Affiliate Marketing Blog - a Traffic Junction Blog

Seems like CJ has given in to affiliates for once. The much talked-about link management initiative (LMI) which it had announced recently, that would have completely replaced legacy link types with JavaScript links, will now merely become the ‘default link type’ and use of the legacy links will be allowed until early 2007 at least. The change in the default link system will happen on June 23. According to an e-mail received earlier today, “At this time we have not scheduled a date for which the Legacy links will no longer be available or supported. We will notify you at least six months in advance of making this change and will not require the change during the 2006 holiday season.” (additional emphasis mine).

This seems to be a case where the product management folks took a decision without fully evaluating the implications or listening to their clients or assoiates. If they had, they’d probably have gotten a better idea of the concerns of the key stakeholders and planned this initiative, if absolutely necessary in the first place, accordingly. There was quite a bit of debate/review/commentary in the blogosphere on what the changes meant —- with views ranging from we don’t understand what it will do, to let’s wait and watch, to questions on whether this could spell the doom for affiliates (doomsday scenarios don’t usually take long to come up anyway). Thankfully, all this “volatility” and “noise” seems to have reached CJ, and so now we have a compromise solution. Credit to CJ as well for not turning a deaf ear..

The best part is the window of at least 6 months that has been promised for complete removal of the legacy link types, which seems fair and reasonable. I do wish that significant product development initiatives such as these took account of the needs & views of the key stakeholders before they are rolled out– it can not only enhance the product offering but also the relationships between the players involved.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 8th, 2006 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.