Changes with Adwords

Google is rolling out changes to AdWords by week’s end. There will now be a column that will rank each keyword/ad and how it is performing on a three part scale, “Poor”, “OK”, and “Great”. This will help clarify why some ads have astronomical bids and some are just normal. In the coming weeks there will also be an algorithm change that will give advertisers the benefit of the doubt where little keyword data is available. Rather than jacking the bids through the roof, Google will allow a lower bid price until more data and performance is established.

Check out more coverage at Search Engine Land, and the official post from Google.

Affiliate Merchant Relationships

There is an interesting discussion going on over at ABestWeb on the Oreck forum. Paul Schroader, a founding member here at Super Affiliate Marketing is getting raked over the coals for requesting contact information from affiliates. The question boils down to this: do you let affiliates into a program after just reviewing their sites? Or should you do as Paul does and require updated contact information before allowing a publisher into your program? Paul asked me for my opinion on the issue and I chimed in:

…This is an interesting discussion and will be more and more relevant as this industry matures. This really is a double edged sword. Do you approve affiliates even despite not having current (or verified) contact information? (I know that some of us have it listed on the websites in our profiles, but there are many that don’t update that contact info or don’t have contact info listed at all). If you don’t approve these affiliates, how many super affiliates will you miss out on?

When I got into the business six years ago, I took the approach to stay anonymous. No contact info on my websites, register for all forums under a nickname rather than my own name etc., I found myself making a decent full-time living doing a cross between affiliate marketing and search marketing (both SEO/SEM). The turning point for me personally was reaching out to programs and affiliate managers to understand their program, their goals and putting my name out there.

So what you didn’t get approved. I’m a 5 bar-earner in CJ a CJ Performer etc, etc, and I get rejected on programs all the time or have applications stuck in pending status. Be proactive, e-mail the program. If there is no contact info listed for them in CJ send them an e-mail through the CJ interface. Find out why you haven’t been approved. Offer to call them to find out more about their program. Although counter intuitive to some, there are affiliate managers who are weeding out affiliates by seeing who will put forth the extra effort.

There really is a paradigm shift toward less affiliates and higher performers–especially for major brands. I know that almost all of you can come up with a couple (several) examples where that isn’t the case, but as you rub shoulders with affiliate managers at Affiliate Summit, CJU, etc you’ll find many are starting to take this approach. So for those of you who are content to make affiliate managers “jump through hoops” for you, beware, your days of dominance may be numbered.

As the industry matures we will see more and more requirements from programs so that this will be seen as a more legitimate business. I have one program in my portfolio that I would never have landed if I wasn’t willing to jump a flight and meet the affiliate manager in person. Now this program is one of my top 3 programs that I promote…

I really believe that this discussion will continue to be relevant for a long time.  Merchants are finding out that their are a lot of affiliates that seem innocent enough on the surface only to find out that they are doing very sneaky things behind a merchant’s back.  You know what I’m talking about, geo-targeting ads in locations where the affiliate manager won’t notice, day-parting ads so they show during hours the affiliate manager won’t notice.  Just to name a few.  So rather than sacrifice your brand, have to worry about a extra policing of the program, why not only accept affiliates that are willing to provide this information?

What say you?

Congratulations to incuBeta

Congrats to Vinny Lingham and crew at incuBeta for securing $3.4 million in venture capital from Mark Shuttleworth’s HBD. The press release states that the investment will help the company expand its presence in the U.S. and U.K. and fund the opening of offices in Silicon Valley. It is great to see investment of this scale in the industry. Money has been flowing into the affiliate networks for a while, but its nice to see the recognition of an affiliate in terms of investment dollars. Good luck to all involved.

We Have a Logo

And the winner is:

[added] Follow up to “Choosing a Logo Part 2” and “Choosing a Logo” [/added]

Behavior Marketing

Recently I have been working with a few companies that have been using behavior marketing, so far I have had a good experience. I was wondering if anyone has any feedback?

Post Affiliate Summit-Jan 2007

This last weekend was the Affiliate Summit down in Las Vegas, for anyone who has not been there it’s a great event. Many of the top vendors, merchants, and affiliates are walking the halls.  If you make one good contact or get one great idea, the entire trip has paid for it self. Of all the networking and material you learn, the most important thing from any conference is what you do right when you get back. You come back with a million ideas and half a dozen directions to go in, but if you never put anything into action then it was all a waste of time. Action is needed, even if you have no idea of how your going to get from point A to Z, all you need to do is get from A to B, C will follow.

Choosing a Logo Part 2

We are still in the process of choosing a logo. Logoworks has been very good to work with and they’ve come back with these revisions:

Here is the starting point they worked off of:

Revision #1

Revision #2

Revision #3

Revision #4

Revision #5

Revision #6

So what do you think?  Improvement over the last ones? Which one is your favorites?  What type of changes if any would you make to your favorite logo?

Affiliate Summit 2007 Wrap Up

Affiliate Summit played to a sold out audience of over 2,000 people. It was a great success. Congrats to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for putting on a great event. I think Wynn Las Vegas did a fantastic job in a major sponsorship roll with the party at the Tryst and at the Icebreakers networking event. Great job Karen, Katie, and others that helped out. I didn’t attend as many classes as I would have liked, but the networking was great. If you missed the one in Vegas, you can still catch the event in Miami which I’m sure will be a equally valuable.

It was interesting hearing the different sides of the debates in a lot of the classes. I wish Michael Jacobs would have continued debating Vinny Lingham in the “Parasites or Partners” track on Tuesday. I enjoyed the presentation but I believe that Michael’s logic regarding affiliate search partners was (is) deeply flawed. I think a healthy debate was taking shape that would have benefited merchants and affiliates alike and that the discussion was ended prematurely.

I’ve uploaded a few pics of the event to my Flickr account for anybody that wants to take a peek.

LiNkBaItInG - aNyThInG tO gEt AtTeNtIoN

My entry into the online marketing game began as an affiliate playing around with natural / organic search. Anyone who has attempted optimizing a website for the search engines will quickly tell you that 90% of the game is link building. There are lots of ways to obtain links but the engines (particularily Google) are becoming more sophisticated each year in terms of what is a “true” link versus a manipulated link (bought etc.). Ultimately, the best link building strategy is to create loads of original, quality content that others will WANT to link to. As blogs have become more widespread a new link building strategy has become more and more common - linkbaiting. Basically link baiting is the idea of writing something so outrageous, controversial, funny or attention grabbing that people can’t help but link to it. Search Eninge Land refers to linkbaiting as “viral, linkable content designed to attract thousands of links. ” Even Matt Cutts over at Google (who typically frowns on any attempt to manipulate search engine rankings) admits that link baiting can be “something interesting enough to catch people’s attention, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. “

Affiliate Summit Las Vegas

I arrived late last night in Las Vegas for the Affiliate Summit conference. I will be meeting up with affiliates looking to push our payday loan offer (Cash Central) as well as interviewing a couple of people for an seo position with Cash Central. If you would like to discuss promoting our offer or are interested in interviewing for the seo position please give me a call on my cell phone, 801-636-9592. (Ryan Williams)