Category: Affiliates

Looks like someone is catching the bug…

Twitter / Jason Calacanis: oh snap,we sold two items o…: “oh snap,we sold two items on CJ.com!$15 buckseach for a Real.comSuper pass. $15 *each* -puts the CPM on that page at $7.50 for *one* link.”

Now multiply that by all of the Mahalo pages with quality content, and you can haz business model.

I’ve said time and again that I live my online existence through my feed reader (NetNewsWire on the Mac at the moment). Everything from email to Twitter messages from my favorite people flows into there.

One thing that I always enjoy checking is the hourly update of Hot Trends from Google search. For instance, GasBuddy.com was hot a few hours ago. Evidently there was a report on soaring gas prices here in the states and ways to save money at the pump..

Google Trends: gasbuddy.com, Mar 15, 2008

Of course, Ashley Alexandra Dupre (of Spitzer fame) is hot as well as the college basketball tournaments that precede March Madness.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

In other words, Hot Trends is a way for you to see what is hot all throughout the day in a convenient RSS feed. If you’re a keyword or niche marketer, the long time data is a gold mine for staying ahead of the curve and watching how fast certain topics, or keywords, go from being hot to cool.

As part of my settlement after leaving ReveNews, I get to retain the ownership of CostPerNews.

Welcome back, everybody. This place is going to fire up again. You ready to go?

Hope you stick around 🙂

Sam

I have to wonder how close we are to a “cheap computer” revolution when linux based laptops start eating into the non-Apple laptop market.

I know personally that the Asus eee is a fantastic little piece of tech. I’ve said more than once that it is my favorite laptop ever (even more than the high end Dell I had for a few years and my new MacBook Pro).

So, the thought of Windows moving into this territory and squishing some of the linux momentum scares me…

Asus and Microsoft working an Eee-targeted version of Windows 7? – Engadget: “Given the Eee’s ‘other requirements,’ Asus and Microsoft ‘couldn’t go the Vista route,’ presumably because the Eee doesn’t really have the horsepower for it. Sure, but what caught our interest was that Microsoft is ‘in close discussions with Asus [regarding] how to take that forward… in regards to the Windows 7 Europe timeframe.’ Windows 7, you’ll recall, has that lean new kernel, which would presumably make building a stripped-down version specifically for Eee-class machines easier — but the last we heard, Windows 7 wasn’t due until at least mid-2009 (and possibly not until 2011), so either Microsoft is planning to continue shipping XP after June or Windows 7 is coming much earlier than we thought. Our money is on XP continuing to soldier on, but here’s hoping.”

What does this have to do with online marketing? A great deal, I believe since the machine that people use to access the web or get things done has a great deal of influence on how they view online products or services. The more people that wise up to linux and open source products, the more people become web and savings savvy.

Looks like the “affiliate spammers” are starting early at Penn State University.

Although, this is more of a CPA network offer (email/lead based) than an affiliate offer, but few people in online marketing can actually cite the difference between affiliate and cpa, let alone innocent bystanders who get creamed with this sort of unsolicited garbage.

Penn State Affiliate Marketer Spamming Fellow Students: “I can’t believe someone on the PSU domain is spamming me with an affiliate offer. I received this email from the President of ‘PSU Free Student Offers.’ This character named Samantha Volley is obviously fake, and I confirmed it because the name is not in the Penn State Directory or even Facebook.”

Again, this raises the Calacanis Keynote question of how to “clean up” the affiliate industry but also brings in the interesting component of how affiliates should kick their often less-than-honorable lead based cousins to the curb…

Here’s a quick vid updating you on the status of the soon-to-be ReveNews move to WordPress:

If you’re doing video and using WordPress and YouTube, this is a really nifty plugin that alleviates some of the frustrations that people often have when they start embedding video into blog posts:

Smart Youtube – WordPress Plugins: “Smart Youtube is a WordPress Youtube Plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos in both your post and in RSS feed. It is small, fast and does not depend on any external scripts.

The main purpose of the plugin is to correctly embed youtube videos into your blog post. The plugin is designed to be small and fast and not use any external resources. Unlike other plugins the link to the video will also appear in your rss feed. And the best thing is, Smart Youtube will also display a preview screenshot of the video in your RSS feed.”

I see this all the time on merchant and affiliate sites… if you’re going to put copyright notices on your sites, make sure that are at least up-to-date (along with your T&C’s and Privacy Policies):

Gullible.info: “Among web pages that show a copyright date, 3.5% have a date that is more than one year out of date. As of February of 2008, 11.4% of pages with obviously new information still show ‘© 2007′”

[display_podcast]

Lisa Picarille, Jim Kukral, Shawn Collins and Sam Harrelson cover the latest and greatest in the world of performance marketing, tech and all things geek. This week we discuss revolutionary screensavers, how to butt kiss Jason Calacanis, the acquisition of buy.at by AOL and why tech bloggers don’t like affiliates, and why some affiliates don’t like each other.

The show runs about an hour.

I’ve been testing out ShowYourAdHere, and I have to say that I’m impressed. We’re even giving it a go with the ReveNews ad rotations.

So, if you need an easy-to-use ad serving solution that is web based, give ShowYourAdHere a shot.

Show Your Ad Here

Listening to the most recent Gillmor Gang today brought about more head-scratching for me as to why or what is so hard to understand about the basic understanding of what affiliate marketing is and what affiliate marketing is not.

Don’t get me wrong. I completely understand that it will (probably) not help my bottom line or profit margin by any degree if the participants of the Gillmor Gang and the associated San Francisco Bay-centric clique understand what affiliate marketers do and that they are not SEO’ers, spammers, arbitragers, MLM’ers or general web-pollutionists.

I’m referring to Jason Calacanis doing a series of well (or ill depending on your sense of humor and sense of segue way cadence) placed ads for the Affiliate Summit during tapings of the Gillmor Gang podcast. I’ve covered the first episode of The Gang where Jason caused a few ripples by doing the Affiliate Summit ads over on ReveNews.

On this past Friday’s taping, it was TechCrunch‘s Mike Arrington who asked the now inevitable “Are they SEO’ers?” question when Jason did his now tongue-in-cheek ad followed with an odd “they must be all black-hatters.” Jason answered that affiliate marketing is a billion dollar industry that no one knows about and isn’t SEO or MLM. Good to hear that Jason has been doing his homework and I do look forward to hearing his thoughts on the industry since he is the Affiliate Summit keynote.

So, my question is whether or not I should keep feeling a sense of frustration or exasperation that such web influentials know so little about affiliate marketing or seemingly care so little to learn about affiliate marketing before slapping it with an unfair brand of spam/blackhat/arbitrage/junk.

You’d think (or at least I do) that bloggers who blog about technology and web2.0 monetization such as Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick would also investigate the business model of DoubleClick’s important Performics division. Or perhaps these bloggers would seemingly be interested as to why the Japanese mega-corp Rakutan spent hundreds of millions on Linkshare or why ValueClick and its Commission Junction property are considered next in line for a major acquisition after DoubleClick, Razorfish and Right Media (if you listen to the rumors and sites such as SeekingAlpha). In all of these examples, affiliate marketing plays a major role.

Perhaps I’m just being protective and defensive over an industry that I’ve seen dramatically mature and “grow-up” over the last few years and one in which I’m proud to be a member. Nevertheless, in order to adequately understand the web landscape and the future shape of web apps, bloggers and thinkers must take into account the various forms of monetization that exist on the web without dismissing them as black-hat. Or at least that’s my hope.

A couple of months ago, I tested out Disqus for comments. I’m re-enabling that because I have been impressed with the features and forum-esque feel (plus, you can grab an RSS of the comment thread).

We’re probably going to hook this up on ReveNews as well as soon as the WordPress transition is done (should be within the next couple of weeks before the Affiliate Summit).

Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Using Disqus for Comments Here at Cost Per News

The AffiliateClassroom folks have put together a professional certification course for affiliate managers and released a video to help explain the course.

They are launching the course at AffiliateClassroomLIVE on the Saturday before the Affiliate Summit (Feb 23) in Las Vegas.

I generally view this as a very positive development for the industry. We’ve needed some sort of accrediting body in affiliate marketing for a long while and as the industry continue to grow up and evolve, this need will only increase.

Accertified.com: First Industry Recognized and Endorsed Affiliate Manager Certification

Wow, this is pretty surprising. I’m not an alarmist, but this is a pretty big miss for Google:

LIVE ANALYSIS: Google Misses Revs/EPS, Stock Plunges – Silicon Alley Insider: “Overall, net revenue decelerated sharply–from 62% growth in Q3 to 52% growth in Q4–after a series of quarters with only modest deceleration. Expect this deceleration to lead to multiple compression: Google’s days of trading at 50X cash flow are likely behind it.”

(Via Silicon Alley Insider .)