“I am involved with Affiliate Marketing, and know quite a bit about the industry.”

“In my position, one of the departments that reports to me is Marketing.”

? So you don’t really know it since you have somebody else reporting to you about it, you’re not involved in the day to day.

“In a best case scenario, it is barely a neccesary evil”

Guess who said the same exact thing?

http://www.revenews.com/jeffmolander/archives/001708.html

So it’s either:

A. You’re Jeff and your attitude isn’t with the knowledgeable majority in this industry and it’s come to having to make up aliases to find someone that shares the same views or

B. You are in fact somebody else and : “He has actually met with my group” I can see where the attitude came from. Reference my first post in response to what you said:

“I think that the actual truth is that affiliate marketing (at least as we know it) is on its last legs.”

So you or anybody else with that attitude can say it all day long but when the people who actually buy it, smarten up, they’ll remember where it came from.

Unlike the clown duo of Carla and Johnny Boy. The knowledgable people in the industry like to make references to Chicken Little, Justin Timberlake, 98 Degrees. I would never put Nick Lachey in the same sentence as Affiliate Marketing. Nick is here to stay, AM will not have the longevity of a Mr. Lachey.

In my position, one of the departments that reports to me is Marketing. And as Affiliate Marketing is one that we are involved in, a try to keep up-to-date with the latest trends. As well, in my dealing I have met with Jeff. He has actually met with my group, and we had dinner at his beach house. It was a lot if fun, and the food was great.

What most people miss and or never even think of are the methods available to affiliate marketers. All it takes is one good relationship with a merchant and a bundle plan can be extremely lucrative.

Before some of you step up to the platform to scream (bundle) a bundle can be as simple as adding a flyer with your special code to an existing shipment.

You get a bundle all the time.
You open this box of goodies you just bought and here is a flyer about some other great junk you may want to buy…. YA its AFFILIATE MARKETING.

I prefer to leave off all the other advantageous ways affiliate marketing is profitable, but if you’re only looking at HTML and/or a BLOG as an option fro affiliate marketing then you need a wake up call.

Thankfully the knowledgeable people in this industry don’t share the Chicken Little views.

What do you do in the industry?

> “That is not necessary. I have worked with Jeff, and he is excellent. I am sure you do not have his qualifications.”

Not sure how belonging to a bunch of associations unrelated to affiliate marketing establishes somebody as somebody to be reckoned with in affiliate marketing?

That is not necessary. I have worked with Jeff, and he is excellent. I am sure you do not have his qualifications. Did you know that Molander served as Internet Program Director for the American Marketing Association/Chicago and is an active member of the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org, the Direct Marketing Association and the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association.

Yeah, that is what I thought Johnny Boy!

Comparing Online Marketing to a 90′s boy band is interesting, but not accurate. I am sure Cowls LOVES Cher, Madonna and Search Engine Marketing!!!! So 1980′s!

I knew Nick Lachey, and trust me, you are no Nick Lachey.

I can’t take anybody who posts that seriously. It’s like an audition for a Jeff Molander podcast. Get on over to Abestweb.

SEO — Very few affiliate sites have a hope of getting much traffic through SEO because of authority. This is becoming more and more the case. SEs will continue to evolve so that the main site is ranked above affiliates (if they are ranked at all). The only affiliate sites that have a hope of ranking are going to be very heavy on information (not just a few articles–real useful information), and that is a big job outside the scope of part-time affiliates.

I think this depends on how you define an “affiliate site”. Are you counting social networks, comparison shopping, rewards, coupons, etc. How about video, which became a whole lot more in play with Universal Search. And mobile sites when people search from their phones?

CPC SEs — More and more affiliate programs are outlawing CPC for the easy sales (trademarks, etc), and when allowed, the tight margins in affiliate marketing do not justify paying the required bids to gain traffic. At Vitabase, we have to sit on the sidelines in most CPC situations because it is not profitable, and for our affiliates, it is more so since their margins are not as good as ours.

Bear in mind that margins vary for different verticals. In general, only specific types of affiliates work well for each vertical.

Even though Amazon had the first big affiliate program, it still accounts for a small percentage of their sales.

What is your basis for this statement?