Category: Affiliates

Mozilla is best known for Firefox, but for fans of open source, sanity and alternatives to Outlook (or Evolution on Ubuntu), Thunderbird is a popular choice.

And now Thunderbird has an affiliate program to spread the good word (although you get points and pride, not cash… so it’s more for the fanboi’s than the serious affiliate business person).

Affiliates Home | Mozilla Thunderbird – Reclaim Your Inbox | Mozilla Thunderbird – Reclaim Your Inbox: “SpreadThunderbird offers a simple affiliates program (Beta) that enables members to support Thunderbird and earn fame and prizes.

SpreadThunderbird’s Affiliate Program is not the only program to help drive Thunderbird downloads.

We’re also interested in seeing more of these kinds of affiliate programs and if you’re interested in starting a similar program, please contact us”

I’m glad to see something like this, even if it is geared towards the diehards and fans.

I’ve been an off and on user of Thunderbird over the past few years and it is a viable competitor to Apple Mail or Outlook. While it doesn’t have native support on these platforms, the features often outweigh those costs.

Amazon continues to make interesting and noteworthy improvements to its associates program. I wrote off the ability make any money with Amazon a few years back because of my own lack of success with their offerings on my affiliate sites.

However, I’ve been using Amazon more and more with great results on click-thru’s. They have so many options for affiliates and publishers (esp in niche categories that aren’t serviced well by traditional affiliate networks (which is a funny term to use since Amazon had an early affiliates program…but I digress).

If you haven’t given Amazon a shot in a while, you might want to reconsider.

Here’s an email sent out to associates/publishers this morning with details on new Deals widgets:

Dear Amazon Associate:

As you’re gearing up for the holiday season, don’t miss out on the new and improved Deals Widget. Now you can display the hottest deals from Amazon on your web page. The Deals Widget lets your users browse discounted items and ongoing promotions from the Amazon.com product category of your choice.

The new widget lets you display the deals most relevant to your website to improve customer retention and conversion.

Deals by Category
You can now configure the widget to display discounted items and promotions from any Amazon.com category of your choice! Simply use the drop down to select a specific category and we’ll keep the widget updated with the latest deals from that category. Remember that your viewers are more likely to click through a widget when the deals are relevant to the theme and topic of your site. You can now use the ‘Deals by Category’ feature to place relevant Amazon deals throughout your site.

Gold Box Deals
You can continue to display Gold Box deals using the Deals Widget. Gold Box deals are limited quantity offers that run for a specified time. The Gold Box deals widget lets your viewers browse through the latest Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and Our Best Deals.

Multiple Sizes
The Deals Widget is available in a variety of standard sizes and can be placed anywhere on your site. Available sizes include: Sidebar (120×400, 160×400), Large (250×250, 300×250, 336×280) and Banner (468×60, 728×90).

Create a Deals Widget in just a few clicks. If you want to display a list of handpicked products, be sure to try out the My Favorites, Carousel, and Slideshow widgets.

If you have any questions or feedback on this feature or the Associates Program, please contact us via the contact form. We want to hear from you!

Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Program

Yahoo announces their Yahoo Deals platform:

Yodel Anecdotal » Blog Archive » Have I got a deal for you: “Retail isn’t all doom and gloom. While total spending may drop this season as consumers guard their net worth, Forrester Research predicts that online shopping will actually rise 12% over last year, mainly because half of online shoppers anticipate that the best values and deals will be found on the Web. And it goes without saying that they’ll also avoid the stress of crowded malls and long lines when they log on in their pajamas.”

Similar to Microsoft Cashback, the aim is to help consumers find the best deals for popular products.

Should be interesting to see how well they do with this…

Nick Denton, head of Gawker Media (which is the umbrella for such wide-read and influential blogs as Lifehacker, i09 (one of my favs), Gawker, Valleywag, Fleshbot, etc) writes about the coming online advertising apocalypse…

Doom-mongering: A 2009 Internet Media Plan: “Internet advertising is by no means immune. Advocates of the internet claim that the sector is both more mature than it was during the last downturn; and it’s more ‘measurable’ than other media. They hope to avoid a repeat of the 27% decline in 2000-2002. Good luck with that. The sector’s maturity also means that its underlying growth is more sluggish than it was in the late 1990s. In 2001, internet advertising swung to a 13% decline from 78% growth the previous year; this time the sector starts from a growth rate of 27%; I would hate to see what a swing as violent as the dotcom burst would look like. As for the measurability of internet media: sure, marketers and their agencies can track engagement and clicks in great detail online; but it’s still only television advertising that can demonstrate a correlation between spending and a boost to a marketer’s sales.”

What Denton and Calacanis, etc fail to come to grips with is that the model of ad welfare which has supported the Silicon Valley lifestyle and worldview over the last 5 years of web2.0 is not (and has never been) the reality of actionable advertising or marketing.

Despite Calacanis’ dire predictions of affiliate marketing’s irrelevancy at Affiliate Summit West ’08, there is a brighter future for the industry compared to what the Valley will have to endure in the coming years.

Welcome to reality. Have a seat. Enjoy the view.

I talk about Basecamp a good deal here.

And there’s a good reason for that… it’s essential for web workers (which means all online marketers and/or entrepreneurs) as an end-all-be-all of productivity, project planning, organization, todo lists, whiteboards, etc.

Now, you can add your Basecamp projects to GMail via Periscope via Labs. I’ve tried it… it’s tremendous:

Gmail Gadgets: Add Your Basecamp Projects to Gmail: “To enable this gadget, you’ve got to have a Basecamp account with the API enabled, a Periscope account (which stores your Basecamp login information), and Gmail Labs’ Gadgets by external URL feature enabled. Got all that? Once you’re there, head to the Gadgets tab in Gmail and copy and paste the Periscope Basecamp Gadget URL in, and then your sidebar will display your Basecamp projects as pictured.”

Yes, my GMail tab looks like a crazy narcissist took over the place since I have my Calendar, Docs and Remember The Milk Gadgets going along with the occasional chat (I use GTalk within GMail for AIM and Google chat)…not to mention the steady deluge of email.

Nevertheless, I feel as if I’m getting somethings done with this approach.

Jim Kukral, a veteran of the performance marketing world, MC of Affiliate Summit and serial entrepreneur, has rebranded himself as TheBizWebCoach and is writing a book called Blend This Book! about attention economics.

Hi, I’m Jim Kukral, The Biz Web Coach! I’m doing something different here. It’s revolutionary! I’m offering my 12+ years of experience and expertise in a new way, through Web coaching on a membership program.

Why?

Jim sees this as the future of business web coaching and understandably realizes that coaching is becoming a major niche for individuals with enough social capital and know-how to help businesses (and/or individuals looking to start them) in these troubled economic times.

It’s hard to explain the totality of what Jim is doing, but it is quite interesting. Beyond being a “business coach,” Jim rightly sees that experts are moving into the one-on-one type help situation (instead of ebooks, etc).

So, is membership the next big thing? I think it may be.

Hopefully, I’ll be doing a podcast with Jim in the next few days where we talk about his ideas and goals for the rebrand and where he sees this space going.

As a part-time consultant, I’m interested in hearing his thoughts and you should be too.

Jangro is writing some great (and useful) stuff these days over on his blog…

Datafeeds Done Right, Finally. | Jangro.com: “It was one of those painstakingly slow processes for the affiliate that caused this one to not even bother in many cases.”

Head over to get his full review on how some networks are providing better datafeeds for affiliates and publishers.

Sure, you can find most of that ancient medium known as the “music video” on YouTube, but having all those great videos from the 80’s, 90’s and early ’00’s in a neat searchable place is handy.

BTW, here’s a vid for “New York New York” from my favorite singer/songwriter Ryan Adams that was shot just a few days before 9/11. I was living just an hour or so away from the city in Connecticut at the time, so the video had a big impact on me (and still does):

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:14102

Anyways, if you are doing anything music related on the affiliate side, this might be a site worth investigating considering the embedding options…

MTV MUSIC – Ryan Adams – New York, New York

37signals is the company behind such popular web worker products as Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise and Campfire. You’ve probably noticed the BackPack banner over in the sidebar, but now they’ve expanded the affiliate program to include their other productivity products. I’m pretty excited about that.

If you’re a small business doing online markeitng and not using Basecamp, you’re really missing out. It’s the hub of my online business life and people like Scott Jangro are also big fans.

I want to reiterate how reliant I am on Basecamp and Backpack for organizing my personal and business (and academic) lives, and also how you should be promoting these products if you’re in the B2B affiliate field.

37signals Affiliate Program: “The 37signals Affiliate Program pays you once after a customer’s first monthly payment, plus 5% of that customer’s future monthly fees for as long as their account remains open. “

Of course, if you’d like to sign up for any of their programs, feel free to do so with the affiliate links in this post (b/c CPN always needs and appreciates your support!).

CPA Empire has been rebranded into the choice domain affiliate.com.

This move reminds me of how Pepperjam has successfully rebranded itself as a “next-gen” network in the mindset of many affiliates. It will be interesting to see if affiliate.com can do the same for CPA Empire, which hasn’t always had the sunniest of reputations on the affiliate forums, etc.

Here are some excerpts from the press release…

“affiliate.com provides us with a premier name to go along with our leadership position in the affiliate marketing industry,” said Steven Richter, President and General Counsel for Media Breakaway. “However, we are doing more than simply changing the name of our affiliate marketing division. Our goal is for affiliate.com to become the next generation of affiliate networks.”

The company also announced that it will be undertaking a number of key initiatives as a part of the name change. These initiatives include the development of a proprietary tracking system that will provide affiliates and advertisers with accurate, real-time reporting and an easy to use interface to access performance data on all their campaigns. In addition, business development efforts are being focused on bringing in more top performing international offers, as the company continues to increase its presence in the global market. The company will also be expanding its affiliate management and advertiser support teams and enhancing the affiliate manager training program to ensure that the team is providing the highest level of support in the industry.

“Through each of these initiatives and others we will put in place in 2009, we plan to take affiliate marketing to the next level in technology, services, and support,” said Richter. “We are dedicated to helping our affiliates and advertisers grow their businesses and become more profitable.”

Sounds like there may be some competition in store for Affiliate Classroom as well (“enhancing the affiliate manager training program to ensure that the team is providing the highest level of support in the industry”).

The affiliate.com team also has a blog up and running as well.

Shawn Collins also has a post about the rebranding.

For those of us with allergic reactions to statistical spreadsheets, a new feature in Google Analytics makes seeing which keywords convert almost fun…

YouTube – Motion Charts in Google Analytics: “Learn to use Motion Charts in Google Analytics to analyze your data in five dimensions. “

Electronic Voting 2.0 – ReadWriteWeb

One of the keys to success in affiliate marketing is getting your site or link in front of the people who are looking for the info, services, etc you are representing.

Google has helped create the affiliate marketing landscape by becoming the world’s database of information as well as being fairly transparent on what it takes to rank well in the search result pages organically (not to mention the ability to pay for positions on relevant keywords).

So, this new move by Google to ramp it up on the recognition and indexing of PDF’s is promising for smart affiliates given that history. Why? Because PDF’s are a great way to produce quality content on specific topics. Instead of having to invest the time, effort or money into OCR efforts themselves, affiliates can let Google do the heavy hauling and have the info indexed. Nifty.

Google Search Indexes Scanned Documents – AppScout: “Google today, however, announced a new technology that lets the search engine perform Optical Character Recognition on scanned documents saved in Adobe PDF format. OCR converts the picture of words into actual words. “

And here’s the Official Google Blog post about the new feature.

Here are some examples of what’s in store:

repairing aluminum wiring

spin lock performance

Lots of opportunity there!

For those of you not content with Google’s present level of omnipotence, here’s more for you to chew on:

Google Blog Search Now Reads Links on Web Pages: “Today Google introduced some changes in the way they index content from blogs / RSS feeds.

Earlier they were only using links from RSS feeds to determine the resultset for link: operator but now they consider links that are mentioned on web pages as well very similar to Technorati.

This means that if another blog (abc.com) has linked to your own blog (my.com) from his sidebar, Google will now show abc.com in the results as well when you query for link:my.com.

If there were a Technorati Rank like parameter for Google Blogs Search, almost every blog may have seen major fluctuations in their rank due to this simple change.”

If you do your affiliate marketing via blogs (or even RSS), take note because this will definitely have an hand in determining your site’s PageRank as well as its organic rank.

The bigger question is how this might (in the long term) affect affiliate marketers. Affiliates necessarily rely on links as the lingua franca of doing business because the nature of the economic model. Will Google slap affiliate sites with too many commercial (affiliate) links in the search results?

Fun stuff to ponder on Halloween!

I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.

Wow, email, chat, RSS and now SMS all in one lovely package.

Game changer!

OMG – Webmonkey (thanks to my pal @bmoore622)

http://www.viddler.com/player/fde939d1/

I really do love Basecamp, BackPack and Highrise. All three of these products make up a substantial part of my business life as an affiliate and I can’t imagine having to hack together a “getting-things-done” solution without them.

Even my wife, a physician, loves and uses BackPack on a daily basis.

So, I’m excited to see this new addition to Highrise (a fantastic CRM manager):

37signals Product Blog: Big new Highrise feature: Deals: “Deals let you keep track of proposals, bids, RFPs, and project sales right inside Highrise. Highrise has always been great for keeping track of the people you do business with, but now with Deals you can keep track of the business transactions as well.

Now you’ll know which proposals/bids are pending, which you’ve won, and which you’ve lost. Enter notes about the deals, attach proposals or contracts to the deals, and keep a log of any changes. Now you’ll know how much money a particular customer has paid you over time or how much you’ve left on the table from deals you didn’t win.”

Seriously, if you aren’t using BackPack or Basecamp (at least), you’re missing out.

Having worked on both the network and publisher side of affiliate marketing over the years, I’ve definitely wracked my brain for a solution to the affiliate approval process problem (hereafter known as AAPP… kinda catchy, no?).

Jamie Birch has a new in-depth post on the issue from an affiliate manager’s point of view. Jamie has just launched his new JEB Commerce OPM company and is heavily dealing with the AAPP now.

Jamie’s previous work at Coldwater Creek and Converseon gives him authority on this issue, so if you’re a new affiliate wondering why you got denied for a program, definitely give his post a read (plus subscribe to the blog because it’s loaded with good content already):

Why is my application to affiliate programs always denied? | JEBCommerce – Affiliate Management and Online Advertising: “Along with the known affiliates applying to your program, there are hundreds and thousands of applications that come through that are either suspect, fraudulent or simply incomplete. If you are an affiliate manager reading this, you’ll probably be nodding your head and maybe even have a chuckle. If you are an affiliate that seems to receive more denials than approvals when you apply to programs, this article is just for you. I’d like to highlight some of the things that managers see every day that you may be doing and need to avoid in order to get your applications approved. So let’s get started…”

Perhaps most valuable of all are the list of suggestions at the bottom. Good stuff.