Affiliate Marketing Blog - a Traffic Junction Blog

The whole cliche of the importance of good content in online marketing has been said and written about countless times before. What amazes me though is how many people play only lip service to content, even when they hear every day how they cannot do without it.

For affiliates relying on search engine optimization / marketing for their site, good content is what will get and/or convert users to the action they want the user to take. I saw a post on the Affiliate Marketing Forum, where an affiliate complained about having a website with “search engine-friendly URLs and a site map” , but having difficulty with Google indexing it. One look at it and you’d know why — the website hardly has any content; it presents itself as a collection of search engine friendly URLS!

But the question that the affiliate should be asking himself is “even if i get Google to crawl this page and get a visitor here, what will that visitor do?” Sadly, many affiliates and webmasters view search engine marketing in a silo.

Even if we leave aside SEO for a minute, with the changes as to how landing pages are being viewed and its impact on the cost of advertising, what is written on your website becomes even more important.

Also, there are indications that Google will begin factoring in ‘editorial opinion’ into its search results, according to a patent awarded very recently. Until now, Google has been completely algorithm-driven and stayed away from any human influence in determining its search results. However, there may be changes on that front —it is likely that we will see a combo approach where human opinion will also have a say.

There is no better time than now to get started with building sites with quality content; for, you can ignore content only at your peril.

Amazon has launched the beta version of aStore, a hosted storefront for affiliates that, according to the company, can be set up in a few minutes (Shawn Collins agrees).

The aStore is designed to make it really easy for affiliates to have a full fledged store front with all of the rich capabilities of Amazon — the shopping cart, the recommendations and editorial reviews, etc. While the storefront will be hosted by Amazon on their servers, the interface can be customized to give the look and feel of the affiliate’s site.

Affiliates can benefit from the continued association of the prospective buyer with their own website, which tends to make the overall user experience a lot more seamless.

So, Amazon has taken care of helping an affiliate to started by giving the tools to have their own e-commerce store for free. The company has also taken care of ensuring high conversions by making available everything that visitors can expect to find on Amazon’s store itself.

Now affiliates only have to worry about attracting the right kind of visitors to this storefront. That as we know is the one of the biggest challenges of affiliate marketing….

As most dGM affiliates would know, the company released its dGMPro 1.2 version last week. Initial feedback on the updates done to the system are positive. The focus has been on improving usability (the company had quite some technical and usability issues last year– they engaged a well-known third party firm to improve the usability). Many of these changes are long overdue, but now that they are in, we hope to see better results follow as well — in the end, that’s what it’s all about!

One thing I must complement dGM is on is that they are trying to gather feedback from the key stakeholders (ie. us affiliates) and making an attempt to incorporate that into their development. We are not an easy bunch to please and there will still be tons of items that are not implemented, but as long as they’ve made an honest attempt to listen to us and choose the best options that meet business priorities, it is a big positive for all concerned.

Another recent product roll out was that from Microsoft — the MSN AdCenter was officially launched in the UK recently. It’s been eagerly awaited; as most advertisers want to find something comparable to Google AdWords- it is unlikely that MSN will be able to provide the volume of traffic that Google gives any time soon, but we can certainly hope for lower cost and ease of campaign management.

While on MSN, many would recall Bill Gates’ statement that the company could consider rewarding (read “paying”) users for searching. There was a lot of hue and cry over the correctness of that approach to draw people to search; now, dogpile, the meta search engine has actually gone ahead with a similar plan. NetImperative reports that dogpile has tied up with iPoints to offer loyalty points to dogpile users for searching; like any other loyalty program, these points can be redeemed with various products, including books and airline tickets. Personally, I think this is a good concept and nothing wrong with it; it’d been more interesting to see the change in the search traffic landscape if Yahoo and MSN had launched something similar.

As we all know, Google has not only been trying out different models for the various advertising options it provides but also taking quite a few steps towards integrating options across various media. Only months after launcing a pilot program for advertisers to use Adwords to book print advertising, they’ve made available video advertising, are testing out a CPA model and now, the latest: distribution of online coupons through its local listings on Google Maps. Currently, it is being offered in the US in partnership with Valpak; the latter’s advertisers can add co-branded coupons to their Google listings, giving these advertisers an additional channel to reach target customers.

The jury is still out on the impact it will have on affiliates, with some suggesting that it could affect affiliate businesses significantly. Personally, I do feel there may be some impact, but it won’t be as catastrophic as the “death of affiliate marketing” as we often tend to hear. In fact, most things that search engines are working on offering to their advertisers have some impact or the other on affiliate marketing.

As I have written in the past, neither should affiliates expect to be immune to these changes, nor can they afford to be indifferent. It is a matter of being prepared for and responding to these changes. Affiliates will have to get used to playing the game both online and off to continue winning (treat it as home and away games, perhaps ) .

Amazon is a trailblazer when it comes to getting outside parties (its key stakeholders) to contribute to achieving its own objectives. It was one of the pioneers of affiliate marketing and seeded an entire industry; it has successfully used customer reviews and recommendations to generate lots of content, which has served various purposes: help get products noticed, get people involved, and get shoppers to help one another. It had introduced tagging previously to help people locate related products and now the latest is its “search suggestions” which the company officially announced yesterday.

Context is a critical underlying factor in how a lot of online marketing is done already and how organic search engines will work in future. Getting the end users to create associations of a product with search terms is to make contextual search completely user driven, which is how it should be. At some stage, the user suggestions are bound to be a factor in the way products are ranked and displayed to customers.

This announcement comes very closely after Amazon launched Omakase, its contextual advertising platform for affiliates to leverage. In March, the company had introduced S3 storage; and it continues to invest in improving its technology for customer retention/engagement, even when at the cost of lower profitability. But if the last 10 years are anything to go by, this “technology company” knows what it is upto. It’s strategy of growing big and fast, powered by technological superiority and innovation has led to this unbelievably fast transformation from a book seller to a retailer to a technology company.

The latest issue of the CJWire newsletter has a checklist of what affiliate publishers need to do to become a CJ Performer (an affiliate who has earned at least $10,000 in commissions per month for three months running).

It’s good to keep reminding oneself of these basics for continued success in affiliate marketing. The below is an edited excerpt of the checklist from CJWire:

Partner with the best: Choose the best advertisers and partner with them in promoting their products/ services. Note the emphasis on “partner”; it is important to build strong relationships with the advertiser.

Protect the advertisers’ brand: The issue of damage to a brand is a blotch on affiliate marketing. As a partner, affiliates can and must contribute to enhancing an advertiser’s brand equity.

Quality of websites: Build and maintain high quality websites with original content, a lot of which can be obtained from advertisers themselves. Use multiple streams to generate content and promote the products.

Diversify marketing channels: Prudent affiliates don’t put all their eggs in one basket when it comes to using marketing channels.

Measure and evaluate: Assess and test everything you do, from joining a program to the results from marketing.

Timing: Plan ahead and be prepared for the great opportunities, be it a particular shopping season or a new trend that is emerging.

Know the tools: Get savvy with all the tools provided by the network or the merchant to manage various promotional programs.

Compliance: Respect the terms and conditions set forth by the network/ advertiser. If you disagree, raise it with the concerned parties and you may be able to get exceptions or even have the terms changed. Don’t risk unilaterally breaking T&Cs.

“Don’t be evil” - that’s been Google’s much written about (and sometimes, much scoffed at) mantra. Looks like Google is taking that one step further with a more proactive approach to “Stop Evil”. According to Netimperative, Google is introducing a new service, using technology from StopBadware.org, whereby they will alert users who click to a site suspected of hosting or distributing “badware” with a pop-up message.

This is significant since it is reported that there are close to a billion visits each month to websites that aren’t really safe for surfing due to spyware/ malware. A study earlier in the year by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor reported that almost 8% of sponsored search results led users to suspicious sites while a little over 3% of organic search listings were deemed unsafe.

A couple of interesting points to note: We aren’t clear if Google’s latest initiative of warning users applies to both organic and paid search results. Secondly, while the initiative itself is laudable, MSN seems to be doing a better job of weeding out the “bad” sites. Why isn’t Google eliminating or preventing access to these sites instead of just warning users? Surely, they have the resources, technology and ‘leverage’ to be a stronger enforcer, particularly when it comes to eliminating evil?

For the retail sector, the speculation begins now. What will the holiday shopping season be like? An eMarketer article indicates that this year X’mas shopping will be slower than last year (though it is still expected to grow a bit). Of course, the analysis is based on research from the US market; yet, some of the external factors that affect the US consumer undoubtedly affect consumer trends in the UK.

There are some interesting points in the article: a higher percentage of women seem to be shopping online; consumers are likely to begin shopping a bit later than last year, but not necessarily spend more; and it seems there aren’t any truly exciting or path breaking products that could catalyse sales. Yes, the lack of buzz about any particular product is quite palpable.

However, it is still unclear whether the projected slowdown in offline shopping will benefit online retailers. I would most certainly hope, yes.

Another trend noticed in the UK is the number of people using online auction websites. We’ve experienced the benefits of this trend ourselves as we’ve driven very high volume sales for eBay. According to the APACS, GBP2.8 billion was spent on auction sites last year, 4.9 million adults made their most recent online purchase frm an auction site. Moreover, over 50% of all adults in the country made an online purchase during the year.

So, it seems like we have some mixed / unclear signals at this point in time about what’s in store for the best time of the year for affiliates. I reckon we will have a much better sense in about a month’s time.

Prolific Revenews blogger Shmuly Tennenhaus points out the enhancements that Google have made to their shopping portal. Looks simple, neat and well organized (typical features of the UI of Google products).

What might be of special interest to affiliates is the fact that Google is offering coupons for shopping with particular merchants. Google, a coupon affiliate?

Another thing that struck me (and I am guessing here) is all merchants — especially those who sign up early into the Google Check Out program- could be getting a link from this well organized directory. How valuable will that link be for the merchant’s SEO efforts?

While on Check Out, there is a more elaborate article on this service by Kevin Ryan on iMediaconnection. Some key things to note from the article:

• Difficulty in implementation: The article quotes a Google Product Manager as saying : “Google Checkout is a purchase facilitating mechanism but not a shopping cart service,” says Benjamin Ling, lead product manager for Google Checkout. “Each implementation is different and it’s a bit more difficult than a plug and play. There is some process integration and coding that must take place.”
• Move towards ‘value-based pricing’ for keywords: This is pure conjecture on the part of some advertisers, but the concern is that if Google senses a higher conversion rate based on all the information being collected, will advertisers be charged higher minimum price per keyword bid?

We should get some indications of how successful Check Out is after this holiday shopping season; but in terms of timing, I think Google got this launch almost perfect.

ValueClick, the parent company of Commission Junction, recorded a fabulous 2Q , 2006, with revenues of $130 million, which is more than double its revenues during the same period last year. In fact, revenues for the quarter were almost $10 million higher than its previous guidance to analysts, reports the Los Angeles Business. Profits also jumped year-on-year; the company has revised its guidance for the full year as a result.

While similar details are not available with Linkshare — and admittedly, a comparison between Linkshare and ValueClick is not an apples-to-apples comparison— Linkshare also seems to have made some progress during the quarter, atleast in terms of acquiring new merchants/ advertisers to its fold. The company reported the addition of 43 new merchants; it claims that “fourteen of LinkShare’s second quarter new merchant partners have migrated over from competitive affiliate marketing programs.”
While Commission Junction was embroiled in a bit of bad publicity over its proposed links management initiative a couple of months back, Linkshare made enhancements to some of its systems. Two key developments are the Link Locator Direct and the Merchandiser-by-Location data feeds.

These are undoubtedly positive developments coming out of Linkshare, which has had its share of criticism in the past year.