Affiliate Marketing Blog

Where is it written (graved) within the 10 commandments on the two tablets of granite & stone that Moses brought down from affiliate mountain “thy cookie shalth only be 30 days”.

(Please excuse my lack of knowledge / ignorance on biblical history)

The wrong message is being sent, perhaps from outset even, rather than bending over a barrel & accepting the cookie period terms “any” merchant desires or badly recommended by “any” network, perhaps “all” networks should be actively persuading their merchants (there is no time like the present) to increase cookie periods. Nip it in the bud.

Perhaps 365 days should delineated as standard !

It was warned in an earlier blog entry to be wary of merchants squeezing the cheese from affiliates during a difficult finanacial climate that gradually more & more will try to reduce cookie periods to increase the merchants margins.

Two of the several oldest excuses given are along the lines of :

“These investigations have shown that the majority of transactions occur within 30 days of the original click time (with the vast proportion occurring within 3 days of the click).”

Poppycock … If so insignificant, why bother reducing the cookie period?!

“We have moved their cookie period in line with major competitors in the sector “

Poppycock … Well this doesn’t make the merchant stand out from the crowd, but more just one of the mindless sheep.

Moving Forward:

Perhaps there should be a a concerted campaign of a short period of time, where “all” networks make a real concerted effort, not just a token one, to ask “all” their merchants to consider & action the increase their cookie periods ideally 365 days or more, but at least some decent improvement. Some merchants like Buyagift already have a 9999 day cookie. Even affiliates could at least ask / persuade / educate merchants they deal with.

I think this is one sign which shows good intent from a merchant in how much they value the affiliate channel.

You don’t get unless you ask ! Even if only “two” out of “ten”say YES , that’s still a whopping 20% increase.

Depending on which angle you approach the discussion & the question. What is king? Is content king or is cookie king? As part one of however many I end up blogging about. Let’s look at “The Cookie Is King”, for some this maybe sucking eggs but through our own trial and error over sustained periods of time, this s what has worked for us, in our KISS approach (Keep It Simple Silly).

Can I firstly say, I am not condemning the discussion or subjective opinions of what actually is content, but consider this momentarily, how a ppc ad of less than 100 characters can trigger & yield as many if not more sales than a full page of content.

When you visit various sites displaying products, the most common button you see is “Buy Now”. The problem is with button appearing alone, there is an over assertive (aggressive) assumption as to presuming what stage the customer is during the purchasing journey. This command alone will probably not yield a massively high click through rate, you could argue that conversion is good if your pre-sell as well (just one type of content,  which we will come onto again), but if that person is not ready to buy now, there is more likelihood that the “Buy Now” button is not clicked & thus no cookie dropped, so what’s happened, your content (varying in degree & subjective in discussion & opinion to what is quality or effective) may have the bells & whistles or not, but realistically in most cases your site won’t necessarily be remembered if & when they are ready to purchase.

The next most common button used (though not used often enough) is “More Info”, again it can be suggested that you should only provide the potential customer just a taster of the product, if you provide them with too much information on your web site then there is less likelihood this button is pressed, thus less cookies are dropped. Very often when linking to a merchant web site or better still deep linking to a product, that consumer is presented with more or less the same information … again … the customer is being pre sold to what amounts to the same content twice, why? It’s a shame that still 10 years or so into affiliate marketing, the item cannot be put into the basket on the merchant site on following a link from an affiliate site, surely this could increase conversions.

From our own tests by featuring both a “Buy Now” & “More Info” with less content the click thru rate (CTR) increased, thus so did sales, as it considered different stages of a customers journey. Appraoch this sales technique like a funnel effect, the wide part of the funnel represents a stage where a customer is less committed to purchasing a product.

Some of you are thinking, “hey Moose, your teaching me to suck eggs.” … Fair enough.

By the same token & taking this still further now introduce a “Check Stock” button, the consumer maybe at a stage where they are thinking, “I don’t want to buy quite yet let’s check to see if the item is in stock and I’ll come back later.” The consumer clicks, another cookie is dropped, remembering the consumer is more likely to return to the merchant’s site than your own if returning later, but at least the cookie is dropped & in place.

So far we have “Buy Now”, “More Info”, “Check Stock”. Again experiments have shown the CTR has increased and so have sales, which do you think had the highest conversion rate or yielded the most commission? It might not be that obvious.

However, there is one more option. You know there has been a lot of heated debate, discussion & policies related to voucher code & discount code sites in relation to “click to reveal code & visit merchant site” when there is not a valid code available. Well the last option, stemmed from the aforementioned & considers that it is not necessarily a necessity to display the price of a product. With the adoption of a “Show Price” button, taking the user to relevant merchant page also significantly increases CTR, cookie drops & sales.

With these four buttons : “Buy Now”, “More Info”, “Check Stock”, “Show Price” you are considering different elements of a customers journey. But sometimes users don’t always click on these buttons as they are and you really have to say exactly what is meant to do on the tin, by prefixing these with “Click Here”, thus we have “Click Here to Buy Now”, “Click Here for More Info”, “Click Here to Check If In Stock”, “Click Here to Show Price”.

Long winded you may think, it’s up to you to experiment for yourselves to draw your own conclusions. For us, it has been conclusive that CTR’s have been increased & so have sales by reducing information or content about any particular product simply because more cookies were dropped. It’s also worthwhile split testing with different colour buttons or fonts for each one as well as different placement orders to find the optimum setting for you.

There are several other small improvements which can be appended to this to tweak even more, but this blog entry is getting quite long now, and I’ll save it for another time.

If you can get the right blend of “content” & consideration of the different stages the consumer is on their purchasing journey, you should hopefully yield better commissions.

Until a mechanism is found to reward affiliates at various integral parts of a customers journey (where content could be king), also remembering the recent adoption of voucher code “click to reveal “policies introduced via some networks partly because of the cookie dropping … Unfortunately it’s not an ideal world & for sometime yet Cookie will be King.

Are you exasperated or unimpressed up with the bulk of any merchant information / details  page being filled with telling what you what you CANNOT do? This goes for a good portion of the number of emails sent out too.

Rather than “hey” you CANNOT do this or CANNOT do that, otherwise we’ll castrate you and give you a life long sentence banished to the Badlands from a program for ever, where pillaging & murder often get less stiffer penalties/sentences.

How about, hey did you know you CAN do this & you CAN do that … like a summary of merchants who you can link direct on generic / product terms on paid search, we publish voucher codes or that your sales won’t be deduped against xyz … and these are really our top sellers rather than this is stock we are trying to shift so lets get the affiliates try & shift it. Tell us that you pay on gross value of sale (including delivery) or that your action referral occurence is not set to one (ie the cookie doesn’t burn after the first sale) even a decent merchant write up. Even boast about your EPC or conversion rate being higher than certain merchants (even name the other merchants), tell us your high ticket value items that sell. If tracking goes down, give affiliates a guarantee that they will be remunerated rather than hide under a stone until the affiliate forgets. Isn’t it strange that merchants can reject sales at the tick of a box or the snap of a finger, but affiliates claim remuneration on lost tracking by the same seedy process, where is the parity.

… and so forth.

Personally, on the PPC side I would like a single page on each network telling me who I can direct link to & use the display URL for generic & product related terms. Perusing through just one page is better than trawling through hundreds examining the small print telling me what I CANNOT do or worse still written in lemon juice (used to make invisible ink).

Don’t you see, these will make such better selling points & any program a more appealing & attractive proposition to affiliates rather than intimidating affiliates, if more thought & effort went into mentioning what affiliate CAN do.

You see when you are in the decision making process of selecting which merchants to promote, all this don’t do that & don’t do this or draconian measures simply makes you want to move onto the next program.

Most networks are guilty of this to varying degrees. For example have you ever been bemused when you read all the T&Cs on OMG (Online Media Group) on many of their programs, It is OMG (Oh My God). Rather than scrolling down monotonously, If there ever is a need for pressing the browser back button or that little red sqaure with the white cross on the top right hand side of the browser (the exit). To reiterate same can be said with many other programs & a few other networks.

So remember, tell affiliates what we CAN DO & don’t harp on & scold affiliates on what they CANNOT DO. Imagine new affiliates / fresh blood coming industry reading all this. They are going to think “sod this for a game of soldiers” I am going to find a new vocation earning my 5 stars at MacDonalds, when they don’t realise what they are missing out on, simply because they are scared off or felt intimidated.

Thought For The Day

There are quite a few respected industry peers who regularly attend the IAB AMC, in my own opinion if it is to gain a wider respect in the affiliate community, rather than focus on what affiliates shouldn’t be doing. It should focus more on protecting affiliates in relation to the usual problems we see occuring day in & day out. At the moment I don’t see the IAB AMC as representing any of my personal interests as an affiliate, therefore I don’t recognise it as so, but more in the interests of merchants & agencies, so lets see how it pans out during 2009. I still see the joining fee as an obstacle as there are other network & merchants opinions who I do sit up and listen to.

Remember … Affiliates are the lifeblood of the industry … Simple ! Sometimes that gets lost in translation.

Fancy having voucher code site with less hassle, here is a possibility of a cunning plan which might earn a few pennies. It might not be popular, but not all seem to be playing by the rules and networks maybe not proactive enough in addressing cookie overwriting within certain time frames. So please slap & spank this blog entry to your hearts content, but hopefully you can see through it, by understanding & appreciating the constructive criticism in the underlying message, by reading between the lines & the intended good intent.

• 1. Purchase a domain name with discount & voucher codes in it. Maybe a different name as a few might be cheesed off, though not their jurisdiction.
• 2. Develope a basic style directory adopted by some of current VC/DC sites with merchant logos.
• 3. It will be a voucher code site with no affiliate links, only sponsored listings for a given merchant. If you have the tools you know what they are bidding highly on, if not not brand names & hybrids will suffice.
• 4. Spam meta tag, you only have to do a search on search engine for “brand + voucher code” etc to get an idea.
• 5. Optimise the layout by old keyword style keyword stuffing, this old school tactic still seems to work with some.
• 6. Do hybrid brand bidding (not recommended) and claim ignorance. Do not have brands written in any url properties or strings. Otherwise broad match on generics & analyse the search string on site entry to present the correct merchants.
• 7. Acquire & aggregate as many published codes out there & display, whether direct from sites or free databases. Since it’ll only be an information / resource site. Maybe encourage users to post as they find them.
• 8. Sign up to all other voucher code site newsletters, making it easier to collect codes.
• 9. Collect & harvest email databases.
• 10. Earn via various sponsored link sources, easy to know what merchant bids on, but brand alone will bring in the pennies & with so many merchants converting poorly generally it might just be better than you think.
• 11. Note there are no affiliate links, so no networks are involved & thus out of their jurisdiction.
• 12. No revenue for networks, perhaps they should be doing more but not allowing other affiliate cookies to be overwritten within a certain time frame, or stop merchants de duping against voucher codes.
• 13. Click here to reveal code & visit merchant could be adopted.
• 14. Eats into the margins of competing VC / DC sites and you can still offer a decent service.
• 15. Reduces their margins of competitors so that some might have to look at other options.
• 16. No need to worry about merchants who are starting to exclude voucher code sites in their program t&cs.
• 17. You might initially think the EPC might not be great, but if you know what you are doing this can be increased to more appealing levels.
• 18. There is no jurisdiction for networks to get involved.
• 19. You have a VC / DC site without the network & affiliate hassle. Less merchant hassle.
• 20. If anything it might prevent “content” & “ppc” affiliates cookies being overwritten. PROTECTS THEM ! Unless merchant de-dupes against their own ppc activity and/or if a voucher code is used.

Finally:

Oh .. and … no cookie overwrite issues… no de-duping issues … no tracking issues … no not getting remuneration issues … no unpaid or late invoice issues !!!

“If not enough is being done or quick enough to appease affiliate concerns by networks (in their juggling & balancing act) who still get override, then affected ppc & content affiliates should shoulder the burden, take responsibility themselves by taking matters into their own hands … to protect their own (and other content & ppc affiliate) revenue stream by deflecting traffic to themselves preventing cookie over-write. There is no reason why a good site cannot be produced in the aforementioned way”

Are You Being Duped By De-Duping? Merchants deduping against various channels is probably a bigger issue than affiliates realise, which has never really got the column width on the forum. Some merchants are being naughty.

Yet, hardly anybody comments or notices, and industry wide this has been going on a lot more & longer than all this voucher code malarky. When, on the forum you can create a conversation about “aquamarine coloured widgets” & it ends up being a discussion on voucher code sites & then ultimately MVC … yawn.

I suspected something with a sports merchant recently who likes to post the same thing in about half a dozen sections on the forum, when I noticed their EPC had dropped right down. Once more those suspicions were founded. It reminded me of another merchant who declined sales because that user visited the site sometime in the past (not last click/referrer).

Anyhow I was having a chat with a network representative & this is the summary of the conversation we had.

“ironic that more attention is on voucher code sites when de-duplication transparency may yield a lot more revenue for all.”

Some merchants de-dupe against all channels, i.e. paid search, display, email etc, often this will be done using local cookies so only last referring tracking is shown on confirmation page, other times I am informed “they use 3rd party software like analytics packages (popular ones include Atlas,Coremetrics, Doubleclick ). Some of these have their own ‘rules’ system in place for attributing commission, thus merchants will choose which channels they want to de-dupe affiliates against”

It should not only be strongly recommended, but enforced through industry standardisation, that merchants do not de-dupe against brand PPC for obvious reasons, although which do and which don’t is difficult to establish. Affiliates commissions shouldn’t be de-duped against display advertising akin to de-duping against TV adverts.

If a programme is de-duped at source using local cookies, is it difficult for anyone except the merchant and their tech team to know how it actually works? Again where is the trust & transparency?

On the opposite side of the coin, there are merchants doing no de-duplication at all, could this open Pandora’s Box? Where merchants who don’t de-dupe start implementing policies which could see an overall revenue drop.

“in the interests of making things fair for all parties, so they know where they stand, everyone should be made aware of acceptable de-duplication policies. No nasty surprises for merchants or affiliates.”

Revenue from some merchants will go up and from others will go down, but on the whole significantly up in favour of affiliates. Quite possibly affiliates are losing out against deduping processes, so we need clarity on which programs have undesirable de-duplication policies but likewise there could be other big programmes where no de-duping takes place at all.

For the latter, if done correctly & fairly for affiliates it could free up budget for more affiliate activity.

Merchants who know about this issue in general take full advantage and de-dupe against whatever they can, some will take network advice on this & others do it arbitrarily. However, there’s probably a large amount that know nothing about it and don’t do it at all, this would cover most SMEs and probably a handful of larger merchants.

Are You Being Duped By De-Duping? How should we proceed?

Thoughts for the day:

1. Well done to Affiliate Window for announcing they are going to cover over £35,000 of commissions for the Empire Direct program, a merchant that recently went into administration. I genuinely applaud them. I believe the program is on at least one other network. Will they follow suit? As it has forced their hand slightly. I was also disappointed to see over £3000 worth of unpaid commission sitting on one network, via them being unable to collect commissions from merchants. If there was goodwill & they want me to trust or work with them more, then they should cover this debt themselves, isn’t that what they meant to do? collect payments, trusted 3rd party etc. Mutual goodwill payments would go some way in the affiliate placing more faith in the network.

2. Affiliate Window’s Raffle Bonanza - I didn’t get an opportunity to blog this, but wanted to say I thought that it was a very good promotion, I was a lucky winner with CD WOW, but wanted to say thanks to Affiliate Window & I hope they repeat it. How about an all year round one & more in your face withing the admin area?

3. I’ve been chasing a few merchants & a couple of networks recently for payments, it’s quite surprising how much is sitting out there not collected, worse still not even invoiced & disappointingly merchants stalling. If a network hasn’t chased to an affiliates satisfaction then network should cough up.

4. I am concerned about pending commissions disappearing from reports when a program closes or get automatically declined. Each network should have somewhere within interface where affiliates can easily access.

5. Not enough attention is paid towards tracking, even short durations (deliberate during peak periods & non deliberate). I ‘ll say again, there is a need for trend graphs over a rolling number of clicks, which affiliates can view for a merchant performance network wide. This will parties to more easily identify when tracking may have been down. It’s about transparency.

Again there is lack of transparency on merchant information pages or where commission details are listed, affiliates should be informed if they are being paid commission on the net value of the sale or the gross value of the sale & i.e. Taking a product for £115 at 10% commission. If paid net this is 10% of £100 = £10, Gross it be £11.50. You only need to scale this up to say £100,000 worth or products and you’ll be better of by £1500 (15% or the current rate of vat). Also we need to know if affiliates get paid a % of the delivery cost.

 It’s important to look at whether the commission rate is inclusive or exclusive of VAT as there is still a lack of consistency here, plus if commission is paid on delivery costs. Something which is all part of the decsion making process.

Bug Bear Of The Day :

A few years on I am still disappointed that we are still seeing “Action Referral Occurrence” set to once or “Recurring Events” set to none on several networks & are all networks disclosing? If so are they absolutely sure? Basically this means no matter what cookie length is published after the first sale the cookie crashes & burns. Something I’ll come onto again another time.

We Still Have “No Recurring Events” & “Action Referral Occurrence” Set to Only 1

 No doubt there will be plenty of speculation, sensationalism & plausible deniability on which merchants will go into administration or close next year. So for 2009 affiliates as a whole will need to keep a much closer eye on the merchants they promote.

Look out for obvious indicators of merchants pulling the purse strings such as cookie reductions which often get changed & unnoticed, with consumers possibly making more considered purchases rather than spontaneous or impulsive, perhaps merchants should be encouraged to extend cookie periods to 365 day minumum, rather than this unwritten 30 day suggestion. Increasing the cookie period significantly will show good intent.

Commission reductions is an indicator, though some will use “”the” credit crunch” as an excuse when not really a legitimate reason.

Delayed invoice payments, as affiliates we should be more alert & report all incidences to the forum, this will ensure that merchants don’t become complacent or disrespect the affiliate channel. More merchants paying in escrow should be considered & looked into too .

Also, look out for networks who hang onto payments, accruing the interest affiliates should maybe receive. Even more regular payments from those that currently only pay monthly, like the weekly payment from Webgains or on demand like Paidonresults, this will keep the cashflow topped up for affiliates. It would be nice if all networks could switch to more regular methods. Granted a few networks have previously paid out when they haven’t been paid, we need to support the ones which offer guarantees (but isn’t that part of what override is about), but several larger ones do not pay regular enough. Just think about how much affiliate cash they are sitting on at any one time.

Also, look out for merchants delaying in approving pending commissions as they might only be hanging onto the cash a little longer(they possibly get paid by credit card companies within a few days & stock they have may well be on credit anyhow). The problem is when you may only get intermittent or a few sales for a merchant, but if affiliates enquire to the forum, then those interested can at least feedback their findings to ascertain any common thread. So we need to get this trickling down of payments to us affiliate bottom feeders quickly.

We just have to remain alert that the affiliate marketing channel doesn’t become devalued & prevent them merchants from thinking it’s the first place to look for where they can trim expenses, with networks in unison being more assertive with their clients too.

I know it’s obvious, but spread your risk and only rely / depend on yourself.

A blog post I liked was Goals - Setting And Achieving Them by Shane.

I wonder whether in a few years time, the traditional pyjama affiliate or scruffy bedroom affiliate will  be written into the historical archives as an urban legend or mythical entity that once graced the internet marketing world, unless some radical improvements are made … with the 2009 message being diversify, consolidate skill sets, think outside the envelope or become extinct. It’s not about evolving into a better being or developing a corporate persona or becoming  entrepreneurial, but unfortunately becoming more ruthless & less conscientious by relinquishing the values once guarded, because it certainly doesn’t pay dividends being a solitary sentinel “facing” into the wind. So then, what will be inscribed  or delineated onto the traditional affiliates epitaph?

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

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

Such as:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merry Christmas One & All.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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