Affiliate Blog

Affiliate marketing isn’t like a poster campaign, where you can set it up and leave it, affiliate marketing is more similar to sales, in the sense that you need to be reactive to the climate and peoples desires, as such this makes planning an affiliate campaign far more involved than traditional advertising, with better and more targeting, there are so many factors to consider, its essentially a full time job and many large companies and agencies have in-house dedicated affiliate managers to tackle these issues and manage affiliates.

Planning forms a big part of affiliate management, in order to take advantage of seasonal changes and to ensure that a campaign remains competative with its competitors. Without sufficent planning, any campaign is bound to fall fall short of its expected potential, for example, you could plan a fantastic customer incentive that lasts 24 hours, only to tell affiliates on the day of the event, by that time, affiliates won’t have enough time to react to such and event and will most likely not react to this consumer incentive and not promote the campaign, leading to its failure. Ideally, you’d want to be giving at least 2 weeks to 1 months notice to affiliates for any campaign incentive.

Frostie is one of the affiliate marketing greats in the UK and he’s put together a handy list of the key dates in affiliate marketing, you can see it here:

• January Sales (26 December -> 15th January usually)
  • Think, plan and design during August / September
  • Implement and test October -> November
• Valentines Day (14th February)
  • TPaD during September / October
  • Implement and test November -> December
• Easter (March / April)
  • TPaD during October / November
  • Implement and test December -> January
• Summer (12 June -> 14 June *England only )
  • TPaD during February / March
  • Implement and test April -> May
• Christmas (25 December)
  • TPaD during July / August
  • Implement and test September -> October

as an affiliate manager or a merchant in general you shoulod be planning according to these dates to ensure that affiliates have sufficent time to optimise their sites and to give your promotion the best chance of succeeding.

Battlefield was an awesome multiplayer first person shooter where you were able to freeroam, ie. do what ever you like in the game. Since if first emerged as a game by EA Games it’s gone from strength to strength with expansion packs and new variations of the game being produced. It seems the Battlefield have taken a new angle towards high end gaming and stuck their newest game online as a browser based game.

Economically this is a brilliant move, computer games by their very nature are very addictive and players tend to be very loyal, getting to the next level is almost an obsession. Whilst the idea of taking the game online and allowing players to buy items isn’t new, as the recent successes with The Sims, Warcraft, and Second Life illustrate perfectly, whats different about Battlefield heroes is you don’t need to buy the game first or download anything, you can play directly from the browser as you would with a free flash game, a perfect illustration of the concept of  ‘cloud working’ – basically, because of the internet, you’ll soon only need a laptop as an input and output device with all programs and information being stored virtually, think of google docs, flickr, facebook, battlefield heroes, google mail and any other software you use, being simply login rather than having to install into your computer. This makes Battlefield future proof and, very easy to maintain, both for EA games and for players. In particular if player want to play from an internet cafe, the fact that its browser based means they can, and for EA games if they want to upgrade the system, that can be done on the main platform, no need to issue upgrades to every single user. Its both convenient and cost saving.

Now, as far as making money from the game goes, you’ll remember my article about mafia wars, well essentially this is the same method that Battlefield manages to monetize the player, first they’ll have in-game advertising, second, you need to create an account so they now have your address and email whcih they can market to, next and here’s the real clincher, in order to really boost your player you need to upgrade them with all sorts of features, natrually to get these features you’ll need to buy credit from Battlefield Heroes. Whilst the amount they make per player might be quite small to begin with, the player loyalty is longer and the over heads would be less, like in gambling, over the lifetime of the player, the cumulative amount they earn per player would actually amount to more than if they simply released a single game. To illustrate on Mafia Wars you pay over £90 to get 700 credits that lasts for as long or short a period as you as a player choose, so the more addicted you get, like gambling, the more you spend. amazing, not necissarily moral but no doubt a very smart business model.

Easy Content Unit is the ingenius idea of Lammo, from Big Idea media, essentially its an amalgamator tool that allows an affiliate to create datafeed populated widgets from merchants across any network. The Widgets can be fully customized and added to any site or blog that accepts Javascript.

There are two versions of the tool, one is totally free to use but will show their ads in place of yours 20% of the time, which seems reasonable considering the usefulness and massive time saving that such a tool provides to affiliates, especially those who, like me, have to spend loads of time writing content. There is an alternat ‘pro’ version that adds some useful functionality and only costs £19.99+VAT a month, which if you’ve got the right kind of site, this could actually be a real winner. (you can get the pro version here)

the Pro features include -

RSS – this allows you to output easy content units to a blog using RSS, a fantastic time saver and also allows search engines to read the content within the unit.

Call back URLs – for the purposes of collecting statistical information, you can integrate this with Google analytics and use it to understand how well the unit is doing

Custom Descriptions – You can now edit/create your own descriptions for the products you add to your content units, should you wish.

Here’s an example of a unit from the free version, naturally, please feel free to order using this as well, I’m a poor employee and this site is supported on my own meager income, so show some love and buy something via my affiliate link…please?

Now the thing about ECU is that an affiliate has managed to use ECU Pro to populate an entire blog complete with content with some smart use of the RSS that ECU can generate, along with the custom content ability available in ECU Pro and by adding a wordpress plugin called wp-o-matic which converts RSS feeds into posts. You can read the instructions here. Here’s a bit more info from keith Bond, another big affiliate whos developed a feed to post plugin.

Basically what this means is you can effectively write your posts in ECU and your blog will auto update, again, brilliant time saver.

I had a chat with a ‘black hat’ SEO affiliate today, about the techniques he uses to make ‘quick bucks’ on the network, whilst there’s no doubt these techiques are quick winners, they don’t exactly drive the kind of quality or offer the consumer the kind of value-added that would make such strategies viable in the long term. More importantly I’m of the mindset these techniques ‘game the system’ and will eventually be found out.

As far as the industry goes, given that affiliate marketing is still viewed as a dirty word to marketing managers, often (miss) associating Affiliate marketing with Spam emails and viagra, these techniques can only serve to alienate already skeptical merchants to the detriment of the entire industry.

I thought some of the techniques could be altered to be a bit more legit and actually fit in with ‘white hat’ affiliate marketing, however i think it’s important that merchants and affiliate managers can spot the difference, after all they are responsible for approving and affiliates application to a campaign, and often flase assumptions are made about the legitimacy of the site.

So here’s a few handy tips that will help both sides make the right decisions when it comes to approving affiliates -

Affiliates -

• make sure your sites are good quality and well finished with readable content and working navigation
• if you have more than one site, use the description field in the network to give more information and use a holding site that gives information on your sites as your listed site in the network
• some networks require you to validate your site, much as its a pain, you’re gonna have to do this, hence why I avoid using Trade doubler if possible, I understand the need, but with 80+ sites, i don’t have the time to flaff about with that, especially when they still may not approve my application, grr!
• find the affiliate managers at the networks and merchants and explain to them how you intend to market their campaigns.
• (obvious) adhere to the merchants terms and conditions

Merchants -

• Learn to tell what a quality affiliate site is
• if there are other affiliate programs on the site, there’s a good chance the site is legitimate
• make sure you read the description in the networks if these are actually informative and reveal informationa bout how the affiliate is marketing then there’s a good chance its a legitimate affiliate, if the description isn’t then you may have a dodgy affiliate
• check the affiliate sites and navigate the site checking links work
• do a whois search and check that the registrant name is that same as that in the affiliates network profile
• check email addresses, if the affiliate’s email address is a free email address make sure you look more closely at the account, this doesn’t mean the affiliate is dodgy, but that you should be more wary.
• contact the affiliate, make sure you get a response, this also gives you a chance to find out more about their strategy and build relationships with affiliates.

I’m definately no expert in PPC, my expereinces in this area are limited to say the least, primarily to keey my account with CJ open, but PPC is a real art that just needs to be mastered and there are some great experts in PPC out there, Kristy is one such affiliate, she’s now full time and targeting the UK market from the sunny beaches of australia, shes made it to that much saught after full time affiliate status where her affiliate income covers her own wages. here, she goes into some detail about PPC as an affiliate and offers some good insight into how to manage a PPC campaign as an affiliate.

Smingle is one of the best Niche SEO affiliate marketers out there, not least because of his generious giving of useful and legitimate advice. You can see some of his tips here .

Smingle has also written a great basic guide to SEO here, which covers the onpage SEO basics for any site, and forms an important part of how to get a site ranking highly in google.

I’d recently asked affiliates particularly those who do affiliate marketing part time, what their day job was.  More out of curiosity than anything else.

As it turns out – the results were quite revealing and indicate that affiliate marketing still isn’t something that really the general public are aware of. At the time of writing  here are the results:

Full time affiliate		18	38.30%
IT professional		9	19.15%
Retail (store clerk etc.)		2	4.26%
Professional – Doctor, lawyer etc.		4	8.51%
Student		1	2.13%
marketing/advertising (use this if you’re network staff)		11	23.40%
civil service		0	0%
part time work		0	0%
banking		0	0%
unemployed		2	4.26%

indicating part time affiliate are either mostly working in IT or working in the industry in a non-affiliate capacity, i was surprised that only 1 affiliate was a student, as I would have thought affiliate marketing would be an ideal part-time job, i know I would have done it had I realised at the time! I was surprised that there were part time affiliates who elected Professional as their day job, i would have thought these individuals would be raking it in with stable well paid jobs. It’s reassuring to see there are a few unemployed users who are taking up affiliate marketing, it make sense after all its got low overheads, its not that difficult and actually is more time intensive than anything else, perhaps affiliate marketing is the solution to unemployment?

I’m wondering what this data could be used for, could this mean networks could offer incentives to support affiliates with different day jobs? Could affiliates form a loose commune where skills are shared? what do you think?

Linkedtube is a new tool that allows you to append a clickable link to any site, yes, you can you affiliate links from a youtube video displayed on your site, this kind of technology means that you can now create youtube videos that are clickable as a form of creative for a specific product or service allowing users to cick through, via an affilaite link to a specific page, this gives affiliate more freedom and an extra source of interactive content which both builds their site and helps generate interest. Whilst this seems like a great idea, i think time will tell if it actually becomes a pratical and highly converting form of advertising.

the Conversion rate on a merchant site is one of the key metrics that govern the overall performance of a merchant site, and thus the performance of the affiliate program, to calculate the conversion rate you essentially divide the number of sales by the number of clicks to the site i.e. vol. sales/total click = conversion rate for a specific period. Affiliates use this to determin the profitability of a campaign to them, however as a merchant it’s important that conversion rates govern the way the sites sales and check out process are optimised. Changes to the sales process on a website ultimately affect the conversion rate and it’s important to ensure the conversion rate is as high as possible, typically this should be around 3-8%.

In a recent econsultancy report, here, we find that shopping cart and check out abandonment has been increasing for a variety of reasons, ultimately what this points to is that by addressing each of the items listed, consumers will be less likely to leave your check out area and more likely to convert into actual sales. So, in the spirt of this article, let’s tackle each challenge (obviously I’m going to address these in an affiliate campaign context which differs slightly from the standard way of tackling these challenges)

Lack of money – I once heard a quote in relation to sales, a report was accusing a retailer of over pricing their products and the retailer responded,  i offered at a price that was good for me and the price was good for the customer and he accepted. It makes sense, customers will only buy products at a price they perceive to be acceptable, and it makes sense that retailers can offer products at a price that fits in with their margins. It makes sense then that merchant should be as competative as possible.

Wanted to look for a coupon - searching online has never been easier and discount codes and incentive sites have meant that the opportunity for saving by shopping online has become a clear advantage. The internet has fast become one of the most significant anti-inflationary tools since online retain took off and it makes logical sense that if consumers are looking for a discount online, and your competitors provide one, as a merchant, to remain compatative you should provide one as well.  Of course this doesn’t take into consideration the brand factor.

Wanted to shop offline – for online only retailers, the only way to takle this is to offer USPs that give consumers a clear advantage for shopping online rather than redirecting to other highstreet stores, for larger multi-channel retailers, it makes sense that some sort of incentive is given in order to increase the ‘sticky-ness’ of the customer to the merchant, an example could be to issue a voucher that can be taken to the store offering a discount for example.

Couldn’t find preferred payment option - given the variety of payment options out there, its likely that customers will want to pay using specific payment options, by offering a wider range of the more popular options this can help to encourage users to complete their sale.

Item unavailable at checkout - there’s nothing worse than finding out you’ve wasted time, its the same for customers, if an item is out of stock, then thats should be made clear, during the customer’s browsing on the site, in some cases, removing the item from the listings altogether would also be an advantage, an alternative option is to allow customers to reserve the item and give a discount to the customer, loyalty in exchange for a discount.

Couldn’t find customer support – having contact information for customers is important, however at the same time affiliates want to minimise leakage, in this specific case, the best solution is to provide a freqeuntly asked questions section on the site that addresses any of the more generic queries and in here provide a support email address.

Security concerns - trust is a big issue online, its still a bit of a cowboy country on the internet and in order to allow the customer to trust a merchant site, you need to provide secruity certificates and accreditions as well as business contact details which a customer can use to find your business in case of any concerns.

By appying these changes to a merchant site, it can greatly prevent shopping cart abandonment and ultimately lead to better conversion rates, good for the merchant and good for the affiliate!

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m by no mean feat a small time, part time affiliate, i only spend around an hour or two a day on my sites including a small retail site for custom lego parts that isn’t associated with affiliate marketing. As far as actually being an affiliate I’m certainly no major player, but to give myself some credibility I am a full time affiliate manager meaning that it’s my job to plan build and ensure the success of affiliate campaigns, i just need to translate that into sales for myself!

So here’s a totally honest round up, no matter how embarrassing, of my affiliate related earnings for June. (I’ll be doing this each month moving forwards to track progression)

Linkshare – £13.36

Skimlinks – £2.07

Amazon – £2.33

Google adsense – £99.49

total – £117.23

Whilst commission for google is consistent and actually exceeded what i was expecting this month, but failed to beat May’s results, its promising news. However, on the other hand affiliate network commissions are still a trickle, and something I was hoping would change, The amazing £115 commission sale i got from one site, failed to repeat itself this month, but fingers crossed a little age on the site and some link building will help with that. I guess my habit of going around in circles when it comes to my own stuff has meant my progression as an affiliate has been slow, i should be in the £x,xxx region by now one would have thought! Nevertheless, persever, after all as an affiliate manager i see the kind of numbers possible in this game.

so, a little more focus, July sees me starting a new job, but affiliate side, we’re going to try and hit £125 commission, and in order to acheive this, i’m going to move my affiliate ‘office’ from the sofa in front of the TV and my lego, to the desk, by the dvd player and all those big books we use to prop doors open with. Lastly i’m actually going to READ more, I haven’t finished a book in months, so its about time i actually do some more research.