percent this year.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has yet to release its numbers for the first half of this year; however, the IAB’s report on online ad revenues for the first half of 2006, done in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers, varied widely from Nielsen and TNS. TNS clocked online ad growth in the first half of ‘06 at 18.9 percent over the same period the previous year.

The IAB’s and Nielsen’s estimates for the first half of ‘06 were much higher. The IAB marked Web ad growth at 37 percent, while Nielsen reported it rose a whopping 49 percent over that period the year before. It should be noted the IAB tracks a variety of online ad formats, not just display advertising.

Of the online ad spending estimates he’s seen, Hallerman said most show around a 20 percent growth rate for 2007, and about $20 billion in spending by the end of the year.

“The hugest discrepancies come from definition,” said Hallerman. In other words, one measurement firm may categorize a particular type of ad as a display ad, while another may not.

At best, he suggested, these reports are good indicators of how the ad market and the Web ad sector are doing. “But it’s not as absolute as your bank account,” he added, “It never is.”

By Kate Kaye, The ClickZ Network

Industry Director of Media and Entertainment Adam Stewart detailed results from a campaign NBC Universal ran for the show “Heroes” across several Google ad offerings as the show returned from hiatus in the spring.

“We weren’t looking to grow the show, we wanted to bring people back to the show, to let them know it was back on,” said Stewart. The campaign produced a 60 percent increase in unaided awareness, he said; viewers were more likely to discuss the show with others. A spike in awareness led to a spike in search activity, with increases of up to 114 percent in branded and trademarked searches.

The campaign was a collaboration between Google, NBC Universal, and 360i, NBC’s agency.

In the healthcare category, Google executives said pharmaceuticals, hospitals, wellness programs, have been slow to embrace the Internet for marketing and branding. Print, television, magazines, and radio advertisements remain preferred advertising vehicles.

“The Internet is the most underleveraged resource in the healthcare industry,” said Khee Lee, Google’s healthcare industry manager. Still, he said data show consumers, after seeing a healthcare advertisement offline, will turn to the Internet to see more information about a health condition or treatment.

Pointing to a successful offline-online campaign, Lee referred to King Pharmaceutical’s non-branded advertisement, broadcast during the 2007 Super Bowl, designed to increase public awareness of high blood pressure. In addition to the television ad, titled “Heart Attack,” King worked with Digitas Health to create a search campaign and posted a YouTube video to promote its sponsorship of the American Heart Association’s high blood pressure Web site.

A look at the retail sector showed how online campaigns can effectively drive offline sales. A recent campaign for Rooms to Go, a U.S.-based furniture retailer, tracked the in-store redemption rate of coupons printed from the Web, and also looked at click-through rates. The campaign was geotargeted by IP address, using concentrated terms like “Austin furniture” in local search and AdSense placements. The campaign showed increased revenues and no change in return on advertising spend.

Current turmoil in the financial sector hasn’t affected the search giant’s stronghold. Google claims it drives more traffic to financial services content than all its competitors combined. At $2 billion, financial is the largest sector of online ad spending. Over the past year clicks were up 66 percent, and Google data shows the ad spent was up 90 percent.

Google shared preliminary details of a study it undertook with Compete for the automotive sector. The study looked at online shopping and research behavior in the six months leading up to a vehicle purchase. The research finds the buying cycle for autos has condensed from up to six months to one month, with 65 percent of buyers making a decision in one month or less, and only 17 percent taking more than three months to make a buying decision.

“Automobile marketers are more used to planning their marketing activities around a six-month cycle, but they must now adjust to the new speed of online marketing,” said Bonita Coleman Stewart, director of Google’s automotive industry team.

“Google has been reaching out to the auto industry to educate them on these kinds of findings,” said Coleman Stewart. “Google is working with automakers, agencies, regional dealer groups, and individual dealers, as well as parts resellers and service vendors, to help them understand which of Google’s products would work best for them, and show them metrics that prove that it will be worth their while,” she said.

Questions concerning the rumored GPhone were skirted with talk of the mobile sector. “Mobile advertising is very important,” said President of Advertising and Commerce Tim Armstrong. “As a platform [with] access to information, searching [and] ads, mobile is a critical piece of the future.”

What of DoubleClick? “On a normal review process,” said Armstrong. “We continue working with the government to make sure the acquisition closes.”

By Enid Burns, The ClickZ Network

The crisis underlines another dilemma for mortgage companies like Countrywide Financial and lead generators like LendingTree.com. What will they do online to shore up reputations and win customer trust as foreclosures increase and adjustable mortgages reset at higher interest rates?

Managing and working during a crisis isn’t easy. My past experience as a daily newspaper journalist taught me that. When bad things happen, a reporter and photographer – sometimes an entire newsroom — must respond.

Why doesn’t this happen at other businesses, regardless of their mission, be it financial services, merchandise, food, or travel? Some businesses get it. Others don’t.

ClickZ’s CMO columnist Pete Blackshaw hammers home this point. Among the stellar rebounds: JetBlue. After the airline left passengers stranded on JFK Airport runways during a February ice storm and then canceled numerous other flights, CEO David Neeleman responded. He posted a video on YouTube, apologizing to passengers and outlining plans to fix broken processes.

As ClickZ’s new executive editor, the mortgage crisis struck me as a topic ripe for investigation, including what the turmoil means for online advertisers and marketers, and companies that derive revenue from these businesses.

Did-it.com Chairman (and ClickZ columnist) Kevin Lee told my colleague, Kevin Heisler, executive editor at Search Engine Watch, he’s seen some fallout. “We noticed some softness in both keyword pricing as well as in search volumes in the mortgage space with some dilution in conversion rates,” Lee said. That said, a conversion rate drop doesn’t necessarily mean fewer prospects are filling out loan applications. It could mean an increasing percentage of news-related searches is bringing down conversion rates.

A look at the top online advertisers suggests some lending companies continued to dedicate money to online advertisements in the early summer even as the home mortgage market encountered turmoil.

In fact, Bankrate.com, an aggregator of loan rates and other financial information, has seen strong demand for its mortgage and deposit channels, says Bruce Zanca, Bankrate’s chief marketing and communications officer. In a twist, some financial institutions such as Countrywide and IndyMac launched online ad campaigns promoting their respective certificates of deposit.

Not everyone’s doing as well. Consider IAC/InterActive Corp.’s LendingTree.com unit, which provides leads to mortgage companies. It reported revenue of $198.6 million for the first six months of 2007, representing a 10 percent drop compared to the same period in 2006. IAC cited deteriorating market conditions for LendingTree’s revenue decline. Still, LendingTree’s Web site ranked No. 1 on a list identifying top Internet advertisers, based on media value, in May and June, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

LendingTree, in an earnings report filed May 10, said it would focus instead on “traditional mortgage products in reaction to changes in the mortgage market.” But did the company change its online ad strategy?

A Google search for “home loans” turns up at least a dozen sponsored or paid results. Among them, one for LendingTree, that read: “$200,000 for $938/Month! When Banks Compete, You Win.”

LendingTree’s site features innocuous customer testimonials. “Lending Tree was easy, fast and I was very satisfied with the results,” says Margaret T. of Key West, Fla. “This whole process was so easy! We started receiving offers, decided on one, and within weeks, closed on our refinance!” writes Victor N. of Port St. Lucie, Fla.

Was it a coincidence LendingTree chose customers from Florida, a state hard hit by the mortgage implosion? Probably not. Beyond that, the company, like others, doesn’t appear to acknowledge hardships some borrowers have encountered with declining housing values and climbing monthly mortgage payments.

In response, LendingTree’s senior vice president of marketing, Darren Beck, said in an e-mail that the company ”regularly adjusts its advertising to adapt to not only the market environment but also the needs of both our consumers and lenders.” Recent changes, he said, include promoting more fixed-rate loans to assist consumers with adjustable rate mortgages about to reset.

The Washington Post spotted a Countrywide Financial ad on AOL.com promising to make it easy to get loans for homeowners with credit problems. Countrywide told the Post it “monitors and adjusts advertisements to help ensure that the leads generated are likely to be within our underwriting parameters.” Rick Sizemore, chief strategy officer at Multimedia Intelligence, suspects many mortgage lenders, especially those targeting the subprime market, are scrambling to survive rather than revise their ads.”Strategies are chaotic,” he observed.

For some, it’s easier to hide in a foxhole than to climb out and fight back.

By Anna Maria Virzi, The ClickZ Network

Utten, who earlier held CMO positions at Revlon and MasterCard, doesn’t limit his Google-related spending to search. He also buys keyword advertising, campaigns on YouTube, and ads in Google’s display advertising network and participates in Google’s contextual beta tests in both television and radio advertising. Utten holds a daily Google meeting with his team of Ph.D.s (eight in the U.S., bolstered by another slew of eggheads based abroad), all charged with creating analytical algorithmic models of the company’s Google campaigns.

“Test, learn, optimize” is the mantra. Utten and his team don’t use their Google-derived data only to optimize their many campaigns in near real time on the search giant’s many platforms, but also to tweak creative, offers, flights, and localities in their traditional print and broadcast ad campaigns.

As they’re not close to their top of spend on Google, Utten says, “we’ll keep spending more online until it plateaus out.” And sure, E-Trade’s buying inventory and search terms on Yahoo and MSN as well, he confirmed while we shared a cab after a media event yesterday at Google’s New York headquarters. “But frankly, they’re not really even in the race.”

It’s Not an Ad Budget, It’s an Operating Budget

Of course, Utten was invited by Google to share its Kool-Aid with media. Google’s head of the financial services sales vertical, Jon Kaplan, would have been delighted at how on message Utten remained after he left the building. E-Trade’s an early adopter of the new advertising model Google’s chief ad honcho Tim Armstrong is preaching: turn your advertising budget into an operating budget. Rather than picking a year-on-year or quarter-on-quarter number, he’d like advertisers to view their Google buys as an operational expense, “like making a movie or building a dealership.”

And Google wants its advertisers to advertise more. A lot more. Say, about a thousand times more.

As an example, he cites an unnamed computer manufacturer and Google client who, a few years ago, ran campaigns for 8 to12 products annually. Today, that same company advertises 12,000 products and services, according to Armstrong. The idea, he says, is businesses can make all their assets available to allconsumers all the time, and in doing so, connect only with interested users.

“You don’t need to go into a fixed budgetary cycle,” Armstrong argues. Instead, advertisers must learn (with or without battalions of number-crunching Ph.D.s at their sides) how their budgets fluctuate with consumer-interest cycles.

In a breakout session on the financial vertical, examples of evergreen and episodic advertising were trotted out. The company is keeping an eye on search behavior in the wake of this week’s interest rate cut and the ongoing mortgage crisis, for example. Lenders are adjusting their ad spend as a result, and banks are seeking depositors to fund their own loans.

This isn’t only Google’s idea, of course, though it goes far to explain its proposed DoubleClick acquisition. It’s also what’s fueling the reorg AOL announced this week, Microsoft’s snapping up of aQuantive, and WPP’s buying of 24/7.

Whither Ad Agencies?

Google isn’t explicitly out to disintermediate ad agencies, and (swears Armstrong upside down and sideways) it certainly doesn’t want to be in the agency business. But if its vision of the future is realized (and face it, to a large extent it’s already happening), the implications for agencies will be just as seismic as they were when this whole Internet thing came along in the first place.

Utten may have put it best when he explained insofar as E-Trade’s constellation of traditional, interactive, and media agencies are concerned, the company remains idea agnostic. Instead, what he’s buying is the “best optimization.”

“It’s probably more impactful to build ads on the fly,” is the way Armstrong put it.

Not exactly Madison Avenue’s core competency, is it? No wonder Google is poaching from the top ranks of agency creative talent to help agencies get the hang of what promises to be a whole new ballgame.

The promise is more effective advertising which, handled correctly, will be sustainable and even self-financing.

The pitfall? That daily meeting between eight sober engineers with doctoral degrees and the high-strung prima donna of a creative director.

C’mon, Google, solve that!

By Rebecca Lieb, The ClickZ Network

The top search engines: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask, are falling over one another in unveiling plans to reduce how much user data they retain, and for how long.

It all began in March, when Google said it would begin to delete the final portions of individual IP addresses it collects from users after 18 months, and only retain data longer if legally compelled to. And this month, Google said its cookies will expire in two years time, rather than in 2038 as has been the case until now.

Yahoo jumped in to say it intends to delete IP addresses and cookies after 13 months, unless users (or law enforcement agencies) want them to hang onto the data for a longer period.

Microsoft chimed in, saying it, too, will make Windows Live Search data anonymous after 18 months “unless the company receives user consent for a longer time period.” The retroactive policy applies Microsoft’s search portals all over the world. Search data will be stored in a different manner than data tied to personally-identifiable information (e-mail, phone numbers, etc.), and no correlation between search and other data types will be possible. Cookies will expire sooner, too.

Microsoft also says it will enable consumers to opt-out of behavioral targeting on third-party Web sites as well as allow users to search and surf its own sites without being associated with personal identifiers used for targeting.

“People should be able to search and surf online without having to navigate a complicated patchwork of privacy policies,” said Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen, in a statement.

Ask, meanwhile, is providing AskEraser, a tool that allows users to search while relinquishing no data whatsoever. “People should have access to privacy controls based on their level of comfort around the storage of their search data,” said Doug Leeds, VP product management.

These developments are interesting and not unwelcome. The question, really, is whether they’ll impact users’ sense of privacy and security when surfing the Web.

Data-collection and targeting opt-outs have long been in the crosshairs when it comes to consumer privacy. Remember the fallout over DoubleClick’s practices, back in 2001? Consumers have long been able to opt-out of DoubleClick’s cookies — but how many average Joes know they can, or why they might want to? How prominently will the search engines feature opt-out information? And how easy will it be for end-users to understand and to use these features?

Self-regulation is not a bad thing, of course. Against the backdrop of highly-publicized search privacy breeches like the one that befell AOL last year, it’s also hardly surprising. Add to that the fact search giants and portals are gaining more data with each new acquisition (Google just bought DoubleClick, AOL snapped up Tacoda, and Microsoft not only acquired Avenue A/Razorfish, but also just filed a patent for a technology that serves ads to users’ desktops). No wonder Washington is watching.

At the end of the day, though, is this just going through the motions? In an era when a day without Google is an endurance-type challenge in the blogosphere, does it matter if data expires in 18 months or 18 years? The cynical answer is no. Given usage trends (search is the top online activity after e-mail), it’s unrealistic to expect people not to search for over a year or more. If they stop searching on Google or Yahoo or MSN or Ask, it’s either because they’ve developed other search engine preferences — or maybe they died.

What data search engines retain and how long they hold on to it has big implications, of course, positive and negative. The ability to provide personalized search results comes immediately to mind. So does the potential for more accurate behavioral targeting and ad serving. I am liking the fact that when issued misguided and/or immoral government subpoenas for user data, whether domestically or in countries such as China, the search engines may literally have nothing to offer.

By Rebecca Lieb, The ClickZ Network

So I heave a sigh and go through the drill. It ain’t no fun, but it’s a necessary part of publishing quality content on the Web. Sure, the issue is one of copyright, but it’s also about protecting your brand and keeping it out of bad neighborhoods, be they AdSense-fueled splogs (define) or bottom-feeder marketing companies making a low bid for legitimacy by passing your content off as their own.

Is It Happening to You?

The first step in protecting your content is to keep track of it. If you’re not listening online, you should be. When setting up an online listening mechanism, don’t neglect to add given names or other unique keywords found in your content. Splogs and scrapers rarely to never attribute your site or domain name, so you need other methods to be vigilant.

When Your Content Is on Another Site

OK, so you’ve found your blog post, white paper, article, or presentation on a Web site (as opposed to a splog).

Now what?

First, get in touch with the site’s owner or publisher. Check the content or “About Us” pages for information. What if the info isn’t there? Before shooting an e-mail to admin@the-domain-in-question and hoping for the best, there are more tangible options. Try a WHOIS lookup of the site owner. Alexa can help, too.

Once you’ve dug up who to contact, a polite cease-and-desist e-mail, fax, or letter is in order. Your goal is to point out the transgression; to request removal of the content, a correction, or attribution; and to create a paper (or digital) trail. Be detailed, and point to the URLs where the content resides on your site, as well as to your own copyright policy, if you have one posted (not necessary, but never a bad idea. Creative Commons is a great place to start if you need one.) Let the recipient know how to get in touch with you, a deadline by which you expect a response, and that you may resort to legal action if the matter isn’t resolved.

In most cases where Web sites are concerned, this helps open a dialogue and resolve the problem.

When Your Content Appears on a Splog

Splogs are more nefarious content thieves than Web sites because they’re designed and built to illicitly make someone else money on your content. Most are on Google’s Blogger platform for one good reason: it’s free. Sploggers needn’t register a domain name or prove their identity. Good luck finding a feedback or contact link, and if you do, don’t hold your breath waiting for a response. Sploggers seek out keyword-rich content to transplant to their sites, which they monetize with contextual advertising, usually Google’s AdSense.

Standard Blogger blogs feature a nav bar containing a flag link for reporting abuse to Google. Sploggers tend to hide or disable this feature (in itself a violation of Blogger’s TOS). If you use Firefox, there’s a fix.

You can report a splog to Blogger. But why stop there?

Splogs exists to collect ad revenue. If they’re making money off your content, it’s up to you to put a stop to it.

Report a policy violation to AdSense. You can also click the “Ads by Gooooogle” link, then select “Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw” to report a violation.

In the less-likely event the ads are delivered by Yahoo’s Publisher Network, send your detailed complaint to: ypn-feedback(at)cc.yahoo-inc.com. And, of course, if the splog is part of an affiliate program, you can report abuse to Commission Junction, AdBrite, or the program in question.

Another tactic is to report these sites for term violations to the search engines themselves. The goal is to get offending sites removed from the search engine index, rendering them essentially invisible.

Report a spam result when a site or splog violates Google’s quality Webmaster guidelines or Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) obligations. You can also report them on Yahoo’s copyright infringement page and Microsoft’s support page.

Open Eyes, Realistic Goals

Cleaning up the Internet is a Sisyphean undertaking. That’s not the goal here. However, marketers, advertisers, bloggers, and publishers have an obligation to protect the integrity of their brands and their content. Ethics, standards, and copyright law are very obviously deep subjects this column doesn’t attempt to tackle. But if it hasn’t happened already, one day soon your stuff will appear on someone else’s Web site. The above tools will help you to cope, and rectify an unfortunate situation.

By Rebecca Lieb, The ClickZ Network

You can better target marketing messages and more cost-effectively meet buyers’ expressed needs using their contact information and purchase history. Having purchased from the company in the past, existing customers are familiar with your firm’s brand and hopefully are predisposed to shop with you again.

Three Retention Marketing Goals

With increased transparency and expansion of social media, retention marketing is no longer just about getting more sales. It’s also about:

Keeping existing customers active and purchasing to increase sales while reducing attrition and churn

Supporting the buying decision by making customers feel good about their purchases; providing more information to help use the product; and aiding returns if the order doesn’t meet their needs

Providing support and an advocacy venue for customers to express their opinions and refer friends

Today, we’ll look at keeping existing customers active. In follow-up columns, we’ll cover supporting the buying decision and providing an advocacy venue.

Five Challenges of Retention Marketing

To provide ongoing communications that remain fresh, retention marketers must overcome five hurdles:

Make presentations seem fresh. Don’t continually reuse the same creative.

Keep products looking different. This is especially important when customers have seen them multiple times.

Prevent offer and promotion fatigue. Promotions often become less effective with each successive use, generating lower results.

Maintain the same number of annual promotions. It’s generally necessary to keep the same number of promotions each year to maintain the same sales level.

Overcome variability in customer quality. Shoppers may vary their purchasing levels, depending on how they were originally acquired. One red flag for retention marketers is customers who purchased for one of the following reasons:

Low price. Price-sensitive customers may only buy based on price, an issue in terms of both margins and profitability.

Free shipping and handling. Customers who were attracted with free shipping and handling offers may wait to buy until the offer is available again.

Gift purchase. Customers who bought the product as a gift may have no further interest in your company.

Competitive forces. From a customer’s perspective, how good is the competition’s offer? How strong is its advertising? Assess whether this challenge is worth meeting, cost-wise.

Low or special credit qualifier. This is an issue for higher priced items that are paid for over time.

Three Ways to Keep Customers Buying

To keeping existing customers buying, there are three major marketing activity categories:

Sell to current customers. This includes selling more of the same product, related products, or an upgrade from a past product. To this end, a marketing calendar is important to ensure there’s an ongoing schedule of promotions to drive revenue. Use several different factors to determine each promotion’s success, including total revenues, costs, and buyers. When developing a promotional calendar, consider the following:

Current and previous year’s promotions, including offer, product, creative, timing, and results.

Acquisition timing and life-cycle sequencing. When are new customers acquired? How does this affect the marketing calendar? Are special offers targeted at high buyers, inactive customers, or other segments?

Fresh, updated product offerings.

New creative approaches or offers to replace fatigued ones.

Continued communications beyond e-mail and catalogs, which get recipients to buy more. The aim is to foster the relationship with customers by providing more information that enhances their product experience and gives them reasons to revisit your store, Web site, or catalog.

Extend revenue opportunities. These marketing initiatives focus on leveraging the customer file’s value to generate revenues from non-sales related activities. Options include:

Coregistration for online e-mail registration, which may be done for a fee or reciprocal registrations

Package inserts, which are third-party ads placed in outgoing shipments for a fee, paid on a CPM (define) basis

List rental for e-mail or postal mailings

Referrals from current customers, which are a negative cost that reduces acquisition costs

Manage inventory. Ensure there’s a balanced stock of new and existing product. It’s important to continually refresh the product offering to keep it alluring while not maintaining inventory that doesn’t move. When assessing your offering’s long tail, consider customer demand. It may be necessary to change product presentation and pricing to liquidate excess inventory. But don’t run out of stock on hot items.

Retention Marketing Success Metrics

Among the factors to measure to determine retention marketing success are:

Sales. Track dollars, units, and products as well as revenues per customer contacted.

Expenses. Monitor marketing cost dollars and cost per customer contacted.

Response rate. Calculate the percentage of customers who purchased relative to the number of customers contacted.

Churn rate. Track the percentage of customers who end their relationships with your company within a given time.

Lifetime value. Measure the combined effect of acquisition and retention strategies over time, taking into consideration the net present value.

It’s much less expensive to sell to existing customers than to find new ones. While it can be more challenging to keep the marketing and product mix fresh, it’s worth the effort. Repeat sales have better margins.

Stay tuned. In parts two and three, I’ll cover the other two aspects of retention marketing: purchase decision support and customer advocacy.

By Heidi Cohen, The ClickZ Network

What Does Delayed Purchasing Mean for Marketers?

From a marketing perspective, it’s important to ensure customers get the information they need to aid their purchase decision and they can complete their purchases with minimum hassle when they’re ready to buy. It’s also important to facilitate sharing information with others who are involved with or may influence the purchase decision. Here are five steps to help customers choose to buy your offerings:

Extend cookies to 30 days. Prospective shoppers will find the merchandise they were considering in their shopping carts when they return to your site. While this may seem obvious, there are e-tailers whose cookies expire sooner. If customers have spent time putting your product in a shopping cart, they don’t want to go through the process again!

Make related product easy to find. To this end, include:

• A search box, so users can refine their research or locate another product
• Meaningful site navigation, either left hand or horizontal
• Related product to cross sell
• List of bestsellers to increase sales

Answer shoppers’ questions. Since customers may have issues regarding your product or site, make sure they can get questions answered in a reassuring way. Be prepared to take action if these queries lead to an immediate desire to purchase. Include:

• An FAQ for popular topics.
• A toll-free number for customer service.
• An e-mail contact that’s answered within a reasonable time. Manage customer expectations with an autoresponder.
• Live chat, if available.
• A physical address with a link to maps, where appropriate.

Help customers share information. This will aid in the shopping decision. To this end, have:

• A bookmark-this-site link or button so users can find it later.
• E-mail-a-friend functionality. Make sure e-mail includes relevant product information, a product picture if possible, a URL, an e-mail contact address with a link, and a toll-free number and retail address, where applicable. Remember, users may be sending this information to themselves as a reminder.
• Print-this-page button. Make sure the printed page has a URL that’s easy to type, along with your toll-free number, e-mail contact, and physical address. Customers may use this printout to order. For tracking, use a special e-mail address and toll-free number.
• IM and social bookmarking options.

Enhance the shopping experience. You’ll meet the needs of a variety of buyers. Among the options are:

• Give customers a “Buy Now!” button to purchase the merchandise directly.
• Have a “Save My Shopping Cart” option that doesn’t require lengthy registration. Test asking for just an e-mail address to allow you to send an e-mail reminder.
• Allow customers to create a wish list. People tend to use these lists for gift-type products, not everyday items.
• Include e-mail newsletter and RSS feed registration for future promotions.
• Use trust marks like “Hacker Safe” early in the process. According to Nigel Ravenhill, ScanAlert’s director of marketing communications, “The best placement to maximize conversion lift is in the upper corner of the left navigation column about two inches from the top, near the search box.

Measuring Delayed Shopping Delayed shopping can affect your tracking, particularly on paid search marketing effectiveness and shopping cart abandonment. It can be difficult to track sales back to the initial engagement. To this end, it’s important to consider this goal when setting up customer contact points to collect information that aids your post sale analytics. Here are some suggestions:

Incorporate appropriate tracking into the sales process. Plan your marketing promotions with an understanding of your business goals so you can incorporate and collect useful metrics. This includes ensuring your cookies last 30 days to monitor return visitors.

Track conversion rates and time to successful conversion. See how your site measures up to this current research, and monitor your trends over time.

Extend paid search tracking to monitor delayed purchases. Given paid search continues to increase in cost, it’s critical to ensure you’ve captured all postponed sales from the initial investment. (Note: Customers who initially used paid search to find your site may use it again to return. This is also important to track.)

Monitor shopping cart abandonment. By taking a longer, lagged view of purchase conversion, assess whether your site has a lower shopping cart abandonment rate than it first appears.

When prospective shoppers visit your site looking for a product, they may not be ready to buy. You must facilitate their ability to find more information about the product they’re looking for (as well as related items), to share their research, to easily find your site again, and to quickly purchase the product when they’re finally ready. When a visitor leaves your site, the clock is ticking. Your prospect may buy from your competitor if you didn’t make the extra effort to close the deal.

By Heidi Cohen, The ClickZ Network

Fortunately, marketing in uncertain times (or in the middle of a genuine crisis) requires the same fundamental skills and process you’ve already been using. Often, the best response to uncertainty is the ability to take rapid, decisive action. Your department should already be using analytics to guide decisions about future investments, as well as measure current ones’ ROI (define). Marketing departments can be effective as both leading and trailing indicators of the health of the company, the market sector, and the overall economy.

Last week, my ClickZ colleague Kevin Lee wrote about an economic downturn’s impact on SEM (define) and made some excellent points. His examination zeroed in on one element of the total marketing picture and demonstrated that there are always upside opportunities even in the most downward-trending marketplace. When you look at the much bigger marketing picture, you can find clear paths to success in the midst of uncertainty.

Here are the action steps to take now to be prepared for any crisis that may lie ahead:

Build a crisis plan. Just because your boss asked for it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. A crisis plan is useful even if you never have a crisis. Consider it a scenario plan instead, and work through the various events that could happen in your market, to your company, and to your competitors. Evaluate how your business should respond. These scenarios — a classic element in strategic planning — can cover things as mundane as a commodity price increase and as extreme as world economic meltdown.

Map out both the crisis elements and the responses each will generate. Include a timetable for response actions as well. Finally, consider how the Internet itself may be affected by a crisis. Will bandwidth be reduced or transmission costs increased because of a global crisis? What does the elimination of a competitor mean to traffic patterns? Can you count on customers spending their time and money online, or will they head to stores to bargain-shop? There are plenty of questions to address in the plan.

Add crisis KPI levels to your scorecards. I’ve been writing for a long time about the importance of identifying success metrics, defining core key performance indicators (KPIs), and building an actionable scorecard. Take another step forward to really examine the KPIs you must watch carefully in the face of a looming crisis (or even in the face of a minor blip). Determine the levels for these KPIs that indicate significant change in your environment.

These needn’t be negative levels. If you find you’re getting a spike in search traffic that once went to a competitor, that competitor might have reduced its SEO (define) investment. Is the competitor doing that because it needs to cut back or because it’s hoarding cash in the event of a market drop? Every piece of available data tells a story. You decide which story it tells.

Monitor better information. For decades, the large petroleum companies have had entire departments dedicated to strategic assessment and planning. These groups often consist of dozens or hundreds of individuals worldwide who track information across many sources and provide regularly updated perspectives on what this information means to their businesses. The U.S. government does something similar in most of its branches. They all know the minutiae often tells a very different story when viewed from 50,000 feet rather than from 50.

It’s unlikely you have a large research and strategy organization, but you do have the Web and the insight into the trends and topics relevant to your business. Start your own clipping service internally, using sites like Digg and del.icio.us to provide tools to help you get the macro perspective on your industry and the economy as a whole. Impress your peers by knowing recent sales gains are due to the poor rice harvest in one country that led to the reduced export of a product used by your competitor. Looming crises or not, be prepared — and practice safe marketing.

By Shane Atchison, The ClickZ Network

Shepard Fairey, creator of Obey Giant, describes his campaign as an “experiment in phenomenology.” Although you may not be familiar with the campaign, you’ve most likely seen the sticker with the picture of Andre the Giant and the word “obey” somewhere in your travels. Fairey has subverted the ubiquity of advertising and branding, creating a campaign with no product to sell and no cause to promote. Instead, it simply exists to call attention to the act of recognizing the world around us and the messages delivered.

Gibson and Fairey tap into the dark side of our marketing-driven culture and call our attention to the dangers that lurk within. As marketers, we often fall into the trap of “more is better.” If we can show the logo 20 times, why not 100 times? If we can get customers to add our banner to their blogs, why not make the logo on the banner just a bit bigger?

Marketers are trained to believe in the power of repetition, exposure, and constant brand reinforcement. The Web allows us to replicate our message infinitely and to ensure we lead customers through a highly planned and tested brand experience. If on- and offline brands are out of alignment, we see immediate impact on customer behavior. Consider Apple’s on- and offline stores. Why is the physical store so much better at portraying the brand than the online version? Could Apple do a better job, or is this a weakness for one of its competitors to exploit?

Modern online marketing allows us to plan, measure, adjust, and optimize in near real time, 24-7. We can make our own brand nearly ubiquitous if we invest enough time and effort. But do any of the data tell us when we’ve gone too far? Do we know at which point we might be causing an “allergic” reaction to our messages in our target customers?

Here are a few things to consider when thinking about this problem:

Has your Web site become a giant logo farm? How many times must your corporate or product logo appear on a page? Should it appear on every page? If you have a globally recognized brand, you likely only need it to appear once. If you have a lesser-known brand, you should focus on creating value behind the brand, not pasting the logo everywhere.

Do you run viral and community campaigns that have become brand parade floats? Do you focus on the real content and value of what you deliver when you enter the online community, or are you trying to get your logo to appear on some kid’s MySpace page? Does having it appear on that MySpace page really sell your stuff and drive ROI?

Are your off- and online marketing activities aligned sufficiently so the brand experience is consistent from one to the other? Are you in danger of creating brand allergies in potential customers through your overexposure or poor execution? There’s nothing worse than seeing a picture of a hotel room online, then walking into the real room and feeling duped. Ensure every brand touch delivers both value and truth.

Have you been testing and optimizing brand messages and visual treatments as well as product content and offers? It’s pretty easy to run a massive multivariate optimization test of discount offers, but what if you simply test the presence or absence (or even size) of your logo when placed next to the offer? Consider the impact you might be having on your customers when you put the big “LOGO” sign in front of them.

Online marketing has given us an amazing set of tools and the ability to test everything. The trick for the good marketer is being sure to define “everything” as everything.

By Shane Atchison, The ClickZ Network

Pop-up ads, once the bane of online advertising, have all but disappeared, thank goodness. Once the scourge of the Web, they’re now pretty much relegated to the type of site you’d probably be unwilling to confess you visit in the first place. Complaints and user dissatisfaction, therefore, are way, way down.

Which isn’t to say users aren’t still plenty frustrated by online advertising. What’s irking them now are video ads, one of the fastest-growing Internet advertising forms since the banner.

Yesterday, a friend e-mailed me a link to an article on an ABC affiliate site. “Don’t stay here too long….There is an annoying sound pop-up that, uh, pops up annoyingly,” the accompanying message warned.

It wasn’t what you and I would call a pop-up (define). Rather, it was a Rovion ad that appeared — and promptly began to talk — about 15 seconds after I landed on the page. Frankly, I don’t know what it was for or what it said. I belong to the leave-the-headphones-permanently-plugged-in camp at work. They go on my head only when I need to hear something (Skype, for example). At home, audio is more or less permanently muted unless I’m watching a film or listening to iTunes.

Therein lies an essential difference between online video and pop-ups. For all the hoopla about broadband video measurement standards and what constitutes a video impression (to say nothing of the oh-so-elusive engagement metric), I’m willing to bet a significant portion of video advertising amounts to something less than white noise.

No, I can’t find any studies or stats on how many users leave their audio on. But think about it. To zap pop-ups, users had to download and install software, tweak browser prefs, or add browser extensions. Killing online video advertising is as easy as — if not easier than — using TiVo to zap a TV spot.

The Right Place at the Right Time

Online video ads almost always have an audio component. Is anyone listening?

Dayparting could be a large determinant. We’re all aware Internet primetime is during the day, when office workers are rooted to their desks and broadband connections. Given most office workers are in cubicles these days, not only is software-initiated audio rude, it probably also isn’t the greatest idea (unless you’re looking for the sort of negative publicity “The New York Times” and Pfizer recently endured).

Actually, the offending ad in question wasn’t software-initiated…exactly. It required a mouseover. Unfortunately, the concept of user-initiated is becoming ever murkier. Be honest. Unintentionally mousing over something too big to avoid — or flagged as an audio trigger — is a launch pad for mayhem. C’mon. It doesn’t really count as user-initiated, does it?

Environment counts. Do users really expect an all-singing, all-dancing experience when they visit “The New England Journal of Medicine”? I’m no physician, but I doubt it. Publishers who don’t set standards risk serious brand damage. Advertisers risk engendering hostility rather than generating business. On the other hand, consumers expect and welcome audible conversations from entertainment and video sites.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Video ads don’t just occupy screen real estate, they take up a user’s valuable time. Yet increasingly, advertisers and publishers are dispensing with frequency caps (or they’re radically lowering their standards).

On Moviefone last week, it was all “Pirates of the Caribbean” all the time, according to an exasperated colleague who was searching for something else across the site. At least that abated after the opening weekend. Ad:tech San Francisco tortured its visitors with a walking, talking greeting from my good friend Susan Bratton, the conference’s chairwoman emeritus. It appeared each and every visit — and when you’re attending a conference, you’re likely to visit the site multiple times. Rovion CEO Len Ostroff, whose company created the video, said it’s company policy to always recommend frequency caps. But there’s nothing they can do when they’re removed. (To ad:tech’s credit, the new site video appeared only once.)

Publishers always say they impose frequency caps, but they’re also committed to displaying a predetermined number of impressions. When they don’t, makegoods are in order. The stakes are higher when premium video inventory enters into the equation.

Pre-Roll That Just Keeps Rolling

AccuStream released a study yesterday that finds pre-roll video inventory has grown an average 105.2 percent annually for the past five years. That’s some serious expansion, but it’s also a source of serious transgressions, not the least of which is ad rotation.

A significant constituency of the new sites embracing pre-roll ads are TV networks with a ton of content to make available via broadband. The bad news is many haven’t found a corresponding ton of advertisers to sponsor that content. It’s hardly unusual to watch clip after network clip on a site and be forced to endure the same :15 or :20 spot again and again and again. These same television properties would never dare to populate an on-air ad block with only one ad, repeated four or five times. So why do they do it on their Web sites?

Is is really necessary to once again call out the standards and practices committees to create guidelines for online video advertising? Wouldn’t it instead be better for everyone if advertisers and publisher exercised a little common sense? And wouldn’t that be preferable to having frustrated users turn the Web into the online equivalent of a DVR?

By Rebecca Lieb, The ClickZ Network

Although those days are clearly over, affiliate programs still haven’t gotten the message. Few are adapting to shift to larger banner ads — ads that can deliver stunning increases in performance.

From pop-ups to emails, increasingly larger banner graphics are beginning to dominate the Internet.

A look at Jupiter Media Metrix numbers tells you the story:

Over 50 percent of ads being served are still traditional banner ads — 468 x 60.

Bigger banner ads increased dramatically in 2001, jumping from 2 billion a month in April 2001 to about 5.7 billion in January 2002.

The Increasing Popularity of Bigger Banners

I clicked on a Netscape News story on my IM ticker and found that big ads dominate the entry screen. The article is nearly buried beneath them. Yet, Netscape continues to run these ads, as does CNET, Yahoo Finance, and many others.

Why? Because they work much better than smaller ads… for now. It started with skyscrapers, and now the use of bigger banner sizes is growing so quickly that they threaten to take over your screen. The use of pop-unders that nearly take up the full screen is increasing. For example, Fastclick.com’s pop network uses 700 x 325 pop-unders to capture people’s attention. And everyone has seen the huge X10 ads.

HTML emails that simulate postcard mailings are also becoming commonplace. They’re basically the size and shape of a standard postcard — 600 x 325 has worked well for me.

Finally, large banner ads are appearing on Web site pages. We did a test at Yahoo’s email channel. With a geotargeted 400 x 450 flat banner ad, we got 3 percent click-through! What is even more surprising is that Yahoo defined its ad space as 400 x infinity, challenging us to make it as big as we wanted.

Now what I have learned in my own testing is that bigger banner ads must be a part of your creative development. But, I would never have applied this knowledge to email if not for my affiliates.

The Power of Bigger Banner Ads

One of the best things about an affiliate network is the continual testing and innovation your affiliates can offer. Though it can sometimes get out of control, this energy is one of the most valuable, hidden resources of affiliate programs.

Recently an affiliate taught me how to use bigger banner ads to improve my email click-through by at least 2 percent, and my conversion rate has improved as well.

I was running a detailed testing campaign to benchmark acquisition costs for a client. We focused on pop-unders, testing the size and shape of the X10-like banner against smaller banner pops (250 x 250, 400 x 450, and even an excellent 120 x 600 pop-under).

Meanwhile, one of my affiliates saw my 600 x 325 pop-under, grabbed it, and shot it out in an email. The results amazed all of us:

This 600 x 325 graphic-only email registered 270,000 impressions (opens).

We got 9,610 clicks, or about 3.56 percent of impressions (actual emails opened).

We generated 104 orders.
Bigger banners work much better on Web sites and in email for several reasons:

You can share more information.

You can capture attention of the visitor through graphics and detailed text.

Bigger graphics mean bigger pictures and more room to show the product.

The most popular bigger banner continues to be the 120 x 600 skyscraper, but many odd sizes are beginning to make inroads. The odd shapes seem to do better in my testing, maybe because the unusual shape attracts even the jaded user’s attention. After all, people see a 468 x 60 banner and think, “Skip it!”

They dominate the screen.
The problem with bigger banners is how they seem to be taking over the Web browser. Go to CNET or Yahoo Finance, and you’ll see them growing all the time, sometimes interrupting your reading of the content.

You also may have to deal with bandwidth challenges. In my 600 x 325 banner test, that pop was 25k, much bigger than standard ads. We wondered if that would affect email performance, but, in fact, users seemed to be quite willing to wait for it to download.

The days of small banners are likely over for most of us; we all know how poorly they perform. But designing bigger ads involves more information space, and it’s important to use that space wisely.

In my next article, I’ll share with you how to create bigger banner ads, using the space and size to deliver your message in way that improves performance and actually enhances the advertising experience for the end user.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

eBay’s affiliate program was launched with good intentions. It would pay affiliates that referred visitors who registered and/or bid on eBay.

The program could have worked if eBay had hand-picked affiliate commerce sites with good customers. Instead, the online auction site made the fatal mistake of opening the program to every affiliate everywhere.

No Way It Could Have Worked

Countless affiliate programs are fully capable of trafficking millions of people to anyone’s site, given the right (read: wrong) reason: the incentivized per-click game. It’s a recipe for failure for all but a few savvy marketers (who all work in porn, anyway).

eBay recently pulled the plug on reward-based affiliates, whose referrals were generating tens of thousands of dollars in bids per month. This because visitors some of the affiliates sent over were low-balling bids on eBay to earn incentive points for each bid. They had no intention of purchasing anything.

Affiliates, of course, knew this would happen. Offer something for nothing, and there are always takers. For a short while, visitors sent from these affiliates’ sites turned parts of eBay into a free-for-all. They bid with no intention of paying. They raced in and out of auctions, looked at everything, and placed even more bids.

More bids, more points. That’s what happens. Ask any affiliate consultant about CPC programs, and you’ll hear laughter. This is no place for rookies or a naive belief in hard-working affiliates diligently qualifying customers. It’s the real world. Incentivized affiliates did what they do. They sent tons of users who take tons of actions for tons of points. Period.

When eBay figured out what was going on, the company notified some reward-based affiliates they wouldn’t be paid commissions for their traffic.

If programs make their affiliates pay for their own bad decisions, what’s the value of their contracts? Nothing in eBay’s agreement with affiliates prohibits this practice. Something does now, and eBay is trying to enforce the clause retroactively.

Learn From the Past

eBay didn’t understand the most fundamental premise of affiliate marketing: You get the traffic you pay for. In performance marketing, it’s your job to build performance into your affiliate program.

Many of eBay’s incentivized visitors weren’t customers. They were folks rewarded for registering and bidding. The reward (incentive) was points for a CPC and cost-per-action (CPA) program. Anyone who has ever done any research on affiliate programs (or made a few phone calls to ask around) could tell you eBay’s program would fail. It’s not rocket science, just common sense.

Mix CPC and CPA into an incentivized blend, and you have a recipe for disaster. Should affiliates pay for a program’s ignorance? Nope. A company of eBay’s stature has little excuse for ignorance.

Extraordinary Delusions and the Mob Mentality

The continuing naiveté of Internet marketers, especially in the affiliate/CPA space, is amazing. Doesn’t anyone else remember the MyPoints deluge of unresponsive Internet traffic back in 1999, when dot-com craziness was at its peak? Who could forget the totally insane CPA affiliate programs in 2000, when companies would spend two dollars and more for a name and more-likely-than-not fraudulent address?

It was the game of leads, and it burnt out quickly. CPC is a landmine. So is CPA, if not treated like a true reseller channel.

Sift among the masses for qualified customers. That’s your job as the affiliate program owner. The affiliate’s job is to get people to take action, hopefully in a way that works for both of you. Often, it doesn’t because your interests and their interests differ. You each have different definitions of success.

Reward a user for taking action with no economic value (e.g., registering or bidding for points), and you get nothing in return. They’re loyal to the reward.

eBay should pay its incentivized affiliates what it owes. Next program, it should do its due diligence and not open the program to problems easily avoided.

The fault lies not in its affiliates, but in itself. Paying for your own mistakes pays in the long run.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

I also hate the fact that a number of self-appointed people are censoring email as spam, blocking messages all over the Internet. School book depositories are emerging on the Net manned by zealots — the Lee Harvey Oswalds of spam. The movement is small, but it’s growing — along with the insane amount of spam.

As you read this, after sifting through hundreds of spam messages in your inbox, you may wonder how all that spam gets through (read TalkBiz News’s excellent assessment of this online movement). What you should be wondering is whether your email reaches your recipients and if your affiliates’ emails could hurt your business. What they do reflects on your company. They could cause your email to be blocked without your knowledge.

If your messages do one of the following, they could be tagged as spam and blocked:

Talks about “a limited time offer” (0.841)

Offers a “money back guarantee” (1.489)

Discusses “a strong buy” (3.838)

Claims to honor removal requests (4.536)

The list is from SpamAssassin, one new tool that may be blocking your email from intended recipients. SpamAssassin is not widespread, but its techniques are. The numbers next to the phrases indicate how “spam relevant” a message is. Exceed 5.0, and the message will be blocked.

Blocks and blacklists are determined by the whims of individuals and organizations. Most are sane, solid marketers trying to limit an overwhelming proliferation of junk email. Some judge email by their own standards, such as SpamCop. SpamAssassin and its ilk are the first wave of antispam tools. The next wave will come with a cost — the cost of making sure your email is delivered.

I advocate the creation of a Network Solutions-like company, a quasi-official body that will sell guaranteed access to email addresses. That third-party solution would possess a master list and database, along with a controlled blacklist. It would audit and regulate commercial email, and marketers would pay for email it tags for delivery. After a few years, this work could be deregulated and delivery companies could compete in the space.

The idea may be optimistic, but it’s not completely unprecedented.

A Brief History of Direct Mail

As Santayana once said, “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In the early 19th century, U.S. mail could be sent for free, but only within urban areas. Rural delivery began at the turn of the century.

When mail started reaching the entire country, the marketing onslaught began. It was the end of the world! The horror of all those commercial messages! Companies mailed literally tons of catalogs. A new industry was born, and postal carriers’ backs were aching.

When mail was free, users often did not accept delivery or bother to go to the post office to collect it. The postal service bore the cost. In large part, this accounted for the introduction of fees to ensure delivery.

That’s why a new cost structure will evolve for email. The spam issue will not be solved by random, anarchic filtering of email subject to specific individuals’ definition of marketing. The pain is now borne not by the backs of postal workers but by end users, ISPs, and overloaded servers, not to mention legitimate marketers unjustly labeled spammers.

Marketers are not evil, nor is commercialism. The Net is becoming mainstream, and the amount of spam is increasing. Charges for commercial email will hopefully protect everyone. In some way, shape, or form, spam will continue. You can’t stop bright minds from finding holes in the code.

The Price of Admission Is a Commercial Fee

Marketers want to reach their audiences. Commercial marketers will be charged to guarantee email delivery. That will tube most of the “I’ve got 50 million opt-in emails in my permission-based spam list” brokers. How fees will be structured is debatable. Certainly you’ll no longer see huge email lists; rather you’ll see focused, targeted lists at a higher cost.

I hate spam. As a marketer, I hate that my good email is hurt by all the garbage out there. That’s why I’m willing to pay for delivery of my commercial messages.

Like direct mail, the charge is coming. In the meantime, keep on top of blocking issues. Your email may not reach end users, even if you think you’re not spamming. You say it’s opt-in, but someone else might not think so. This lack of standards is a direct threat to your business. Your affiliates are on the front lines of the battle. Keep a close eye on them. One bad affiliate could ruin your business with one carelessly worded email.

Though I wouldn’t eliminate email from my affiliates’ arsenal, I’m much pickier about who are permitted to send it.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Everyone says they test. Do you?

Sure, it takes extra time, which you say you don’t have. You stress, develop creative, throw it out to the millions, and start again, repeating the same old mistakes. That approach takes lots more time.

It’s tiring for you and your customer.

Everyone talks about testing, but few do it. It’s easy to throw a bunch of ideas against the wall, hoping one ad sticks, and call that testing:

It’s not a test and it’s not direct marketing, which is what affiliate programs are all about. It’s guessing, which you can’t learn from.

It’s not rocket science, but it is a science. It’s learned more through experience than in a classroom. Most entry-level marketers know little or nothing about direct marketing, although it’s the central function of their job.

It’s a discipline. It doesn’t take genius, but it requires tenacity. The foundation of direct marketing is the practice of testing.
Successful affiliate programs incorporate direct marketing principles that have been practiced for years. They require good headlines, copy, and creative. They focus on conversions. They live and breathe numbers, not opinions.

What you like doesn’t matter. What the customers like does. The numbers will tell you whether they like your offer or not, quickly. Especially if you test.

How to Conduct an Affiliate Email Testing Campaign

The basis of testing is using a control, A, against a test, B.

It’s important to understand basic factors of testing. We’ll focus on an affiliate email campaign to keep things specific (this practice can be applied to virtually any marketing medium, such as banners or pops):

First ask yourself: What are you testing? Each element you test is a variable. For example, you can test these variables:

Subject line

Link placement in the message (top, bottom, middle)

Ad copy effectiveness (what makes them click and act?)

Isolate the variables. You have one control email and a test email with variables. For example, you could use a control sender line and a sender line with a different approach. You could test how many people open the message and/or the click-through rate of the creative.

When you know what you want to test, the rest is easy. Send the A email (control) to your list. Send the B email (test) to a representative sample. Know the control results, and try to improve them by tweaking copy, headlines, and subject lines.

Give the email a week to return results, and adapt the campaign from there.

Practice direct marketing with your affiliates. If you’re lucky, 5 percent of them have evolved into resellers for you. Deliver all the messages with the creative already coded. Make it easy for them to send a few tests.

Try to test a minimum of 50,000 emails through affiliates (or 20 percent of the list, if possible. If that’s not possible, the lists may be too small).

Many bigger affiliates won’t test at all, so focus on smaller niche partners to help your efforts and theirs. Use affiliates to benchmark your cost per action (CPA) (see my previous article).

Click here to see a sample test Excel spreadsheet with the variables outlined.

Focus on just a few variables. Don’t try to test everything.

A valid test of a list depends on the size of the list. A good estimate is to test to 10 to 20 percent of the entire list. Use the control for your standard emails.
Completing the Process: Create an A Email and
a B Email

Implementing an email campaign involves the next steps you are about to take. You simply create two versions of the email, differing only by the specific variables you mentioned.

To start your testing process:

Create an A email version in HTML, AOL, and text.

Create a B email version in HTML, AOL, and text.

Track open rates, click-throughs, and conversions; use your affiliate software to track to transaction or the action you want them to take. Use a graphic from your affiliate program in the HTML email to determine open rates (total opened emails/HTML emails = open rate).

Upload your creative to your affiliate program.

Be sure to enter your campaign into the email test spreadsheet and track your results.
Direct marketing is based on numbers. Numbers come from testing small and scaling out your offer.

Because affiliate advertising is so cheap, many marketers get sloppy. We throw stuff against the wall. Who cares what sticks, as long as something does? The customers — the people you’re trying to market to — care. Don’t treat them like a wall you’re constantly throwing ads against. They’ll get tired. They’ll tell you by their lack of response, as do your affiliates when your program doesn’t sell.

Select a few partners, pay to test your own creative, and work with affiliate partners based on results, not hope.

When it’s a game of numbers, you can win. When it’s a guessing game, you’ll lose. Branding is important, but revenue pays the bills.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

This mafia has no name or physical location. Membership varies by the nature of the deal. It may be revenue share, performance based, or a hybrid with CPM and performance bonuses.

These aren’t deals you make with strangers. Internet advertising is increasingly a smaller circle of those who get it and thrive and those who crash and burn.

For affiliate programs and most media buyers, mafias, or circles of influence, form around the ability to create and execute a deal. The genius is the execution, from creative to running out the campaign to final tracking and review. It all hinges on the partners you choose.

In the tumultuous online advertising market, mini-mafias make deals and don’t screw each other. If they do, they lose their positions. It’s not about ad standards, it’s about the standards of doing good business every day.

The mafia I’m in consists of about six businesses working together closely, each doing what it does best, from technology or marketing to fulfillment. Such economic mafias are growing all over the Web.

From Mass Affiliates to Select Partners

The old days of affiliate programs, when you opened a program with some affiliate software provider and let the masses sign up, are over.

Only 5 percent of affiliates actually make sales for you. The 5 percent have become resellers, what I call the “performance mafias” of affiliate programs. They make the rules by making deals that work for all involved.

The Little Inkjet That Could

123inkjets.com delivers remanufactured inkjet cartridges and office products through a variety of affiliate partners. Virtumundo is one of them.

You may not like those inkjet emails, but many customers do. They benefit from the partnership of a solid supplier of physical products with a smart email marketer that saves them a ton of money with a cheaper alternative to new, name brand cartridges.

That’s the power of partnership: Neither party could do what the other is doing. Virtumundo is excellent at opt-in mass email. 123inkjets.com can deliver a reliable product and guarantee it.

Before you scoff at these resellers, understand inkjets make money for super affiliates and for distributors. My company has still not cracked the top echelon, the mafia, of 123inkjet.com’s affiliates. That’s very select company.

There’s a reason this product does so well. Where do you think the major printer manufacturers will make money? On inkjets, not printers. New cartridges are much more expensive than remanufactured ones. The bigger companies would argue remanufactured inkjet cartridges are not as good as their products. True, but they’re much cheaper.

123inkjets.com knows how to deliver a good product on time. Fulfilling inkjets that work is a challenge for any distributor. The company used its fulfillment capabilities to build a robust affiliate channel.

There are two mafias: on the high end, the HPs and Dells sell expensive new cartridges. In the trenches, companies with affiliate programs offer remanufactured cartridges that work for a lower price. People love the value proposition.

As the Internet becomes a stronger advertising channel, whether driven by CPM for a few prominent networks, such as AOL and MSN, or by direct marketing methods, including affiliate programs for smaller companies, the challenge is to survive.

Affiliate marketing is as much about the other companies in your mafia — the publishers, email marketers, technology providers, and the advertisers — as it is about your own product or service.

Is your marketing your thing or our thing? If it works, it’s la cosa nostra, which translates as “our thing,” because it works for all involved.

The Price of Admission: Knowledge, Execution, and Who You Know

Knowledge is the privilege of partnership. It’s what we all buy and sell. What you know separates you from the masses.

Who you know and your track record indicate your ability to make deals flow. Partnership is something you earn with every deal.

Your word and ability to deliver separates you from the scrap heap of dot-coms. No one will bury you under Giants Stadium, but they will get the word out if you don’t deal fairly.

As they say in “The Godfather,” “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” Earn friendships. In really good mafias, no one dies

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Your subscribers at AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Excite, or MSN may not remember it. Even worse, they may never have gotten it — not because you are a spammer, but because you send more than the average volume of email.

What’s average? This interpretation varies from provider to provider, but the amount of mail you send per hour may be resulting in your exile to the emerging email black hole. These volume filters may be an obvious way to fight spam, but they’re also beginning to have an effect on affiliate marketers.

Since these filters have been installed, it’s become difficult to determine whether your email ever arrives, which is a huge problem for affiliates who use email as the focal point of their marketing.

As the ISPs see it, if you want to stop a huge flow you need to put up a dam. When it comes to email, creating that dam involves checking:

The sender line

The sender email address

The IP address

The volume level per hour and per day
Once the ISP sets an acceptable volume per sender, anything over that level is set aside. Ways around these blocks exist, but most folks don’t know about them (and they are generally illegal).

Although it works for the ISPs, volume filtering threatens your efforts. After all, if you can only deliver 2,500 messages a day to Excite and your list has 25,000 Excite addresses, it might take you 10 days to deliver your message. You might as well put it in the mail!

Fewer emails are getting through, open rates are dropping dramatically, and you are not in control. Many marketers are questioning whether it’s worth sending AOL users email at all, because you have no idea if it goes through and likely never will.

One thing you know for sure: AOL doesn’t care if it ever gets there. Why should it?

Email Filtering Goes Way Beyond Text

It makes sense that ISPs are looking beyond text-based filters, because using them to stop spam is an endless game. As I wrote about in an earlier article, spam filters that use text are everywhere, and their numbers are increasing daily. But smart email spammers can outwit text filters. Anything your filtering program can do, someone can likely do better. It’s the nature of software. Code always has some hole a smart programmer can figure out.

But filtering for volume is much simpler and almost impossible to combat. It’s unlikely an individual would send more than 25 messages an hour. However, it’s very likely a professional email marketer or email newsletter publisher will deliver thousands of messages an hour.

When a volume filter blocks an email, you often don’t really know what happens. It all depends on how the network receiving the mail has set up its system. In many cases, the email is not bounced back, and you assume it went through — but you have no proof. You will never know if that email got to its destination. Sometimes it is just cast aside; other times it is put in a queue and delivered over a longer period of time.

Volume filters are also sporadic, because they react to changes in incoming traffic. The more messages that come in, the more that get caught in the volume filter. This is why messages sometimes get through to the major providers, such as AOL, Hotmail, MSN, and Yahoo, and sometimes don’t. It all depends on timing, volume, and when these filters are at their most vigilant.

What to Do

Email is cheap and has become a commodity — an oft-abused commodity. If you send email, you are in the battle whether you like it or not. Here are a few suggestions for fighting the volume wars:

Send fewer emails. If you have big lists, remove people who never open your email. Most marketers are lucky to get 10 percent open rates. That means 90 percent of the list consistently ignores the message. Why send them email?

Qualify users and break down your lists into smaller groups. Marketers should create lists of prospects, buyers, and multiple buyers. The last two lists will be far smaller, and far more valuable, than the first.

Mix up your lists so that they contain addresses from different providers. Never send to lists with only one provider, such as AOL, or you will definitely be blocked.

You can contact the providers, but don’t expect much. AOL has no incentive to let your email in. Who does?

Treat email like search engine positioning; it’s a game that changes monthly, as providers react and email marketers adapt. It’s a game of vigilance.

If you buy lists, even from the most reputable companies, beware. Though some may say they have deals in place to get their email through, it doesn’t always matter. I have a friend on AOL’s white list for approved email providers, and his email does not get through consistently.

Put your own AOL, Hotmail, MSN, and Yahoo addresses on your email list and check to see whether the messages get there or are filtered.
In the end, you can’t let these filters cripple your efforts, but you have to be aware of the effect they are having. What’s occurring is part of a natural evolution of direct marketing online, as email lists of 50 million names are being replaced by smaller, targeted sets of email lists that are more valuable.

When it comes to email, less is more. In the end, this will make email better.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Now you can pay to get on top of most major search engines through Overture, FindWhat.com, LookSmart, and others that charge a fee to put you on top of the listings. Email is heading in the same direction, driven by the same companies charging for search engine positions.

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about charging a fee for email. Now I’m discovering I was wrong. We are already getting charged, literally, and it is just the beginning.

The bulk of email is controlled by a few major companies: Yahoo, MSN, Excite, and AOL. These are the major email networks, and right now most do not do much about email — other than shut you off if you send too much volume or if you word your message in a spam-like manner. In many cases, users are left to futz with filters.

Though software can stop spam, it’s way too complicated for most users. Unfortunately, the problem has gotten to the point where people have to put these controls into place to protect themselves. As I’ve written before, direct email is becoming like direct mail, and it’s taking a toll on the Internet community because of the incredible volume of email being sent. I’d envisioned a scenario of marketers paying one centralized, Network Solutions-like provider to make sure their messages are delivered. Instead, businesses are paying the networks for access to their customers.

The days of cheap email are over, and the stories are starting to circulate. For example, if you want to get your email into AOL, you’ll have to pay. We’re talking about companies paying CPM rates just to get email through to AOL.

Word on the Net is certain companies gain access to a rumored whitelist of approved AOL email vendors by adhering to certain standards. Knowing AOL, it is likely a laborious process of hoop-jumping, which people will go through to reach the masses of AOL users. Rumor also has it your domain and IP are put on an approved list, which should mean your email will always get through.

I called a couple of folks at AOL, including the company’s official spokespeople, to ask about the rumors and hadn’t heard back by press time. So, some of what I’m writing is based on what I’ve heard, and some is based on speculation. Take it with a grain of salt, but I do believe companies will soon be charging for access to their users, even if they aren’t now.

Still, even if you pay for access to users, it doesn’t mean you’ll get sales. The mass spammers are continually finding ways around everyone’s rules. The competition for people’s attention remains the same, but dollars are being added to the equation.

AOL simply has too many subscribers for direct emailers, and affiliates, to ignore. So do Yahoo, Hotmail, and Excite. Their user bases are huge, and you need to get through — even though you know many of these addresses are dead, unresponsive, or never really existed in the first place.

The promise of payment is you will finally reach your end user, but at AOL, for example, the game is not that simple.

It’s an extremely risky proposition, and, even with admittance, open rates at AOL are 5 to 10 percent at best. So, if I send 1 million emails, I expect 50,000 might open the email — a good 5 percent rate (and they go really low on AOL, as low as 0.2 percent, which simply means no one on your list is really out there).

If my click through is 1 percent (high for marketing lists, low for information lists), I get 500 clicks. Then, if 1 percent convert, I make five sales. I hope I’m making a ton on those five sales!

Could I increase my click through and conversion? Definitely. But if I’m paying a $2 CPM, it costs me $2,000 just to get through to AOL users. At a $5 CPM, it would be $5,000. That would be on top of all my other costs of delivering email.

Can I increase my open rate? Not likely. You can play games, but games don’t help sales. We are settling into numbers that remind folks of direct mail, and it is only getting worse.

The email marketing business is moving away from those email lists boasting 10 to 50 million names and moving toward good, smaller lists built on targeting. Of course, those lists don’t mean much if you can’t get your email through. Here’s what I expect from the main email providers in the future:

AOL. The online leader knows bandwidth costs money. Why turn away millions of emails when you can charge anywhere from $2 to $5 CPM just for access? But the open rates generally suck. Most folks I know skip AOL all together, white list or no. Those who’ve been accepted still feel screwed because even then the email doesn’t get through or generate response — an AOL tradition.

Yahoo What AOL does, Yahoo is soon to mimic and most likely improve. Yahoo chucks email it designates as “bulk” into a special folder. What’s the price to get out of the bulk folder? You tell me, but I get a feeling Yahoo will soon tell both of us. Then, it’ll opt in their users to that option.

Hotmail. Its volume limit and spam controls are excellent, and it has a real opportunity. For example, Hotmail could give users a free year of advanced service just for allowing approved direct emails to go through. By making the ads scarce, the value would likely be higher. Do some basic data mining and you could easily build an opt-in model around the likes of the user.

Excite. These folks have spam filters on full power. It only makes sense for them to charge. At it stands now, you can barely get through 100 messages an hour.
Most of my recent articles have covered email for a reason. While all the pundits argue about standards, it’s butt ugly out in the trenches, especially when you’re marketing through email. Email has long been a preferred method of super affiliate marketing, but the line between super affiliates and spammers is becoming less apparent.

Good businesses are getting screwed by outside forces they cannot control. We all know the story of spam, ad nauseam. I’ll spare you my opinion. What’s important is to see how the world of email is changing now, largely because of the influence of spam.

From now on, you will have to pay admission to reach users in a network. Yet, you must make sure the cost of that admission has some benefit. Right now with AOL, there is little benefit.

The company that turns this problem into a benefit wins the game, because, in the end, we will pay. Today we get on top of the search engines by paying for placement. Tomorrow we will pay to get on top of email boxes — but until a benefit is associated with that cost, it will not provide value. Either way, you’re going to pay.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Affiliate programs can generate quality customers if you look for them.

Affiliate programs can generate crap customers if you don’t qualify.

To get quality customers, you have to target and convert quality customers.

Managing the mass-market appeal of Internet affiliate programs is critical to your survival. You can’t just trust folks to slap your ad anywhere they like.
In the early days of affiliate programs, having more affiliates was supposedly a good sign. Back in 1998 at one of the first affiliate conferences, I met many of the growing affiliate networks bragging about the thousands, and soon millions, of affiliates they could sign up.

Credit card companies such as NextCard started signing up the masses in 1999. NextCard gathered about 800,000 customers with one of the most effective, well-executed affiliate programs ever conceived — as far as marketing is concerned. Four times, it was ranked the best credit card by Gómez. The company’s delivery and instant, online approval processes were top notch.

Automatic online approval gives you quite a buzz, but with it comes the cost of processing the application. Imagine the cost is $5, and you get 33 percent approvals — that means 3 out of 10 people are approved. But you pay $55 in application costs to get those three customers, and that’s beyond the $30 or so paid to the affiliate for each customer.

The acquisition numbers were high, but so were the costs. Super affiliates flocked to this like bees to honey. Bulk email lists, per-click affiliate masters, and every joke, astrology, and free stuff site were all promoting NextCard. Credit cards were one of the highest paying affiliate products during 2000 and 2001.

But the ease of converting customers through the affiliate program was not necessarily a good sign. High approval ratings for NextCard made this an easy process for an affiliate. Yet, NextCard’s conversion process was too easy; it approved customers with low FICO scores (which determine credit worthiness) and filled its coffers with subprime (high-risk) credit customers.

With the recent dip in the economy came a request from federal regulators for both credit card companies to increase their reserves to cover the increased risk such “subprime” customers bring. NextCard ended up dying on the vine, being absorbed by Merrick Bank. Capital One shut down its affiliate program in the U.S. (the U.K. is still open) and covered its reserves.

Yet, the message is clear for anyone in affiliate marketing. You get what you pay for. Everyone used to think the Internet was cheap. The way we all marketed through affiliate programs was cheap. Email was, and is, cheap to send. Pop-ups and banners can be distributed widely, almost for free. But free advertising doesn’t necessarily get you the right customers. What most of us have done is troll through the masses, the virtual National Enquirer of the Internet. What most have not done is look closely for the best customers.

Super affiliate lists used to be dominated by the lottery sites, joke sites, mass email lists such as Colonize.com, and others who knew how to attract thousands to an affiliate site regardless of quality. Affiliate programs are quickly getting smaller and more effective, focusing on yielding quality customers by qualifying affiliates.

Here are a few ideas for qualifying your affiliates:

Create private reseller programs specifically designed to qualify and select the best affiliates to work with on an ongoing basis. Advertise by word of mouth, not by announcements on the Net.

Profile your top affiliates. What sort of audience should they appeal to? What can you do to keep them running your program repeatedly?

Develop residual income opportunities with top affiliate channels. Like retailers, super affiliates have access to a specific audience. Well-positioned products that have a year-round sales cycle (e.g., online education, books, dating services, financial services, and small business products and services) should be developed through a reseller channel.

Pay a slotting fee to stay on these sites and build loyalty. Encourage them to send you better customers and reward them with higher margins when they do.

Develop a back-end system that lets you upsell products. Don’t be a one-trick pony with a single product, or, if you are, bundle your offer with other affiliate program offers to make it more appealing.

Build your conversion process to get you the kind of customers you want.
By focusing on volume more than quality, NextCard missed the boat. And many affiliate managers still don’t understand that an effective sales channel is founded on the most basic of business principles: The right offer to the right list at the right time generates results. The rest is just commentary.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Everyone seems to be jumping on the “affiliate programs don’t work” bandwagon. Small affiliates that haven’t been successful with an affiliate program claim their own lack of sales means the program doesn’t work. Publishers who want to sell CPM continually dismiss affiliate programs, because generating sales from ad space isn’t an easy thing to do.

“Affiliate” has become a dirty word, even to the affiliate networks built on the basic principles of cost-per-action programs. Visit Commission Junction, Be Free, and LinkShare and you rarely, if ever, run into the word “affiliate.”

Actually, they all are right. And they all are wrong. Affiliate programs don’t always work and don’t always make money for everyone who tries to promote them. Let’s get this straight right now: Most often, affiliate programs don’t work. Last time I checked, most marketing efforts don’t work. Optimists cite the 80/20 rule of marketing, which says that only 20 percent of your efforts really work.

Smart affiliate programs are applying this rule to their own efforts, focusing on finding the 20 percent of effective resellers through research and partnership development. Instead of trolling for random affiliates to sign up for their programs, smart marketers are looking for key partnerships that deliver ongoing revenue. To keep that revenue flowing, you need to find partners that will continually perform, do repetitive marketing, and conduct reseller channel development.

Affiliate programs are not dead; they are simply growing up to be business development and partnership channels that pay for performance from partners who qualify. Many think Internet marketing is vastly different than traditional marketing, but it is quickly becoming clear traditional principles of direct marketing apply to Internet affiliate programs as well:

On first contact, you will be lucky if 2 percent of the people buy what you are offering.

Following up with prospects repeatedly via email works. Most people buy on fourth or fifth contact, not on the first impression. Integrating these communications with the needs of your affiliates is critical to success.

You have to look for the right partners and manage smaller affiliate networks. It is not enough to post your program on every affiliate channel and wait for the masses to sign up. Those days are over, because it is ineffective and random.

Smart, effective partners are always hard to find. This is the central focus of today’s successful affiliate programs. Now the affiliate network has to take responsibility for finding and maintaining good partners, instead of expecting the partners to find them.
Sometimes the best things in business are really simple. Like affiliate programs.

In the beginning, it was all about how many thousands of affiliates you could claim. It seemed to be so easy. You have thousands of Web sites linking to you, and you pay only when someone performs a specific action, such as purchasing or registering. All you have to do is give affiliates some ads and tell them which product to sell.

But the problem with this model is readily apparent. Most affiliate programs think the whole marketing world should revolve around their offers, but affiliates are like retailers. They are loyal to what makes them money, and they work with a variety of vendors.

Many affiliate programs act like there are no other choices, as if the affiliate should be tremendously interested in their offers over all others. This kind of self-centered approach creates a myopic, deadly form of unprofitable marketing.

It is like anything in life: If you’re too interested in yourself, you are pretty boring to hang out with. Your biggest opportunity in affiliate marketing will be when you start forgetting about your self and start thinking about your partners. Then the real success will begin.

Some of the most successful Internet companies are built on this simple foundation, together with an affiliate model.

For example, ClubMom’s affiliate program, run by Shawn Collins, builds partnerships with specific sites. Through a variety of marketing tools adapted to the needs of the company’s partners, it is able to extend its reach to a specific, targeted market. ClubMom execs research partnerships while letting folks sign up at their site. By taking responsibility for finding, contacting, and nurturing these partnerships, the company’s marketers are able to roll out an effective affiliate program based on qualified affiliates.

Here’s what you can do for your affiliate program:

List your top 30 dream partners. Then find the best way to package your product in their names. Make it easy for them to work with you and put their names on your offer if possible, like private labeling.

Give them the right margins, with scaled commissions based on performance. Encourage your partners to achieve sales goals and be rewarded, like good salespeople are. If they sell 500 units, pay them xx percent. If they sell 1,000, pay them more, if you can afford it.

Listen to your affiliate partners. Your best ideas will come from your partners if you communicate with them. Pick up the phone or email them; it’s that simple.
Private labeling? Syndicating? Reselling? There are different ways of looking at this changing affiliate business space.

But the true bottom line to your business and you is this: When you start putting your partners and customers first, then you will truly become successful. Affiliate programs are evolving into ongoing joint ventures. They’re not dead, they’re just growing up.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network, Aug 23, 2002

Well, think of the harm it might be doing to your affiliate offer. You know, that email super affiliates are sending out to promote your product. You thought it was just email marketing, paid on performance. Then one morning you wake up to multiple spam complaints, pissed off customers who return products or have been incentivized poorly, and waning interest from your new customer list. Your boss is screaming because people are calling you spammers.

Some super affiliates will send out any offer that seems promising and keep sending out things that sell regularly. That makes sense. Next time you complain about human growth hormone (HGH), cable descramblers, or even porn, remember that repetition likely means someone is buying this stuff. If you see it very frequently, someone is making money. Then it becomes an avalanche.

How do you know the good super affiliates from the bad? Experience.

If you let them, super affiliates will often just sign up and send your offer to as many people as they can. The rule of email volume is simple: The more email I send, the more money I make. Mass emailers pay $0.10 to $0.20 CPM for delivery and easily make $0.30 CPM on a bad day. Mix this with an incestuous spam marketplace where names are bought and sold like bubblegum cards, and you get the problem.

Aggressive, ballistic email marketing is the rule for the customer, at least right now. People’s inboxes are filled by affiliates large and small that simply get the deal’s link, chuck it in an email, and send it out. If you have a successful affiliate program, it’s likely you will, sooner or later, encounter the following scenario:

You open a program, knowing email is potent for sales, and look around for email affiliates. Most likely, they will find you. Everyone is out hunting new deals, because the first one to a good deal makes most of the money.

Super affiliates, in this definition, refer to the email powerhouses that simply blanket the Internet with tons of email to generate sales. You can often find them in Florida and elsewhere, but mostly Florida, and their company names often contain the word “opt-in.” These folks are aggressive and smart and have direct response email factories that literally roll out sales. Talk to them on the phone, and you’re convinced. They drop buzzwords such as “segmentation,” share subtle anecdotal-hogwash guarantees about their open rates, and tell you to just let them run it. What’s it going to hurt?

They hit about 1 million addresses on a test, and, if it works, they’ll send the message as often as they can. A good message will pop up in your email box three to four times a week. If it works, you can easily get super affiliates to send 15 million emails a week.

Meanwhile, the company’s competition is on their list, checking out what the affiliate is doing. Even if your offer doesn’t work, others will start jumping on the bandwagon. You can try to stop it, but the rock is rolling downhill.
That’s smart direct marketing, don’t get me wrong. But more sales don’t inherently translate into more value for your affiliate program. You can get overexposed very quickly and find your deal burnt out within a few months.

Good direct marketing balances volume with quality. It’s easy to say, hard to apply, but ultimately where the affiliate market is heading.

If your program is like most affiliate programs, initially you’ll have a very positive feeling about email. Sales will come in, and everything looks good. But then the spam complaints start to arrive, and you get blacklisted by someone sick of seeing your message everywhere. Although it may not be your intent, to the customer it is spam, plain and simple. A super affiliate has sent out millions of your emails. Your offer has become categorized as spam — annoying stuff to be deleted quickly.

As the noise of spam rises, your sales often do not — for a variety of reasons. People get sick of seeing your offer after having it shoved down their throats so often. Any direct marketer would tell you this approach wears out a list, but you’re not alone. Everyone else is wearing out the list with the email onslaught of 2002. And it’s not just about the super affiliates, but about this entire email industry that feeds off anything that works. In tough markets, businesses will do amazing things to survive.

For example, in 2001 and 2002 credit cards were hot affiliate items. They generated tons of customers for NextCard (which has since disappeared), Providian, and Capital One. Both of the remaining companies have shuttered their affiliate programs because of poor customer quality.

About the only credit card programs you see now are subprime credit, but the volume is nowhere near where it was. Email killed some of the best affiliate programs, driving poor customers who, in this case, had subprime credit ratings. When the economy tanked, so did the affiliate programs.

What are you supposed to do?

Tell the super affiliates to email less and make less money? Yeah, right.

Accept the problems and enjoy the short-term influx of revenue? If you allow this kind of email, it’s likely you will be labeled a spammer no matter what. It’s also likely you’ll make money quickly, but that won’t last for long. Initial success is almost automatic if certain super affiliates market your product. It’s a small business and everyone knows the spammers… even if you don’t.

Manage them? You’d have better luck herding cats. Direct marketers are virtually impossible to corral; it’s all about revenue.

Put a cap on affiliates? That makes the deal less appealing to anyone who can do volume (even with quality). By protecting against the bad affiliates, you may inhibit the good ones from acting.

Evaluate each campaign and watch your super affiliates? Definitely, but email is like a rock rolling downhill. Once you push it, it’s almost impossible to pull back. You make lots of initial sales, but rarely do the numbers hold.
Why would anyone complain about too many sales? It’s not that simple. Any monkey can spam out a message and make money. But true direct marketing weeds out the garbage, and in the next six months you will see tons of weeding, much of it spurred by legal issues. That’s an easy prediction, but, for now, beware. The storm is coming….

Your super affiliate email may be hazardous to your company’s health

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Most affiliate managers hate per-click programs, knowing that they are rampant with fraud and produce low-quality leads. But garnering lots of clicks is still very tempting, and, for a few of the top file-sharing companies and the other applications that piggyback on their downloads, per-click is proving to be quite lucrative.

If you can deliver good clicks, people will buy them in bundles. Just ask Overture and every Overture spin-off that lacks the traffic to compete. Now, emboldened by their success in the affiliate world, these file-sharing applications are joining the ranks of those spin-offs. Instead of rolling out other company’s products, Kazaa has announced it will use its new search engine application to bring in per-click revenue. This is just one aspect of the real shift going on right now among file-sharing programs, their partners, affiliate programs, and per-click search engines.

The Importance of File-Sharing/Spyware/Thiefware Affiliates

Although the recent furor in the marketing world began with Gator’s grabbing of real estate at the Washington Post and other newspapers, most of these desktop applications — commonly termed spyware and thiefware by Internet pundits — began by making their money through affiliate programs. Players such as Morpheus and Kazaa gained power because the file-sharing craze that began with Napster is still spreading like crazy (just check out the stats at any download site for examples), with millions of users downloading and using the software to get MP3s, porn, videos, and movies. Sometimes these applications came with piggybacking applications, such as WhenU or Gator. Since all of these applications are on the masses’ desktops, they began to become attractive affiliates.

Since the user has downloaded and installed these programs, it is argued that she has chosen to have them perform their marketing antics. But the Washington Post and others, including UPS, which just filed suit this week, argue that Gator is messing with their copyrighted content. Where it’ll come out legally is anyone’s guess, but the impact is being felt in the affiliate industry, as well as in marketing circles throughout the Internet.

Although the control these programs have over users’ desktops make them attractive to affiliate managers, they’re not making any friends among affiliates.

For example, back in April I learned from an industry newsletter about the tricks Morpheus was playing, including:

How Morpheus was stealing links from affiliates with technology that replaces their affiliate code with the Morpheus code

How Morpheus was replacing a link typed into the browser with its own affiliate link, gaining credit

How Morpheus was taking a searched-for link at Overture and inserting its own affiliate link to generate revenue
There was a mild buzz in affiliate circles about these practices, and Morpheus updated its software to adapt to requests. (But don’t forget that software upgrades only work when people upgrade, and many don’t do that too often.) In the end, though, affiliate programs are always about who makes the most sales, and many of these new players started gobbling up real estate and generating real activity, especially with clicks, making them partners and potential partners of affiliate program managers.

Although major newspapers such as The New York Times are finally catching on to the rip-off of affiliate links, these players are moving on to the next thing. Kazaa says it’s trying to go legit, but that has its own challenges. Proceed with caution, but these companies are obviously forces to be reckoned with, given that they’re directly affecting the ownership of the browser on millions of desktops every day.

The new competition in the affiliate world includes everyone from Hotbar to WhenU to Morpheus to Gator and numerous small programs you never notice until they pop up an ad on you. Does it work? Only time will tell….

In my next article, I’ll explore the marketing war between the desktop applications such as Kazaa and the browser. Until then, watch your affiliate links.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

That’s spyware, by many current definitions. Internet Explorer is bundled with Windows. No warning about automated updates. They just pop up onto your screen. Just like Gator’s ads.

Ad-supported applications are old news. What’s new is how the adware industry uses this model to market and how detractors lump all these applications in a pile called spyware. From loyalty applications such as Ebates to ballistic marketers such as Gator, marketing is packaged in software applications that deliver value to advertisers. Adware is not always spyware.

Ad-supported software is a demand-driven model, and it’s building the next generation of adware. A user exchanges control of the software for a certain quantity of advertising. Spyware has become synonymous with adware. That’s simply wrong.

Adware was driven first by the P2P revolution of file swapping, then morphed into consumer incentive programs. Now virtually any form of it may be called spyware. There are placid versions of adware, and versions that are more ballistic.

Few would call Eudora spyware. The free version of this email client makes you view ads. Because it’s limited to small banner ads, no one really minds.

Then, there’s Gator and WhenU.com. Both are labeled spyware, although neither fits the current definition. A brilliant article on the subject covers the issues and opinions and claims Gator intrudes on publisher’s rights:

The user is denied access to legitimate, bought-and-paid-for advertising, and worse, is inundated with many more pop-ups and banners than they would be during normal, Gator-free surfing.
Problem is, Gator sells more of that advertising to more clients. Over 400 of them have bought ads on that application, which has been downloaded something like 25 million times. There’s power in numbers.

Who owns the desktop, the browser, or the application? That seems to be the question, more than the pseudo-issue of spyware versus adware. Gator’s Scott Eagle, chief marketing officer, has a simple answer. “Consumers have a right to decide for themselves what is displayed on their own computer screens, not publishers. The consumer invites publisher’s content (software or Web site) onto their computer. Much of this content is free and supported by advertising.”

Scott continued, “What’s at issue is consumers’ right to use hundreds of popular software applications that automatically display separate windows while surfing. These range from Gator’s e-wallet to ICQ Instant Messenger to Norton AntiVirus and Microsoft Outlook’s reminder feature.”

The consumer owns the desktop. The consumer downloads all kinds of software, some he knows about and some he doesn’t, but who remembers everything on her hard drive? That’s the reality, and these applications will be around in one form or another.

Avi Naider, CEO of WhenU, shared his opinion. “Yet, when it comes to the desktop, many try to assert that it is publishers and Web sites that somehow ‘own the user.’ We believe that the desktop is a very competitive space: Kazaa and BearShare have every right to compete for user’s eyeballs and dollars with other publishers and with ISPs such as AOL and Microsoft.”

“If the ‘price for a free version of Kazaa is another piece of software that shows you targeted offers, a user has the right to make this tradeoff and an advertiser has the right to approach the audience through this medium,” Naider added.

What’s the true definition of spyware? Of adware? This is the crux of the issue. There are no hard definitions, no rules to follow. The new adware model is ballistic and effective. It’s marketing as an application. The old model, marketing in the form of ads posted on Web sites and email, is ineffective. Advertisers go where things work, the consequences of which we are dealing with. Battle lines are being drawn online and in courts. The software is installed. Once it gets going, it’s like a boulder rolling down a hill.

There are No Rules… Yet

In this column, spyware is software installed on your computer without your knowledge or without revealing its intent. Spyware is hard for an average user to find. If ads are shown, they anonymously launch behind the scenes. Where it comes from and how to uninstall is beyond the understanding of the average user.

If you look at the top companies accused of distributing spyware, they don’t fit this definition. Gator, WhenU, Kazaa, Morpheus, and a slew of others have turned their applications into legitimate marketing engines. They are easy to download and most have halted various tricks tried earlier this year. Adware is going mainstream. It delivers value to users who continue using the applications and frustrates others through its control of millions of desktops on a daily basis.

That’s not stealing. That’s marketing, driven by consumer demand. Whether users know they have this software is another issue. The growth of these applications is dramatically affecting the affiliate industry.

Shawn Schwegman, in charge of the Overstock.com’s affiliate program, sees the effect on smaller affiliates. “The affiliate industry is changing so fast that smaller affiliates are not technically proficient enough to keep up,” said Schwegman.

“The question is,” Schwegman continued, “is adware breaking the rules? Unless people get together and define the rules, it’s a no-win situation. Once the rules are defined, the big guys will change the software to play by the rules and the little guys may not be technically proficient enough to manage the technologies. Is it wrong, competitive, or just a fiercely competitive market? The root of the problem is that everyone is saying they are breaking the rules, but no one is defining the rules.”

There’s a difference between aggressive and illegal. Overstock chooses to work with Morpheus, but not WhenU or Gator because of their tactics. It’s a choice. Consumers have a choice, merchants have a choice, advertisers have a choice, and adware has a choice of how to do business. Though adware’s tactics are debatable, their impact is undeniable and growing.

What Next? Standards!

The time has come for affiliates to stop assaulting merchants on discussion boards and propose solutions. Adware companies must recognize the marketplace, the industry should set rules together.

Wayne Porter of Afftrack.com is mediating a meeting in New York on November 7 to help seek a solution. “The primary focus of the meeting… is to promote dialogue between the four most prominent solution providers: Be Free, [Commission Junction], LinkShare, and Performics. We hope to see a meaningful exchange of information and a unified set of rules for engagement for software applications,” said Porter.

“This is no simple task,” Porter continued, ” since there are four fierce competitors sitting down to the table, but so far all solution providers have been willing to cooperate and work together. In the end, we should have some rules that would govern how software applications articulate with performance marketing networks.”

This meeting is the first time all networks (and many adware companies) have agreed to come together under one roof in an attempt to create an industry standard. Of course, they will most likely define rules everyone may not be happy with, but it’s a great first step.

Adware is here to stay. The fallacy is that adware is automatically spyware. Hopefully, most attendees will engage in productive talk, not accusations. Affiliates should be protected while the new adware sector grows.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

I long ago embraced the concept of demand marketing. It’s the practice of activating the customer’s expressed demand for specific products and services. Not random clicks surfing the Net, but targeted clicks that generate sales activity. Adware companies do great (albeit über-aggressive) demand marketing by profiling customers based on their actions and serving ads in response to those actions. Search engine affiliates have done this for years. This new form controls the user experience in creative ways. Demand marketing evolves with the customer.

There’s huge controversy over the role of adware in the affiliate space, but as my friend and mentor Jonathan Mizel used to say, “Customers are three things. They’re lazy, they’re selfish, and they’re right!”

People click on ads all over the Internet. They don’t know or care much who owns the click or the ad. They just click. That expresses demand. That’s the action everyone in Web marketing targets, leading to a conversion. And that’s where affiliate programs are changing from an old, banner-driven model to a direct response model I call demand marketing.

Who owns the customer’s desktop? I don’t know. No one does. That’s why affiliates, affiliate networks, and adware companies will meet next week in New York to start setting some rules. There are guidelines, but currently no rules. Many customers have downloaded adware applications that redefine this space because of their ability to target and generate customers, often through profiling, or demand marketing.

Traditional affiliate channels rarely profile. Most programs play a game of broad reach, chucking out as many ads as they can and hoping for the best This is a huge mistake. My company regularly profiles affiliate traffic through clicks to understand the expressed demands of visitors to better target ads. So do search engine masters, who find the right combination of keyword and price to drive revenue. And so do adware companies — with a vengeance. That angers many traditional affiliates.

Affiliate programs began as a way to place links and banners all over the Internet using tons of affiliate sites. They have morphed into limited partner channels that generate volume. The controversy over adware and affiliates is part of that trend.

Adware is a symptom of companies’ need to generate sales. This demand is met by adware companies. They outperform most affiliates. Few generate volume, as any affiliate manager knows. Those generating the highest volume now aren’t playing by the old rules.

Early affiliate programs primarily targeted massive amounts of clicks and customers. Quantity first, quality second was the motto. Everyone bragged of having thousands of affiliates. These affiliates would do anything they could to get in front of the right customers and generate sales. They threw ads up everywhere. Super affiliates now break into three basic categories:

Search engine affiliates buy clicks at Overture and Google.

Mass emailers send hundreds of millions of emails per month.

Adware companies make ads appear in front of Internet users.
People associate affiliate programs with spam, pop-ups, and search engine results driven by commerce.

Affiliate programs are becoming demand marketing. Programs are based on understanding customers and delivering ads targeted to their needs. Instead of sending ads to random affiliates, take control of your program. Ask yourself:

What if you could predict the success of your affiliate ad before you placed it?

What if you could tell right away whether your creative hit the mark, your landing page converted the right numbers, or customers would buy your product in this lifetime?

What if you could go further and analyze your top 10 affiliates, then come up with a benchmark you could use to compare any traffic buy, email, or pop-up with another?
What you’d be developing is the new breed of affiliate program: demand marketing. Emulate and replicate what’s successful. Whatever it is you do, someone else does it better and cheaper. Companies that profile and observe their customers (such as adware companies) generate better results than do random ads flung in front of the great masses of Internet surfers.

All things can be known, if we allow customers to tell us. Demand marketing’s principle is simple: By their actions you shall know them. Aggressiveness works, whether with adware or insistent questions from Yahoo every time you check email. Aggressive always worked in affiliate programs. Now the stakes are higher. There’s more competition.

It’s time to practice demand marketing. Listen to the customer. Sending massive amounts of ads to the masses won’t work as well as targeted commercial links.

Ask adware companies and search engine affiliates who drive real traffic. They understand demand marketing. Do you?

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

When mass emailers (many are top super affiliates) send messages — or so it appears. Email is slower than snail mail delivery at some larger email houses that send millions of messages every day. Messages trickle through, one at a time. This holiday season, the question isn’t just whether your message gets there. How fast is of equal concern.

Besides making postal workers happy, impact on e-commerce during one of the busiest times of the year is tremendous. When it’s most important to reach customers, mass emailers often cannot get your message through — literally.

Is your email delivered quickly? These anecdotes were shared anonymously by contacts in the email industry:

A company emailed an offer to its own opt-in list. It had used the same list for months. Fifteen days after the mailing, a spam complaint was made. Normally, such complaints are almost instantaneous — who waits two weeks to report spam? The hosting service threatened to close the company down due to the suspiciously slow nature of the complaint.

Another company sent an email that took three weeks to generate spam complaints. When you send millions of messages a day, complaints are routine, no matter how opt-in your list. The company couldn’t understand what happened, since the message was sent weeks earlier.

A friend mails regularly to his list. He noticed revenue began to dip at the beginning of the month. When he did month-end tallies, the numbers increased significantly, albeit lower than his usual email numbers. His email was obviously delivered at a variety of times, and certainly not quickly.
Increased email blocking by AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and Hotmail, combined with sheer email volume, directly affects emailers (even legit ones). Isolated incidents? People I talk to say it’s endemic.

In the midst of an unprecedented flood of holiday email, the Internet is a clogged drain. Maybe it’s spam filters; maybe ISPs shut off outside email periodically; maybe mass abandonment of phony Hotmail and Yahoo addresses adds up. Many use Sendmail, a dumb program that, when overloaded with messages, slows to a deadly crawl until all are sent. This could affect other email’s ability to get through as well.

I tested the process. I wanted to send mail to 50,000 Yahoo users from my opt-in list. I selected a cross section for the test message. Eighty-five percent were undelivered because:

The inbox was overfull.

The user doesn’t exist.

The message was delivered to the bulk mail folder. Technically it arrived, but you feel slimy for having sent it.
Like most people, I didn’t use the most sophisticated tools. Yet I was shocked because my list does well generating revenue. Then I considered direct mail. How many people open a postal direct marketing piece? Fifteen percent? If you’re lucky!

That means the industry-wide 4 to 6 percent open rate for higher volume emailers (over 50 million per month) and a recent steep decrease in revenue may be a portent for affiliate managers.

Email is becoming direct mail. You can’t rely on it arriving immediately. Too many factors are out of your control. Although not challenged by weather or postal workers, email delivery is slowing dramatically. Fewer people respond to, open, or buy from email.

Is email dead? By no means. Overuse is a sign of effectiveness.

In the early days of the postal service, overeager marketers flooded homes with free catalogs. A price was levied for delivery to force marketers to share the costs. Our mailboxes remain full of junk mail.

Email is still the most effective game in town. Like all marketing, the game continues and the numbers fluctuate. Like direct mail, those numbers come in a little slower than in the old days.

Keep an eye on this as you watch the sales of your affiliates who use email. Their volume approach may affect us all.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

In the early days, affiliate programs were always about more, as if a mass-quantity, retail model was the only one that mattered. But as the dust settles, a new breed of affiliate program is rising, one that focuses on quality instead of quantity. A great example of this new breed is the program operated by Kaplan, the test preparation company.

In a recent interview with Adam Weil of UNreal Marketing, whose company manages the Kaplan affiliate program, he shared comments that prove the old days of affiliate marketing are long gone. In the highly competitive field of online education, Kaplan takes a powerful brand and a careful approach to getting qualified leads that convert into cost-effective sales.

Q: What does the Kaplan affiliate program offer and whom are you targeting?

A: The Kaplan affiliate program offers a variety of courses and degree programs, including business, IT, financial planning, criminal justice, paralegal, nursing, and law. All of the programs are targeted towards working adults looking to further their careers.

Kaplan is looking for the working professional, 25-plus, online, affluent, with a household income that averages around $50,000 per year. Our ideal affiliates have a large demographic of relatively affluent, 25-plus professionals. We do not want to market to the freebie, contest, and sweepstakes oriented and definitely don’t go for incentivized Web sites. Business and finance sites perform well; however, niche programs like criminal justice, legal nurse consulting, and law often require highly targeted site planning.

The majority of the lead volume is generated through email marketing, using both text and HTML emails. Newsletter sponsorships also work particularly well. Banners of all sizes are used, but Kaplan prefers not to use pop-ups and pop-unders.

Q: Why do you limit the number of leads your affiliate program gets each month?

A: With most affiliate programs, immediate success is recognized through a sale or lead. With Kaplan College’s CPA [cost-per-action] initiatives, a lead was acceptable; however, the full success of the program is measured by conversions into student enrollments.

The Kaplan sales cycle can take up to 90 days; therefore, the program must be managed effectively, ensuring diverse, quality lead sources as well as aggressive tracking and data sharing. Unlike most affiliate programs, the Kaplan College program has a much higher price point and requires significant interaction with the brand’s sales representatives and course consultants.

Most CPA deals give an immediate reward of success, for either a lead or a sale. In this case, considering the 90-day sales cycle, you don’t know what you get until you exhaust the funds. That is why it is essential to limit leads.

Q: Name the three best marketing approaches you have used to succeed with your affiliate programs and why they work.

A: Restrict the campaign in the affiliate network, selecting only those affiliates that meet the Kaplan requirements. Do not offer this to everyone.

Use a diverse range of affiliates and creatives, and aggressively optimize the campaign by click-to-lead conversion, and, most importantly, from lead to enrollment.

Rather than always using a creative that deals with one particular degree program, we like to use general distance education “get your degree online” creatives, bringing the visitor to a general landing page, which is clearly designed and lists all of the Kaplan courses. We then like to make it as easy as possible for the user to make one or two simple clicks (at most) until they receive the information request form.

Q: Name three marketing approaches you would not recommend using with your type of affiliate program and why they don’t work.

A: We would not recommend enabling any and all affiliates to carry the Kaplan offer. This would bring Kaplan the wrong quality of leads and not convert well into enrollments.

We will never support and/or practice any spam tactics, as this is against [Kaplan's] ethics and would not reflect positively on them.

Limit short forms asking for fewer data, which generate high volumes of leads but not necessarily high quality leads. Although our request for a course catalog form is quite long, we feel this will generate a higher-quality student prospect. We do not want to capture simple demographic and course-of-interest information, as we feel this does not give Kaplan enough information to properly assess the lead. The cost to send out a catalog is also very expensive, and this needs to be limited to serious inquiries.

Like most good direct marketing, less is more. Many affiliates can generate thousands of unqualified leads. But the smart marketers like Kaplan’s understand that a value of a lead is only as good as the conversion it generates.

As you plan the growth of your affiliate program, look at the new formula that Kaplan’s excellent program represents:

Carefully qualify leads. You must carefully sift through the leads, asking yourself specific questions to ensure that the appropriate person pursues the lead.

Test information-driven lead generation and minimize dependence on immediate customer reaction. Requests for initial information must be followed up (by email or telephone) to improve results and add to quality of leads. In this step, you qualify the leads.

Get quality control. Qualifying processes need to be implemented to better qualify leads. It’s easy to get affiliates to sign up thousands, but by being picky you win. In fact, many affiliate programs now pay for double opt-in leads only, and pay more for fewer leads. If these leads convert and the numbers are right, the quality is there. If not, you don’t spend the farm trying to figure out what works.
In a few weeks, I’ll share the six most important trends in affiliate programs for 2003. Enjoy the holidays and get ready for a much better new year.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Most online marketers theorize how e-commerce should regulate itself. The affiliate industry is actually doing something about it and the challenges of adware.

With the recent release by Commission Junction (CJ), Performics, and Be Free of the Code of Conduct, along with LinkShare’s evolving Addendum, the affiliate industry is attempting to build best practices by regulating itself in the face of controversy.

More important, this serves as a template of how diverse Internet interests can come together and find solutions. Although the problem isn’t resolved, the movement is so important I’ll explore it over three columns.

In an industry where technology spurs change before fair business practices are established, the affiliate industry found itself in a quandary in early 2002.

Adware companies, or as their foes call them, spyware, parasiteware, and thiefware, are downloaded onto desktops left and right, often bundled with other software. Instead of relying on Web traffic, they do things with the desktop, including comparison shopping, redirecting affiliate links, spawning pop-ups on sites, even ballistic things such as TopText link stealing on Web pages (see “The Big Lie About Spyware and Adware”).

Adware turned marketing into applications. Like most technological innovations, the challenges it spawned could never have been predicted. Some affiliates started seeing lower sales.

In April 2002, LinkShare came out with its first Addendum draft. Most merchants ignored it. Who’s LinkShare to tell them what affiliates they can work with or to set the rules? With no enforcement, challenges continued. By late 2002, the problem was growing. Irate affiliates demanded solutions. The New York Times and other mainstream media picked up the sound and fury.

That’s how a November conference in New York was born. Members of the affiliate industry feared the event would be a backbiting bloodbath, like most conferences involving the affiliate networks.

Instead, a strange thing happened. The affiliate networks organized the meeting together. Adware companies such as WhenU.com showed up and spoke, ideas were exchanged (and sometimes accusations). Weary affiliates asked for regulations from the networks and adware companies. They started a dialogue.

The mediator was Wayne Porter of AffTrack, an unlikely centerpiece in this high profile conference but indicative of the power of the affiliate industry. Unlike other sectors, which constantly promise self-regulation under the aegis of major companies, this industry sector began to do something, with all players participating. By most accounts, the meeting was a positive first step.

As I wrote last November, the controversy centers over the rapid rise of adware applications, basically plug-in software providing everything from comparison shopping to passwords to straight out rogue pop-ups. Now that the affiliate industry is calming down after the storm, it’s finding its way to self-regulation

The Code of Conduct, released last month, is a joint effort arising out of the conference. The promising first step focuses on simple concepts:

We have jointly drafted the following Code of Conduct (the “Code”) to provide guidance to each of our advertiser customers (“Advertisers”), Web publisher customers (“Publishers”) and software download technology providers (“Technology Providers”) regarding the use of certain downloadable shopping software applications.
Instead of tarring companies with the pejorative “adware,” they’re calling them Technology Providers. Instead of dictating, guidance is offered. Extremists on both sides will always exist, but this first move shows promise, and trust in self-regulation. The current draft focuses on several key business practices:

Do not interfere with affiliate links and referrals.

Do not alter a Publisher’s Web site.

Make initial attempts at rules regarding software installation and de-installation.
Yet all is not well in the affiliate kingdom. Many are complying, but much of the old software is still out there. Affiliates are still worried, and many believe the Code is too weak. Change takes time.

The LinkShare Addendum attempts to combat the problem with technology. Though first to market, it now stands as a litigious and isolated effort, confined to one affiliate network. The goals are the same and LinkShare’s document has the right spirit, but it is limited to its own network. In typical fashion, the LinkShare document runs 22 pages; the Code of Conduct is merely a page.

No one takes the Code to be a final solution. It’s a step in the right direction. In my upcoming columns, I’ll interview the heads of affiliate networks and technology providers. Finally, I’ll let affiliates weigh in to share perspectives.

Time will tell if these first steps are effective, but look at it this way: They’re more promising than efforts to stop spam, aren’t they?.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Part of this divergence is built into the Code of Conduct Preamble, which reads:

Each Service Provider has committed to enforcing the Code through means consistent with its own business operations and practices, and to communicating and cooperating with its customers regarding enforcement and interpretation of the Code.
In short, each affiliate network will interpret the Code of Conduct in its own way. Ironically, LinkShare is continually positioned as an outsider, yet its Addendum actually fits in with this self-regulation part of the Preamble.

In trying to find out more about all this, I interviewed Commission Junction’s CEO Jeff Pullen, Performics’s Senior Vice President Chris Henger, and Be Free’s founder/CTO Sam Gerace together. LinkShare’s CEO, Steve Messer, was interviewed separately. When I asked the group if Messer could be included in the initial interview, the response was: “Steve Messer will not be on the call, because we want to keep this focused on Be Free’s, Commission Junction’s, and Performics’s Code of Conduct, which LinkShare is not part of.”

Clearly a dividing line has been drawn around these two documents, when the real issue isn’t the words or even the affiliate networks involved. For the affiliate industry, what is most important is how all this will actively be enforced, and that’s still not apparent. Read on to find out what the affiliate networks have to say.

Why is the Code of Conduct important for the affiliate industry?

Pullen: The Code of Conduct is a solid, workable document that provides good framework for the industry. Certainly it is not without critics; some want more stringent rules, some want less stringent rules. After drafting and discussing this, I think we got a document that is relevant [and] enforceable and will stand the test of time.

It was important to make sure it was flexible enough, as the technology evolves and business practices evolve. We looked to some guidelines in the context of fair business practices and prepared a good, solid, competitive foundation for everybody involved.

Gerace: I think we should underscore that this is a process, not an endpoint. We feel that we have created a vehicle and an ongoing forum for affiliates, merchants, and providers that today, and going forward, allows all to compete on a level playing field.

The three of us are focused on making sure that the outcome at which we arrived was both enforceable and flexible enough to adapt as technology changes and industry practices change. Fact is, this issue was very different in late 2000 and will be very different in late 2004. Our Code of Conduct is about how one conducts oneself in business; it is specifically designed to be flexible enough to allow technological change and adapt to it.

Messer: For over a year, LinkShare has relied on our agreement and addendum to offer protection to our affiliates. We participated in the discussions on the Code of Conduct in the hopes that an industry standard to solve this problem would result.

While I believe that the Code of Conduct produced by some of the other providers is a great first step, it is overly vague in its statements and lacks enough detail about enforcement. In addition, we felt that the code shifted the burden of deciding what behavior is acceptable from the provider to the merchant, potentially creating a larger problem.

For these reasons and others, LinkShare decided that it was better to decline adding our name and reputation to this document and continue to use our addendum, which did not have these issues. The LinkShare addendum has teeth — it is clearly written and is contractual. Anything short of that would not protect our partners.

What do you think about LinkShare’s efforts?

Henger: LinkShare was part of the Code of Conduct process, collaborated on it, and pulled out at the last minute. We encouraged them to support the Code of Conduct, set up mechanisms of enforcement, and allow for upcoming change that is about to happen.

Gerace: I can’t really comment on what LinkShare is or isn’t doing. I’m not LinkShare. At the New York meeting, the entire community was represented by merchants, affiliates, and plug-in providers. We heard from everybody, and we continue to have input from everybody so the Code of Conduct is a living standard.

Messer: LinkShare was the first in the market to address this issue, with our new affiliate agreement and the LinkShare Anti-Predatory Advertising Addendum, which followed shortly thereafter. We have spent over a year evaluating and understanding the impact these new technologies have had on the affiliate market. What all the participants have in common is the desire to have a simple and clear definition of what is and what is not permissible.

Even more important is a framework for how technology companies can become compliant, and what happens to them if they are noncompliant. In one sense, all the players (affiliates, merchants, and technology providers) want the same thing — to know the rules within which they have to work and the framework within which to operate their businesses ethically. The LinkShare addendum provides this in a clear and consistent format that supports fair business practices.

Today, we have the power to protect our affiliates. Even more important is the protection that we secure against a plug-in provider reverting to noncompliance at some point in the future. You just can’t do that without a contract and a clear definition of what is and what is not permissible.

Are adware companies following the rules?

Pullen: Everyone is interested and complying, being responsive, trying to understand what the rules are. We’re working with all of the major players, and they are all cooperatively listening and working to improve their technologies. I think it’s positive for the industry. The goal is to get them all compliant. I think they want to be compliant.

Messer: Not only have several signed the LinkShare Addendum, they have gone through compliance testing with us. For example, one company had a software version that did not follow the procedure; it was shut down and activated only when the company proved to us change had been made.

The following have signed on with LinkShare as supporting the Addendum: WURLD Media/BuyersPort (Morpheus), TopMoxie (and its nine clients, including eBates, Upromise, etc.), ShopAtHome Select, [and] FatWallet.

What Does All This Mean?

What I found when talking to all of the affiliate networks is that everyone says that everything is going well, that adware companies are becoming compliant, and that the problem has been approached at the right time, before it got too big.

It is clear that this industry is trying to establish best practices, but it seems affiliate networks are as concerned about positioning themselves as they are about making an actual impact. The three players behind the Code of Conduct provide a unified front, but the Code of Conduct currently has little muscle. It says what not to do, but leaves enforcement up to the individual affiliate networks. It’s like a law that says what not to do but doesn’t really tell you what will happen if you do it. Call it market economy or call it vague, but it’s hard to figure out whether it will really have an impact after the issue starts to fade from the press. LinkShare’s Addendum is far clearer in its rules and enforcement, but that is because it is limited to one business.

The real challenge is to the merchants and affiliates, who are being regulated by affiliate networks who can only control what happens within their own networks. Outside that little universe, it’s still the Wild West. Confusing? You bet. Is it a good first step? Yes, but if regulation stops here, then all that’s been accomplished is a little good publicity.

If the code continues to grow and adapt, and to affect changes, then perhaps the industry will regulate itself. Right now, the future is uncertain — optimistic, but uncertain.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Adware Companies

TopMoxie’s Patrick Toland, VP of sales and marketing, had this to say:

What we have is an emotional issue that results in very little financial impact (at least as it applies to TopMoxie partners) being championed by affiliates who have lost their ability to compete in online marketing. In the end, it will not solve the underlying problems of affiliates suffering from an eroding business.

The Code of Conduct and LinkShare Addendum are effective for us [TopMoxie] as they help define the rules of engagement in utilizing affiliate tracking methods. However, many other software developers are not only unwilling but also incapable of compliance due to their unsophisticated technology.

The Code of Conduct represents both a reasonable and realistic approach to the challenges of self-regulation among the parties involved. For cooperative software developers, the Code of Conduct ensures an ongoing relationship between the parties involved and an agreement that can evolve with ever-changing market conditions.

The LinkShare Addendum’s primary weakness is the potentially variable terms executed by various software developers. Also, by signing a contract, LinkShare can enforce the issue; however, it limits the ability of each party to evolve quickly given any changing market conditions.
eBates’s CEO Alessandro Isolani said: “We’re as benevolent as you can get with this technology and our attitude towards other affiliates, but we’re being depicted as Darth Vader. I don’t have any interest in taking sales from anybody.” Isolani continued, “What’s frustrating from a software producer’s perspective is that you can jump through all the Code of Conduct hoops, take all the feedback, and be in compliance with aggregators, yet still get slandered and slammed by this fringe group of affiliates. We’ve done something out of generosity, a sense of community to help these affiliates out. The response is, ‘no, change your business model.’”

According to Gator’s Chief Marketing Officer Scott Eagle, “The value to our users is free software they get and control on their desktop. As long as the consumer is empowered and all the content is branded, that’s in the best interests of the consumer.”

Eagle went on:

What’s not fair is someone who adds no value to the consumer, steals a link, and grabs that consumers’ attention. That’s repugnant. We have talked with affiliates concerned with this issue and asked, “How often do you see Gator’s ads? Are you rebelling against the concept of what Gator does or the economic impact?”

They say it doesn’t matter, it’s the principle. It’s the idea that we are bringing ads to consumers in separate windows. These affiliates say, “Change your business model.” We would like to educate affiliates about our approach:

We don’t interfere with click-through or substitute codes. We agree that kind of behavior does not add value to the consumer.

We use a view-based and click-based technology to strike the best financial arrangements for companies we work with.
We could help affiliates and have worked in the past with some of the larger ones. We are working with the affiliate networks. But you can’t ask us not to have our model of consumer empowerment.
Merchants

No merchants replied to my requests for comments, most likely because they are in an uncomfortable middle position between affiliates and adware companies. Making their opinions known could lead to more headaches than solutions. Wayne Porter, VP of product development at AffTrack (who works with numerous super affiliates and merchants), shared this view:

There have been a number of positive baby steps, but there are still idiosyncratic behaviors that need to be resolved. There have been some programming additions to the mix that are being implemented by software companies. The final solution will probably call for a two-pronged approach including both the Code of Conduct and technology innovation. Ultimately, the choice will come down to individual marketers, because they have the final authority on partner selection.
Affiliates

Mike Hyland, IMS Webmaster, had this to say:

The Code of Conduct will never be enforced on the major abusers, who will just devise on/off switches on their BHO (Browser Helper Objects) theftware applications. Why? Enforcement would require the networks to own up to the fact they endorse these applications, which give them a commission cut on non-commissionable links from their merchant partners. There is no bank robber or thief in the world who wouldn’t plan a heist if they knew they had a six-minute automatic getaway escape route, let alone a 60-day head start. By having no provision for the BHO affiliate to not earn commissions while their programs get tested and certified for compliance, the Code of Conduct is totally meaningless.

What is the real purpose of a BHO theftware/adware application? Like a well-thought-out virus, they take advantage of the weaknesses of the existing network affiliate industry by exploiting the loopholes under the guise of loyalty/reward programs. They take the value-add work completely out of the commission earning formula and suck bucks from unwary merchants, not the networks.

A BHO overcomes these affiliate marketing hurdles. No need to generate domain traffic or generate paid [search engine] listings. No need to put up any banners, product links, or other time-consuming affiliate-coded creatives. No need to worry about cookie durations. Your BHO guarantees lifetime cookies. Hijacking and monetizing all links to a merchant’s site with a point-of-sale pop-up reminder eliminates all branding and free traffic schemes by the merchants. A BHO like Gator or WhenU can also demand and generate domain-protection fees from all e-commerce merchants to keep competitors off their sites.

The cure: Turn off all network autofeeds of incentivized offers. Require a trackable impression/click for any affiliate to earn a commission.
Next: The Conclusion:

The opposing camps in the regulation debate are affiliates and adware companies, with merchants and affiliate networks caught in the middle. Affiliates continue to attack all forms of adware and seem unwilling to compromise. There are strong compliance signals from many adware companies.

What does it all mean? In the next and final part of this series, the ramifications of the regulation debate.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

In the case of the Code of Conduct and LinkShare’s Addendum, clearly on one side a small, vocal, vigilant group of affiliates will accept nothing short of stopping the evil adware companies. On the other side, adware companies are saying everything is all right, they’ve made changes, and things are going better.

Both sides are right, and both are very wrong. In the middle are the affiliate networks and the merchants, trying to guide an industry with a few regulatory attempts. There has been an impact. Merchants are taking a closer look at adware companies and making sure they follow the rules.

It boils down to three issues:

Do not interfere with affiliate links and referrals.

Do not alter a publisher’s Web site.

Create rules governing software installation and removal.
Affiliate Networks’ Perspective: Let’s Move On

The sense from the affiliate networks is the problem has been dealt with. It’s not solved, but at least it’s recognized. The Code of Conduct is more PR than enforceable rules, but it’s remarkable how positive this PR has been. Most adware companies and merchants now view the issue seriously. Most do not want to cheat affiliates out of commissions.

Since the Code of Conduct was released together with a stronger LinkShare Addendum late last year, there have been changes. Few if any adware companies now redirect affiliate links (yet inherent problems still exist). Altering a publisher’s Web site is reduced to elements that pop over and under, and the practice of replacing links or banners on a physical page is not as frequent.

Software installation and removal challenges remain. There are many interpretations of the rules, but most no longer allow software to just miraculously appear on a desktop. Notification is coming along. It’s still vague, but clearer.

All in all, the Code of Conduct and LinkShare’s Addendum should be taken as positive initial steps. None of the networks sees this as an end, but all trust the market to evolve and regulate itself. I believe they are right.

Judging from the mood of raucous affiliates, it will never be enough. Nothing short of a complete change of the adware business model will suffice.

That’s part of regulation. It’s not a perfect world. The extremists cannot run the show because they do not represent everyone. Merchants will not punish adware companies, any more than they will punish smaller affiliates.

Is the adware problem over? Depends on who you believe.

The Few, Proud, and Loud: Affiliates’ Perspective

All you have to do is read endless discussions posted by a few affiliates to realize how political this issue has become. For them, it will never end. It’s the apocalypse, it’s an outrage, and nothing short of legal sanctions protecting their territory will suffice. Sorry to say, this won’t happen in our lifetimes.

Affiliates believe the issue is redirecting affiliate links. Yet in numerous interviews, I found it hard to determine the precise damage. The affiliate networks didn’t view this as a huge problem. It clearly could have been, but it was identified and curtailed. The problem isn’t growing, although older adware applications may still redirect, so it remains an issue. In brief:

Affiliate redirecting is being dealt with by adware companies, but not to the satisfaction of a few zealous affiliates.

They want adware companies to change their business model. Short of suing Gator (as a consortium of publishers did), there’s little you can do to adware companies. Most don’t make money from affiliate redirecting.

Affiliates argue they have been doing things their own way for years, and adware companies should adapt to their practices.
Adware Companies: We Are Changing, Leave Us Alone

Most adware companies have adapted. They don’t support affiliate redirecting. In none of my interviews with adware companies or affiliate networks was this pointed out as a significant economic problem. In fact, that’s why most adware companies agreed to stop — it wasn’t making money.

Yet adware companies come in many guises. Most now follow the rules, but the damage from bundling and redirecting is still evident. Here’s why:

Adware software is not easily updated. Although many companies have adapted their latest versions, automatic updating capabilities weren’t built in. People are lazy about updating software, and old versions are out there.

Bundling tricks (software bundled with another download) are being changed, but it is hard to say what’s proper download procedure. It’s like opt-in email — easy to advocate, hard to enforce.

Everyone in adware defends their “value add” for customers. Sometimes, merchants do, too, as with Ebates. The only way to judge a value add is to gauge how many users and merchants employ the adware. It seems adware is developing a value add for customers and merchants, but, like most marketing, there’s a point where the novelty wears off. Only time will tell what truly adds value and what does not.
Merchants: Due Diligence and Self-Regulation

Merchants have been extremely reluctant to share their viewpoints for this series. Small wonder. They’d be chastised for any support of an adware company, although most now include basic due diligence to ensure adware follows basic good practices for downloading and does not redirect affiliate links. There’s no advantage for a merchant to speak out. Most take the issues seriously and believe affiliates should be treated with respect. If they work with adware companies, they will be attacked by the vocal affiliates. It’s part of doing business.

Is Either Document Enforceable?

The Code of Conduct was written to address the problem (arguably, LinkShare’s Addendum was conceived before the problem but wasn’t powerful enough to have an effect). Effectively both started in late 2002. Since then, business practices have significantly changed.

No one can change the past. Millions of adware applications have not been updated and may still commit transgressions, such as affiliate redirecting.

The fact many adware companies bundling with downloadable applications also cannot be reversed. Most companies don’t have the freedom to practice this now. But like many email companies that got started with spam before going legit, in a few years it will be hard to remember who violated the rules and who didn’t.
When a market regulates itself, all parties involved are rarely happy. But there has been change, albeit small, and it has affected how adware companies do business.

The future is hard to predict, but it’s good to see affiliate markets regulate themselves and assume responsibility. It is one of the rare cases where a market has improved its own practices.

That said, I bid you farewell. Time to move on to performance marketing and other issues. It’s been my honor and pleasure to share perspectives. Please write if you would like to keep in touch or share a story or some insight.

Remember the power of affiliate programs is in this market, small and powerful, regulating itself and adapting. We are the pioneers of performance. Although most branding folks don’t get it, we do. It’s about results.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

Want to make a good year? Start with a new focus on improving ROI and lowering customer-acquisition costs by focusing on performance. If you pay CPM, make it perform. If you run a CPA campaign, prove it works, so your affiliates will roll it out widely.

The funny thing about most end-of-the-year columns is that they try to predict trends based on what they hope will happen with company spending. Many of these writers are agency folks who love to take big budgets, charge outrageous CPM prices, pretend they’re doing targeted marketing and then cry when the client goes away despite their polysyllabic defenses of poor marketing. This type of person hates affiliate programs because they are based on performance — on getting down in the trenches and actually acquiring customers.

Good affiliates do not hope for trends, they create them. In their typical, understated fashion, affiliate programs represent some of the biggest trends in the Internet business. Here are the top six trends that will affect you :

Email used to be quick and easy. Now you have to ask yourself if your message will get to its target. Is that list a spam list? Or one to which a billion messages are sent a month, making it inherently a spam list, no matter how it was compiled? Do you, like many others, wonder if you should even try to email AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail? For a hint of the real future, look in your snail mailbox. See the piles of junk mail? Like it or not, this stuff doesn’t go away, and neither will email. With such high margins, it is a game of volume, so those work-at-home and debt-consolidation offers won’t go away anytime soon.

For those of you who want to be snobs, remember that repeated marketing messages are most often a sign of success, not stupidity. While you may consider yourself superior to your neighbor, people out there are buying these products. Look for new regulations, massive lawsuits against scapegoat spammers, and a new trend towards sending less email more often so it gets to its destination by avoiding volume filters. Sound crazy? In the email environment less is definitely more.

The power of adware: meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Like it or not, it’s working. Adware (aka “stealware”) companies are on the forefront of controversy in the affiliate community, resulting in the new code of conduct issued by CJ, Performics, and Be Free. LinkShare is offering its own anti-predatory advertising addendum to keep adware companies from hijacking affiliate links through technology. Meanwhile, the major players in adware like Gator and WhenU continue to dominate the new game of contextual linking. Will the adware players agree to play by the affiliate networks’ rules? In the ever-changing game of affiliate programs, some of these adware companies consider themselves more than affiliates. Merchants will follow the sales no matter what the controversy; in tight markets, ethics are nice but profits tend to win out. In the coming weeks, look for more articles in this column covering the ever-growing power of adware companies and the threat they pose to traditional affiliates.

Pay-per-click affiliates continue to be threatened by Google and Overture. It’s no secret that most programs’ top affiliates dominate the pay-per-click search engines. These affiliates are better than most companies at.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

I was asked this question recently by a client targeting small businesses through affiliate programs. This is one of the hardest audiences to reach, because these folks are short on time and generally not interested in receiving commercial messages in a business context.

At the same time, I know most of my customers surf the Net at work, listening to radio and looking at sites — visiting the virtual water cooler, if you will.

How can I find these customers, real small businesses, with an affiliate program? Figuring out the answer to this question requires dispelling some of the myths about affiliate marketing. After all, there’s no reason for companies starting new affiliate programs to repeat the mistakes of those who’ve gone before.

Finding an audience, whether it’s of small businesses or consumers, is still a game of measuring risk. You have risk as the advertiser. The affiliate has risk as the publisher. The new affiliate game is to weigh these risks to find the perfect formula of price, margin, and performance.

Myth No. 1: If I open an affiliate program, I will automatically get new customers without having to pay much.

Yes, you will get more new customers than if you didn’t have a program. This myth probably got started by complacent Internet companies that figure the Net enables them to avoid contact with their customers and pay very little to affiliates that generate sales. Offline, these same businesses know you get what you pay for, but because it’s online everyone thinks it has to be cheaper.

A new trend is emerging, however. Good traffic is costing more, because it is worth more. Cheap deals will only get you onto the small sites. You get what you pay for.

Among sites with an audience of small businesses, the best have huge CPM prices and fight cost-per-action (CPA) deals. They have pieces of the small business audience, but no one site has been able to be the resource for small businesses. (Sorry, AllBusiness, Business.com, and smallbusiness.com. Although your sites are good, I still believe there’s no single site for small business.)

It comes down to the basic principles of direct marketing:

The right offer. The offer must be relevant and interesting to the users.

The right list. The list must be composed of interested recipients. Sound easy? You should try what I’m doing — targeting small businesses.

The right time. Emails in August die because it’s a dead time for direct marketing. Knowing when your customers buy is an essential but overlooked piece of the puzzle. What will your affiliates do during the dead seasons for your product or service?
Myth No. 2: Performance-based marketing is risk free since I only pay on results.

Remember, you have less control with performance-based marketing than with straight media buys.

Affiliates may be grabbing your links and promoting your products, but:

What if the quality they generate isn’t so great?

What if the volume generated is higher than what you have budgeted for?

What if your product is misrepresented?
If you play an active role in the program, you can minimize all of these risks. Paying on results is nice, but affiliates need to generate some revenue, too. Recently we’ve seen better affiliate results selling higher-priced products with higher margins.

Surprised? It’s harder to get 1,000 people to register at $1 a registration than it is to sell a $297 product that garners you $100 per sale. For this small-business campaign, we don’t have a $297 product. But we can set up a tiered reseller program, paying based on volume of customers delivered within a month.

The best way to minimize risk is to handpick your affiliates, building a reseller channel. Performance works when the risk of both the advertiser and the publisher are evenly weighted.

You don’t get that balance by posting a link on the Net and hoping for the best. You get it by taking control of your affiliates as a serious reseller channel.

Myth No. 3: Buying media based on CPM is bad because it’s risky. By opening an affiliate program, I won’t have to pay on CPM, only CPA.

Affiliate programs often can generate 33 percent of overall revenue if merchants focus on them. Obviously, the other 66 percent comes from somewhere else.

Smart affiliate program managers also buy CPM and use their affiliate programs to benchmark deals. That way, when they strike those CPM deals, they know what results should be expected. This is one of the most powerful tools affiliate programs give, but folks like to live in a black-and-white world in which it’s either CPA or CPM.

Smart companies know you have to live in both worlds, blending the risk on both sides to find the best solution for you, the affiliate, and ultimately your customer.

CPM can be risky, if you don’t know the metrics behind your media buys. However, if you know that an ad drives X number of new customers and it cost you Y dollars to run that ad, you can determine if this meets your acquisition cost goals.

Your affiliate technology will allow you to track these metrics in a turnkey way to determine whether buying on CPM makes sense for you. In fact, once you look at your metrics, you may find buying on CPM is cheaper than paying CPA.

Plus, more top publishers are now looking for hybrid deals, in which you pay both a CPM and CPA component.

Myth No. 4: Success in affiliate marketing is driven by having thousands of mom-and-pop Web sites promoting my products/services.

There are a lot of small Web sites that will begin promoting your products, but the key to success is finding a small number of partners who will drive results.

For example, one financial services company has over 30,000 affiliates in its program, but 80 percent of the resulting revenue is generated by only about 40 affiliates. Your results will be dependent on finding the right partners, big or small, that drive results.

What’s the formula for a successful affiliate program aimed at small businesses? You need to create a system that generates performance for both the advertiser and the affiliate. To do that, you need to identify sites that will perform, and make sure you pay them enough to make it worth their while. It’s not as easy as the mythology might suggest, but if you do it right it will certainly be worth your while.

By Declan Dunn, The ClickZ Network

The sites were all in place, and my affiliated merchants handled everything related to orders.

Last week, one of my clients mentioned that he was moving AWAY from selling his own products to promoting more affiliate programs just for the simplicity and freedom.

Yup, he definitely ‘gets’ it.

Although there are many, many benefits to promoting affiliate programs with your own home-based Internet business, here are my top 10 reasons to become an affiliate marketer.

1. No Product Development Costs – The cost to develop and produce a new product is expensive!  But you needn’t worry about that as an affiliate.
2. Low Cost Set-up – Got a desk, Internet-connected computer and word-processing software?  You’re in business!
3. No Fees or Geographic Limits on Distribution  – Affiliate programs are usually free to join, and market reach is limited only by the affiliate’s ability to promote his or her Web Site.
4. Choose From Thousands of Products and Services – What isn’t sold online? With affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Be Free and Linkshare, it’s easy to find products related to your current or planned web site.
5. No Merchant Account Required – Forget the problems associated with collecting and storing names, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. The merchant  handles all payment processing, so you never have to lose sleep over chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account.
6. No Inventory to Carry – Even if you live in a small one-bedroom apartment, you can sell large items without storage concerns.
7. No Shipping Costs -  Don’t worry about buying packing supplies or postal rates. The cost and hassle to prepare and ship products to customers worldwide belongs to the merchant.
8. No Customer Concerns – Do you hate the prospect of dealing with nasty people? Don’t worry about it! The merchant handles the snivelers.
9. Make Money While You Sleep – What other business allows you as a sole proprietor to keep your doors open and keep making money even when you take breaks or after you go home for the night?
10. High Income Potential -  With your own affiliate business  your income potential is limited only by your desire, effort and imagination – not your boss.

To me, that question speaks of the asker’s skepticism, so let’s put aside any question of whether money is REALLY being made online before we look any further.

Thousands of merchants have put resources into developing affiliate programs so that others can promote their products in exchange for a Commission, which is usually a percentage of the product’s price. If there wasn’t money to be made, Sony, Dell and those thousands of other merchants wouldn’t waste their time and money building affiliate programs.

I personally know at least a hundred people who make marketing on the Internet their full-time occupation. If there wasn’t money to be made, that wouldn’t be possible.

I am one of those people.

So, having dispelled any question about whether there is money to be made online, let’s proceed to the REAL question. Let’s take the emphasis off the word ‘REALLY’ and place it where it belongs – on YOU.

Can YOU really make money online?

Sure you can! IF you REALLY want to.

Desire is the first key to success. But here’s where it gets a little tricky. If your desire is for money, as opposed to what money can buy, your work will be made much harder, if not impossible.

‘Huh? Why is that?’ you may wonder.

Money is a concept. In and of itself it does nothing for you, unless you are very fond of small rectangular pieces of colored paper.

If you focus instead on the good that money will bring to your life, such as free time and all the fun ways to spend it, then you’ll give positive direction to your efforts.

Think about it.. what can that money buy you? The kids’ education, a new car, a new house, a second honeymooon… how about a sailboat?

Dream a little – dream a LOT, but create some desire, and a REASON to work hard for what you want to achieve.

And that’s the second key to making money online – Work.

Too many people still hold onto the notion of ‘get rick quick’. I’ve got news for them – there’s no such thing. You can get rich a little quicker on the ‘net, but the truth is that nothing worth having comes without a price. You must invest some time and money.

Not much money, but some. Compared to starting any other business, the amount of financial investment required to start an affiliate marketing business on the Internet is negligible.

If you don’t have one or two hundred bucks – or can’t beg, borrow or steal that amount – then maybe you can get a part-time job and save up to start your online business.

No matter how you slice it, you won’t find another opportunity anywhere that has the potential for this much reward for so little outlay. This IS one of the least expensive businesses you can start.

Last but not least – can you stick with it over the long haul?

Persistence is perhaps the MOST important quality shared by all entrepeneurs. That’s why you hear about those who make a million, lose a million and then make another million. They go up, then down, then up again, but they never gave up.

You can’t let the ups and downs get to you. Not everything is will go your way all of the time. You’ll have to make some effort and it won’t always be easy.

But, if you keep your goals foremost in your mind, learn what you need to know and invest your resources wisely and with persistence, you virtually can’t help but succeed.

That’s how you REALLY make money online!

I’ve listed them in no particular order, however the first is perhaps the simplest to start, and #6 is by far the most lucrative.

1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate programs, also known as bounty, referral and Associate programs are the fastest and easiest way to start an Internet business.

You simply sign up for a company’s Affiliate Program; e.g. Amazon, Wal-Mart or KB Toys and place a Link personalized with your information on your website.

When a visitor clicks through that link and buys a product, you are credited with the sale and make a Commission.

The company then sends you a check.

Pretty simple, huh?, learn more about Affiliate Marketing!.

2. Internet Auctions
Most of us have stuff in our basement, closets or garage that we’d like to get rid of, things that are just too valuable to throw away. The good news – not only do other people want that stuff, they’re willing to pay for it!

The online auction business is an inexpensive and relatively easy ebusiness to start.

You don’t need a website and it’s freee to sign up for an eBay account.

It takes only a few minutes to list your items, and a listing costs only pennies, learn more about Internet Auctions!.

3. Reselling
Unlike affiliate marketing, as a product reseller, you PURCHASE both the product and the right to sell it – and you keep 100% of the sale.

Reselling generally requires more time and resources than affiliate program sales, but the rewards are correspondingly larger.

To save time, some products come with a ready-made website to help you sell.

Because people surf for information, infoproducts and software are among the most popular products sold online, and many ebook authors and software developers sell reprint or resale rights to their products.

Before buying products for resale, check to see how long the product has been on the market. If it’s technology-related and more than one or two years old, it’s probably seriously out of date.

It’s best to promote these products as soon as they are made available to resellers – before there are thousands of other webmasters selling the same item.

4. M~L~M Business Opportunities
Internet M~L~M programs often provide a ready-made website. All you have to do is market the product.

However, these marketing schemes usually charge an ongoing fee to join and remain a member.

CAUTION: Do your homework! While there are many legitimate opporunities, there are just as many scams.

5. Offer a Service (Prime-Source)
My friend Joel is a skilled web designer. He has turned his skill into a full-time business which he advertises on his website and offline. He is also my virtual assistant.

Another friend makes her living designing business cards and other printed materials for businesses. She also sells her design service online.

Programmers, graphics artists and data entry workers are all selling their services online.

All the dating services that I affiliate with are examples of prime-source services.

Do you have a service to offer?, learn more about offering an online service!.

6. Create and Sell Your Own Product (Prime-Source)
The most lucrative way to do business on the Internet is to sell your own product.

It’s fairly straightforward. You develop a product, and you keep all the income.

Information products are both the best-selling products on the ‘Net and enjoy the best Profit margins.

They cost virtually nothing to develop and entail no storage or shipping costs.

And before you think ‘I’m not a writer, so that’s not for me’, I know someone who can prove that everyone has knowledge that someone else wants and that writing about what you know really isn’t all that difficult, learn more about developing your own product!.

Summary

There are SO many ways to earn online.

Choose one or MORE of auction, affiliate, reselling, M~L~M, service or prime-source selling, but DO choose!

The sooner you start, the sooner you can move on to ANOTHER type of online selling and DIVERSIFY your eBusiness.

Although I am best known for affiliate marketing, I also sell online using auctions and have drop-shipping arrangements for hard goods.

And of course, I have my own infoproduct, ‘The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made 436,797 Last Year Selling Other People’s Stuff Online”.

Who knows what will be next?

What I DO know is that the more I diversify, the more I learn, and the MORE money I make.

You can too! Just try it!

• affiliate – the publisher/salesperson in an affiliate marketing relationship.
• affiliate directory – a categorized listing of affiliate programs.
• affiliate forum – an online community where visitors may read and post topics related to affiliate marketing.
• affiliate fraud – bogus activity generated by an affiliate in an attempt to generate illegitimate, unearned revenue.
• affiliate marketing – revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model.
• affiliate merchant – the advertiser in an affiliate marketing relationship.
• affiliate network – a value-added intermediary providing services, including aggregation, for affiliate merchants and affiliates.
• affiliate software – software that, at a minimum, provides tracking and reporting of commission-triggering actions (sales, registrations, or clicks) from affiliate links.
• exclusivity – contract term in which one party grants another party sole rights with regard to a particular business function.
• payment threshold – the minimum accumulated commission an affiliate must earn to trigger payment from an affiliate program.
• return days – the number of days an affiliate can earn commission on a conversion (sale or lead) by a referred visitor.
• super affiliate – an affiliate capable of generating a significant percentage of an affiliate program’s activity.
• two-tier affiliate program – affiliate program structure whereby affiliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program.