Category: Affiliates

Zac Johnson was upset over a sudden change to Azoogle’s referral terms and blogged about it yesterday. Azoogle didn’t take long to respond. There’s a great deal for both publishers and networks to learn from all of this…

AzoogleAds Makes Good on New Referral Terms | Super Affiliate Secrets from Super Affiliate Zac Johnson: “Once again, this fiasco has shown the power of blogging and communication. While some readers were angry that I removed AzoogleAds from the blog, simply because you thought it would be a loss of revenue for me, you are wrong. My referrals and revenue sources from AzoogleAds are minimal and I made the decision to remove their links because at the time, new terms were put in place with no explanations or reasoning. With so many networks and revenue sources available, I will not tolerate drastic changes without reasoning, and neither should you.”

(Via Zac Johnson .)

Techmeme‘s Gave Rivera chimes in on Andy Beard’s post about Google’s apparent -3 PageRank penalty applied to Techmeme.

Great stuff… go read Andy’s post and Gabe’s full response:

Techmeme PageRank Penalty? | Andy Beard – Niche Marketing: “Hey Tim Berners-Lee, you once said ‘hyperlink by enclosing anchor text in an A HREF tag’. Hope you don’t mind, but Google’s amending that with ‘oh, and make sure to use a nofollow condom on links to entities with which you have commercial relationships, and if your links are redirects, robots.txt disallow the redirect urls…wait, better yet, nofollow those too’. Thanks for the simplicity Tim, but this is what progress looks like.”

(Via Andy Beard Niche Marketing .)

ContentRobot is a great company that is helping us move ReveNews from MovableType4 to WordPress. If you need help with WordPress installs or service, I highly recommend them.

Karen, Dana and the team recently asked Stephanie Agresta, Carsten Cumbrowski and myself how to get started in affiliate marketing.

Here’s our short responses:

Affiliate Blogging: Getting Started | ContentRobot

There’s a new version of MarsEdit out which allows you to save drafts on the server side.

What is MarsEdit and why should you care, you ask? Then you’re probably not blogging on a Mac. But, if you are go check out v 2.1:

MarsEdit 2 – Powerful Blog Publishing For Your Mac

I don’t know why, but “FAIL!” pictures are hilarious to me. I’m not a mean spirited person or of the Uncov persuasion. Yet, I can’t help but laugh.

See many more at The Fail Blog (the new LOLCats?)

I’m an avid Twitter user and fan (you can follow me here). I love when politicians use the service for updates and quick thoughts such as what Democrats John Edwards and Barak Obama have been doing in the presidential campaign as well as what Republican Rep John Boehner has been doing with Congressional business.

My favorite person to argue with, Shawn Collins, let me know that Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain has brought the straight talk express to Twitter with his own account. I noticed what I think might be the first political attack tweet from a candidate:

Other candidates that have been using Twitter have been posting info about events for local followers or either links to YouTube video of rally’s, etc. It would be a shame if the candidates follow McCain lead and bring the negativity so associated with TV political messages into the Twitter medium.

Evidently, I’m a spammer…

This was sent to me by my pal and super uber affiliate marketer Scott Jangro today. Clearly, that’s my name, my MySpace profile pic and my “identity.”

Seriously, WTF? Clearly this did not come from “me” yet it did come from “me” according to MySpace. If you thought Facebook’s Beacon was bad, then this is terrible.

I’ve logged into my MySpace account (which I rarely do) and everything seems in order. Just to be on the safe side I changed my password.

How in the hell did this happen? Did all of my MySpace “friends” get this? Worse yet, it’s for a ringtone offer. Shoemoney would be proud. I digress.

Ah, the joys of social networks.

[Update] Evidently, I’m not alone. Although the “change your password and everything will be cool” advice really doesn’t make me feel better.

For the past three years, I’ve bookmarked a great deal of things using del.icio.us. Last Spring, I decided to start using Ma.gnolia.com to bookmark marketing and tech related items that might be interesting for readers here and using Feedburner’s “Link Splicer” option to import those bookmarks into the RSS feed and daily email subscription newsletters.

I wasn’t sure if people would enjoy the bookmarks or find benefit but soon realized they did. With the craziness of having a newborn, I feel behind on linking through Ma.gnolia and decided to start again recently. After turning on the Link Splicer again this week, I’ve notice RSS numbers and actives jump up 12% and the most popular feed items are consistently the bookmarks.

I’m not sure if that’s saying more about people’s opinion of my blogging or the benefit that they are finding in the things I bookmark, but I’ll take the increase either way 🙂

So, if you are using del.icio.us or Ma.gnolia (or Furl or Digg) for bookmarks and Feedburner for feed management, make sure to turn on Link Splicer. People do want to see what you think is interesting from your daily web browsing.

Lisa Picarille, Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral and Sam Harrelson discuss the week's news in affiliate marketing and online tech news.

http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pa1fdef232c02f041ef8ffbaa9d13d84aYl9wRVREYmdw&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap28

MP3 File

Show Notes
– Affiliate Summit Tips
– Scoble Sells Out
– Ethical Standards and Blogging
– 45n5 and Affiliate Spam
– WickedFire N00bery
– John Chow
– Izea, PayPerPost and Ethics
– 5 Seconds of Suck
– Shawn is Yoko Ono
– Why is Jason Calacanis Affiliate Summit Keynote?!?
– Auto Approval Sucks… or Does It?
– Affiliate Certification?

Visit GeekCast.fm for More Great Geek Marketing Podcasts!

One of my favorite events (or at least the one with the best food) at the Affiliate Summit is the Christian Affiliate Marketing Assoc’s Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues.

This is the second year the CAMA is putting on the event, and it should be even better this year since transportation is being provided from the Rio (where the Affiliate Summit is being held) down to the House of Blues. Last year, I walked from where Wayne Porter and I were camping all the way to the H.O.B. and I have to say that I got my exercise on that chilly morning. Good times.

The 2nd Annual Gospel Brunch, presented by the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association, is taking place at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay on Sunday, February 24, 2008 from 8:45 AM to 11:30 AM. Yes, it’s early and most of you will have been partying late into the night on Saturday night, but you could probably use some good food and fellowship to cure that hangover and wash away some of the Sin City taint. In all seriousness, it’s a great event and I highly recommend. As the CAMA points out, you don’t have to be a Christian or from any denomination to attend (and no one is going to beat you over the head with the book of Deuteronomy to make you change your sinnin’ ways…).

So, if you need a moment of respite, rest and fellowship during a hectic Affiliate Summit week, make sure to attend the Gospel Brunch.

Missy Ward and Shawn Collins of the Affiliate Summit Conference are heading up a “pre-show” on WebMasterRadio tomorrow at 1pm. I’ll be taking part as a participant along with Jim Kukral, Wil Reynolds and Stephanie Agresta:

The Affiliate Summit Pre Show will feature the following guests:

Stephanie Agresta – Founder of Stephanie Agresta Consulting, which helps online entrepreneurs and emerging technology companies realize effective, cost-efficient online marketing programs

Sam Harrelson – VP of Biz Dev for OnCard Marketing and one of performance marketing’s best-known voices, designer of affiliate programs for top retailers, operator of marketing networks and manager of a variety of consumer advertising channels

Jim Kukral of JimKukral.com and active, multiple-roled participant in the affiliate marketing industry and leading expert in the blogosphere, recently awarded the Affiliate Summit “Best Blogger” award for his voice and participation, also former publisher of ReveNews.com

Wil Reynolds – Founder of SEER Interactive, dedicated to driving traffic to sites from search engines and analyzing the impact that traffic has on the bottom line of companies

More on Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.com.

Make sure to listen in as this should be a very good show. I’ll try to get a copy to post here and we’ll hopefully have one up on GeekCast.fm for you to tune into as well.

Tony Hung has a tremendous reminder / tip / must-do if you’re running a blog on WordPress:

If you’re running WordPress, unless you’ve already locked down your Wp-content folder with some .htaccess fixes, you may not notice that your Wp-content/plugins folder is naked and bare to the world. That is, navigate to http://www.yourblogname.com/wp-content/plugins and you may find a directory listing of your plugins folder, files and all. How do you fix it? Easy. Just upload an empty index.html into the wp-content/plugins folder and its all fixed.

(Via Deep Jive Interests.)

I’ve teamed up with Jim Kukral and Shawn Collins to form GeekCast.fm which will be a podcast and video show aggregator for our projects as well as select others.

I’ve been doing the daily 22 minute AffiliateFortuneCookies podcast which you can find there as well as Shawn and Lisa Picarille’s AffiliateThing and Jim Kukral’s Daily Flip vidcast and VideoNinjas podcast with Magnify.net’s Steve Rosenbaum.

We’re also doing a weekly flagship show called GeekCast Gang where we’ll be discussing various issues in online marketing, video, mobile, affiliate, search, etc. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Should be a fun venture! The first episode of GeekCast Gang is below. You can grab the feed and subscribe in iTunes or your podcast player of choice here.

http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P15a926455cc49bb2d23bf20cb2f30520Yl9wRVREYmB9&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap28
MP3 File

According to Mark Meckler at the Digital Moses Confidential, TheUseful has settled with the Florida Attorney General’s office for a cool million:

In a press release eerily similar to that issued by Azoogle upon its settlement and million dollar payment to the Florida Attorney General, The Useful / World Avenue USA has announced that the Florida Office of Attorney General has closed its investigation into the company’s activities and will be dismissing its lawsuit.

Watch the way you use the term “free” in Florida, folks.

If you are in the world of online marketing / content monetization / affiliate marketing, you’ve no doubt seen the dozens of posts covering the launch of pepperjamNETWORK.  It’s a major event for the online marketing world and the amount of coverage generated in the first 12 hours since launch has been impressive.

Randomly, I decided to check Techmeme to see if any of the pepperjamNETWORK coverage made it there.  Even though blogs with high PR ratings and thousands of readers and subscribers that have been on Techmeme numerous times (this blog, ReveNews, Shawn Collins’ AffiliateTip, VinnyLingham.com, etc) covered the release, none of them made it onto Techmeme.

Not to mention that it’s the day of Steve Jobs’ keynote at MacWorld, so many people in the tech space will be looking for a few glimpses of non-Apple news.

I’m not complaining about the echo chamber yada yada, but it is interesting to note that if and when TechCrunch or ReadWrite/Web covers the launch of pepperjamNETWORK, it will be on Techmeme immediately.

There really is no place for the geek marketer.

I guess it all goes back to the misconceptions of affiliate marketing that people outside our industry have.

The Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards have been announced on the Affiliate Summit Blog.

I’m honored to be among such esteemed people in this year’s Pinnacle Awards. Carsten and Shoemoney are two of my favorite affiliate bloggers and I am completely flabbergasted to be considered in their ranks.

Best Blogger

Carsten Cumbrowski
Sam Harrelson
Jeremy Schoemaker

The awards will be given at this year’s Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas in February. If you’re involved in affiliate marketing, you need to be there.

Affiliate Summit Blog

Ben Edelman has a new report and investigation of in install of “Sears Holdings Company” complete with his expected thoroughness and attention to detail:

Late last month, Benjamin Googins (a senior researcher in the Anti-Spyware unit at Computer Associates) critiqued a ComScore installation performed by Sears’ “Sears Holdings Community” (“My SHC Community” or “SHC”). After reviewing the installation sequence, Ben concluded that the installation offered “very little mention of software or tracking” and otherwise fell short of CA and industry standards. I agree.

I write today to add my own critique. I begin by presenting the entire installation sequence in screenshots and video. I then explain why the limited notice provided falls far short of the standards the FTC has established. Finally, I show that Sears’ claims of adequate notice are demonstrably false.

Squidoo strikes back against Google with an interesting front end for a Squidoo lens creator called SquidKnol:

We built a new front door that makes it easy for you to build a scholarly page, filled with details, facts and more on Squidoo. And of course it will be indexed all over the web…

Pretty smart (and funny at the same time) from Seth Godin and the Squidoo team if you ask me.  Should be fun to watch how much attention this brings back to Squidoo since the topic of Knols is hot conversation in the online tech and marketing world at the moment.

Seth’s Blog: For scholars who just can’t wait

My pal Marshall Kirkpatrick made a post on Read/WriteWeb concerning the fascinating new TweeterBoard site:

On Tweeterboard you’ll find not only a list of the top 100 most influential users on Twitter – you can also look up any of almost 2000 users and see who they are conversing with and get some idea how much influence they carry in the Twitter ecosystem. Only a small portion of Twitter users are being tracked so far – but if indexing can be automated (!) then this could become a very important service.

Tweetboard is fascinating but it’s inherently bad for the type of organic and fluid conversation that happens on Twitter everyday.

If Twitter is going to make it to the mainstream and really start pushing the envelope of personal content production by non-tech gods and goddesses, we’ve got to get over the silly notion of “rank” and “importance” that these types of things measure.

Why?

Because sites like Technorati and Techmeme (though utilitarian for some) have stunted (or at least perverted) the blogosphere by introducing concepts of ranking and opened the floodgates to spammer-and-gamer SEO’s and affiliates (those are adjectives for some, not for all) and created a class system of blogging that is not easily overcomed.

Let’s level the playing field with Twitter and not repeat the same mistakes that caused for the creation of A Lists, B Lists and Z Lists. Otherwise, Twitter and micro-blogging in general will suffer.

[Update] After I posted this, fellow Twitter user Mike Krigsman (someone I follow) and ZD Net blogger posted this:

@samharrelson Absolutely agree core value of Twitter is leveling the field. Diminishment of that attribute will limit it’s value. Think Digg

Exactly.

Interesting post (and discussion in the comments) from ComparisonEngine on Pepperjam’s shogging.com site:

In a search for Ugg boots, I found the following ad:

I thought I was clicking on a Shopping.com ad. Instead, I arrived at Shogging.com, which is owned by the Pepperjam Network.

Kris Jones has also posted about Brian’s ComparisonEngine post on the PepperJam blog . Should be fun to see how the comments and conversation play out and what people think of the PPC marketing strategy behind this (and to see how many affiliates or agencies are doing similar things).