Affiliate Marketing Blog

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

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

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

Related Links

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

Sharing the Wealth – The Solution to Brand Bidding Groups 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Details can be found by CLICKING HERE

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

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

Prizes Include:

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

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

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

That’s not all…

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

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

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

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

Full Details Can Be Found by CLICKING HERE

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

There are probably 3, not 2, certain things in life. Apart from the obvious death & taxes , there is an possibly an overlooked third in “t”internet land, and that is possibly the guarantee of Google Adwords squeezing your profit margins and leaching from you even during a worldwide credit crunch.

“yeah.. that’s a more certain certainty than death itself.. least you can count of adwords to shaft you within a reasonable timescale,, death can be lingering and painful for years” – Shane ©

Being an avid tea drinker, morning (or when I awake to the world) is normally greeted by a pint of tea, with two tea bags left to stew, milk and a sprinkled teaspoon of canderel. Then stirring 23 times clockwise then 23 times anti-clockwise. During the course of the day I may have a few of these to maintain my lucidity. Gulping them down rather than sipping with my little pinky protruding out which I call my darts finger.

So this afternoon I decided to go for coffee for a change, albeit it’s diuretic effect it tends to have on my bowels.

So there I am in the kitchen, two heaped teaspoons of “coffee”, plenty of semi skimmed milk & a teaspoon of canderel. Back I traipse down to my study, recline back in the chair with laptop on my Simpsons cushion lap tray, and take a huge gulp of “coffee”.

Before I know it I am pebble dashing the laptop screen.

It was a Mmm … Bisto! moment.

I had only gone and used Bisto gravy granuals assuming it was the coffee sitting by the kettle jug.

So remember, always check the label first.

Voucher Codes & Discount Coupons, seem to be all the craze at the moment & ubiquitous. I have no real criticism of them “overall” and there are a number of quality sites by respected affiliates around. I feel voucher codes are probably more beneficial for the consumer than cashback sites, whereby the saving is instantaneous and at source. With cashback sites the consumer has to reach a minimum threshold before seeing their returns or even prepay for membership. For the cashback affiliate, I can only guess it can be an “mare” for them dealing with enquires for non tracked sales, both false & genuine, maybe even those customers using the voucher code from another site & “accidently” clicking on a link from there, when the consumer was also a member of the cashback site and they then proceed to attempt & claim back from there as well to recoup a double saving. As for handling all those cheques, urgh no thanks.

Perhaps there is room for a hybrid cashback / voucher code site, even an aggregator, which could be massive savings for the consumer (who will benefit from both cashback & savings from the voucher code). Those who currently have cashback sites maybe better positioned for this.The question is then posed, what incremental sales has this brought? Would they have purchased anyway? Or was this the trigger or catalyst to switch them from window shopper to actual customer.
The current advantage cashback sites may have at the moment is a wider selection of merchants to utilise / pull from, though I guess it’s only a matter of time before the number of voucher / discount codes can be comparative. Just check you affiliate inbox, a good proportion are titled with discount code related headings.

Being a couch potato, and slow off the blocks to incorporating voucher codes this time around, I am looking forward to seeing what all encompassing (all networks) white lable / updated api feeds will be available for voucher codes soon, I certainly hope so.

The Need For Unique Voucher Codes

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

With the aforementioned, hopefully this may create a slightly more level playing field, plus open up more marketing opportunities, which I ‘ll come on to later.

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

Should voucher codes given precedence over cookies? That’s a difficult one, at the moment I guess I might lean towards saying no this shouldn’t be permitted until something towards a more ideal solution is found. Maybe rewarding along the lines of the incremental elements of the sales journey /path. i.e. last cookie & unique affiliate code share the commission. (though I cannot see this coming anytime soon) The disadvantage though with any scheme where the omnipresent voucher code gets part or whole of the commission, suggests that all affiliates should then adopt, embrace & incorporate them (voucher codes) into their own sites to minimise leakage or loss. This is not a complaint in doing so, but maybe just moving & adjusting with the times & current climate.

Perhaps we should distinguish between unique voucher codes set for an individual affiliate & generic codes, for which at the moment we have a mix in circulation. I would prefer everybody had a unique code along the lines of the suggested more transparent format above. How practical would this be to implement?

Another advantage of “unique” voucher codes, is that customers / consumers might post them on other sites and forums, send by email to friends or if printable, pass them around. Thus it will be like having free viral advertising / marketing “allowing affiliate marketing to move offline.” What better than swarms of consumers posting your unique code to other customers and the voucher affiliate wins wholly or part of the commission?

“There would be nothing stopping you producing a catalogue which contained voucher codes and distributing it for instance or billboards, posters, stickers etc”

I guess there are a few voucher codes floating about whereby the saving is offset against the the affiliates commission, perhaps there is something here too as a better alternative to cashback sites, that’s if the merchant site’s can cater for it. The trend suggests that most merchants may need to incorporate voucher code boxes, just to remain competitive.

Please note I have no idea on the scale of this at the moment, and how much of a problem it is & if it is, but I would be keen to discuss further the advantages of having a voucher code site versus a cashback site. When will it be move over cashback sites & bring on the voucher code sites.

A Message To Affiliate Window & Shop Window

Please, introduce a few extra columns in the shopwindow feed with details on any voucher codes like the start & expiry dates, brief description, voucher code number. It might increase conversions.

Today we are pleased to announce the Books Direct Prize Pool Incentive.

A few months ago Books Direct approached my close friend Fraser Edwards & I to ask if we would consider running their brand based paid search activity through Affiliate Window. Which was previously ran by another outsourced agency & the program was on another network. The program is now solely on Affiliate Window.

Not being a fan of straight brand bidding groups & the little value it would add to the program, we pitched a concept to Sarah at Books Direct ….. See Here ….. Books Direct being a forward thinking merchant were receptive to the idea and so the incentive was formulated to generously reward affiliates for the incremental sales they drive to Books Direct.

A new affiliate account was set up solely for the purpose on the brand campaign on a no profit basis where all commissions (at the normal rate) earned are placed into the prize pool as well as the override the network Affiliate Window receives. Deducted from this are the paid search advertising costs. Books Direct, Affiliate Window & us all have access to the various paid search accounts for any costs & keywords used so that transparency is maintained throughout.

The main prize draw is at the end of the year and is confidently expected to be in excess of £10000. The activity for June collected a pool of £1,236.97, activity for July collected a pool of £2,627.38 … a total so far of £3,864.35. So we have August to December inclusive to be added to this.

Get Your Golden Ticket

In Charlie & The Chocolate Factory fashion, there are lucky winners each month who can claim their Golden Ticket for the bumper prize.

Each month, all affiliates who have made a sale, or no sales but have generated at least 100 clicks on the Books Direct programme will be entered into a prize draw. Each sale will count as one prize draw entry, so the more sales you make, the more chances you have to win. If you have made more than 100 clicks, but no sales, you will receive “one” prize draw entry.

Each month, 5 winners will be selected who will each receive a prize of £50, as well as a “Golden Ticket” to enter the main draw, to win the remaining prize pool, which will be divided between 2 winners. The exact date will be announced later in the year but will be end of 2008/early January 2009.

Each month the prize draw starts afresh! You can enter every month and increase your chances of winning the big prize.

Omitted From The Prize Draw

Fraser & I already do quite a lot of generic activity for Books Direct from our own individual & joint accounts. In July we earned about £2,624.00 commission & in June we earned about £2,048.00 commission. However though in theory we could qualify for the incentive, we have taken the decision to omit ourselves from any prize draws leaving it open for other affiliates to grab a Golden Ticket.

Fuller Details

For more detailed information please read the following threads & blogs

Books Direct Brand Bidding – Prize Pool
Books Direct Blog
Books Direct: Prize pool offers monthly £50 bonus and a grand pool of circa £12,000
An Alternative To Brand Bidding Groups
Plunge Into The PPC Prize Pool & Grab a Golden Ticket

Thanks Books Direct & Affiliate Window

Fraser & I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Books Direct for their generousity with the incentive & Affiliate Window for their efforts in the joint coordination & adding their override to the prize pool too. The setting up has been quite seamless & straight forward. Hopefully affiliates eyes will be lit up, be encouraged, start promoting further & add incremental sales to a decent program.

Why should affiliates be permitted to SEO in organic search for a brand (including variations & misspellings), when a merchant already has a restricted paid search policy in place based on the brand?

What makes PPC unique in being isolated and targeted with knee jerk reactions with: over restrictive keyword policies, damnation from some networks & ridicule from some purist SEO affiliates.

Brand bidding is indeed a low hanging fruit, it also serves as a good litmus test to find out how well or poorly a merchant converts to ascertain if that merchant is worth pushing on generics & product related terms.

Putting it simply there is no real difference between SEO & PPC, both are competing for placement on search engines, with SEO there are obviously a whole lot more affiliates doing / exercising this.

SEO is more deliberate, however. A PPC ad can easily appear for a hybrid phrase like “BRAND electrical store” without actually bidding on the brand because they are bidding on on a partial element i.e. “electrical store” “store” or “electrical”. With SEO it’s more deliberate because they physically have to add the brand somewhere into the content or meta tags or url sub domain / directory url. i.e. the brand has to be appearing somewhere on the page/site . With PPC this isn’t necessarily the case & with expanded broadmatch / synonym match / contextual matching on PPC keywords, it’s the PPC’ers that get fingered out by emails or on public forums.

So flipping this on it’s head, if an affiliate can SEO for a brand (i.e. there are no restrictions) why can’t a PPC’er do brand bidding on paid search?

At the moment only a few merchants have SEO restriction policies in place, thankfully. I look forward to the day (not in wanting, but more in dreaded anticipation) when this increases further, this in turn will temporarily deflect attention from affiliates engaging with PPC (and synonym matching issues) where some SEO affiliates quite happily jump on their back. Perhaps they will be able to appreciate how unreasonable it can be when the ball is in their court with the restrictions being imposed upon them.

If an affiliate can SEO for misspells, why can’t a PPC affiliate when there are keyword restrictions in place for paid search bid on variations & misspellings. So what difference is there really between SEO & PPC? I have always considered this blanket rule on not bidding on variations & misspellings inappropiate simply because the merchant is not aware of what they actually all are.

If SEO is rightly or wrongly perceived as NOT being the domain or jurisdiction of the merchant … a taboo area .. then by the same token nor should PPC, let’s remember search engines are a third party & not owned by networks, merchants, agencies nor affiliates. The search engines themselves rank organic listings & sponsored ads according to what they deem most relevant / quality according to their algos & manual tweaks.

To reiterate, what makes PPC unique in being isolated and targeted with knee jerk reactions, damnation from some networks & ridicule from some purist SEO affiliates?

“A merchant should (in theory) be number 1 in search, but in PPC they may be outbid by affiliates – and therefore don’t feel happy about giving commission that way?”

Paid search engines also rank ads according to various “quality” scoring factors & algos, it it’s not uncommon for SEO affiliates to rank higher than merchants for the brand. With hybrid terms & variation / misspellings this is even more common place / common practice. Therefore the merchant is still “giving” (if that is the right word) the commission away. A SEO page might also list other merchants as options to the visitor, thus leakage occurs, or worse still promote an entirely different merchant. There are most probably more cases of malpractice / rogue affiliates or leakage than that from PPC. So why do people of the incorrect mindset tend to consider PPC’ers to be the bad boys/girls?

So next time you see someone appearing for a brand or hybrid phrase on paid search, just look at all the organic listings for that same phrase as comparison, so that you can perhaps gain a little perspective & stop condemning PPC affiliates.

Remember an affiliate doesn’t have to be signed up to program to SEO. So isn’t it better the merchant & a signed up affiliate is duly rewarded with the sale rather than a competitor! Thus isn’t it better to offer an affiliate commission & put in their pocket than the tills of a competitor? Remember an affiliate can still SEO for brand, hybrids & misspells & send to sponsored listings! Where very often the EPC is better than going through the CPA channel, so it doesn’t matter if an affiliate is signed up to the merchants program or not.

Keep remembering merchants DON’T own the search engines!!!

When we see a few merchants introducing SEO restrictions, ask one question, since when has the ownership of an affiliates own website been the intellectual property of a merchant? Never!!! Another risk with SEO restrictions is that the potential customer may end up at a non-affiliate site such a consumer review site or blog where an individual might have had negative reviews about a merchant. People mis-type by re-occuring habit, I understand brand conformality & portrayal in correct spelling, thats another discussion altogether, I am relating more to actual brand spelling & hybrid phrases / longtail, though mispellings do have their dutiful role to assist in directing the flow of traffic to the intended recipient & thus should maybe be accepted by merchants.

You might say with SEO, merchants cannot police all websites whether these are affiliates on non-affiliates that has anything to do with meta tags, content copy etc etc … and that it’s all about control & thus it’s easier to control PPC affiliates.

No, is the simple answer to that one. SEO or Affiliate websites can be simply requested to use javascript links or images where the merchant’s name is referred to in the content & ban the brand name in meta tags or even insert ‘no index,follow’. Why do you think this is unreasonable? It’s similar to the same ludicrous PPC restrictions which are enforced where you can’t mention a merchants name in the PPC ad copy.

In my opinion SEO gets manipulated ethically or abused unethically with dubious practises or suffers greater leakage via SEO on brand related terms a whole lot more than PPC.

It seems daft that you can’t do PPC but you can do long term SEO which can’t be switched off or changed or corrected as easily as PPC, the latter having greater flexibility & speed in portraying a brand or current offering correctly. Compare how quickly a PPC ad can be amended to a webpage being amended and indexed. The PPC ad wins hands down.

“If PPC’ing a brand you are spending money advertising in order to send traffic to the brand owner or divert traffic from the brand owner”

A vast majority of brand PPC is simply to send traffic to the brand owner, however cost has nothing to do with it since both methods have their own costs. SEO affiliates running a website incur elements of cost from hosting to buying a domain to paying employees or out-sourcing & not forgetting those man hours which are an affiliate’s most precious commodity.

“But it’s more like writing a magazine, where as PPC is akin to putting a classified ad in the newspaper saying you promote a merchants stock”

No again, a publisher’s website is still media promoting the services & products a merchant offers, the difference being that a webpage can contain more content on the pre-sell. A PPC affiliate can still direct traffic to their own website in the same manner instead of direct linking to the merchant. However, one advantage of direct linking from paid search is the following blog … Prefill the Basket – Don’t Presell the Customer Twice … where you don’t need to presell the customer twice plus you get 100% transitional flow of traffic without leakage.

Quite simply there has been the incorrect mindset from the beginning by networks, merchants, agencies & even purist affiliates. The catalyst for this was the introduction of the single URL policy by paid search engines like Google Adwords, Yahoo Marketing & MSN Adcenter. There were knee jerk reactions from some networks, merchants & agencies who didn’t think about it properly & have not been trained correctly with regard to the bigger picture.

So what if it requires a cultural change? Well, if the mindset was incorrect from outset then maybe it needs to be reprogrammed to bring back into proper alignment & continuity. It’s quite plain to see how a few networks & some employess “don’t get it” that’s because they were not educated correctly in-house & have a false perception of what is right & wrong in the industry.

Granted, it would be like opening pandora’s box if there is a deluge of restrictions enforced on SEO, but perhaps those purist SEO affiliate who slate & slander PPC should take a step back and think of the bigger picture on how lightly they have got off so far.

Should balance be restored by imposing the same restrictions on SEO where there are PPC restrictions? That’s open to thought provoking discussion, I wouldn’t advocate it, but it will balance the restrictive policies currently around, it will still have a long way to go to be as far reaching as PPC restrictions are at the moment, why should one be more ridiculous than the other?

If a user types in the brand, hybrid, misspelling or variation into a search engine then in theory only one organic listing should appear in the organic listings … but there isn’t … by the very nature of search engine it lists options … thus there shouldn’t be that restriction on PPC or SEO either.

Therefore the only exception I see pertaining to paid search is the use of the actual brand / merchants url as the display url in the paid search adverts because of the single display url & that is all, nothing else.

Thought provoking isn’t it? Should the encroachment into brand related SEO be a taboo area to impose restrictions upon, when PPC is treated so heavily handed?

Additional note:

A wider issue might be that those merchants which dedupe might do so against seo one day.

If the industry in some quarters prefer ppc brand bidding, where permissible & where there are BBGs, not to overwrite content affiliate cookies (which I agree), then by the same token though not easily implemented I guess, why shouldn’t the same apply to sales from SEO on brand? And by an additional token shouldn’t SEO on brand not overwrite PPC affiliate bidding on generic & product related terms?

Basically imho there is not really much difference between SEO & PPC, the former has to actually include the brand to appear organically & the latter can be achieved to appear without actually bidding on the brand, so why does / should ppc get isolated for targeting & not seo? i.e. why should seo be allowed for a brand but not ppc. Is seo taboo & ppc not?

You never know, it could all turn Interflora or John Lewis or Marks “&” Spencer, where merchant names have to be gifs or jpegs or javascript or can only be mentioned a certain number of times. Then you have merchants who say their name cannot be part of your directory structure or as a sub domain of your own site. … Don’t you just love affiliate marketing? If it’s not one thing it’s another.

If that is the case then, then search engines should list only one website when a user is searching for a brand or variation, but they don’t, they are search engines by their very nature! & no affiliate, merchant, agency or network owns them.

A question is will this now see an increase in seo restrictions later in the year or was it bound to happen anyway because affiliates were too apathetic & networks too yellow bellied to call a halt to the domino effect by saying “no more”. If it does affiliates will have the 2nd chance & opportunity to stand united, but I won’t hold my breath. On the flip side merchants with an IQ above that of an amoeba or geranium might actually start opening up their keyword policies to a certain degree.

With reference to paid search and a merchant “x” program with keyword restrictions … at what point does a brand become a merchant .. and what is the rule with regard to resellers.

Let’s take a couple of recent examples. Last week I was working briefly on a keyword database for sporting supplements. One of the popular brands also has an affiliate program, but their branded products are also sold by other resellers / merchant “y”who also have affiliate programs.

Can I or Can’t I use those keywords, or would I have to remove myself from the program of merchant “x” in order to use those keywords & promote the resellers. I haven’t mentioned this merchant yet because they see the logical problem, seem quite reasonable & are maybe looking at opening up their keyword policy because their resellers are already in the space.

Suntan lotions & creams was another I have been working on, Ambre Solaire is a popular brand who currently don’t have an affiliate program so I have a choice of merchants of who to send customers to, but what if they started a program with keyword restrictions?

Now lets take other programs like Dell & Apple which have keyword restrictions (maybe even BBGs ) There are other merchants (with affiliate programs) who are resellers of their products .. Can I or Can’t I use keywords related to those products?

Probably the biggest area is mobile phones like Orange, Vodafone, T Mobile, (the former two having BBGs btw), but there are plenty of other retailers who offer tarifs or handsets relating to them.

We also see a few brand clothing merchants too, basically the list goes on & on.

Say I was bidding on “Sony DVD Player” but the Sony affiliate program had keyword restrictions, it’s like them turning around to an electrical retailer in the high street & telling them they can’t promote Sony products in their shop window.

It’s a tricky one, but in my opinion if there is a reseller of those products then any associated keywords should perhaps be fair game, unless the reseller / merchant “y specfically prohibits it. However the problem develops still further if the original merchant “x” appears somewhere on your site & not necessarily the landing page even if your focus is on the resellers. It’s a slight dilemma when merchant “x” starts throwing toys out of their cot, then the only option is perhaps to drop out of the merchant “x” program in favour of the reseller / merchant “y.

Is this going to be a further potential problem & additional clauses merchants will start incorporating? I think we already see similar on magazine & hotel affiliate programs, but will it escalate? Will boundaries be further encroached with get out of jail free cards enforcing further restrictions.