Moose on the Loose

Microsoft Affiliate Network BETA, seems to have slipped in under the radar. An interesting development but probably nothing to get too excited about yet, it’ maybe simply a question of how long before Google launches theirs? I might aim at finding out more about it & try & post here accordingly in due course.

Is Microsoft Affiliate Network BETA an affiliate network in the sense of how we traditionally understand it or something slightly different.

Further news today suggested that Microsoft is paying $6bn (£3bn) to buy digital marketing firm Aquantive in its biggest ever acquisition. BBC News

Possibly like any other affiliate, our inbox is continually bombarded with emails from merchants on various topics.

However as an affiliate & within affiliate marketing my time is my most precious commodity, a majority of the information sent through is superfluous to my requirements.

I appreciate that merchants or networks obo of merchants sending out promotional emails is proactive, but when you are signed up to a couple of thousand programs, an affiliates inbox can become overwhelming & time consuming to plough through. Maybe a couple of years ago, we might have been saying that we were not receiving enough, but the pendulum has swung to the other extreme.

Therefore as an affiliate I don’t wish to be automatically opted in to receive emails I am not interested in order to have to opt out, if that is at all possible.

Mandatory emails which should go out are PPC or keyword policy changes, programs opening & closing. Cookie period changes, commission changes or promotional emails should be optional. Thus networks should maybe start categorising emails more i.e. don’t blend a keyword policy change within some promotional email.

However, all in all it’s probably got to a stage where we should now opt into emails & specfically what type of emails these pertain too. Obviously direct communication emails still apply.

I think over the next week or so, we will approach each network with our instructions to ascertain who is accommodating or not & report back, quite possibly some may not even have that facility.

As a side note, internal mail systems should maybe run simultaneously with emails sent out, as proof of delivery is not proof of receipt.

Anyhow, back to my inbox now it’s about 3:41am and I only have another 607 emails to go … now where is that mass delete button, there’s a good film on the box.

Now that the cat is finally out of the bag, this blog is a warm congratulations to Princess Fiona & Fraser (author of Affiliateblog.co.uk) who are are expecting their first baby Shrek.

I am totally chuffed for you both & wish you every happiness in the world for your bundle of joy which is due on the 30th October, around All Hallows Eve … Wooo! Hooo!

It seems some affiliates are getting quite viril recently, what with Graham (from Buyagift) & Mel having their first child about 13 weeks ago and with Leona & Clarke (Supercod) (Affiliate Marketing Blog) expecting their 2nd in September .. Congratulations to them also.

If you are a dad and also an affiliate, an affiliate community has been set up on the newly relaunched Affiliates4U forum, called Affiliate Dads .. Click Here

Clarke wrote his first article on the new Affiliates4u forum today, called How to instantly kill your Affiliate Program (PPC side)! by Supercod

Which I thought was another angle to look at affiliates using paid search to promote merchants.

“I was told by our PPC Agency that Affiliates are bad and that I should not allow them to use our sites URL in any direct to site PPC activity. After I done this our Affiliates deserted us in droves including the guys I thought only done SEO. Our sales took a nose dive and I was fired as you don’t need an Affiliate Manager if you have no active Affiliates. I am still looking for a job, but no one will hire me after they heard what I done :-(”

Click Here for Rest of Article

My Comment: The introduction of brand name bidding restrictions, on what is a low hanging fruit, I have no problems with, except for the cartels, lack of notice in changes etc.

However, as for display url restrictions, well that is simply castrating the program, along with what Kieron mentions in his blog

But going back to Clarkes article, what is the “longtail” of it all? Quite simple really, the income derived from the override networks receive will diminish. There are possibly a couple of networks who’s survival is probably dependent upon this (apart from the revenue generation from good quality cashback sites). Why do you think that the odd one has their own little cartel op in progress? Unless networks innovate of course.

Therefore with a few networks, if you take away brand bidding closed groups, they possibly don’t actually have a sustainable business model.

The heartbeat of the UK affiliate marketing industry has always been the community around the A4UForum.

Today, it has taken that next revolutionary & evolutionary step by relaunching as Affiliates4U

I am still finding my way around and have been impressed with the extra features that are now available from covering everything from creating your own Communities on any topic you desire (or join others, if nobody joins yours, you could always create one called “Billy No Mates”), News & Articles, Blogs (where feeds are pulled from registered users & aggregated), The Traditional Forum Structure, Events (related to the industry) & Providers.

It certainly feels like there will be more social networking between members not just on affiliate related topics but anything & everything where the common denominator between us all will still be our enjoyment of affiliate marketing.

Matt & his team must be applauded for this … Bravo old bean!

But for the time being, take a look for yourself and join in the exciting development at Affiliates4U.

Just thinking out loudly … Which is never a wise thing … I am not 100% convinced the whole presell philosophy always works or is always necessary, especially conversion wise.

Unless after the presell on you website or within a pay per click advert, following the affiliate link actually inserts the product in the shopping basket by prefilling the basket or taking the user directly to the checkout.

I have yet to come across enough programs which prefill the basket after we have presold them on our sites or ppc activity.

Surely this would increase conversion rates as they (meaning the customer) are taken further down the corridor of the sales process … otherwise in effect the customer has to be presold twice?! Once on your site & once again on the merchant site. Where is the logic in that?

I suppose what I am rambling on about is that affiliate links should have the ability to take customers to the checkout and/or shopping basket … for improved CR … they may even soar!

Correct me if i am wrong, but who says you cannot presell a product in 3 lines of ad copy on a ppc search engine and do ppc > merchant?

What’s the better user experience in terms of time & bandwidth for a customer and conversion rates for the affiliate?

a.) ppc > publisher site > merchant … noting no basket prefill thus a product is effectively presold three times

b.) ppc > merchant ….noting again no basket prefill but a product is only presold twice.

That’s why in a.) ie those merchants who allow use of their display url will always have priority over those who don’t permit it. Less leakage & higher % transition of traffic … unless the landing page has an option of several products and ALL take the customer directly to the checkout on the merchants site.

We have the ability to deep link as as we know these generally convert better most of the time, so why don’t networks and merchants take that next step.

btw this is something I brought up on a forum back on January 2nd, 2005. Maybe it illustrates that the industry still hasn’t evolved enough to at least give us the option and try on a larger scale.

As you maybe aware Affiliate Window had a recent coup by capturing the brands of the DSG group which includes Dixons, Currys, The Link & PC World. Now this blog entry isn’t gloating about whether I was pleased or not about DSG changing networks, but about what happened in the aftermath.

Before any notifcation was sent out from Tradedoubler (btw I’ll have to check emails to ascertain if it has yet been sent out), the commissions were lowered and set to a paltry 1% on Tradedoubler with immediate effect. Thus, once again there was inadequate notice to the change in a contract, which left affiliates in the lurch. It doesn’t matter whether they were a large affiliate or affiliate, or to what degree any affiliate had implemented those brands or what proportion of their time it related to. Affiliates would have been out of pocket.

What did Tradedoubler do about it?

Well not a lot it appears on the surface of it all, did they enforce the finer details of a contract on the DSG group or were those finer details not in print in the first instance, conversations may suggest the latter from the awkward & unenviable position they were unfortunately left in. Note: DSG left affiliates in a awkward position to forcibly change links quickly with little regard to them & thus lose money while Affiliate Window could have had trouble in a smooth transition of the programs.

However, though the fault lies squarely at the feet of the DSG Group, this presented an ideal opportunity for the Gauntlet to be picked up for the cause & good spirit of affiliate marketing, for those affiliates which would have beeen left out of pocket.

Now, I’m not suggesting this is the case, though it could be inferred as so, based on the subsequent events & how they unfolded, to the point it could be suggested / interpreted that Tradedoubler washed there hands of the matter or acted distinctly inertly. Whether they did or didnt’ and what ever the politics the result is still remained the same.

Affiliate Window came up with the following statement:

“We have been following the discussion regarding lost commission for sales that occur on TradeDoubler, post commission reduction.

(http://www.a4uforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58929)

In order to limit the loss of any revenue during this transition from TradeDoubler to Affiliate Window, we are offering to compensate for all verified transactions, including those from existing TradeDoubler cookies.

To clarify, AW will add an extra 2% commission to the existing 1%, to be applied as a manual commission via your Affiliate Window account.

In order to process this quickly and simply, we will require all affected affiliates to supply an export of their TradeDoubler DSGi sales data to cover the period 2nd May to 30th May. This will be verified with each brand so we can calculate the total compensation to apply to your account. A reminder will be posted after the 30th.

DSGi are keen for you to migrate over, and we at AW want this to be as painless as possible, this therefore seems like an equitable solution and we hope you see it that way too.”

Now, blow me down with a feather, what an ideal solution & fantastic offering. Now granted Affiliate Window wanted as smooth-a-transition of the programs to their network possible, but in effect remunerating the affiliates like this and in effect picking up the tab of another network is awesome. A very good PR exercise where the right thing was done.

Hats of to Affiliate Window! Tradeodubler really missed out on a good PR opportunity.

Duncan Says- “Awesome move, other networks should notice the positive PR a move like this generates, goodwill may be intangible, but its value in this instance will (I believe) far outway the absorbed cost of the exercise. “

Now I am no fan of DSG, PC World owe me over £10,000 (maybe circa £13,000 or so, I will have to check reports) in unwarranted reversal of click & collect commissions when the program was on Tradedoubler. Whereby we were let down by both merchant & network. The merchant only offered a poultry* £500. *spelling mistake paltry

Granted, I have maybe been full of praise recently for Affiliate Window and they are maybe one of the current Goldenboys out of the networks, but my advise to them is to make sure they keep their feet firmly on the ground & don’t take their eye of the affiliates’ requirements plus remain squeaky clean in their actions. A previous & phony pretender to the throne will no doubt glance over with an envious eye & jealous rage .. and .. whilst trying to deflect negative attention from themselves, will quite probably try & dig up as much about Affliate Window as possible to tarnish their name. Because, if there is something to hide or ignorantly doing something untoward, they will try and unearth it.

Any Network can fall from grace quite easily as we have already witnessed, but at the “moment” they seem to be going in the right direction.

“You can fool some of the affiliates all of the time, and all of the affiliates some of the time, but you can not fool all of the affiliates all of the time.”

But for the time being, let’s take the postives from this, well done & thank you for demonstrating something good & done well, all in the true spirit of affiliate marketing.

At first I thought Google’s acquisition of YouTube might endure a flurry of claimants and that it might prove to be a glowing red coal which might prove to be too hot to handle, simply because of the Google Tag it will receive greater coverage to the not so net savvy, unless these claimants have been laying in waiting for the right opportunity.

Further news arose today that the Footbal Premier League (known as Soccer to any US readership) wants to sue Google’s video-sharing site YouTube for alleged copyright infringement. It’s not as if the Premier League isn’t wealthy enough as it is, but fair play to them in taking on Google, claiming Google knowingly misappropiated it’s intellectual property by conciously encouraging footage to be submitted by users on its site.

This simply compounds the appox £500m lawsuit from media griant Viacom.

No doubt, more companies will join in the frenzy, because there is now an unfortunate suing culture which has infected/infested this side of the pond?

“Despite its huge popularity and commercial success, YouTube has attracted criticism from media organisations for the access it provides to sought-after content.”

No doubt Google will deny, deny, deny as other companies may also jump on the bandwagon. However there is no denying that Google’s YouTube is benefiting financially from others content.

Are there any plans for Google to remunerate the authors of original content which doesn’t impede on intellectual property or copyrights of companies or individuals?

Basically Google IS milking it of others. You often hear the expression “content is king”, but who’s content are they making money from? Joe Public that’s who.
But, even if they, meaning Google, decide to settle with the current plantiffs, will the problem ever go away with wave after wave of human rights & copyright infringement claims potentially coming in?

Perhaps Google might one day wish they could literally flush this acquisition down the lavatory U-Tube, great & popular though the site is, it might lose it’s appeal when the only video footage that will be permitted on there is personal videos, albeit there is an abundance of good ones of those.

No doubt Google will squirm out of it somehow, claiming to be the victim, with a bit of spin to throw in for good measure. However I am a football fan through and through, and the last thing I want to see is Google bleeding the game, I enjoy, dry.

Granted it’s obvious I am not a fan of Google, and trust me if I had a red hot poker to hand I know who’s proverbial U-Tube I would like to shove it up. Figuratively speaking of course.

Question : Will this acquisition prove to be an own goal?

This is more a personal diary note to say Happy Birthday to my Grandad “Charles Frederick”, he passed away a few years ago, but is always fondly remembered. It would have been his birthday today and he taught me quite a lot. I’ve been invited to a geeky WOW pub meet in London today, so I’ll have a beer on him. Happy Birthday Grandad.

Affiliate Window have proved to be first past the post with their recent re-development of Shop Window.

A long time ago I suggested on the A4UForum that any network that can produce high quality product feeds to allow affiliates to easily create product search sites will be the first past the post. Together with that I had an inkling since last year that Affiliate Window were a Dark Horse running up on the inside rail to pip at the post what some others considered to be the major players.

Well they certainly have come up trumps with their lastest ShopWindow Toolset which was launched on the 27th March, 2007.

I really hope affiliates appreciate this product and that the uptake & usage from them is high, as it has certainly raised the bar for other networks to follow suit, though I do hear that some slightly different but innovative ideas are being developed at Paidonresults too.

Kieron has already implemented ShopWindow Toolset very well it and you can see his comments over at www.here.org.uk We have a few theme ideas we would like to get stuck into, which we will embrace soon after a few current projects are completed, though flexibility will allow you to create some nice little niche sites of your own. But, if we demand innovation from networks, then we also need to use it, especially if it’s of a high enough quality so they will continue to develop further products.

ShopWindow Toolset provides you with product comparison functionality that can be customised and integrated within a website with minimum effort.

You can earn commission through adding ShopWindow functionality in the way that best suits your skill set and website architecture in one of three ways:

1. ShopWindow Direct – sending your web traffic to the shopwindow.com website

2. ShopWindow Client Software – integrating a fully customisable software package within your website, adding product comparison functionality

3. ShopWindow API – using our ShopWindow web-based service which allows you to develop applications based around our product data

ShopWindow Toolset will enable you to provide your users with dynamic content from our managed database of over 3 million products. Your users can search for specific products and review the results from within your website. Those users who click through to a merchant site are now more informed and more motivated to buy than ever before, increasing the likelihood of earning you a commission from their purchases.

Affiliate Window merchant product feeds have been thoroughly reviewed and mapped in recent weeks. The ShopWindow system is designed to recognise and learn behaviour patterns. This will result in your users being able to search for products more accurately and refine the results more thoroughly as each day passes.

Click ShopWindow to access a demonstration website with the Client Software in action (or go to www.shopwindow.com)

Please login to your Affiliate Window Admin Area for further information about the ShopWindow Toolset.

Well Done Affiliate Window !!!