Category: Affiliates

Andy Beal has launched an online marketing job board as an addition to the Marketing Pilgrim blog…

Andy has partnered with JobThread.com on the site for the backend, and initial job listings include the likes of Microsoft, iProspect, High Rankings, SEO Inc, Channel Advisor, The Rimm-Kaufman Group and Fox Interactive Media.

Nice work, Andy!

YouTube rockstar Shmuel Tennenhaus gives an account and analysis of all the recent YouTube news (Fox sues over episodes of 24 and Simpsons appearing on YouTube, revenue sharing with content providers, new search capabilities, Google enhancements) with his own flavor of commentary…

“Jack Baur is a badass”…

Many of us have played with the beta versions of Microsoft’s new OS, Windows Vista over the past few months. However, what features or potential issues in the operating system might give affiliate marketers a headache or reason to cheer?

Granted, affiliate marketing is an online business, so it would seem that an offline operating system would not interfere with what happens in a customer’s browser. However, Vista has (fairly) integrated the offline with the online and the blend may end up providing new challenges or cheers to those of us in the online marketing sphere.

So, here are some of the features affiliate marketers need to be aware of in Vista… particularly in the internet browsing (IE7) portion of the OS…

• RSS. It’s too early to tell if Vista’s IE7 integration of RSS feeds into the browsing experience will bear much fruit for those of us who have been preaching from the mountaintop about the benefits of RSS for affiliate marketers and merchants outside of pushing offer updates to publishers. There is real gold in growing a large and responsive customer base through RSS… and it’s much cheaper and much more effective than email.
  
  
• Security. Networks such as Linkshare and Digital River’s oneNetworkDirect have begun to move beyond the cookie, but how will Vista’s new security features impact programs and networks (the vast majority) which still rely on cookies for tracking and stats.

• Search Box. Vista has integrated a search box into IE7, similar to Firefox. Will users stick with the Google option or begin to use other search engines or platforms (such as Amazon, Wikipedia) which are built into the drop down options. How will this affect organic search, AdSense, keywords and even SEO?

• CSS, HTML and email. Vista’s new version of Office will put restrictions on the amount of code that can easily pass into a user’s Outlook inbox. While not every affiliate marketer or merchant relies on email, most of the newsletters I receive from networks, merchants and affiliate programs are loaded with html and tracking code. Impact?

• Widgets! Vista is encouraging movement of web browsing onto the desktop in forms of widgets. Watch to see how many users adopt and start demanding these services. Wayne, Carsten and I have been debating how to implement widgets into affiliate marketing, and Vista could change the conversation completely.

What did I miss? What has been put into Vista which should be noticed by affiliate marketers for good or for bad?

In preparing for an objective post on this week’s release of Vista and its potential impact on affiliate marketing, I decided to visit Microsoft’s newest attempt at tapping into customer generated buzz… “Show Us Your Wow.”

Microsoft is using the “Wow Starts Now” as it’s catch phrase for Vista similar to its other less-than-catchy “Welcome to the Social” for its Zune player (I hear “The Social” is a nightclub in Toronto…).

In my attempt to pull up www.showusyourwow.com, I was greeted by the unfriendly “you are not using IE7, so none shall pass” Black Knight (I even tried using my wife’s laptop which runs Windows but the same result with FireFox there)…

I know you are a business, Microsoft. I understand that you have to put up gate keeping Black Knights to force people to use your products, because if you let choice enter into the market you would sink rather quickly as a business. But at least let us poor Firefox users experience the WOW as well. It looks fun judging by her expression. I promise I won’t sneer (too much).

[EDIT: Just found out that ABW is discussing the issue of FireFox’s compatibility with Vista here.]

Scott Jangro’s BUMPzee affiliate marketing community has continued to grow and improve since its official launch about a month ago.

Now Scott has upped the ante with a plugin that can be placed on affiliate marketing blogs, which allows readers to “bump” a post right from the page where they are reading.

I’ve installed the plugin on the permalinks page here at CostPerNews. So, click on an individual post’s title to see the widget in action…

The number of users who have created profiles and actively use the site has grown to 144. While a small number, those 144 include many of the top minds, affiliates, merchants and networks in the affiliate marketing space. In this type of community, exposure to 144 of the top movers and shakers in the industry is highly valuable. I anticipate that number will continue to increase, but I can’t imagine a more high quality group of affiliate marketing professionals.

If you haven’t checked out BUMPzee, I do recommend browsing and setting up an account. The quality of content there is superb and will only continue to grow as the site itself reaches more and more readers and users.

Me.dium is a new service which makes use of our base and primal need as animals to share our experiences. Blogs do this, emails do this, and conversation through language does this.

However, there hasn’t been a scalable and measurable way to adequately determine the value of this human instinct we all share (even we only children who are shy and prefer our “alone time”).

Since affiliate marketing is best described as a relationship focused industry, it would be highly valuable for affiliate marketers to be able to quantify the social nature of traffic.

Me.dium might be a step in that direction.

In the real world, the people and activity around you constantly effect your decisions and behaviors.

No one has ever been able to benefit from these environmental influences online. Our current online experience deprives us of the wisdom of crowds and the day-to-day interaction that happens between strangers in the real world.

Me.dium reveals the hidden world of people and activity behind your browser. Without having to do anything differently than you normally do, Me.dium shows you your online world and allows you to communicate with friends and others in a natural, contextual manner. It lets you see what else is around you and relevant based on what you’re doing – all in REAL TIME. Just like the way you interact in the real world.

What I think is valuable is the concept behind this plugin. In my opinion, this is World of Warcraft guild communing and socializing meets social shopping sites such as FatWallet or ThisNext. In many ways, this type of application democratizes the traffic pattern and allows users to influence their friends and others in a paradigm that models real life.

Interesting concept.

I was invited to a private beta for Me.dium, so if you’d like to try the service, let me know and I’ll send over an invite as well.

More from Jerry Paffendorf here and Ajaxian here.

In a move that is not altogether unexpected, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley announced at today’s World Economic Forum in Switzerland that the wildly popular video sharing site will begin sharing revenues with users…

“We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users,” Hurley said. “So in the coming months we are going to be opening that up.”

Given that YouTube videos are now being included in search results on Google, this seems like a wise move to keep users and high traffic YouTube celebs (such as the beloved Shmuly Tennenhaus) happy.

YouTube competitors such as Revver or Mangnify.net already have revenue sharing programs in place, and have also emphasized the use of distributed video through widgets and on site video. YouTube also has its share of distributed video placements, but the amount of traffic hitting the YouTube homepage far outweighs that of its competitors…

Of course that is an Alexa based ranking with no inclusion of widgets and distributed placements of videos, but the graph serves to illustrate the point that YouTube gets much more traffic to its portal site than any of its competitors combined. How will the rev share platform affect Revver or Magnify.net?

Will users turn over control of their content provided at places like Revver to make more money from the amount of traffic that YouTube receives?

Is this a potential hint of imminent things to come with Google’s coming contextual video ads on its search pages?

Don’t put your best content or offers behind a fence.

Let users interact with your best content, your best offers or your best ideas in the open. Of course, that’s dangerous. However, no one said winning is easy (channeling Jerry Maguire).

Learn to embrace the challenge of challenge and open your affiliate program, affiliate site, or even network to the scrutiny of the masses…. it might just make you a better online marketer.

Thanks to Asa Dotzler and the Firefox team for sending over the t-shirt and showing some love…

You guys rock. Keep on changing the world, one browser at a time!

(I’m still waiting on my PodTech shirt, Robert!)

I’m seeing more and more affiliates attempting to monetize the registration path of their offers before the traffic redirects to the merchant or network’s offer page. A few “affiliate gurus” at the Affiliate Summit were even prescribing a complicated version of this method to “better monetize traffic.”

I’m not comfortable with this approach, and find it incredibly disruptive for both the visitor, affiliate and merchant.

How are merchants combating this sort of tactic?