Month: January 2007

One of the steepest uphill challenges for any new CPA network or merchant looking to establish a certain volume of quality traffic is locating affiliates and publishers.
Finding the right affiliates and publishers early in the process can give the program the right foundation for future growth and become a win-win scenario for both the program and the affiliate as the program grows.

Even for existing networks or merchant programs, finding and keeping quality affiliates can be a challenge.  We’ve seen incentive programs such as cash or prize rewards, along with wine and dining at industry conferences for the top affiliates.

However, recently I’ve helped a few merchant programs locate affiliates using web2.0 platforms including MyBlogLog, MySpace and blogs.  While I initially questioned the type of quality that can be found in such places, the merchants are more than pleased with the new finds, and the affiliates are of high quality in terms of traffic and production.

If you don’t have a recognizable name, brand or affiliate manager in the industry, how hard is it to locate quality affiliates and publishers?

What’s the best way to keep them engaged in your program when you find them?

Will web2.0 platforms begin to help networks and merchants discover new affiliates or publishers?

[NOTE:  Today is a traveling day for me, so there will be light posting.] 

Snap.com is used on blogs such as TechCrunch and ReveNews among a host of others. The search/preview service has even garnered lush praise from the influentials…

“SPA is an efficiency tool – it saves time for the reader, and that’s a good thing for the publisher. I like it so much I put it on TechCrunch”
— Michael Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch.com

Snap.com adds previews of sites linked to from a specific blog or site. I’ve even begun to see affiliates and publishers making use of Snap.com on their affiliate marketing sites.

I’ve resisted using Snap.com here because I’m not sure that the trade off of an inserted bubble over the content is worth it, and I’m not sure if the user actually gains that much from “previewing the site.” Of course, I’m no fan of links either, so I see this as perpetuating the problem rather than relying on users to have their own experience searching for content in a meta-data type of fashion.

Are blog readers, or perhaps consumers using affiliate sites with the Snap.com code inserted, appreciative of the service? Does it provide a useful tool or is this another intelli-text?

It’s a slow holiday so I’ll throw out a few echo chamber questions that we can think about in terms of how we interact with each other online in the business sense.

First let’s think about the all important instant messaging/VOIP/communications clients out there…

Do you and the majority of your contacts prefer Skype, AIM, Yahoo Chat, MSN Chat, Jabber or another platform for instant communication and VOIP? Have services such as GAIM or Meebo solved any headaches for you?

[Side note: Starting today (Jan 1), I’ll no longer be available on Skype. You can reach me through Ekiga instead. And I’ll be slowly phasing out my AIM and Y! accounts (sbharrelson22) in favor of my Jabber account (samharrelson).]

Paperghost has posted up an interesting video on the workings of a spambot…

http://www.vitalsecurity.org/2007/01/ever-wondered-how-spambot-works.html

To quote Han Solo:  “And I thought they smelled bad…on…the outside!”

Online marketers beware!  Learn how the scum side of the internet works because education is the best prevention.