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Apple to Affiliates: Bite Me

July 1st, 2007 · Comments

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Ever since the initial announcement of the iPhone, I was anxious to promote it as an affiliate. With all of the hype, I figured I couldn’t miss making some affiliate cash off of it.

But I didn’t think of one potential hurdle - that Apple wouldn’t let me promote it.

I was checking daily for the past week or so for some creative to promote the iPhone. I figured they would have dozens of options. Text links, animated and static banners, etc.

Lots of affiliates were criticizing Apple, since their affiliate program only pays 1%. But I was sure the volume potential for the iPhone would render that issue meaningless.

I checked for one last time at noon EST on Friday, June 29. It was just six hours until the release of the iPhone. Still nothing.

So I wrote a note to the Apple affiliate program manager to ask if there would be any iPhone creative or direct links. No response to date.

The launch of the iPhone came and went. My Apple affiliate links pointed to the Apple Store homepage. I never pushed the offer.

I suppose we’ll see iPhone creative at some point, as the hype dies down and Apple isn’t getting all the organic traffic anymore. Count me as one of many who won’t be lining up to promote the iPhone for 1% commission when the early adopters have already snatched it up.

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Tags: Affiliate Opinions

Viewing 19 Comments

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    I am not approved to their new program at CJ yet so I can't get to the links of their data feed, but you can. I am almost sure that you can make a link to the iPhone based on a link to another product. Did you look at the links?

    For example, the item: "Refurbished iPod nano, 2GB - Black" (Page 5 in the product catalog) has the product ID: FA107LL/A

    The iPhone has the product ID: A41FD675

    Grab the Link to the "Refurbished iPod nano, 2GB - Black" and replace
    "FA107LL/A" or "FA107LL/A" (encoded) with "A41FD675".

    That should do the trick. Get a nice shot of the iPhone and off you go. The image use falls under fair use if you don't manipulate it too much (except resizing it).

    Apple did not state that affiliates are prohibited to advertise the iPhone (which would be ridicules) and I bet a lot of affiliates link to the Apple homepage instead when promoting the iPhone anyway, in the hope that interested buyers will find it on the Apple website themselves.
    • ^
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    the second "FA107LL/A" was meant to be FA107LL/A. I hope the "code" tag works, if not, the / replaced with % 2F without the space between the % and the 2F. It is the / URL encoded. Hope that makes sense.
    • ^
    • v
    nope, "pre" tag? Lets see: FA107LL/A
    • ^
    • v
    nope, okay, I give up :) so replace "/" with "% 2F" without the space hehe.
    • ^
    • v
    I am not approved to their new program at CJ yet so I can’t get to the links of their data feed, but you can. I am almost sure that you can make a link to the iPhone based on a link to another product. Did you look at the links?


    I don't have access to the data feed, and wouldn't know how to do anything with it if I did have access.

    The thing with that anyway - why should affiliates have to create manual workarounds to promote a company?
    • ^
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    I don’t have access to the data feed, and wouldn’t know how to do anything with it if I did have access.


    Of course you do, not to the feed in CSV format, but the product links. Just click on "Products" instead of "Links" in the CJ interface.

    The thing with that anyway - why should affiliates have to create manual workarounds to promote a company?


    Poor planning on the side of their program manager I guess. Don't worry, this is normal with the larger number of affiliate programs out there. It's the norm, not the exception (still).
    • ^
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    Here is a how-to link to a video. I hope YouTube will approve it within the next minutes. I can't show more than that, because as you can see in the video, I am not approved to their program yet.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlHxrMbhNnY
    • ^
    • v
    The compressed video size made it hard to read.
    You can get the original .avi file here

    http://www.cumbrowski.com/temp/cj-apple-product...
    • ^
    • v
    Why should affiliate managers consider workarounds to promote a specific product by a company?

    Because affiliate marketing is a partnership. The affiliate manager at Apple likely makes a fraction of what top affiliates do. Easy to get frustrated about the iPhone launch, but how many affiliate programs have you monitored to check the delta between product launch and promotion to the affiliate universe? Methinks none.

    Having run the affiliate program at a major credit card issuer for three years, I can tell you it's incredibly frustrating to be constrained by internal operations hurdles. I wanted to be able to deliver tools etc. that would help my affiliates make a ton of money, but there were a zillion ways that the operational infrastructure and corporate mindset at my company that were working against me.

    And you can bet that I made peanuts for the pleasure of being in that position.

    So try and put yourself in the shoes of the real live person that's trying to get the banners made and tracking set up for the iPhone.
    • ^
    • v
    How to get Apple's/CJ's attention:

    Rip Apple's iPhone info pages and strip their headers/footers.
    Drop those on a cheap .info domain.
    Bid on keywords like "Apple iPhone" and "iPhone Price"
    Set your adwords campaign to start at 6PM PST Friday night (6/29).

    Wait 50 minutes for a phone call. 'Cause that's as long as it took them to call me to tell me they weren't going to give me credit for any sales I sent to Apple's store front in spite of the $200 I blew on PPC.

    Tell me something - how are we supposed to market the apple iphone without using either of those words in keyword phrases? I'm not interested in bidding on "cell phone" or general terms like that to try to outbid anyone with a Cingular/ATT affiliate campaign getting $35 a signup when the iPhone is worth $6, tops.

    It's crap.
    • ^
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    Rival,

    If you would have read the affiliate agreement of apple, you would have noticed that they prohibit affiliates to bid on their trademark names on ANY pay per click search engine.

    That was the case before the iPhone, long before. You took the risk and hoped to get away with violating their policy and got caught. Sorry, but I am not feeling pity for you.
    • ^
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    If you would have read the affiliate agreement of apple...


    Hi Carsten -

    I think your suggestion of building an iPhone link may well run afoul of their terms, too.

    "3.2 A "Qualifying Link" is a link from Affiliate Publisher's site to Apple's site using one of the Required URLs or any other URL provided by Apple for use in Commission Junction..."

    Since they don't explicitly provide that iPhone link, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't honor referrals through such a link.
    • ^
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    Your are reading something in the terms that does not exist.
    There is no exclusion of products that can not be advertised by publishers. If they would do, they would have to state that somewhere and also exclude those items from the sales they report back to CJ.

    Do you honestly think that Apple considers it a violation of the terms and conditions, if a publisher has some technical knowledge to build a link to a page on the Apple website, that a) tracks commissions properly and b) was not provided specifically by Apple and publishers who advertise the item with a link to the Apple store homepage on the other hand are not in violation?

    I didn't see in their TOS any statement that says that the improvement of the conversion rate by the affiliate by doing something on its own and what the affiliate manager should have done for him is prohibited.

    CJ killed in 2002 the unique product links, remember? Affiliates can't see anymore, which product got the customer to the merchant website. The affiliate can only see that it was a product link.
    It's not that the affiliate has to do anything ruthless or unethical to accomplish the creation of a working link.

    Seriously Shawn, if Apple would do anything because of that, I would "go on a mission" as an affiliate and hope that the PR damage is big enough to stimulate some brain cells in the responsible people :).
    • ^
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    I had thought of promoting this too, but read some where that Google was removing any domains with "iphone" from their index. this may or may not be BS, not sure. I'm sure those who blogged about the iphone months ago and have adsense setup might have made ok money. I see people selling "iphone" gmail accounts on ebay for $20 a pop..

    But as far as affiliate stuff goes, not easy. Even Amazon doesnt have the iPhone listed for sale.

    It wouldn't surprise me though to find Google an Apple in bed together...knocking the "little guy" affiliates out of the game.
    • ^
    • v
    Do you honestly think that Apple considers it a violation of the terms and conditions, if a publisher has some technical knowledge to build a link to a page on the Apple website, that a) tracks commissions properly and b) was not provided specifically by Apple and publishers who advertise the item with a link to the Apple store homepage on the other hand are not in violation?


    It's speculation, since they didn't respond to me, but I think they might.

    I don't think it was a mistake that there is no direct link available to affiliates for the iPhone.

    I think it was a deliberate action to withhold that direct link from affiliates.
    • ^
    • v
    I was waiting for all the iPhone creative too, nada. But let's not forget about something I really don't see being talked about, iPhone accessories. Buy.com had creative for that before the launch (nice ones), Amazon had them (iphone accessories) before the launch, probably other merchants as well.
    • ^
    • v
    So try and put yourself in the shoes of the real live person that’s trying to get the banners made and tracking set up for the iPhone.


    Having managed affiliate programs consistently since the 90's, I'm pretty well acquainted with the process for getting creative up for time-sensitive offers.

    I don't think it was the affiliate manager choosing not to put it out there - I think Apple didn't want affiliates to promote it now, because it's getting lots of publicity.

    When the publicity dies down (already on Saturday there were reports of no waits in NYC to buy an iPhone in stores), I'm sure the creative will materialize.
    • ^
    • v
    I think it was a deliberate action to withhold that direct link from affiliates.


    That is a completely different story. That would be a strategic decision (which affiliates might not like, but that is irrelevant).

    This does not make it a violation of anything, if an affiliate figures out a way to link to it anyway, without using any questionable methods (e.g. hidden redirect to apple homepage to set the cookie and parallel redirect to the product page using frames or iframes.

    If what you say would be true, also the replacement of a low quality image that was provided through CJ with a better quality image of the same item from their media kit would be a violation.

    I thought we are talking about affiliate marketing here were the affiliate is supposed to help the merchant to promote his products and services. It's not a field experiment where the merchant can test how bad his creatives and tools can be to reduce conversion to Nil.

    If is absurd to call it a violation, if a partner increases performance by using perfectly legal and ethical marketing and advertising techniques without using any questionable affiliate tactics (cookiecutting, typosquating, forced click) or violates a direct and clear rule of the terms of service agreement e.g. trademark bidding in PPC. This is especially true if the affiliate uses known and proven methods to increase conversion to compensate for shortcomings on the merchants side.

    If you don't want your affiliates sell something you offer (which can be perfectly understandable), don't pay commission for any sales of that item (regardless if the affiliate referred the customer to the homepage, the item itself or any other item) and make your affiliates aware of the fact that you not pay commission on all products and what those products are. That is what you have commission structures for.
    • ^
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    Voila, your iPhone Link, It should track properly and it even tells their logging system that you targeted the iPhone. So their web analytics is not getting skewed.

    If they don't pay commission, I would suggest them to state somewhere that they don't pay commission on certain products.

    If the argument is that the link was not provided by them (a link that removes one click out of the conversion funnel of a customer), then I would ditch them. A merchant who does not want that his affiliates convert the same traffic better without doing anything questionable (trademark bidding, cookie cutting etc) is not a partner and somebody who disguises his actual intend for having an affiliate program = free (or cheap) exposure without the need to pay CPM.


    http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-[insertPID]-1047...

    Note: Replace [insertPID] with the CJ PID of your site where you want to advertise the iPhone.
 

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