It’s a good primer on the industry that points out reasons to add affiliate marketing to a marketing plan, hurdles for the industry, and affiliate marketing metrics to track.

Sixty-seven percent of U.S. Internet users seek the lowest priced items and 40 percent find coupons, according to Pew Internet and American Life Project’s July 2009 “The Internet and the Recession” study. With lower sales, longer purchase consideration periods, and smaller marketing budgets, what can a retailer do to beyond price cutting to drive sales? One cost-effective method is to add affiliate marketing to your marketing mix or enhance your current program.

Affiliate marketing can be a great way to extend your marketing efforts cost-effectively. (To better understand affiliates, check out this report.) Evidence of this is the recent Affiliate Summit East, where affiliates and retailers made real-world connections to solidify their online relationships. This year, the summit had an impressive 25 percent increase in attendance over last year.

Read the complete article at http://www.clickz.com/3634757.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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First off, the article didn’t include any perspective from an affiliate marketer, and the view of affiliate marketers was rather narrow and uninformed.

Affiliate marketing is the practice by which a Web retailer pays a commission to smaller sites that send it business. When bloggers recommend a book to their readers and then provide a link to the volume on, say, Amazon, they become affiliate marketers and thereby receive a cut of the sales–up to 15%.

Hover over one of these recommendation links, then look at the long URL at the bottom left of your browser. The seemingly random string of numbers and letters instructs Amazon’s computer, telling it to credit the appropriate account if a sale gets made.

It’s a win for all concerned. The Amazons of the world get customers without incurring marketing expenses; small Web sites can pick up some pocket change to help defray expenses. (In sleazier regions of the Web, like gambling and porn, the amounts offered for referred business are substantial. That’s why a large percentage of all spam e-mails are from aspiring affiliate marketers.)

I would imagine Amazon considers the affiliate commissions to be marketing expenses, but that’s not a big deal.

Rather, I take umbrage at the opinion that “a large percentage of all spam e-mails are from aspiring affiliate marketers” – if this is, indeed, true, then how about a sourced statistic?

And the description of affiliate marketing suggests that there is mere “pocket change” to be made. Maybe, if he bothered to speak to an affiliate or three, he would have a better sense on the earning potential, as well as the fact that big commissions are not only available in gambling and porn.

But I suppose I should not have expected a particularly enlightened and even-handed article, based on the opener…

Internet users don’t like paying for news or music. Why should they want to pay sales tax?

Again with the broad brush from Lee Gomes. I don’t pay for news online, because there are quality, free news sources online. But I do subscribe to two daily newspapers. And I have always paid for my music online.

Gomes even admits deep in the article that “Constitutional law holds that an online retailer such as Amazon can’t be required to collect sales tax in a state unless it has some sort of connection to the state, called a ‘nexus.’” In one of his rare citations, he refers to Scripto v. Carson, 362 U.S. 207 (1960).

He might want to also reference Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992).

Oh yeah, and Mr. Gomes – you are way, way off with your guesstimate (which should have been indicated as such, and not passed as a fact) on the size of the Amazon Affiliate Program when you say Amazon “has tens of thousands of them” in reference to their affiliates.

FYI – Amazon has hundreds of thousands of affiliates.

Read the complete article at http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0525/042-internet-taxation-software-digital-tools.html.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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The article below, by Craig Battles, Senior Product Manager at CJ, should help affiliate marketers put any concerns to rest.

Like many of us in the affiliate marketing industry, we at Commission Junction were wondering about the impact of the InPrivate Browsing feature in the newest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, currently in beta release. InPrivate Browsing will prevent your browser from retaining your browsing history, temporary Internet files, form data, usernames, passwords and — of most concern to advertisers with affiliate programs — cookies. We recently looked into the issue on behalf of our advertiser and publisher clients, which included speaking with representatives at Microsoft.

Microsoft is not the first to introduce this feature nor is it the only one: Apple pioneered the idea of private browsing three years ago with the Safari browser, Google’s new Chrome browser features an “Incognito” mode for private browsing, and Mozilla announced that the next version of its popular Firefox browser will also include a new private browsing feature.

You can already clear your browser cache with a mouse click in earlier versions of Internet Explorer, but it’s an all-or-nothing action. The benefit of InPrivate Browsing is that it allows you to temporarily suspend the automatic caching functions so that you leave no trace of your visits to sites you choose to keep private while leaving the rest of your browsing history intact.

The good news for advertisers is that private browsing is not the default setting for any of these browsers (the feature must be enabled by the user) and it does not block or delete cookies. Once you select InPrivate Browsing, Internet Explorer 8 will launch a new browser session and copy all existing cookie information into memory. Any new cookies acquired during the browsing session will not be blocked, but they also will not be stored when the session ends.

Situations in which you may choose to use InPrivate Browsing could include when you’re using someone else’s computer and don’t want that person to see your browsing history, when you want to buy a gift for a family member on a shared computer without ruining the surprise, when you’re at an Internet kiosk and don’t want the next person to know which Web site you visited, and when you’re tempted to look at things that could get you fired or kicked out of the house.

So how does private browsing affect Commission Junction’s capability to track consumers’ purchases via affiliate links? Not that much. Even after initiating InPrivate Browsing — as long as they have cookies enabled in their browsers — consumers can use an affiliate link to go to your site and, if they complete their transactions during the same session, the transactions will be tracked by Commission Junction. Even if the consumer clicks an affiliate link before beginning the InPrivate Browsing session, the transaction will still be tracked. However, if a consumer clicks an affiliate link during an InPrivate Browsing session and then ends the session before making a purchase, then any purchase that consumer makes during a return visit to your Web site without going directly through an affiliate link will not be tracked. In all likelihood, most consumers who are interested in using private browsing for making purchases (the surprise gift purchase, for example) will visit your site and make a purchase during the same session.

InPrivate Browsing will also prevent some cookies and other content from being placed by third-party Web sites. According to Microsoft, the sites that will get blocked will be determined based on the frequency that these sites attempt to place cookies. Commission Junction cookies are “first party” rather than “third party” because they are set when a consumer clicks an affiliate link that points the browser to Commission Junction domains whereupon the cookies are set and the browser is redirected to an advertiser’s site.

According to Microsoft: “Users are often not aware that some content, images, ads and analytics are being provided from third party websites or that these websites have the ability to potentially track their behavior across multiple websites,” further adding, “Because InPrivate Blocking is designed to watch for and block only third-party content that appears with a high frequency across sites you visit, no content is blocked until such levels are detected, nor is any such content blocked which is served directly by the site you are visiting.”

Microsoft confirmed during conversations with Commission Junction and ValueClick that its implementation of InPrivate Blocking will identify and block content from specific URLs rather than domains that appear across multiple Web sites. This should not pose a problem for Commission Junction’s publishers because each publisher will use a unique URL including his or her own Web site ID number. The risk of having links or tracking pixels blocked by Microsoft’s InPrivate Browsing is low for Commission Junction because it would be unlikely that a consumer would encounter tracking pixels with the “high frequency” that would be required to trigger such blocking.

In summary, InPrivate Browsing and other private browsing features will not automatically block all cookies and will continue to work with most solutions, like Commission Junction, that track cookies. And of the small minority of consumers who may choose to enable the private browsing feature before they shop, the majority will complete their transactions during the same session, which will allow the tracking of purchases through affiliate links.

Good to hear – thanks CJ. I actually just installed IE8 and I like it so far. There is a cool feature, similar to Google Chrome, where there are all sorts of auto-complete options from my favorites and history when I start typing a URL into the browser.

I haven’t played around with it too much, but it’s performed flawlessly on day one.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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Ravenwood Marketing isn’t an online retailer, but it’s partly responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales each week for many online merchants. Ravenwood is a so-called superaffiliate, a web site that pushes a high volume of qualified traffic to online merchants, accomplishing that through efforts that go well beyond simply pasting up links to merchant sites.

The article also touches on the subject of the economy, and I reflected on affiliate marketing back in 2000…

Collins notes that it isn’t the first time affiliate marketing has survived—thrived, in fact—in a down economy. Collins says online marketers turned increasingly to affiliate marketing in the downturn of the early 2000’s because spending was based on performance rather than impressions. “At the time, companies were folding but I didn’t see many affiliate managers being laid off,” he says. “And so far today, I’m not aware of any cutbacks or layoffs in any affiliate marketing programs, or programs being affected in any other way.”

Read the complete article at http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=27606.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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Amazon.com Inc. and Overstock.com Inc. each gave a strong message last month to New York State: You may need more tax revenue, but we won’t let you cut into our profit margins without a fight.

In the long-simmering battle between states and Internet merchants over the collection of sales tax, New York upped the ante in April when it amended its sales tax law to cover sales by out-of-state online retailers who get customers through New York-based affiliate web sites. The law targets retailers like Amazon and Overstock, which, because they maintain no physical presence in the state, have been exempt until now from sales tax responsibilities.

I’m glad to see more of the media picking up on this issue. Spread the word and speak out on forums, blogs, etc. about the affiliate tax and let your affiliate managers know what you think about it.

Read the complete article at http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=26575.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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Affiliate programs, in Internet time, have been around forever – dating back to the mid-1990s when I had to define the word ‘Internet’ in my stories. Back then, ordinary people could make a living off affiliate programs. And with a minimal number of consumers shopping online, online stores needed the extra promotion.

But the whole industry has changed, said Shawn Collins, founder of the semi-annual gathering Affiliate Summit.

“Everything was prehistoric. You couldn’t log in to see your sales. It was done by e-mail. There wasn’t all the linking options,” said Collins, who joined Amazon’s affiliate program in 1997. “Back then, it was pretty common for people to be satisfied to make enough money to cover their Internet bill, making $20 to $40 a month. Today, there’s a whole breed of super-affiliates who are making six figures or more.”

Read the complete article at http://www.ocregister.com/articles/affiliate-affiliates-deal-2035092-programs-many.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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In a world where bigger often is viewed as better, some online marketers have taken this approach to populating their affiliate marketing programs. If they know they’ll pay no commission fee to an affiliate unless a click-through from that affiliate’s site actually produces a sale, what’s the harm, the rationale goes, in signing up as many affiliates as possible?

The answer to that question isn’t as obvious as it may seem. Some experts say keeping an affiliate program wide open is a strategy that’s riskier than, and at the very least not as rewarding as, limiting and defining affiliates in a retailer’s program.

Read the complete article at http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=23602 for perspectives on both sides, including my own in favor of smaller affiliate programs.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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This issue touches on how offline advertising has a hidden goldmine of traffic and eager buyers; where to find this type of advertising; how to set up your offline campaign; and how to get print, radio or television advertising for far less than others are paying.

Another article covers how ezine advertising is effective, and which style ezine will get you not only visitors, but the visitors that are ready to buy.

“The Goodbye Page” will help you capitalize on your visitors’ impulse buying instinct as they try to leave your site. According to Affiliate Classroom, this technique will double your chances of making a sale, and it gives you another opportunity for an upsell.

Finally, there is a tip about a site that most people know about it, but apparently they are not using it. You can advertise for free on this site, which gets over 5 billion page views per month and ranks #34 among the most-visited websites in the world.

Check out the new issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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I’ve seen some merchants include affiliate offers on the main part of the site, which is certainly not going to make them popular with affiliates, however, I don’t see it as a taboo after the transaction.

After all, there is no threat in cannibalizing the affiliate referral at that point.

If it did become a point of contention, a resourceful merchant could always try working the affiliate IDs into their confirmation page links as sub-IDs.

Read the article at http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/476/Earn-Affiliate-Commissions/

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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OMMA’s Lynne Russo Whylly asked Kerri about the benefits of affiliate marketing, how the industry has evolved, challenges, best practices, and where affiliate marketing is headed five years from now.

Read the article, “Performance Anxiety: Affiliate Marketing Adds Value As Lead Generation Grows More Complex.”

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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