Michael Abolafia's Affiliate Marketing Blog

DoubleClick For Sale - Part 2

According to a recent article it looks like Google, Yahoo and AOL have joined Microsoft as interested parties to purchase DoubleClick.  As i mentioned in a previous blog entry, the affiliate network Performics would be a part of this sale.  Microsoft, Google and Yahoo would have the potential to greatly change the affiliate space.

Many people have come out and said that the new Google CPA network would be the end of affiliate marketing.  I do not believe that to be true at all.  Could it take a small cut out of traditional Affiliate Marketing?  Maybe.  However, to me affiliate marketing is about relationships and matching offerings to the needs of a marketing partner.  This could be in the form of interactive banners, data feeds, search banners, etc.  Until Google could offer these types of customizability and relationships their offerings will not have a big negative impact on the Affiliate Marketing space.  But could the purchase of DoubleClick provide them with this opportunity?

Choosing The Right Products

“Your program doesn’t convert!  I have sent you 50 clicks and haven’t had a sale”.  I think every Affiliate Manager, including ones managing top converting programs has received this email many time from frustrated newbie affiliates.

50 click, 100 click, and even a few hundred is not always enough to test the conversion of an affiliate program.  I urge every affiliate to know their own site and be willing to work with an affiliate manager to promote the best products for their site.

With traffic being as valuable as it is today it is more important than ever to be providing the best possible product match for your sites audience.  It is an Affiliate Manager’s job to know as much as possible about the products that they are promoting.  Sometimes it is surprising to the general public which products match a certain demographic.

For example, lets say that you have one site that is primarily visited by woman and another by men.  In each site you have a cell phone section.  Personally, I would put the cute flip phones on the site for the women and PDA’s on the site for men.  To my surprise in a survey done by the cell phone company Mphone.net they found that men and women purchased very similarly.  For example, of 114 razor sales, 57 were made by men and 57 by females. They found that the biggest difference in purchasing between men and women was phone color. 

Click Here to read more about the survey.

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Offline Strategies for Affiliate Marketers

As promised yesterday I wanted to discuss some ways to integrate some offline marketing ideas for affiliate marketing. Below are just some of the ways that this could be done.

1. Colleges / Universities – Although the majority of college students are strapped for cash they do spend big on certain items. Two such items are school supplies/textbooks and licensed gear for their school. Marketers could post pamphlets or flyers around campus. These flyers would either list a coupon code to be used on the merchant site or a link to a landing page built by an Affiliate. With the NCAA tournament coming up soon it is a great time to use this technique. I do not think it would be too hard to find a college student willing to take a couple hours to plaster his/her campus with flyers for $50.

2. Classified Ads – This following technique has been used forever. Place an ad in the classifieds promoting information or a product. If 1 ad makes you $100 place it in 30 similar newspapers or magazines and make $3,000. An example that could be used would be a small business package that provides everything a small business would need to get started at a discount price. Marketers could provide information about loans, business credit cards, telephone systems, office supplies, fax services, business card service. It is important to be choose publications that are targeted to your products audience

3. Summer Camps – There are over 10,000 “sleep-over” or “sleep away” summer camps catering to over 5 million campers. This is a huge market. Many parents send their kids candy, popcorn, snacks, sporting supplies and nick knacks through out the summer. Affiliates could work with their local summer camps, camp related websites or businesses to provide coupons or ideas for gifts to send their children.

4. Fundraising coupon sheets / Stores – There are endless amounts of organizations who are active in fundraising.  As an affiliate why not reach out to your top 10 merchants for exclusive coupons. Coupon sheets could be created and sold or provided with other items that are being sold for the fundraiser. These sheets would cost next to nothing to create significant income. I realize that there are quite a few websites that provide a percent of sale to your charity of choice. However, there is no reason why this could not also be done on a smaller scale for a charity or organization that you are active with. This same type of coupon sheet could be provided to local businesses to offer to their customers at the time of purchase.

These are just some of the endless amounts of ways to integrate offline strategies into affiliate marketing. Since Affiliate Marketing is all about relationships many of these techniques rely on how closely an affiliate manager is willing to work with their partners. Providing custom codes and tracking based on codes is extra work that an Affiliate Manager would need to be willing to do to make this work. I encourage affiliates and AM’s to be creative in their marketing to think outside of what 99% of what affiliate partners are doing.

 

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Crying for Technology

A few days ago I watched a piece on good morning America where they took away a blackberry, cell phone and email from the managing editor of Forbes. After a couple days he was crying like a baby. I have included the video below for your viewing pleasure.

A day after watching this video and laughing at this poor guy my personal email address from my ISP stopped working. I called my Internet Company and they informed me that it would take up to 72 hours to have it fixed. It has only been 48 hours since it went down and I am taking it harder then expected. This is the account that I use for anything and everything not related to work. This includes emails with friends, newsgroups, newsletters, online banking, etc. I was also told that anything sent in the 72-hour period will not be received and cannot be recovered. Not having this email address up and running is making me feel on edge and worried. I realize that this is not the end of the world. However, I am surprised that it affected me the way that it is.

Between my email going down and watching the Forbes editor weep I started pondering about how much we rely on technology. It got me thinking about ways to integrate offline marketing into affiliate marketing. In my next blog entry I will address some of these ideas.

Search Engines Predict Oscar Winners

Yesterday Wordtracker released search results of the films and actors up for Oscar awards tonight.

I am curious to see how accurately the search results predict the winners. I do realize that winners are chosen by the academy.  However, I see no better way to measure online popularity and I am very interested in seeing how closely this matches the actual results.

Wordtracker Chief Technical Officer Mike Mindel said, “Our figures give a measure of the internet buzz around each nomination. That might well be something that the members of the academy react to, even subconsciously.” “So even if our top scorers don’t lift the top prizes, at least they will know that they’re top as far as internet searchers go.”

Click HERE to read the Wordtracker blog for more information.

Below are the winners based on Word Tracker’s results:

Actor in a leading role
Will Smith 

Actor in a support role
Eddie Murphy 
Mark Wahlberg  (extremely close)

Actress in a leading role
Penelope Cruz 

Actress in a support role
Jennifer Hudson 

Best picture
Little Miss Sunshine

 

Upfront Affiliate Communication

Lately, I received a handful emails from affiliates that have really impressed me.  These emails were not just sent to me but rather to a large amount of merchants. Two emails in particular caught my interest.  Both of the emails/newsletters introduced their site, talked in detail as to what types of merchants, link types, and coupons have worked best for their business in the past.  They also went on to discuss what they want/expect from an Affiliate Manager.  From there the newsletter highlighted key holidays in the next three months what they were looking to do for those holidays.  I was a little blown away by how up front these emails were but at the same time found it very refreshing.

Over the years as an Affiliate Manager I have communicated with affiliates in almost every way possible.  Including, mass email, targeted emails, personalized emails, phone calls, snail mail and post cards.  With new technology came forums, blogs, and RSS feeds.  Although I have used almost every communication method in the book to reach out to affiliate partners, it seems that most of the “non corporate” affiliates shy away from newsletters to merchants.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I would rather have a personal phone call or email exchange with a partner any day of the week.  However, I am realistic and realize that it is almost impossible for each affiliate and affiliate manager to have personal communication in a reasonable amount of time.  These upfront “introduction emails” that I received are very much like the premise behind 3 minute dating.  After reading the email I knew exactly what these affiliates were looking for from their merchants and affiliate managers.  There was very little question as to whether the merchants I represented and even my relationship management style would fit their need.

I realize that this type of communication is not fitting for all affiliates.  Many affiliates need to be more private and handpick their merchants in a quiet manner.  However, if you wonder if you could be have positive relationships with the programs that you have joined but are not active in I urge you to send an email similar to what I outlined above.  You could be inactive in the best possible program for your business and not even realize it.  I too will continue to look for new ways to communicate with my business partners.  Maybe I will start sending singing telegrams for top performers?   

Are Blogs too Good for Affiliate Marketing?

This is my first “official” blog entry I figured that it would be fitting to write about my take on blogs and affiliate marketing. I read numerous online marketing related blogs each day as well as a good deal of others through communities such as Revenews and Bumpzee. I also read a handful of blogs on digital photography (my hobby).

I view blogs as the perfect medium to share and learn. When it comes to digital photography I utilize blogs for two reasons.

1. To learn new techniques and tricks
2. To obtain quality unbiased reviews of photography equipment.

As an Affiliate Manager I have been working with bloggers for the past year or so to help promote specific products that related to the content of their blogs. Most bloggers tend to convert very well and help to grow a program. The majority of the blogs that I work with are second tier blogs. They are not the top 10 blogs in their categories. However, by no means are they small mom and pop sites.

Recently I decided to reach out to the top blogs in the consumer electronics space for a program that I was managing. I would say that roughly half these sites told me that they do not utilize affiliate programs because they feel that it cheapens their sites.

After receiving the same response from a few sites I began offering tips on how to cloak URL’s. However, these tech savvy bloggers didn’t want to hear it.

The part of me that enjoys reading reviews of photography equipment totally understands their feelings. I would stop reading a blog if I knew that they were picking which products to review or basing their reviews on who paid them the most money. However, the Affiliate Manager side of me knew that if a blogger was willing to review a product in the past and give it A+ rating then their had to be way to help them monetize their reviews.

This experience has raised some questions that I ask myself:

1. Is Affiliate Marketing just not right for the upper echelon of blogs that review products?
2. Are these feelings unique to the consumer electronics space?
3. As blogging matures will more and more bloggers have this same feeling towards affiliate marketing?
4. Will there be a new technology or way of thinking that will change these bloggers opinions on affiliate marketing.

Any comments as to your feelings about this issue are welcome.  My internal conflict between the Affiliate Manager and consumer looking for the best information possible will continue to play out for me.