“if you focus on building critical mass, the advertisers just show up.” jason calacanis
Understanding Web Monetization is Essential to Tech Blogging
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.
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Mural: Johnny Cash stencil graffiti (via Franco Folini)
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Performics Network Interface Improvements and the Usability Question
Performics has released a series of upgrades and usability improvements to its reporting platform, ConnectCommerce this week.
Primarily, the updates focused on an improved links interface, advertiser profile interface, enhanced site description for publisher profiles and more accurate accounting reports.
Here’s a screen shot of the new links interface which is a drastic improvement over the old system. Instead of having to drill down layer by layer, the newest links from the network are shown by default and results can be narrowed by a series of available parameters.
The advertisers tab and interface is also improved in this version and allows for better sorting based on user preferences and categories of offers:
These categories act something like tags and allow for much more fluid and intuitive stat browsing:
As the current dust-up over affiliate network user interfaces has shown, there is a market demand for easier navigation, more options and less need to needlessly drill down for stats, banners or links that should be much easier to find.
At the end of the day, this is all about efficiency. The network that can provide the best offer and the best payout was always the winner in the past. However, that paradigm is slowly changing to include the network that has the best user experience and will continue to do so as networks assert their necessity of place in the market.
human league – (keep feeling) fascination (via merlin mann on twitter)
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
books and hoops
“once in germany, someone said nine”
Using Disqus for Comments Here at Cost Per News
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
Affiliate Manager Certification Course Vid from AffiliateClassroom
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