PartnerPerform Blog

This weekend, ShareASale ran their inaugural Think Tank session in Las Vegas, Nevada. I was fortunate enough to attend, presenting on behalf of SameDayMusic, whose affiliate program I manage in the ShareASale network. With little doubt, this was the most productive (and pleasurable) event that I have attended within the affiliate industry.

As always, ShareASale takes very good care of their merchants and affiliates– the event was held at the Wynn Hotel, Las Vegas, which is about as decadent and refined as you can get on the strip. From the palacial rooms to the flawless service to the meticulous design, the Wynn Hotel is quite a place. My hat goes off to ShareASale– they really know how to entertain, and how to make people feel appreciated.

The event was attended by about 50 marketers, affiliates and merchants alike. Saturday’s session consisted of 15 merchant presentations to a crowd of about 30 of the most successful affiliates in the business. The feedback and guidance of the affiliates in attendance was invaluable, and at times– humbling. The revenues generated by the affiliates in that room could intimidate the GDP of small countries. Their insights will surely shape the future of the affiliate programs presented that day, and in turn, the success of the ShareASale network.

I’d like to thank Brian, Carolyn, and Sarah for running one hell of a conference. Its rare that we affiliate marketers get to work together face-to-face, and the guided format of this event made the most of it. During my presentation for SameDayMusic, I mentioned that it was events like that and the people in attendance that make me very proud to be a part of this industry. Here’s to the profits and friendships that were built at the ShareASale Think Tank in Las Vegas.

Its rare when an online clothing retailer really gets it– let alone does their part to make shopping online as enticing as shopping in the store. Couture Candy does it right. Couture Candy is an online boutique filled with high-end fashions for women. Yet its not so much what CoutureCandy sells, its how they engage the customer that truly sets them apart.

Couture Candy’s marketing manager, Blaine Elliott (a former Commission Junction employee), had this to say about Couture Candy’s affiliate program:

Blaine Elliott, former CJ employee and now Marketing Manager for CoutureCandy, said of the program launch, “We refuse to fall into the category of ‘just another online boutique.’ Working with Commission Junction we are able to bring world class services, technology and products to our affiliates. Our niche is primed for this type of move and potential for our affiliates is unlimited.”

Online advertisers now able to participate in CoutureCandy’s affiliate program by signing up as an affiliate on Commission Junction then applying to the CoutureCandy program. Banners exist for all standard IAB formats and a product catalog feed is available to qualified publishers. Additionally, monthly rewards are given to top performing affiliates.

Ok, so we’ve got the basics out of the way. Let’s take a closer look at the details:

* Commission: 10%

* Average Order Size: $220

* Incentives:

* Total Commissions greater than $1,000.00 USD receive one time bonus of $100.00 USD.
* Total Commissions greater than $3,000.00 USD receive one time bonus of $600.00 USD.
* Total Commissions greater than $5,000.00 USD receive one time bonus of $1,500.00 USD.

* Action Referral Period: 45 Days

* Action Referral Occurences: Unlimited

CoutureCandy offers some decent graphic creative, although nothing entirely remarkable. However, they do provide a variety of graphic links, advanced links, flash banners, coupon links, etc. Here’s an example of CoutureCandy’s creative:

What stands out the most about CoutureCandy is not the details of its affiliate program. However, it must be said that CoutureCandy does provide all the necessary tools an affiliate needs to make money with the program. In addition, the marketing manager’s history at Commission Junction should prove that CoutureCandy will take its program very seriously, and provide affiliates with the support they deserve. That said, let’s take a look at what CoutureCandy as a brand does for its customers.

CoutureCandy works hard to enrich the customer experience, providing value far beyond what a traditional online retailer presently offers. Take a look at the following sections of CoutureCandy which stand out, which offer more to their customers:

* “Shop The Runway” - this provides “CC” customers with a birds-eye-view of their product offering. This is an unique value, in that I can’t think of other retailers who have developed such a merchandising tool.

* “StyleCast” - CC produces a monthly “stylecast” podcast, which are centralized here along with their monthly newsletters.

* “Celebrity Style Blog” - An “eye on style” blog, featuring the best dressed celebs, and how you can find their gear at CoutureCandy.

* “PersonalStylists” - CoutureCandy has stylists and “personal shoppers” available via email, phone, and IM, to help their shoppers find the look they desire. Beyond this standard service, their “personal stylists” section includes “fit guides”, a FAQ, “designer of the week”, gift ideas and more.

The moral here is that CoutureCandy is not simply an online retailer pulling in customers and pushing them out the door. CoutureCandy is investing in maintaining a lasting relationship with their customers, and working hard to develop a consumer friendly brand which will grow more and more recognizable over time. While the above features don’t have an immediate value to affiliates, it shows that CoutureCandy is a forward-thinking merchant with a focus on developing a lasting brand presence in online fashion retail.

As a new company, CoutureCandy cannot provide a lot of existing brand strength to its affiliate partners. Affiliates will not only be charged with selling the product, but they must also help sell the brand to their customers. While this shouldn’t be an uphill battle, it may be difficult for PPC affiliates and the like to depend on CoutureCandy as a brand to convert for them. Affiliates who maintain web communities, relevant fashion blogs, and data feed sites can expect to perform well with CoutureCandy, yet must merchandize CC products and links well– for this young brand may not perform right out of the gates without a good nudge.

In all, CoutureCandy is one hell of a retailer, and a great affiliate program to boot. Check them out on CommissionJunction, and be sure to comment here when the sales start coming in.

Earlier today, Jeremy Palmer called a word of warning to affiliates in a post at Revenews in light of Congress’ recent approval of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

Jeremy explains that gambling affiliates, who have been shut out of promoting gambling merchants in the US, are now looking for other non-gaming programs to work with. This influx into mainstream affiliate marketing could certainly shake things up for traditional affiliates…

If you’re not a casino affiliate, brace yourself for the upcoming jolt that may soon shake up the comfortable little niche that you’ve owned for the last two years. Casino affiliates have managed to survive and thrive in hostile conditions for more than a decade. Even when Google, Yahoo and MSN pulled the plug on them, they found a way to adapt and grow their business.

I admire this insight from Jeremy, and agree that interesting times may be afoot very soon. I noticed something else about this suggestion that boosts my confidence in affiliate marketing: affiliate marketing shows a resiliency that will help it thrive through the greatest of barriers.

Presently, affiliate marketing primarily revolves around the search engines. Should these search engines lose their dominance, which could be caused by a loss of net neutrality, what would happen to affiliates? Where would they promote? How would they connect with consumers?

The answer, in light of Jeremy’s suggestion, is that affiliates will always find a way. When the search engines and then the government shut down gambling affiliates, they have found a way to continue successful affiliate marketing on the web. Kudos to Jeremy, and a big kudos to all the affiliates who are braving the powers that be to achieve success online.

VCs are breathing down your neck to bring in more traffic. Your Media Metrix numbers are plunging because they “forgot” to include your biggest site in your consolidation. Customers are pissed because they aren’t getting enough exposure. Your sales staff is fuming because you don’t have enough impressions. Click Monkeys!!™ can solve all your problems!!!! Our off shore click farm can guarantee over 10 million new impressions per month and a million new unique visitors!! Click Here to read about our low cost traffic building programs!

ClickMonkeys sells a thousand page views per dollar– you just point them where you wish, they click away. ClickMonkeys is a Ukrainian company, yet located on a cargo ship in port in San Francisco, where they are not subject to U.S. law. So if your AdSense ads aren’t getting the clicks you desire, you can hire a team of monkeys to click around the clock until you’ve got a nice check from Google.

Yes, they are kidding– and anyone dumb enough should have their AdSense account banned immediately. Still, this makes for one hell of a joke. ClickMonkeys founder, Sidney Zwiebel, has founded some other obviously legit businesses like PetsForFood.

ClickMonkey’s whois tells another story, that of a man named Rick Sanchez, whose primary domain is BugEyedMonster.com, which… well… isn’t as funny as the other two. Still, thanks for the laugh Rick, give your monkeys a pet for the people at PartnerPerform.

By nature, art is an uniquely personal phenomenon– personal, yet collectively loved and appreciated. Today’s spotlight merchant produces a very new kind of art, an art that is more “personal” than art has ever been.

“DNA 11 creates personalized and original abstract art from a sample of your DNA or fingerprints. Each piece is as unique as you. Personal. Beautiful. Absolutely one-of-a-kind. Modern masterpieces that are truly the timeless portraits of this millennium. DNA 11’s art has been featured in WIRED Magazine, Playboy, CARGO, Wallpaper, Metropolitan Home, Elle Décor, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, HGTV, Fashion TV, Discovery Channel, to name a few.”

Here’s a sample of DNA 11’s product offering:

Very wow. So the product is very new, very unique, and its market is virtually untapped. How is the affiliate program offer? DNA 11 run’s their affiliate program in Commission Junction, with a generous offer. Here’s a breakdown:

15% commissions
$650 average order
Typical payouts of $100/order
90 day cookie duration
Performance Incentives
“Top quality eye catching creative”
Dedicated support & management

15% of $650 average orders is not bad at all. If you have a highly targeted audience, say you run an interior design or modern art blog, you can make a killing with the DNA 11 program. If you run a mall, coupon, or incentive site, don’t expect this brand to convert well…

While writing this blog, I got to thinking- 90 day cookie duration? This could have been an opportunity for DNA 11 to get really creative. Instead of offering a “cookie duration”, offer the affiliate partner “ownership” of that customer’s DNA sequence. I’m serious.

Okay, what I’m really saying– offer unlimited cookie duration. If they’re the last referrer, they get the sale for the life of the customer. However, it is some damned sexy PR to sell this as “you own the DNA sequence of the customer for the rest of their lifetime”.

Okay. Moving right along. I’ve got two negatives to point out about DNA 11. First, a beef about their “Top quality eye catching creative”. Their animated creative is nice, but at least offer a variety of creative to affiliates. All they offer are animated gif’s. Some of these are pretty attractive, but they need to offer a static creative option to their partners. Here’s a good example of their creative:

Second, a word of caution for those working with this merchant. If you run a blog or website with an audience that is interested in interior design or modern art, this can be an excellent program for you. If you don’t, expect this program to convert poorly. Their EPC in CJ will be pretty ugly, but I hope that does not deter affiliates with a targeted audience from promoting this merchant. For those who don’t have such an audience, expect to see a low EPC out of this one…

DNA 11 may end up with a low EPC, but their payout will always be high. When you do get a sale from this merchant, you’ll get a nice check. I chose to spotlight this merchant for two reasons: first, they offer a killer product; second, they have a generous offer. If I owned a well-targeted website with a related audience, I’d promote them in a hearbeat…

I first discovered SpotRunner back in May, and not a moment too soon. As a vocal advocate of offline/online ad synergy, the idea SpotRunner proposed was music to my ears– cheap TV advertising for all, managed on a robust web-based platform. SpotRunner provides ad production services as well, offering generic ad creative ready for customization.

“Spot Runner is the world’s first television advertising agency that’s Internet-based and designed to be used by local businesses. Now local businesses can conveniently and cost-effectively harness the power of high-quality, targeted television advertising to reach their customers and sell their products and services. With Spot Runner’s revolutionary approach to commercial production, media planning and media buying services, local businesses can now more easily and affordably produce a TV ad and purchase a targeted TV advertising campaign.

Last week, SpotRunner had yet another brilliant idea. On September 21st, SpotRunner launched an affiliate program in the CommissionJunction affiliate network:

At Spot Runner, we are tapping into a never-before-served, multi-billion dollar market – giving you as an affiliate a unique opportunity to earn thousands of dollars by referring the owners of local or small and mid-sized businesses to our simple-to-use website.”

Very exciting news, well worthy of a merchant spotlight here at the PartnerPerform blog. Let’s take a look at the payout detail:

1 sale / month = $75 / sale
2 sales / month = $87.50 / sale
3 sales / month = $100 / sale
4 sales / month = $112.50 / sale
5 sales /month = $125 / sale
6+ sales / month = $137.50 / sale

EXTRA BONUS:
$50 bonus for your very first sale!
60-Day Cookie Life

Not bad. While local tv advertising is a competitive, nearly saturated market, SpotRunner could potentially develop a level of differentiation that yields a new breed of keyword searches. However, this is an uphill fight– SpotRunner is stepping into some very busy SERPs…

On topic blogs, news/information sites, and other B2B web-communities should do very well with SpotRunner. As the brand becomes more recognizable throughout the internet marketing space, affiliates can truly help SpotRunner execute and build its client base.

I did notice one clear negative to SpotRunner that needs to be mentioned. SpotRunner has set its Action Referral Occurrences in CJ to “1″, meaning that SpotRunner does not pay a commission on return purchases after the initial purchase. If an affiliate connects SpotRunner with a valued client that purchases multiple campaigns in a 60-day period, SpotRunner will only reward them for the initial purchase. Affiliates will NOT like that… My suggestion to SpotRunner? Re-evaluate this very soon– determine the cost of extending the action referral occurrences, then compare this to the business they may lose due to this policy. In my experience, immediate returning customership is slow enough that the cost of extending their ARO policy may be trivial.

SpotRunner offers a truly unique, revolutionary service to its clients– and an exciting program for affiliate marketers. While the market may be busy and the policies slightly awkward, SpotRunner still provides a very fresh, lucrative offer to affiliates.

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So we didn’t “write the book on affiliate marketing”, but we did define Outsourced Program Management… Check out our Wikipedia face-lift on the topic of affiliate management. Boy, did they need it!

Quality affiliate managers are in short supply for merchants who prefer in-house management. The most seasoned affiliate managers operate as Outsourced Program Managers (OPMs), providing affiliate program management and consulting on behalf of merchants. OPMs traditionally manage multiple affiliate programs, with some maintaining a support staff of affiliate managers which are dedicated to each merchant client.

OPMs often provide greater value and lower costs to merchants than in-house employees. OPMs typically bring a loaded rolodex of existing affiliate partnerships to their merchant clients, and can extend the merchant’s offer to their personal network if the program is salable. Additionally, merchants find cost benefits in OPM firms, as OPMs operate as independent contractors who do not incur health/401k benefit expenses, office space/computer costs, or training expenses.

OPM fees typically range between $2,000 and $10,000 a month in flat rates, most of which typically operate on a monthly rate and performance compensation hybrid model. Many OPMs also offer consulting services for merchants, including single-run affiliate recruitment, affiliate program optimization, program launch services, and affiliate tools/technology development.

As of today, Outsourced Program Managers are hereby well represented on the greatest encylopedia in the world…

This morning at CJU in Santa Barbara, CA, CommissionJunction announced the launch of a web services API available to advertisers and publishers alike. Here’s a sample from each of CJ’s announcements, one made to advertisers, the other to publishers– edited for brevity:

For Advertisers:
Commission Junction’s Web Services empower you to increase your promotability, extend your brand and strengthen your partnerships. Using them, your publishers will be able to access your Product Catalog in real-time and choose data to present to their visitors, creating a better buying experience while driving more results for you.This is the first in a series of Web Services release and includes the following Application Programming Interfaces (APIs):

- Branded Sign-Up and Confirmation E-mail
- Branded Login
- Publisher Look Up
(You can access details about the publisher, including their status within your affiliate program, program name, Web sites, categories, promotional methods used and other information related to their account.)

For Publishers:

Web Services are made for tech-savvy publishers who are looking to increase their ability to promote their advertisers and shape their network environment. With Web Services, you can create innovative applications to extend the power of your affiliate program through enhanced Product Catalog functionality and advertiser searches. Use Web Services to connect directly to Commission Junction’s technology and create custom applications to access the specific data that matters most to your visitors.

This is the first in a series of Web Services releases and includes the following Application Programming Interfaces (APIs):

- Product Catalog Access (in real time)
- Link Search Functionality
- Advertiser Search Functionality

This is a big step for CJ and a big step for affiliate marketing. Advertiser/Publisher relationships are based on communication, tools, and offers– and opening up the CJ API fosters enhanced communication and tool sharing. I tip my proverbial hat to CJ, this is an impressive move for the betterment of CJ network partnerships across the board.

In contrast to the fumble of the Link Management Initiative, this is a solid step forward for CJ. You’re the PartnerPerform hero of the day…

A recent BusinessWeek article suggests that entrepreneurs can launch a new business online starting at $3,000.

“Startup costs can be as low as $3,000, and the business can be set up in a home office and attended to at nights and on weekends, allowing new entrepreneurs to keep their day jobs.”

While $3,000 is a modest estimate, affiliate marketers can, and often do, much better. Let’s examine the costs, blow-by-blow. What does an affiliate need to spend to have all the tools to become successful?

1. Computer. I assume that most every serious entrepreneur owns a home computer. In the case that our new affiliate marketer does not own a computer, let’s take a cost-effective option that will work for all of an affiliates needs. Here’s a lovely, budget-aggressive Dell PC for $500. Total Cost: $500.
2. HTML Editor. Sure, one could toss another $400 on DreamWeaver or another WYSIWYG editor. If your bootstraps are really tight, there is a great selection of free HTML editors available online, including the highly recommended Arachnophilia. Total Cost: $Free.
3. Graphics Editor. Sure, a BusinessWeek entrepreneur could plunk down $649 for a current copy of Photoshop, but affiliates can get the same functionality at a much, much better price point: free. Enter The GIMP, an open source graphic editor application with all the tools a web designer would need to build a great affiliate site. Total Cost: $Free.
4. A Domain. A domain isn’t necessarily a requirement, but it makes success a lot easier to achieve. If you wanted to go the free route, an affiliate could sign up for a free blog at Blogger.com or another free blogging service that includes hosting. If you wanted a domain of your own, $8 will get you one at GoDaddy.com. Total Cost: $8, or…
5. Hosting. There are a sea of hosting options available for webmasters. My webmaster of choice? Bluehost. Bluehost service starts at $6.95 per month, and even includes a domain. If you decide to use Bluehost, scratch that $8 from your list above. Total yearly fee for Bluehost, plus one domain: $83.40.
6. Business Registration. To run any legal business, the entrepreneur will need to register their business with the county or state. If we’re a single entrepreneur with no business partners, we can register a DBA (”Doing Business As”) with the county or state. With this registration, we can run our business and use our social security number as our Tax ID. The total cost here depends on your location, but we’ll take Cook County, Illinois as an example. Total Cost: Around $100.

There you have it: the most bare bones, bootstrapped tools an affiliate would need to make a success in this business. The total cost of these tools? $683.40. If our affiliate entrepreneur already owns a relatively up-to-date computer, the cost is much less: just $183.40, the total cost of business registration and yearly hosting with BlueHost (including domain registration). $183.40 for an affiliate to start a web business vs $3,000 for a BusinessWeek entrepreneur. WINNER: The Affiliate Marketer!!!!

Of course, any successful affiliate marketer will tell you that it takes a lot more than just the tools listed above. Affiliate marketing takes time, patience, savvy, hard work, and a strong instinct about the consumer experience online. $183.40 is not the cost of success in affiliate marketing, its the “sign-up fee” for a shot at one heck of an exciting career…