Google takes on the affiliate market with Referrals 2.0

The New Zealand affiliate market just became a whole lot more interesting.

Google have now fully launched their “Referrals 2.0″ through Google Adsense.

For some time now Google have offered referral fees for promoting their own internal products; Adsense itself, Google Toolbar + Firefox and others. Now they have rolled this Referrals 2.0 product (another name for an affiliate network) out to all Adsense publishers.

There was a beta for the Referrals 2.0 launch in March and now it has launched properly into Adsense accounts with a small advert on the overview page of Adsense saying;

NEW Congratulations, your account has been upgraded to include the all new Referrals 2.0 - click here to get started

Is this relevant to the New Zealand affiliate market? Yes.

On a search for “New Zealand” on the products offered within the Adsense Referrals 2.0 there were 10 results including accomodation programs, flights (of course), rental cars (as expected) and interestingly even Green Lipped Mussels!

This is a major step forward for NZ affiliates but is it the best step forward? Specilised affiliate networks live and die on close, personal communication with their affiliates. Will Google be able to live up to this?

I would think it isn’t a huge focus for Google as they already have the majority of the market in PPC advertising in New Zealand anyway so publishers are bound to flock to them.

So, Google Referrals 2.0 is likely to be an excellent option for lower level affiliates but the top level affiliates (who cover 80% of the market, as usual) may well be cautious on using this system as they will lose the ability for one-on-one deals with the affiliate managers.

Time will tell but Google Referrals is here to stay and will become a dominant force in New Zealand where there is a lack of quality affiliate networks.

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What kind of affiliates do New Zealand merchants want?

I’m happy to introduce the first in a series of four articles on affiliate marketing in New Zealand from a merchant perspective by Antony Ellis, Affiliate Manager for NZ Fine Prints, New Zealand’s largest retailer of art prints and posters; www.prints.co.nz.

The next articles in the series will be;

What kind of affiliates do New Zealand merchants want?

Why should a New Zealand merchant care about the kind of website that is signing up to their affiliate program?

No retailer wants to set up shop in a shady part of town. They want to associate their brand and products with quality websites. If your affiliate program offers the option merchants should always thoroughly check the content of sites that apply to join their affiliate program. Infringing copyright? Objectionable content? Think hard about whether the extra sales are worth associating your company, brand and products with dodgy looking websites.

Merchants should read the applicant’s “About Us” or “Contact Us” - check who owns the site. If this is not clear try using whois or domainz to look up the owner. It’s hard to trust any site that doesn’t have clear contact and address details. I’m not bothered by the lack of a physical address - many of our best affiliates are run from a home office and don’t want people dropping by as a matter of course - but a contact form with no other details will make a merchant less likely to accept your affiliate application.

If your merchant program includes pay per click think very hard about the signals you pick up from your research. Unless you have sophisticated tools in place to prevent it click fraud may mean paying out more to the affiliate than they deserve. Pay per sale is harder for a dishonest affiliate to fake - but there is always the possibility the site owner is just signing up to get a discount on your products for a one off sale!

A word on expectations. Owners of new websites in particular may have unrealistic expectations of what they can earn in the short term. Let you affiliates know how much traffic your site needs to make a sale (your conversion rate expressed as sales per 100 visitors) so they don’t give up on your program within a couple of weeks if they are not sending through much traffic. Savvy affiliates will also want to know the value of your average sale. Remember that your merchant ads are competing with alternative affiliate programs for screen share on the affiliate’s site so be as open with them as you can - while imagining one of your competitors is reading the email too so you don’t let slip any commercial secrets in you haste to impress an important affiliate!

Merchants - once you have signed up the right kind of affiliate make sure someone in your company is given the job of keeping in touch with them so they send you visitors for many years. It’s hard for a merchant to find quality New Zealand affiliates - a problem that I will explore in my next article.

Learn more about the New Zealand Fine Prints Affiliate Program.

Thank you to Antony for his contribution.

Close communication with the affiliate market is a very important tool for Affiliate Managers to show their commitment to providing value in the industry so I’m glad to see the Fine Prints Affiliate Program is willing to help the community of New Zealand affiliates.

If you have any comments or contributions feel free to contact me on affiliate@nzbase.com.

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New Zealand Online Research for Affiliates

One of the difficult things when working in the New Zealand online market is finding just the right place to research the habits of New Zealanders on the web.

Many of the tools which you might use for a global campaign are not as relevant to the New Zealand web. A good example here is Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool. This is an excellent online research tool for your affiliate marketing keywords on a particular topic when you’re interested in promoting in the US affiliate market however it is reasonably limited from a New Zealand specific market perspective.

So, you need to have a good look around and find some research tools as well as something like the Google keyword suggestions which will give you a better perspective on the local New Zealand angle.

One excellent local option here is the Hitwise New Zealand Data Center which has monthly reports like the Top 20 NZ Websites (here), the Top 4 Fast Moving Websites in NZ (here) and of course the most useful Top 10 Industry Keywords in NZ (here).

Keeping an eye on what’s going on from this sort of freely available New Zealand online research data is going to give you a good chance to make sure your research is as targeted to the New Zealand demographic as possible.

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