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I’ve been schooled. Asa Dotzler (community coordinator of many Mozilla Foundation projects including Bugzilla, the Quality Assurance Program, co-founder of Spread Firefox and fellow lover of astronomy) and I have been trading comments here on CPN regarding the FF browser and it’s community.

I’ve included the initial part of the post which stirred the conversation and the string of comments that followed.

As an aside, also see Firefox co-founder Blake Ross’ blog entry on why he distrusts Google in their “tips” on search results…

AdventureQuest, from Artix Entertainment, is a four year old flash based online role playing platform hoping to sustain a community in an already crowded field dominated by World of Warcraft.

However, AdventureQuest has taken a unique twist with its plans to enroll members by signing up with the affiliate management company Partnercentric and starting a program this month…

Gamers and business owners alike will all be excited to hear that there is now a FIRST EVER affiliate program for a Massively Single Player Role Playing Game (MSPRPG). That’s right, you can now earn up to 50% for all upgraded customers for Artix Entertainment’s AdventureQuest and DragonFable RPG titles.

The affiliate program is being run on DirectTrack and starts with a 30% payout for new sign-ups but can tier up to 50%. Play is free unless the member wants to upgrade to “Guardian” status within the game, which costs a one time payment of $19.95.

Program manager Dan Fink of Partnercentric says that the site has had tremendous growth in numbers since creating its affiliate program. Fink was interested in managing and developing the affiliate program for Artix since this would be the first time an online RPG had used affiliate marketing to reach new customers and members.

Being a gamer myself it’s great to see a quality game company like Artix Entertainment bring affiliate marketing to online gaming. Not only can the quality of their work be seen in their game, but also their creative used in the program. We have about 70 different flash creative that are all of high quality design and convert extremely well so far.

I’ve played the game for a few minutes here and there today and it does flow nicely. Granted, it is no WoW, but it is promising to see new online RPG communities seeking out affiiate marketing as a means to increase reach and distribution.

Yes, this is another tagging ring, and yes I’ve used the term “meme” (apologies to Shawn Collins and David Lewis).

However, this one came from a blogger I hadn’t yet heard of and supports good causes, so I’ve posted this here.

What if the game of Blog-Tag going around the blogosphere in which bloggers are sharing five things about themselves that relatively few people know, and then tagging five other bloggers to be “it” morphed into bloggers sharing the five charities they believe are most worthy of contribution?

Let’s see if this idea will work. I will start by tagging Stefan Tilkov, Scott Mark, David Heinemeier Hansson and one blogger whom I don’t know (even virtually) but will tag via trackback in hopes that they will consider charity a higher priority over etiquette or other secondary concerns.

Somehow James found me and sent me a trackback to participate, so here are five of the charities and groups that I’ve given time and money to over the last few months. This list will vary for you, since I believe that charity should be as immediate and personal as possible. That’s not always possible (Darfur) but it’s a goal that I strive for.

• Asheville Humane Society
• Asheville Homeless
• Asheville Manna Foodbank
• Heifer.org
• ACLU (no, I’m not joking… I’m a hippie libertarian and card carrying member)
• Carl Sagan Foundation

Instead of “tagging” 5 others, I’ll just put out the idea that anyone who reads CPN is encouraged to consider giving either to their local communities or to their region, to their country, world and the Cosmos in general.

However, there’s a better way to spread worthy meme’s like this rather than through tagging (especially since everyone is sick of the “5 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” virus) as I’m sure James knows, and I’m glad to see he’s trying to turn the 5 People thing into something worthwhile. Tagging is wonderful, but it can come across as too forceful. Attack with love and spread good ideas through more subtle means and the payoff for the good causes you’d like to support will be higher. Doing good should be a subversive maneuver hidden away until it germinates. Just my thoughts.

If you haven’t listened to the latest AffiliateThing by Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille, you need to download that now and give a quick listen. There’s some interesting stuff on there for your listening pleasure.

One of the things they hit on are our ongoing posts about affiliate marketing and web2.0 platforms such as Twitter and YouTube.

So, let’s do the obvious and tackle MySpace.

I’m sure you are all familiar with the platform. How does/can affiliate marketing work with MySpace for you? I’d argue that it can’t. I think most affiliate marketers use too much of a “push” mentality to work with MySpace. Have any marketers successfully used MySpace (beyond the site placements) to effectively drive traffic to their site/program?

(BTW, Shawn evidently owns affiliatewidget.com… contribute to costperlove.com to help me buy it from him!)

Michael Arrington is announcing on TechCrunch that PayPerPost is acquiring Performancing, the blog advertising platform.

A number of blogs in the online marketing sector use Performancing (such as Linda Buquet and Steve Rubel among 28,000 others), and I wonder how this will affect or not affect their use, of the Performancing platform.

Is this a complete buy-out or will PayPerPost only be acquiring part of Performancing’s services? Arrington says the Firefox plugin is not being acquired and will be spun-off, but that seems odd to me.
More answers when they come…

Could affiliate marketing, or online marketing for that matter, ever work on a complete open source model?

Or perhaps to frame the question more appropriately…

Could an affiliate marketing network, broker, agency or even publisher ever succeed (yes, I know that’s a subjective term) with an open source model?

The much talked about MyAffiliateProgram v9 platform has landed another large merchant client.  Intuit Inc. has announced that it will use MyAP for its Quicken and QuickBooks affiliate programs.

“Intuit has joined a number of our marquee clients, like Yahoo! Search Marketing and Yamaha, in choosing MYAP to manage their affiliate relationships,” said Todd Farmer, president of KowaBunga!. ”The increasing complexity of affiliate marketing and partnering strategies makes it appealing for companies to find more powerful solutions to manage their affiliate channel.”

MyAP v9 has received a good deal of buzz in the network and hosted solution spheres lately because of its flexibility and ability to offer highly specific an drilled-down stats across various channels.

Will 2007 bring more defections from networks such as CJ or Linkshare towards networks such as Kowabunga or ShareASale?

(I hear Jim K wants a ticket to the WWE Smackdown event at Quicken Arena tonight if anyone has a connection).

Small merchants who rely on channels such as affiliate marketing could possibly be feeling some unwanted side effects of the adoption of IE7 and other web browsers such as Opera in January when Microsoft will begin to use a new verification feature to stop phishing scams.

The problem could be in a new digital certificate that can better verify a site’s legitimacy than the older “SSL padlock” which was readily available for large and small merchants and included a rather simple approval process.

The new system is far more thorough, but because of the way that it works, many small businesses will be excluded. They can still get an SSL certificate, but their sites won’t get the green “safe” bar in IE7 and Opera.

The new platform will be called “EV” which is short of Extended Validation SSL Certificate and includes a lengthy and purposely more difficult approval process in an attempt to stop the rise of scams and phishing sites who can currently obtain SSL certificates.

Here are the draft guidelines (pdf file) which go into exhaustive detail about what certificate authorities must and must not do when issuing EV’s.

To give only a single example, certificate authorities must ensure that the address they are given by the company is its actual place of business. If the CA is unable to verify this using public records, it must send “a reliable individual” on a site visit to the address. The visitor must look for a permanent sign, must note whether the building is a condo, office building, strip mall, etc., look for evidence that ongoing business is taking place at the location, and must take photos of the exterior and the reception area.

Small merchants (especially pertinent to our niche) need to develop a way to deal with such rapid changes to make sure visitors and potential customers to their sites know they are on a “safe site” for purchasing items and giving away private or credit card information. Otherwise, www.jennifersbakedgoods.com (I’m not sure if that’s a real site or not) won’t be able to compete.

One possibility could be a dual or split program where smaller merchants have different amounts of hoops to jump through in order to gain EV status rather than going through the same exhaustive process as Forbes 100 companies. However, such dual programs might allow the phishing sites the CA/Forum is attempting to head off access to certification.

Ars Technica has more here.

Yahoo News has more here.

Scott Jangro has released his Affiliate Blog List project.

It’s part affiliate blog index where you can perhaps discover some new affiliate marketing blogs. It’s part RSS reader where you can see the latest affiliate blog entries all in one place. And it’s part Digg — you can give individual blog entries a boost in the rankings (or the opposite).

The site is impressive in its functionality and simplicity out of the gate, so be sure to visit and subscribe to the feed there. Take the time to pour through some of the entires and vote on them as well.

A social news “Digg-style” ranking system for affiliate blogs is highly needed and Scott has provided a great resource for all of us here.

Maybe the Flaming Lips have it right on their new album…

If you knew all the answers and could give it to the masses?

Would you do it?

No no no no no no are you crazy?

Almost THREE years ago I wrote the following piece about online advertisements, spyware, banners, pops, email and the general state of online and affiliate marketing at the time. I think this is still particularly appropriate for our current place in space and time.  When I wrote this, I’d been in the industry for a while at this point and I was getting particularly upset with the state the of the whole enterprise by this point.

However, I believe in the general mission of online marketing more than anyone and know that affiliate marketing, in particular, has incredible transformational potential for society (at least of the American variety) due to its emphasis and ability to stress relationship.

Three years from now, let’s make sure we can look back on this point in time and space and realize what we have learned.

Here’s the piece…

Try to imagine life without advertisements. At this point, it is ultimately worthless to attempt such a feat. However, the backlash against advertisements has been an ongoing phenomenon well before digital recorders, email filters and pop-stoppers. The advent of the VCR brought the same apocalyptic predictions from advertising analysts. However, these reports of impending doom soon proved baseless. However, products like TiVo, the Federal Do Not Call list (60 million Americans have signed up), and email “junk boxes” (present in 54% of American homes) do present a different sort of challenge to advertisers looking for eyeballs. Can consumers ever filter advertisements out of their life? Ultimately, what do advertisements mean to the mythos of our society?

Andy Warhol took the symbol of the advertisement and was able to express an incredible amount of meaning from common icons of pop culture. Part of Warhol’s genius was his ability to reproduce images that were seemingly so mundane into complicated representations of contemporary life. In Warhol’s works, Coca-Cola bottles, Brillo boxes, Campbell Soup cans and everyday brand images become hieroglyphs (literally translated means “sacred texts”) of contemporary American life. In Warhol’s vision, advertisements serve as an important key to understanding the complex visual nature of pop society.

Public feelings and opinions aside, what fundamental service and meaning do advertisements serve in 21^st century American culture? Are ads contemporary hieroglyphs as Warhol posed, or are they more defined by Dylan’s contention in his 1965 song It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)?:

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

As direct marketers, we’d certainly like to think that Warhol’s canonization of advertisements is more valid than the opinions of those who would love to see their demise, whether on email, tv or radio. However, returning to the first question posed in this article, imagine a world devoid of advertisements. Certainly, culture as we know it would be radically different.

Advertisements supply a great deal of contextualization, meaning, and dare I say, value to pop-culture. It can be argued that ads actually supply a socialization tool that helps to predict and secure norms within the culture. If it were possible to choose every advertisement that we saw as consumers, or block them entirely how would that affect the social situation held together, in large part, by advertisements?

Good or bad, advertisements have become the sacred scripture of the American dominated global pop culture. In the global culture held together by “market capitalism” the signs of the world’s great religions have been usurped by the Golden Arches and the red and white Coca-Cola bottles. Warhol tapped into this by exposing the sanctification of advertisements in their ability to supply and convey cultural truths, norms and ultimately, definition.

Where is the line to be drawn? Is spyware or adware acceptable forms of advertising? What does “acceptable” mean? Should we be subjected to so much advertising in our daily lives that it fills our memory banks to the brim and spills over? Advertising has always existed. No doubt, it always will. Advertisers have constantly sought the most eyeballs available for the dollar and looked for ways to codify themselves in the normal life of consumers. Post-modern bombardment of the sub-conscious can truly seem like a troubling issue that we as direct marketers and advertisers must face and answer. However, at a certain point, advertisements do fill the gap in our collective need for stabilization and provide social “norms” in a fragmented post-modern society.

As consumers continue to invest more time and money into “ad-blocking” technologies, the question of advertisement’s place among the masses is raised in this new context of direct, targeted and instant marketing. Will the Warhol of the 21^st century proclaim the sacredness of weight-loss or mortgage html email creatives?