Affiliates Archives - Page 7 of 44

Google Retiring AdSense Referral Program

Google is killing off its AdSense referral program and suggesting publishers check out the rebranded Google Affiliate Network:

Hello,

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals program.
We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring the AdSense
Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate
your patience during this transition and here are some alternative
options to consider:

* Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of
DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now
operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting
users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense
Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers
to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on
advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For
further details, please visit: www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork.

Referral programs remain very popular with CPA networks, so I don’t see them going the way of the dodo just yet.

It’s really not that interesting or ground-shaking that Google is finally doing away with the AdSense referral program since every publisher under the sun is probably aware of the program and Google really doesn’t have much to gain from such a program at this point with the death of Yahoo and the growing impotence of MSN search.

Affiliate Classroom Clarifies Association with PMA

Anik from Affiliate Classroom lays out Affiliate Clasroom’s involvement with the PMA in a blog post this afternoon…

What Exactly Is Affiliate Classroom’s Role In The PMA?: “Basically AC has no special rights reserved for us in this organization. No one from Affiliate Classroom, including Rebecca, is on the Advisory Board.
…Herein began the controversy…”

Hopefully, this will dispel some of the unproductive conspiracy theories that are floating about.

This is something that needs to happen for the affiliate marketing industry with as much involvement as possible. People succumbing to bullying and peer pressure to not get involved is a sad state of affairs. Hopefully, this process will continue to involve a wide swath of people, ideologies and agendas as we move our industry forward.

Doing My Thing

I co-hosted AffiliateThing with Shawn Collins yesterday (in place of Lisa Picarille).

Affiliate Thing Podcast – June 25, 2008 : GeekCast.fm

“The June 25, 2008 episode of Affiliate Thing was missing Lisa, who was still celebrating her LinkShare Golden Link Award win.

Sam Harrelson filled in to chat about the LinkShare Symposium and Golden Link Awards, which just took place in New York City.

Shawn and Sam Harrelson also chatted with Jonathan Van Clute, one of the favorites for the upcoming Top Affiliate Challenge reality show.

They also talked about what’s going on with the Performance Marketing Alliance, some cool WordPress plugins, and how all your business are belong to Google.”

Even though Lisa pwns my AffiliateThingness, it was still a fun show. I think that makes for my 7th appearance, so I’m on my way to the 10 Timers club (the current 5 Timers Club consists of Jim Kukral and I… maybe Jangro?).

FeedFront 2

Make sure you’re on the list… FeedFront is good stuff as I’ve said before:

Get Issue 2 of FeedFront Magazine | Affiliate Summit Blog: “We are closing out issue 2 of FeedFront Magazine, so if you didn’t get a copy of the first one in the mail, and you want to get issue 2, subscribe now.

Anybody based on the U.S. who attended Affiliate Summit last year in Miami or this past February in Las Vegas should have received an issue of FeedFront in the mail by now.”

Head over to the Affiliate Summit blog if you haven’t signed up yet or didn’t get the first issue and sign up.

Angie Seaman Joins PMG

Just got an email from PMG saying that Angie Seaman had come on board there. Angie is a great affiliate manager and I had the pleasure of working with her for a while at Kowabunga…

Paulson Management Group would like to welcome Angela Seaman to our PMG Team of affiliate managers – Angela Seaman comes to us from Kowabunga where she was the client services director working on accounts such as several Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and CNET.

Angie is the recipient of an honorary affiliate management certification from AC Classroom in 2008. To View all of the PMG team members please visit our about us page here.

Congrats Angie and PMG… sounds like a great fit!

Changed My Mind on the PMA

Originally, I stated that I wasn’t going to get involved with the Performance Marketing Alliance on GeekCast.

I was nominated for the formation advisory board and originally thought I would probably decline as I said on GeekCast. However, I changed my mind on Thursday night after some very good conversations, including one with my very wise wife (who has nothing to do with affiliate marketing, but has been to an Affiliate Summit).

I’m working to be the change I want in the world… are you?

PMA and Datafeeds

Interesting possibility for the thread that Rebecca just posted on the Performance Marketing Alliance’s blog regarding Haiko’s datafeed standard from 2005:

Data Feed standard update at Performance Marketing Alliance: “Haiko de Poel just emailed me with a link to a data feed standard he developed in 2005 and posted on A Best Web. It is really concise and certainly looks like it covers details important to affiliates.”

This is the sort of involvement that a lot of people from ABW in particular have been asking for in terms of what sorts of issues the PMA might address within the realm of affiliate marketing. Hopefully, issues like ethics, merchant communications, etc will also be addressed there in the coming days and weeks as the PMA moves into its formation stages.

If you haven’t read the Industry Association Meeting thread on ABW definitely head over there for the conversation.

Linda Buquet also has a neat idea on Twitter today:

@billykay An aff group w/in PMA would have so much more clout, could decide on issues that the larger group needs to tackle etc.

It seems to me like the PMA conversations across the wide spectrum of affiliate forums like ABW, blogs like ReveNews, etc have moved to the next level. That is a good sign for the possibility of the alliance both having a life and being beneficial to all ranges of affiliates.

Affiliates Aren’t Just B2B Pimps

Be careful lumping all “affiliate marketers” into the B2B John Reese camp, Tony…

Deep Jive Interests » Mashable vs. John Reese: The Bigger Issue In Internet Marketing: “Because one of the biggest problems with Internet Marketing is that are very few real conversations about it. Most of it are on the forums, but the even there its hard to find a real opinion on things.

Why is this?

Because of affiliate marketing.”

There are lots of us who have some involvement with the world of affiliate marketing who find the sort of marketing you describe later in your post just as sketchy as you do (and should).

I’m an affiliate marketer, social media early adopter and a longtime Twitter user (since ’06) and don’t think I fit the description you make. John Reese and I got into it last night on this topic at Andrew Wee’s blog.

All of my affiliate stuff (as well as 99% of the people I know in affiliate marketing) is consumer related, not B2B ebooks and rarely, if ever, promoted on any of the myriads of social networks I belong to.

There’s a big gap between the B2B “affiliate” marketers and the B2C variety.

1,000th Post

“Now, with the blogs, you can share your thoughts with up to 10 people.”

This is my 1,000th (published…a few dozen never saw the light of day, thankfully) post on CostPerNews.

CPN went live on Nov 1, 2006 and I had no idea where it was going (and still don’t). 19 months later (at an average of 52 posts a month), we’ve hit the magic 1k mark.

I knew in October of ’06 that I wanted to have a place where I could write as frequently or infrequently as I wanted and cover the emerging web2.0 space and the connections I was (and still am) seeing with traditional affiliate marketing. I came up with the name while mowing the lawn that Fall and ran inside to register the domain before I forgot. Luckily, I didn’t forget.

I can honestly say that this little blog has been the most important vehicle for my own personal brand and business, helping me to get into doors that wouldn’t have been opened otherwise and helping me to get to know some pretty incredible people along the way. If you’re wondering if you should start a blog, take it from me… yes.

So, thank you for being there and listening to my crazy ramblings about Twitter and Tumblr and RSS and open source over the past couple of years. I’ve sold this blog, quit this blog (twice), re-acquired this blog and redesigned it (at least 10 times). And here we are again.

I’ve grown a lot with this place and I look forward to growing even more with the next thousand posts.

Many thanks all!!

Sam

GeekCast 23: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

This most recent episode of GeekCast is the best we’ve done.

We spend a great deal of time talking about the ABW and Performance Marketing Alliance controversy and our own frustrations with how things are playing out.

GeekCast 23: Can’t We All Just Get Along? : GeekCast.fm: “The show kicked off with discussion around the ABestWeb forum thread on the Performance Marketing Alliance initiative and whether or not affiliate marketing as an industry is being helped or hindered by the organization and whether or not some of the comments there were helpful to the industry as well. This theme comes around at the end of the show. So, make sure to listen to the whole thing for the proper context.”

Be sure to listen to this one if you’re interested in the industry organization movement.

There’s lots of other good stuff in the 80 minute podcast as well (you can find the whole description on the GeekCast page as well as link to the streaming player).

And here’s the mp3 for your downloading pleasure