JEBCommerce is excited and proud to announce that starting today, we are now managing the Doba Affiliate Program!  “Doba simplifies and streamlines product sourcing for the emerging market of millions of web-based entrepreneurs delving into the fray of starting and/or growing a retail business.”  They are the premier drop shipping and product sourcing company on the web.

JEBCommerce has a long history with Doba.  We launched their first affiliate program back in 2004/2005 and are excited to be working with Brandon Delgroso and the rest of the Doba team to grow their program.

Let me tell you a little more about Doba directly from them:  “Doba is what people in the retail industry refer to as a product sourcing marketplace or drop-ship aggregator. Our members are online retail merchants and entrepreneurs who buy products at wholesale prices and sell them at retail prices without having to deal with the hassle and expense of storing products, managing inventory, packing and shipping products, and handling returns. Doba members can find wholesale priced products on our website, market and sell those products to their customers, collect payments, and then place an order on our site to have those products shipped directly to their customers. Doba’s single interface puts retailers in touch with hundreds of wholesale suppliers featuring a combined product line of over 1,200,000 quality products.”

Doba currently has two programs:

• Commission Junction
• In-house program

Both programs have two commission options:  $10 per free trial lead or $30 per sale and offer 45 return days.  The in-house program is able to offer many more creative and distribution tools with much more flexibility.  If you’d like to get involved, just let me know!

Welcome Doba to the JEBCommerce family of managed programs!

I love to cook.  I don’t mean every day cooking like meatloaf and such.  I mean elaborate meals for all my friends.  4 or 5 course events with entirely home-made food that takes me days to put together.  Along with loving to cook, I love to watch cooking shows. My favorite isn’t so much a “how to cook” show, but more of a how to run a business show with a lot of cooking wrapped into it.  I am glued to the tube when Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare is on.  My wife and I can’t get enough of Gordon Ramsey and this show.

The premise is simple.  Chief Ramsey goes to a restaurant that is struggling and on the bring of collapse.  In one week he attempts to help the owners of the restaurant turn it into a profitable venture.  Chef Ramsey, between f-bombs and “are you flipping kidding me”’s, educates the owners and staff on how to run their business and cater to their customers.  It’s a hell of a show and one of the most entertaining hours of TV I think you can find.

While watching this show one night, a thought came to me.  Chef Ramsey isn’t just showing these restauranteurs how to run there business, he is laying down sound business principles.  Not only that, there are some solid lessons to be learned for affiliate managers, affiliates and others in the performance marketing area.  And a blog series was conceived
So, this is the first in an ongoing series on what we can learn from Chef Gordon Ramsey.

Rule #7 - Don’t try to cook the elaborate stuff if you don’t have any of the basics down.

During one episode, Chef Ramsey showcased Rule #7 - Don’t try to cook elaborate stuff if you don’t have the basics down (paraphrased).  I love this bit of advice and it is good for both affiliate managers and affiliates.  The “chef” in this episode had a menu full of elaborate entries and crazy food combinations.  This guy was trying to cook complex dishes when he couldn’t heat up a pizza.  And it showed in the cash register.  He focused on the fancy before he could cook the simple.  We can learn a lot from this.

Affiliate Managers - Have you been pushing advanced creative options but leaving out start and end dates?   Have you been pushing your datafeed tool but haven’t updated your text links in 2 months?  What about contact info?  Are you expecting affiliates to promote your products and drive sales but you are completely unavailable to your partners?  Do you provide your creative in all the standard sizes?  It helps to look at your program from time to time from the eyes of an outsider to see how it stacks up.  Make sure you aren’t overlooking something simple and important.  (We do an affiliate audit if you need help).  Concentrate on the basics first; product inventory, conversion rates, commission rates, return days, competitive positioning, creative available, contact information, contact methods, information distribution, compliance analysis and more.  Get those down and ensure that you are taking care of those basics (not a comprehensive list) then, and only then, reach beyond that and start doing some of the more advanced affiliate marketing initiatives.

Affiliates - What do you think?  What are the basics that you feel are important to conquer before you go to advanced activities?  I think my post about affiliate applications runs down some of the very basic ones.

I’ve seen too many merchants ignore the basic and fundamental aspects of their programs and expect affiliates to turn up their sales for them.  It just doesn’t happen.  I often tell my sons: “how can I expect you to handle the big things if you can’t handle the small.”  It’s a fitting question.

What are some of the basic things you’ve seen affiliates and affiliate managers miss?

It took a bit of time to get back to this series, but I’m hoping that the research we did on coupon sites was well worth it. This series is meant as a primer for bloggers and anyone else who is just starting out in affiliate marketing. As I said in my first post in this series, this is not meant to be a series for the experienced affiliate marketer, but is a high level introduction to our industry. So if you have been around for a while, you may not get much out of this one either.

Ok, so for those of you still sticking around, let’s go over the networks. Networks basically provide a marketplace where affiliates (you) and merchants (Zappos, Luggagepoint.com and others) can connect, form partnerships and be successful together. The networks act as trusted 3rd parties that track each transaction and provide the technology and distribution tools needed by both merchants and affiliates. If there were no networks, you would over 8,000 affiliate programs with different tracking systems, different logins and different accounts. Most of your time would be spent simply logging in to check your stats. Networks consolidate all of this so you can concentrate on selling.

So let’s give a brief run down of each of the major networks and some of the up and coming ones:

• Linkshare - “LinkShare Corporation provides ecommerce businesses with a wide range of online marketing services including Search Marketing (SEM), Lead Generation and Affiliate Marketing.  LinkShare clients include Fortune 500 and other prominent and emerging companies doing business online, including J.C. Penney, 1-800-Flowers.com, American Express, and Avon Products. LinkShare was founded in 1996  headquartered in New York City, with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Tampa, London and Tokyo.” That is from their website.  Linkshare does have an awful lot of those Fortune 500 companies, so if you think that your audience wants those big brands, I’d definitely look here first.  They do have some advanced linking and distribution tools available, one of their newest being their wordpress plugin.  Signup here is free and pretty easy.  Their reporting is ok and grabbing links is pretty easy.
• Commission Junction - “Founded in 1998, Commission Junction, a ValueClick company, is based in Santa Barbara, California and has offices around the world. Since our inception, we have taken great pride in being customer service fanatics while establishing ourselves as a global leader in the online advertising channels of affiliate marketing and managed search.” That is also from their site.  CJ used to be the network to go to if you were looking to promote lead generation programs.  Programs such as LowerMyBills.com and other finance type lead programs could be found there.  They are still available, but CJ has made large gains into the retail space the last few years.  You can’t really go wrong and if you created an account in Linkshare, you should create one here as well.  I believe there are many more companies within CJ and you may find the interface and reporting a little easier to use.
• Google (formerly Performics) - “Google Affiliate Network connects advertisers and publishers who want to increase sales and drive leads through affiliate marketing.  As an advertiser using Google Affiliate Network, you’ll discover pre-screened publishers who can refer consumer traffic to you. As a publisher, you can market your site to advertisers in the network; if selected to participate in an advertiser’s program, you’ll earn a percent of sales or a referral bounty.” Again from their site.  I haven’t had much experience with this network from the affiliate side.  They do have many big merchants, so if you had to join 3, I would add this to my list.  Companies such as Barnes & Noble, Kohls, Circuit City and other brands are on this platform.  It’s also now owned by Google, so expect more interfacing with the other google tools and services.
• ShareASale - “There are currently over 2,000 Merchants plugged in to the ShareASale Network. Each of these merchants has a different type of product that they are selling - and each is ready to commission you on that sale if you bring a customer to them. The idea - and the implementation - are simple. You decide which merchants to promote and how to promote them, and when commissions are generated, you can see your stats in real-time. All payments are consolidated from the programs you participate in, and are paid with one check or direct deposit by ShareASale.” ShareASale is rapidly become one of the top networks to work with.  I know many of the people there personally and can attest to their professionalisms, ethics, turnaround and innovation.  With over 2,000 merchants, you are sure to find one that fits your audience here.  They also have many unique tools available.  Sign up with them and check out their merchant list.
• AvantLink - “We’ve created a unique, open environment for Cost Per Sale Affiliate marketers. One reason we’re unique is because we only work with high-value merchants with substantial catalogspercentage of sale. This particular advertiser segment can best utilize the industry leading Affiliate tools AvantLink is known for. Tools that are free to qualified Affiliates.” I’ve only recently been exposed to AvantLink, but all I can say is Wow!  They have a tool called the Affiliate Link Encoder that is really a must have for any blogging affiliate.   You basically put a small snippet of code in your footer files of your blog.  You then configure it to code certain words and domains in the copy of your posts to go to a certain trackable link of a merchant within the AvantLink network.  This means that you don’t necessarily need to make each post that contains the word “ski”, for example, link to a ski merchant.  You simply set the tool to encode certain words to go to certain merchants.  And it does it all for you in your entire blog, even archived content.  Becoming an affiliate of AvantLink is a little more difficult than the other networks.  They don’t accept downloads of any kind or affiliates that are considered parasitic in any way.  This only ends up protecting the affiliates the do get in.

There are a lot of other CPA (cost per action) networks that are considered to be in the group above.  I won’t really talk about them too much here as I think that is a pretty good list to get started with.  For each of the networks I did discuss, joining is the first step.  You’ll need to apply to become an affiliate. If you want to know what to put in your affiliate application, check out my blog post on the subject.  Make sure you avoid some of those mistakes so you can get past this first step.

After that, you’ll need to spend some time identifying who you want to work with.  Each merchant and each network requires that you apply to join their program, then you are either approved or denied.  When you are approved you’ll have access to all their links, banners and other distribution methods, I’ll outline some of the neat tools that are available in my next post.

So that is pretty much my brief run down of the networks I think you should get started with.  I do recommend you working with all of them as they do have different merchants in each and each one offers something different than the other.

I’m sure I’m missing some things, so if you are an experienced affiliate marketer reading this post, please feel free to add anything in the comments section that you think a blogger getting started in AM will need to know.

In the previous two posts in this series I outlined the change in consumer behavior as they look for more sales and discounts this holiday season as well as the migration of their purchases to online coupon sites. It’s a bit obvious that as the economy goes down, consumer change their behavior and spend less on the products they buy. More and more merchants will be discounting more (this is also a good time for manufacturers to find greater efficiencies so their products cost less).

I polled the top coupon sites in our affiliate industry on their traffic over the last year as well as consumer behavior. The results were very interesting and backed up the reports from the last two articles. Was it incredibly scientific? I’m not sure the questions were perfect or the size of the field surveyed was complete enough, but it does give us some good data, in my opinion.

Survey Results

90% of respondents have seen an increase in traffic to their coupon site since the economy started its downward spiral.  54% have seen traffic grow by 25%, and 18% saw in increase of over 100%!  But that may not be entirely the economy as one respondent pointed out: “Some of the increase could be due to normal Q4 increases and some to Google algo changes but overall things are up over most of 2008.” There may also be natural increases on an individual basis due to offline advertising and other factors, but the trend is still important to take note of.

90% of respondents have heard from their site visitors specifically that they are changing their shopping behaviors to shop more at coupon sites because of the crumbling economy.  As one respondent commented: “Absolutely, more users are asking about how long such services as coupon sites have been around. As if they have been missing something. Also, in general a new consumer that refuses to purchase without getting a coupon or at least knowing they got a good deal.”

Not surprisingly, 100% of those participating in the survey said that having your brand on a coupon site does not diminish the brand’s perception in the eyes of the consumer. I expected this exact response from this group (coupon sites). Their reasons for this should not be discounted (get it, discounted, we are talking about coupons, discounts and sales  lol):

• “I think there are very few merchants that this applies to. Great customer service and quality products are what distinguish brands.”
• “But just like not all brands are equal, not all coupon sites are either.”
• “The economy has dictated for a merchant to be successful they need to think about pricing.”
• “People come to my sites to try and get a better deal, they associate MY brand with discounts, not the store’s.”
• “Almost every company offer deals. If you’re company is very high end, then you can offer gift with purchase in place of a traditional coupon. This is what a retailer like Tiffany does.”

I asked if they have seen a shift in demographics of users to their site.  Most did not collect this info, but of the ones that did, this was the most intriguing answer: “it seems order sizes average a bit smaller and higher-end brands are not moving as well.” One would expect that luxury brands would not be doing well as consumers shift their behavior to discount items or at least to shopping with only a coupon or during sales.

So maybe you have read this and want to work with coupon sites but you don’t have the ability or authority to give site wide, standard coupons.

Coupons don’t have to be site-wide, large discounts.  Charles Brown, Co-chair of the Promotion Marketing Association’s Coupon Council stated in a CNN.com article in October: “It’s an individual company strategy. Some may be promoting discretionary items that might not be purchased if a consumer is economizing.” As some merchants are brand sensitive to couponing, not wanting to offer coupons that they feel may discount their brand, there are other ways to take advantage of the trends outlined.  “I think that what we’re seeing is a behavioral change in the consumer that could have lasting effects. If you shift buying patterns and enjoy benefits of doing that, you will likely continue in that pattern,” he said. “For the marketer, it’s an opportunities to bring in more customers and get them to try new things.”

• Offer coupons where you don’t lose margin.
• Offer coupons on products that are not moving or are in your clearance section.
• Simply use the products in your clearance section as the content for your coupon partners.
• Many merchants offer at least free shipping, that is enough to work with these sites and can add quite a bit to your bottom line. (It’s not perfect but may enable you to offer them something to get them started)
• Loss leaders - does your company stock products that they lose money on solely to gain the customer?  Promote these products to your coupon affiliates.
• Offer a small discount on your top items.  Product specific coupons are great ways to gain customers.
• Offer one-time, new customer only coupons.  I haven’t seen anyone do this right yet, but it’s been attempted.  To make it work, your shopping cart must be able to identify the customer and whether they have been shopping with you before.  All in the cart.  That can be difficult.

Coupon affiliates - what other ideas can you give to merchants?

Overall, I hope this series has shown that you can’t outright dismiss the importance of this group of affiliates.  They drive an incredibly amount of sales, many are incredibly responsive, professional and really good people.  Many of them I consider close friends and leaders in this field.  Often times you can engage these affiliates in your couponing strategy and they can provide you with some great information and ideas.  Afterall, they work with your competitors and they know what converts.  They may prove to be very valuable partners.

What do you think?

1st Blog in this series

2nd Blog in this series

Yesterday I explored the somewhat obvious change in consumer behavior as the economy continues to slide.  I was listening to the radio today and, I can’t recall which show, but they reported that the GPD shrunk .5% last quarter.  One more quarter of shrinking GDP and we are officially in a recession.  And that is driving users online in larger numbers and driving them right to coupon and discount sites.  Below is what I’ve found to back that up.

Consumer’s Online Behavior

In February of last year, as the economy worsened, ComScore reported an increase in coupon site traffic.  “The number of page views on Web sites that feature money-off coupons for all manner of consumer products surged 38%, to 281 million, in March from a year earlier, compared with 5% for the Internet as a whole, according to comScore (SCOR). Those visitors spent a total of 145 million minutes on the sites, a 37% increase. While the number of new users to coupon sites isn’t growing faster than the larger Internet audience, existing coupon site users are certainly becoming more active. “User engagement by deal-seekers appears to be ramping up,” says comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman. “As a general rule, something like online coupon site activity would increase as a result of macroeconomic trends.”“  Makes sense doesn’t it?  And from what I heard from my coupon affiliate colleagues, their traffic is up considerably as well.

“Visitors to Coupons.com, a decade-old site that lets users print coupons that can be redeemed in stores, grew 35% in the first three months of 2008, compared with the prior quarter, says the site’s CEO, Steven Boal.” Wow, a 35% increase in the 1st quarter over the 4th quarter of the year prior.  That is pretty significant.

Business week weighed in on traffic increases to coupon sites as well earlier this year.  Thanks to Michael Block for sharing this information:  “traffic to sites focusing on coupon offers has increased a whopping 38% from March 2007 to March 2008; compared with 5% growth for the Internet overall. They aren’t just going more often, people are spending more time on these sites - also up 37%.“  That increase was before our economy really got bad, or at least we realized how bad it was getting.

This summer, Hitwise released some very intrigueing data that shows the trend of more traffic to coupon sites continuing.  For the same week in June, coupon site traffic was up 56% over last year.  ““Rising gas prices and tightened budgets have many consumers using the Internet to help save money while shopping online and off. Retailers can entice purchases by making discounts available to price-conscious consumers as the cost of living continues to increase,” said Heather Dougherty, research director at Hitwise. “While discretionary income is shrinking for some households, consumers are still shopping online, but making sure that they find the best deals.”“  I think that is one of the key findings from this report.  Consumers are still shopping, but they are using coupons sites more and more to be sure they get the best deal.  The brands that are not there don’t get the benefit of this comparison and shopping.  US searches, during the same time, doubled compared to last year and that trend just keeps increasing.

In October of this year,  Entertainment.com announced in a press release:  “Entertainment.com usage has risen more than 50 percent in 2008 as consumers scramble for savings.” “Nationally, coupon usage has risen 72 percent in just the past six months, according to a consumer poll released in September by online marketing company Prospectiv.”

But wait there is more:

Lenka Keston of CouponWinner.com and SurfMyAds.com reported in eBizine.com on October 16th: “CouponWinner.com, a website that streamlines and publicizes the marketing capabilities of online coupons, has seen a 110 percent increase in traffic during 2008. The consumer is discovering the personal money-saving power of e-commerce, so retail companies need to explore new ways to monetize that power in order to stay competitive.”

There are more examples of this going on than I care to put here, otherwise this post would take four hours to read.  But it is clear that whether it is 37%, 56% or 110% increase, consumers still want to have a merry Christmas but are going to coupon sites in much larger numbers to do their shopping.

It is becoming increasingly important to participate on these websites and take care of these partners.  It’s not so much about branding anymore, it’s simply about sales.  If you are where the consumers are, they will shop with you, if not, well then a better placed competitor will get the chance to close the sale.

Tomorrow I’ll explore some ways merchants can provide creative coupons and some of the findings from my short and unscientific survey of the top coupon sites :).

Read my next post in this series.

This has been a pretty tough year for our economy.  It seems that every headline is worse than the last and every industry is asking us, yes us, to bail them out.  I’ve met, and know, so many in my area that are effected by the slumping economy, either with jobs lost or just general business downturn, it can be tough to swallow.

As we get geared up this week for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the beginning of the Christmas and holiday shopping season, I wanted to dive into consumers’ behavior and how it is changing over this difficult time.  My thought was that more consumers are, and will be, shopping with coupons and more and more web traffic is going to these type of sites, the coupon and discount shopping affiliates.  What I learned, the more I researched, was that consumers are doing just that.  They continue to spend, but not without researching their purchase through coupon sites.  They want to make sure they get a deal.

I have broken my findings into three posts this week in hopes to get you all ready for Friday.  The first post, today’s, is reporting what I was able to dig up on consumer’s behavior.  The second will be published tomorrow and discusses the trend of of increased traffic to online coupon sites and gives some ideas for unique couponing strategies.  The third will release some data from a survey I conducted by polling the top coupon affiliate sites on the net and provides some of my recommendations for merchants.  Coupon sites will be more important to your online distribution the farther down our economy goes and I hope you get a lot out of this series.  So let’s dive in…

Consumer’s Changing Behavior

As recently as a few days ago, Anne D’Innocenzo, an AP retail writer, reported this:  “Americans have slammed their wallets shut since the financial meltdown, and the future is looking downright scary for stores across the country and the whole U.S. economy.” Some more less than encouraging statements:

“The recent data has been startling: For the third quarter, consumer spending fell 3.1 percent, the worst performance in 28 years. Sales at established stores for October were the worst since at least 1969. The slump is continuing into November: Macy’s says it expects a decline of at least 10 percent this month.  Even those with appetites for Prada and Gucci aren’t immune. Among the hardest hit are luxury stores. Saks Inc. and Nordstrom Inc. reported same- store sales fell at least 10 percent. At Neiman Marcus Group Inc., the drop was nearly 27 percent.” But how is this effecting coupon use and what changes are consumers making to combat this downturn?

According to the Wall Street Journal, this year was the first year coupon redemption did not decline.  For the last 15 years coupon redemption has fallen each year.  As our economy prospered, less and less coupons were redeemed.  But not anymore.  Last year it held steady.  Does this show a general trend in purchasing behavior?  How does this relate to online retail?

RetailMeNot commissioned Harris Interactive in March of this year, prior to the economy really taking a downturn, to conduct a survey on consumers’ shopping habits during a recession.  In that survey they found that 54% of adults would decrease discretionary income during a recession and 63% of consumers WILL NOT make a purchase if they cannot find a deal.  From their press release: “Coupons are a household staple for many Americans–the survey found that the vast majority of adults (86%) have used coupons and/or discount codes while shopping. However, this figure may soon rise as the economic slowdown prompts many consumers to reevaluate spending behaviors and place a higher priority on budgeting and deal-seeking. More than one in three adults (37%) said that, during a recession, they would increase the use of coupons and/or discount codes; among women, the figure was even higher at 43% (vs. 31% of men). Retailers have an opportunity to bolster sales and preserve customer loyalty by rewarding savvy shoppers with discounted merchandise.”

In another survey done by Principal Financial, and reported by Inc.com, more than half of the respondents said they were cutting back on spending due to the economic environment.  That was in June, it’s only gotten worse since.  “That has many Americans eating out less, relying on generic brands and clipping coupons in efforts to save, the survey found.”

RetailMeNot again worked with Harris Interactive in October to release this report.  In it they confirm their first results (since we are arguably in the first quarter of a recession): “nearly half of online adults (45%) plan to spend less money on gifts this holiday season compared to last year given the current state of the economy and one in five plan to spend significantly less.“  They also reported that 19% will shop during Black Friday deals, 44% will shop at discount stores, and 37% will shop online to save gas.

The Washington Post reported that coupons are now coming back in favor.  “With wages not rising as quickly as the cost of basic necessities, coupons are back in favor after many years of steadily declining popularity, experts said.“  … “Were we not in this economy, we probably would be looking at a slight decrease again,’’ said Matthew Tilley, co-chairman of the Promotion Marketing Association’s Coupon Council and director of marketing for CMS. “There’s definitely an increased interest to use coupons for savings by consumers.’’

It’s being widely reported that consumers are shifting their buying habits.  As the articles I referenced above point out, more and more consumers are no longer purchasing a product without researching to ensure they have the best deal.  They are using coupons in larger numbers, purchasing items without them less frequently and generally planning for a prolonged downturn in the US and global economies.  But consumers continue to shop, that is the good thing.  They continue to plan to spend money this Christmas, but are doing it more wisely and making sure they have a discount prior to making that purchase.

But how does that relate to online coupon sites and merchants’ participation there?  I’ll explore how traffic to these sites has been increasing dramatically and how merchants can, and should be leveraging this shift to weather the storm in my next post tomorrow.

2nd post in series - Consumers flocking to coupon sites.

In October I was fortunate enough to attend one of the most informative and fun conferences I have been to in several years - BlogWorld.  The conference overall was fantastic. They had an affiliate track for the first time and it was very well attended.  Many of us in the affiliate community noticed that “affiliate marketing” was relatively new to this audience of bloggers.  Some even said that 90% of the attendees had no idea what affiliate marketing is and how to get involved, let alone that they can use these relationships to monitize their blogs.

Because of this, I wanted to put together a very top level run down of what it is and how they can get started.  NOTE: if you are a seasoned affiliate marketer, then you won’t get much from this article.  This is intended for those that are completely new to this area of performance marketing.  It is meant as a primer into the world of affiliate marketing and doesn’t demonstrate any advanced practices.

Ok, now that that is out of the way, let’s get going.  I’ll start at the beginning.  Wikipedia definition: “Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.”

Here is my definition:  Affiliate marketing is an internet-based marketing practice where businesses reward partners for a required action.  These actions may be clicks, impressions, sales, email signups, lead form completions, RSS subscriptions and more.  It is a performanced based relationship, the business only pays when something is performed.

Retailers typically reward affiliates for a sale.  For example:  Customer John Doe comes to your blog and reads your newest post.  You have a banner (ad) on your website for Zappos.com Shoes.  John clicks on that banner, goes to Zappos and purchases a $100 pair of shoes.  Zappos then rewards you a % of that $100 for referring that sale.  Most retailers work that way.

Mortgage companies, debt consolidation and other types of companies offer a bounty for referring someone who becomes a lead.  That typically means they fill out a form to get more information, sign up for the site, become a member of a site or other lead generation activities.  The bounties can range from $1 to $300 depending on the industry and the company offering it.

Make sense?  It’s pretty simple, instead of paying for impressions up front, the affiliate (you) doesn’t get paid until something happens (a purchase, signup, click). At first you may be thinking, well I won’t get paid unless something happens, but that is out of my control.  Correct, but after doing this for 10 years and managing over 35 programs, I can tell you that many affiliates make hundreds of thousands of dollars through affiliate programs.  The money is there and it the opportunity can be much higher with affiliate programs if you are able to match the affiliate program with what your users are looking for.

Why is this so much easier, at times, then finding your own advertisers?

Affiliate Networks.

Companies such as Commission Junction, Linkshare, Google Affiliate Network, Share A Sale and AvantLink provide a marketplace where affiliates (bloggers, content developers, web site creators) can partner with many different businesses (merchants).  These networks also provide a method to track any transactions that may result from you working with a merchant.

Basically, here is how it works:

You join the network, apply to the programs you think will be successful on your site, and then grab some links.  You will be able to grab banners and text links and many merchants and networks provide some advanced linking that I will talk about in another post in this series.  The code you grab for your banners or links contains all the necessary tracking information to associate that user to your account.  Any purchases that user makes will be registered into your account.

That is basically it.

Here are some things to look at when you are evaluating an affiliate program:

• Commission Rate - each network will allow you to see the commission rates for similar programs.  Use this as one way to evaluate the programs you want to work with.
• EPC - this is earnings per one hundred clicks and reflects the amount you can expect to earn from a program for each set of 100 clicks you send.  This is a good way to see how they are converting, but not all merchants show this.
• Tools - look at the set of distribution tools they offer.  Do they offer a datafeed, any contextual tools?
• Return Days/Cookie Days - The more of these the better.  These are the number of days from the initial visit to the merchant’s site from yours, that you will get credit if that user makes a purchase.  Wow, a mouthful huh? For example, John from our previous example, clicks on a Zappos.com (a new client of JEBCommerce ), on Monday.  Zappos.com, for this example, has a cookie day of 3.  John doesn’t purchase until Wednesday.  Because they offer 3 cookie days, you will get credit for that sale

There are many other things you need to look at when evaluating a partner to work with and promote through their affiliate program.  I want to take a more in depth look into each affiliate network.  I’ll do that in my second post of this series.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our feed!

Read more in #2 of our Series - The Affiliate Networks.

We at JEBCommerce are extremely excited to be working with Zappos and assisting such a dynamic and incredible company with their affiliate program.  Starting on November 13th, we are working closely with the Zappos affiliate manager, Ned Farra, and the rest of the Zappos team to help identify and reach out to new affiliates that are not yet promoting Zappos.  So, if you are not working with this top online retailer yet, you should be!  Just contact me at jamie@jebcommerce.com to get started.

I had an opportunity to meet Ned, Matt, their CEO Tony and what seemed to be the entire company in Vegas this week prior to attending pubcon.  I was extremely impressed with every single person I met and the company as a whole.  I’m sure you have read about their corporate culture, how they take care of their employees and how much of a family it is there.  It’s something that you can’t really get a feel for through a news article or blog, but I can attest that this is one of the most amazing and unique companies I have ever visited.  Every single person I met was extremely polite and truly seemed to love to work at Zappos.  This is one of the reasons we are truly proud to be working with this company.  Great products, amazing service and a family atmosphere.  We are so glad to be recruiting for the Zappos program.

My visit to their headquarters started with one of the most unique and fun company tours I have ever been on.  I was able to bring this picture home with me to remind me how much fun I did have.

So, if you are not working with Zappos, let’s get started today!  Here is what you do, you can email me, with your CJ PID at jamie@jebcommerce.com.  I’ll extend an offer to you through CJ and Ned and I will do all we can to make sure you are successful this holiday season.

If you have any questions or need any other help, just give me a call at 208-635-5164.

Yesterday I had the good fortune to chat with Gary Marcoccia from AvantLink, a new-ish affiliate network that has come on the scene in the last year or so.  Being in this industry for about ten years, I have pretty specific ideas for what I’d like to see the main affiliate networks add or change to help both managers and affiliates, so I was excited to chat with Gary and see what a startup network was up to.

Gary walked me through the entire network and I have to say that I was very impressed.  It was clean, easy to understand and included all the basic functions that one needs to run an affiliate program.  There were also some very cool advanced features, such as the Advanced Link Encoder.  You tend to see big jumps in innovation from start up companies, and this tool is no different.

From their release on October 30th:

“Yesterday we rolled out the Affiliate Link Encoder (ALE), yet another innovative tool that offers Affiliates the option of direct linking to their AvantLink merchant partners in the context of articles, blog posts, forum threads or anywhere else for that matter! A simple JavaScript we provide takes direct merchant links and appends Affiliate tracking details so credit will be applied for all customer referrals, not just those referrals that click through configured tracking links from the network.”

This tool provides the affiliates with a small bit of java script code that they place in the header or footer of their site so it populates on every page.  It then will take predetermined links to a specific merchant and make them a trackable link!  This is outstanding for forums and blogs, especially if you have a lot of legacy content.

Gary told me of an affiliate that has been blogging for years.  He installed the ALE in his footer and within a few days he saw an 80% increase in affiliate commissions.  What an amazing time saver and commission optimization tool.  Imagine if you have a forum - now any mentions of specific brands are turned into trackable links.  I don’t know of any other network that provides something like this.

I was concerned about this tool interferring with the display of the page, but I can attest to seeing this in action and it did not slow down the page one bit.  When you hover over a link you see the trackable AvantLink link, but in the source code you can see that it is a direct link.

And there is the second benefit for affiliates, and merchants.  Since the affiliate can use a direct link, they can then pass their link juice to the merchant.  I have been told of affiliates that were able to acquire a few more points on commission in turn for using the ALE exclusively and direct linking to a specific merchant.  More power to the affiliates here, and an added benefit for merchants.

They released Version 2.0 on the 10th.  Read more about it here.  The most exciting change is the ability to designate any words, not just links, to be overwritten with a trackable link to a merchant.  For instance, you can designate every mention of the word “ski” as a trackable link to a ski gear site available through AvantLink.  Now that is powerful.

Now I just need a new client to really try this network out.  Thanks Gary for spending the time to walk me through it yesterday.

Last week I wrote about affiliate applications and what managers often see that keep affiliates out of  programs.  One of the things I see most often and I alluded to in those earlier posts, is the lack of affiliate contact info shared to the merchants.  It is more frustrating when working with CJ programs as CJ is the only major network, that I am aware of, that does not share all the contact information of the affiliate with the affiliate manager.  Cj, I implore you, please change this policy.

Years ago, getting into affiliate marketing had a very low barrier to entry.  If you saw someone’s good idea and you knew what they were doing, you could replicate it with a little time, html knowledge and some cash.  That being the case, many affiliates did not want to share any information whatsoever, including contact info.  Affiliates also received, I’ve been told, countless spam emails and phone calls pitching products and programs that clearly do not fit with them.  Inexperienced affiliate managers with bad pitches and horrible programs innundated them, and some still do.  These two things, and I’m sure there are others, have combined to get us to a point where there is not full disclosure.  A quick note - I’ve been guilty of this as well so a big apology to those that received those calls.

Recently I had a discussion with my fellow panelists on our Pubcon panel and this issue was brought up.  One thing we all agreed on, and I want to stress here is that our top producing affiliates, overwhelmingly, are those that we have long standing relationships with.  Those that we know their phone numbers, their emails, their IM’s.  This is from a group of individuals that I would say have experience managing over 100 programs (total guess, I know I’ve managed over 35 myself).

Affiliates, what is your reason for not sharing your contact info?  Let’s talk it out
My reasons for asking that you do share are really for your success.  When I see an application or a new affiliate pops up in my top performers list, but I don’t know them…  I immediately suspect something if I am unable to see email addresses, urls and contact info.  Why you ask?  After 9 years of doing this on over 35 different programs, one thing that most fraudulent affiliates have in common is a need to not share any contact info at all.  The the most common characteristic of affiliates that do not intend on abiding by your terms and conditions is withholding contact info and not responding to emails.  So great affiliates doing great work are not getting a fair look when you don’t foster a relationship with your manager.

This industry is about relationships.  Sales is about relationships and that is what this is all about.  The affiliates that are open to communication often receive the best information.  They get product lists quicker, custom creative, VIP commissions, search data and even product samples and gifts.

Thoughts?