One thing I really hate about affiliate marketing is negotiating deals. Firstly I don’t have time to go through the often laborious and painful courtship ritual of what you want versus what we want before coming out at some mutually beneficial (or not) commission level that gives a merchant carte blanche to annoy us every five minutes if all doesn’t go to plan. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I hate having to do the courtship ritual.

Hybrids, tenancy agreements, CPAs, CPRs, mixed up with “can we have a link here and one there”, and “ooh perhaps that one” and “oh can we be in the newsletter”. No thanks! Now I know this is a bit of a business failing, which is perhaps why I like affiliate marketing. Pick up link, do work and get commission. If we want to push more we can, if we don’t we don’t have to!

I find with hybrids or tenancies you’re opening up yourself to not offering value for money (perhaps your SEO drops that month, or the take up for the merchant isn’t there), which whilst good for a short term money grab, perhaps doesn’t do long term partnerships the world of good. This could be a bad approach as some companies just want to throw money at tenancy as their budget allows it and they don’t care about blowing the loot. Perhaps in those cases it’s better to bite the bullet and take the cash!

However, the long shot is I can’t stand negotiating deals which means any company emailing us saying “how much is tenancy” or “this” or “that” is often met with a degree of “oh heck” (or words to that effect). Much better is someone who lays their cards on the table and makes us an offer.

For example, recently, one merchant offered us a challenge to reach a certain level by the end of the month. It was doable with a bit of effort and so the merchant got extra promotion, we got extra commission and a nice (fair) bonus to boot as the challenge was met. No negotiations, no messing about, no time wasting… fantastic!

Even better is being awarded a bonus at the end of the month for producing results and making an effort without even being asked! This happened to us recently and was a massive surprise and totally appreciated (in fact I’d say it was the first time it’s ever happened in over 10 years of AM). It may well be that it’s a back handed way of keeping us “on board”, but it works!

The result is that the merchant in question now gets extra promotion this month, regardless of whether there’s a bonus given at the end of March. We feel appreciated and once again there’s no need for time wasting deal negotiations.

Overall the point of this blog is that there’s more than one way to approach an affiliate and to incentivise them to do a bit more for you as a merchant. If you ask “what do you want” and don’t get anywhere, then why not try a “we can offer you” approach or perhaps even consider rewarding effort from the previous month.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat and there’s more than one way to encourage an affiliate to promote you… not all of us have time (or desire or skill set or confidence) to try and negotiate something that can quite easily be done and dusted in just one email.

March 1st 2010 proved to be a momentous day in affiliate marketing. Not only did it signal the launch of the all new Affiliate4U it also brought news of Affiliate Window’s acquisition of Buy.at. It also saw the announcement that former Tradedoubler IPD Andreas Andreou has joined the board of Quidco. All very exciting events – but what does it all mean for the bedroom affiliate?

The acquisition of Buy.at by Affiliate Window is quite intriguing. Matt Bailey has done a nice piece on “what’s in it for Awin?” whilst Robin Moore from Coast Digital examines the advantages and disadvantages of an affiliate network monopoly. My first thoughts on the news was that it was a bit like Man United signing Michael Owen.

Man United didn’t really need Owen, but they knew that with a bit of love he could become effective and potentially match winning again as long as he stayed free from injury. Besides it’s far better to have Owen at Old Trafford than allow a rival to get him and therefore become a tougher proposition!

So Buy.at are a bit like Michael Owen. They were once young and great, but lost their way due to a move not working out and are now hoping to get back in the big time with an established and successful team.

This means Affiliate Window are Manchester United, except they had to pay $17million for their “Michael Owen” whereas Man United got their’s for free. Mind you, Awin probably have a lot less debt and don’t have half their supporters in red and the rest dressed up like Norwich City.

Admittedly, the football analogy goes to pot some what as the new “Affiliate Window.at” are now singularly dominant in UK affiliate marketing network terms. My biggest concern is that a “super network” may soon in the future only want “super affiliates” or at least introduce tougher criteria to becoming an affiliate.

The latter is probably more likely as new affiliates are important to keep things moving forward and as we’ve seen in the past, sometimes networks and super affiliates fall out.

Which neatly brings us to Quidco.

They’ve appointed Andreas Andreou (ex-Tradedoubler) to their board according to a report on the new look Affiliates4u. That’s not that exciting in the grand scheme of things (sorry Andreas) but it does highlight the growing development of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is becoming less and less about bedrooms and more about boardrooms. That’s quite scary in many ways, as does it mean that to reach the upper echelons of internet business you need to bring in Dragon’s Den type assistance? Quite possibly…? Mind you it can’t hurt your business too much if your ongoing popularity stems from money saving and hot deal type sites, regardless of how many suits you employ.

Getting more than a new suit though is Affiliate4U. It’s had a full makeover and the first impressions are good. It’s faster, cleaner and the Existem guys have cleverly placed themselves as a Digital Marketing news channel. It’s perhaps yet another sign of a maturing industry and that move from bedroom to boardroom.

The good news is that the forum remains in place, meaning that affiliates from all levels have a platform to discuss and comment about affiliate marketing. So A4U is where old school AM and new AM collide! This makes their role in the future of affiliate marketing all the more important and pivotal.

On one hand they need to embrace the new world of super networks and big boardroom affiliates but without losing the voices and opinions of the rest of the people involved in the industry. I think the new look and design is set up to do that!

Most certainly there are interesting times ahead in affiliate marketing.

Many content affiliates already lament the potential loss of commission to cashback sites and voucher codes, but surprisingly the threat of the rebate catcher seems to have bypassed many! This begs the question should we be concerned?

A rebate catcher is a piece of software or toolbar that activates when a user (who’s legitimately downloaded it) arrives on a merchant site. They’re told about a possible discount code or reminded to get cashback. At the moment they’re not that widespread, but with the arrival of this post at A4U regarding Tradedoubler’s codes of conduct, could this mean we’re about to see more of them?

Whilst it’s nice to see a code of conduct in place before the effect (rather than afterwards as is in the case of click to reveal), there are some serious points missing and not mentioned.

For example would the toolbar activate for a merchant who currently doesn’t have a voucher code? Call me cynical but I’d not put it past an affiliate to show a “does XYZ merchant have a code, click here” via their toolbar or rebate catcher even if the merchant doesn’t have a valid code.

Also when Greasypalm launched their rebate catcher I’m pretty sure there was a “check to see if there was an affiliate cookie live”. If there was nothing popped up. Now I might be wrong, but it was at least a fair way to do things.

As I see it, if you’re a content affiliate who’s remembered to include all the voucher codes and latest offers etc in your well crafted promotions, you could still lose out when your visitor clicks your link. If they have one of these rebate catchers or toolbars up will pop a reminder, they then could go off and pick up another cookie from the usual suspects.

They get the commission, you get nowt!

Hopefully there are real rules in place within the rebate catcher/toolbar code of conduct, or if they’re not they get put in place now! Not next year.. now! And if they’re not in place now I’d go as far as to suggest all toolbars/rebate catchers are banned until all issues are analysed thoroughly.

Interestingly rebate catchers were mentioned on this blog back in November 2008 when the IAB unveiled voucher codes best practice. It concerns me that we now have best practice for what in my opinion is nothing more than legitimised adware designed to benefit the big guys, yet the debate has been fairly mute.

If nothing else this blog will get affiliates, merchants and networks at least thinking about the impact toolbars/rebate catchers will have on the industry – and make sure the loopholes and ways to cheat are nullified from the off.

One of the things I’ve found with affiliate marketing of late is that it all seems so much faster. Blog this, tweet that, email the other! The days of leisurely adding content and then having a week before the next email from a network have gone forever. So, when new tools are released by networks they have to be usable from the off… I don’t want to be messing about with APIs, or spending time writing code, especially as we have a system in place to use feeds already.

I’m more interested when content creative is released by a network. If it’s something I can use straight away, perhaps around our own written content, then that’s infinitely better than any techno techno techno stuff that gets churned out by networks. Yes we can do the API coding if needed but there just isn’t enough hours in the day to do everything.

The new creative from DGM utilises Google Maps and are called DGM Travelmaps. They’ve taken all the locations of their travel merchants hotels and holiday parks and stuck them on a map. Click on a locality and you get a description and affiliate link to the merchant site. Pretty cool!

A quick example is shown below.

I say a quick example as all I’ve done is resize one of the options from the creative suite. When I first looked at DGM Travelmaps admittedly my heart sank as all sizes with 600×800. For some reasons all networks seem to provide content units that are infinitely bigger than most websites. However, there’s good news. DGM allow you to resize the units to fit your page. Good work.

But it gets better. By playing around with the settings you can zoom and focus onto the map to highlight particular areas you want to show to your visitors. There’s an explanation on the DGM interface how it all works.

There are some minor niggles! For example, I’d like to be able to remove the legend as on a resize it kind of overpowers plus an option to not include a merchant would be cool. Not being too demanding, I’d also love to be able to include the code via PHP rather than an iframe, but these options could possible be included in a future release?

Travel affiliates perhaps may have their own in house versions of this kind of creative and include feeds from other networks, however for other affiliates this kind of creative is a useful additional extra when perhaps writing about a local region or promoting a special offer from one of the travel merchants included.

DGM Travelmaps is pretty much a usable straight out of the box solution and more importantly it’s functional. Even better it isn’t all API techno trousers and therefore doesn’t take up valuable time to implement.

Culling inactive or even ineffective affiliates is back in the spotlight this week thanks to Ann Summers on Tradedoubler and an excellent discussion over on Affiliates4U. All affiliates who make one sale during February will be invited to remain on their program, whilst all others will be told adieu unless they can satisfy those in charge that there’s potential to do business in the future.

Apparently this clean up will allow them “to look after you better and really manage the relationships the way they would like to”. My general feelings on this kind of activity has already appeared here on OLD – Purge Inactivity To Get The Best From Your Affiliates!, and to be brutal those feelings haven’t changed. I think this kind of thing does more harm than good.

Look after us better?

For us the vast majority of affiliate managers look after us simply by sending us an email once a week/fortnight/month/year. That’s it. Not that I’m complaining, I don’t want 100s of AMs contacting me all day and every day. So with that in mind am I a drain on their resources? No!

Let’s assume there are several other affiliates paddling along in the same boat, all receiving the same standard email each week, that will go out to unculled affiliates. How is removing them going to save anyone any extra time or facilitate better relationships? It’s not!

Ok, perhaps it’s fair to remove affiliates who haven’t logged in to their affiliate account in years or who haven’t done a click ever or whatever other stat that can be dragged out of the management interface to show total inactivity (you AM guys and girls do have access to these kind of stats, yes? And you contact those specific affiliates without annoying everyone, yes? If not, why?)

And yes, there’s an option to plead our case to the merchant when these things happen, and fair enough most are pretty understanding. However, in my opinion this culling process has a real negative effect on affiliates. Including those who aren’t effected. Plus the time and energy devoted to kicking people out would be better used cajoling them to make an effort instead.

So why remove those who can’t perform or satisfy at the moment (there’s some irony here that we’re talking about Ann Summers) but who perhaps are promoting you, developing sites or are just happy to get on with things regardless and do not impede on their affiliate manager’s time.

I guess it could be cost (i.e. merchants pay networks by click or banner show) or that the tools to manage affiliates by groups aren’t available. I know that Paid on Results have such a facility, meaning you can group up your top affiliates, inactives, and others accordingly – and assume that other networks offer such tools?

However, one reason, and this seems to be cropping up more (Will Our Conversion Rate Ruin Your Affiliate Program), in my opinion is that affiliates who don’t conform with high clicks/no sales or high banner shows/no sales make a mess of statistics like conversion rate, EPC and what have you.

Perhaps I’m biased here as an affiliate and also as an affiliate who actually doesn’t give two hoots about statistics. One figure matters to me and that’s the one after the £ sign! I don’t care if I make one sale after 10 clicks, or 10,000 clicks simply because I’m not paying for traffic.

I’m working within the ts&cs of the program and as I’ve posted on A4U already I’ve yet to see one program that says “we will remove you if you make a mess of our stats, conversion rate, or any other number thing to make us look bad”. It’s me who’s suffering because of low conversion as it means I make less cash so why is it a big deal to the merchant?

I’m getting more and more concerned that merchants, agencies and AMs are getting more driven by statistics, but perhaps not in the right direction… and for an affiliate who really doesn’t care about EPC etc it’s a major worry that in the long term we’ll not be able to include merchants on our sites.

Personally I’d rather see an email from a merchant, worried about lack of activity or conversion, incentivising and encouraging me to promote them, not trot out lines like looking after me better when the reality is we’ll still be getting the standard network email a week anyway.

Finally, it’s worth noting that if Ann Summers do cull you, then you can always promote LoveHoney instead. You may still not get any sales, but LoveHoney do offer 16% commission compared to 10% with Ann Summers (which to be fair is a lot more generous than I expected).