What are affiliates looking for?

Recently I came across an article reporting on a survey of affiliates completed in late 2008.

The main purpose of the survey was to find out what the most important things an affiliate was looking at when joining an affiliate program. They came in the following order;

  1. Commission amount
  2. Product being sold
  3. Brand
  4. Tracking platform
  5. Terms and conditions
  6. EPC
  7. Individuals managing the program
  8. Return days
  9. Action occurences

In addition to the above, the report showed that more than two-thirds of affiliates included the platform the affiliate system was built on in the decision to join.

There is a lot affiliate managers and companies looking to build / launch an affiliate program in New Zealand can take from this specifically regarding the decisions based on platforms available.

Time spent on building a few of the smart features that affiliates who promote internationally (that’s almost all affiliates, including NZ ones) expect to see like custom landing pages, product feeds and detailed reporting tools are one of the key factors in gaining an affiliates belief that your company takes the program seriously and are willing to invest time into building tools for the affiliate.

Labels:

Finding the right affiliate program for your site…

One of the great things about working online from New Zealand is that we’re already in a local community that’s small and isolated enough from the rest of the world that we’re usually happy to help each other out.

Kotitihaere, a poster in our forums, has come up with some brilliant feedback to both affiliates and affiliate managers in what they, as an experienced affiliate, are looking for when searching around the web trying to find the right affiliate program to promote.

I like the start;

Nothing is more annoying than finding a site in a search engine that has an affiliate program then finding the link to it is a mission in searching!

You can read more on their Guideline for Good Affiliate Programs to sign up to.

Great feedback…

Labels:

Update on the Adsense Affiliate Program

Google have already back-tracked a bit on the removal of the Adsense Affiliate Program. It looks like they only removed it for certain areas and just assumed that if an affiliate was in a certain location then they were only referring users from that location. Now that’s a pretty basic mistake for any affiliate program to make. In my experience it’s pretty rare that affiliates are only targeting their own local population unless it’s a non-English language site.

From the email;

Since announcing the changes, we’ve received a number of responses about the program being dependent on the location of the referring publisher rather than the referred user. After carefully considering this feedback, we have decided to modify our planned changes.

You can usually read that type of language from any affiliate program as marketing speak for “Half of our affiliates vehemently complained, we admit we screwed up and now we’ve been forced into changing the policy” :)

That might be a little harsh, Google are doing well to keep the communication lines open to affiliates.

The changes they’ve put forward are;

Specifically, you will have the option to add a referral unit for AdSense within your account when you target any referral unit to Japan and/or any countries in North America and Latin America. To ensure payment for valid conversions, we recommend that you check the targeting settings on your current AdSense referral units.

So, one would assume that in countries where they have an overwhelming market share and everyone uses them as the first option for online marketing (this is pretty much how it works in New Zealand with their 95% share) then they’re dropping the affiliate program completely.

Sounds like a pretty solid business decision.

Labels:

Into 2008; Adsense affiliate program removed

There’s been a bit of a hiatus on posting at the moment due to a new addition to the family of a bouncing little baby girl so affiliate market updates will be a little light for the next few weeks but hold in there as some new developments are in the wind for AffiliatePrograms.co.nz :)

Fresh into 2008 and Google have announced that they have quashed their affiliate program for referrals to Adsense. Here’s the full text of the email;

Hello,

We are writing to share some important information with you about
referrals to the AdSense product. As part of ongoing efforts to
optimize revenue opportunities for our publishers, we’re
constantly experimenting with new revenue-enhancing features as
well as tweaking those products already available to our
publishers. This is the case for referral units directing visitors
to sign up for AdSense. After experimenting with this program
over the past year, we’ve concluded that there are other products
that are of higher value than this program to publishers in your
region. As a result, referral units for the AdSense program will
be retired in the coming weeks. Referrals to other products and
services remain unaffected.

If you’re currently displaying referral units on your site
directing users to sign up for AdSense, read on below for details
about what to expect in the coming weeks.

In early January, the option to add referral units directing users
to the AdSense product will no longer appear in your account. You
will continue to accrue earnings for all existing referrals yet to
generate $100 until late January, at which point the program will
be fully retired. Existing referral units will continue to appear
on your pages.

By the end of January, you should remove all referral units
directing users to AdSense from your pages. Referral units
that you do not remove will continue to be displayed on your pages
as normal, but conversions will no longer be recorded. We
suggest you replace the AdSense referrals with referrals to
another product or service or an additional ad unit.

Thank you for referring users to AdSense in the past. We
apologize for any inconvenience this news may cause.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Darn. There are bound to be a lot of people who have many links through-out their sites promoting Google Adsense. It’s a frustrating experience whenever an affiliate program (no matter who it is) completely removes their program.

There have always been questions about this happening and the amount of traffic that the program continues to receive from old links that webmasters have either not found to change or are just never bothered to be updated.

Interestingly, Google appear to have replaced this affiliate program referral to Adsense with advertising Adsense itself through their own Adwords system. I consider it more than a bit questionable to have a company competing with their own clients (particularly in any form of bid system) to promote their own internal products. Very questionable, as the cost is nil to them but may drive up the price for other advertisers who are bidding to show their ads on affiliate related keywords. Perhaps Google should front-up and let the community know if their own Ads on Adsense affect the bids of others?

If anyone has heard of Google talking about this in the past let me know and I’ll update this post.

Labels:

Blogger offer Adsense per post

Adsense Insider, the Google Adsense Group keeping advertiser up to date with developments has announced that it’s now possible to use a widget inside Blogger to add Adsense following each and every post within a blog;

We’ve heard your feedback about wanting to insert Google ads between your blog posts, and we’re happy to let you know that Blogger now supports this implementation through the AdSense widget.

This would appear to me to be breaking the Adsense terms which limit the number of instances of different formats of Adsense on any one page. If there are many posts on a page I would assume this would mean many copies of the Adsense advert thereby breaking their own conditions?

I have not yet seen the implementation of this so will check it out soon and follow-up to see if this is in fact what Adsense have done.

If it is, it seems like yet another step by Google to giving preferential treatment to people using Google’s own products to the point of breaking terms and conditions.

Labels:

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.

Labels:

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.

Labels:

Further discussion on duplicate affiliate programs…

I was emailed recently regarding my previous post on my annoyance surrounding offering duplicate affiliate programs on a sign-on page and thought it would be worth further publishing my response here.

Here are the details from the email. Hopefully the person concerned does not mind the post going public as I believe this type of discussion is exactly what the New Zealand Affiliate Market needs to shape-up it’s thinking. Both views have good merit and until these things are worked out for the specific NZ demographic then the affiliate market will continue to struggle;

I’m writing in regards to your post “Duplicate Affiliate Programs”.

Let me explain why merchants do this.

Most publishers/affiliates only join one affiliate network. And some high profile publishers/affiliates need to join the merchants own program because they negotiate special terms with the merchant.

If the merchant was to join only one affiliate network, that merchant would miss out on advertising from affiliates who are members of a different affiliate network and are not interested in joining any other affiliate network.

And why should merchants only support one network?

Deciding not to join the merchants affiliate program because the merchant supports more then one networks is extremely disappointing. It’s like telling a manufacturer that you won’t buy their product because their confusing you by supplying it to too many different retailers. How lame is that?

Perhaps you just didn’t understand the concept.

Thanks for your comments although I believe you mis-understand my original point as well as my experience and understanding of the affiliate market :)

There are a couple of things to tackle here in a response.

Firstly the email suggests;

Most publishers/affiliates only join one affiliate network

This appears to be a good part of the premise for the email and mis-understanding.

My opinion (based on discussions with many affiliates at conferences internationally) is that affiliates are joined with many networks at any one time in order to give themselves the maximum opportunity to promote relevant products. Granted, there are some affiliates who will say that they will only ever promote products from one network due to the specific reporting or tracking that network has however in my experience this is often bluster from the affiliate, they are usually joined to other networks as well with a preference to the one they are promoting. The key point here is that the dollar rules. If an affiliate can see that the relevant product they know will work on their site is only available through another network then they are most likely to join that network as well.

On the statement;

And why should merchants only support one network?

This is a very good question. My initial post was not suggesting that merchants should only join a single network in every scenario, it was suggesting that they should not be pushing all networks they are a part of, as well as their own program on the same page as it creates a confusing decision for specifically a new affiliate who is not part of one of these networks.

I do believe that an affiliate program should be very selective in the affiliate networks it may join, for example it would not be my suggestion to join more than one affiliate network in the same geographical market (e.g. the New Zealand market). Creating partners of your affiliate networks is a strong necessity in this situation and I would freely admit that the New Zealand affiliate market is just not mature enough yet to have strong affiliate network partners who are promoting the affiliate programs in the way they should.

If an affiliate program is part of a network and they are looking for affiliates who they believe are part of a different network then it is in the best interests of the affiliate network to work closely with that partner to source the affiliate concerned.

Finally;

Deciding not to join the merchants affiliate program because the merchant supports more then one networks is extremely disappointing.

I couldn’t agree more and do not believe any affiliate should do this. It is counter-productive to the whole idea of building the highest returning business online that the affiliate can!

My problem with the program in question revolved more around usability and the way in which an affiliate program offers its wares to the affiliate. In this case I was in a rush, wasn’t already joined to the networks offered and didn’t have the time to research which option was the best (e.g. which offered the higher %).

If the program had promoted its own internal program first on its site with logos for the networks having a lower weight on the visual display of the site (just to show they were part of that network if you recognised the logo and would prefer that option) then I would have had an easy choice. I was there to sign-up and would have if I knew which network / program was my best option.

On the question of negotiating a higher affiliate percentage;

And some high profile publishers/affiliates need to join the merchants own program because they negotiate special terms with the merchant.

This type of statement is exactly the reason why I didn’t sign-up to the program that day. How would I as an affiliate know (without researching every term and condition on every network) that I could only receive an increased percentage through high traffic levels by joining the affiliate program of the site itself? Affiliate percentages should be negotiable based on traffic levels irrelevant of the network the affiliate is part of. In this case I would have joined the program through a network that I happened to be already signed up to and would have there and then made the wrong choice based purely on the way the options were presented.

If you have any thoughts related to this I would be happy to post them on here. Just email affiliate@nzbase.com.

Labels:

Duplicate Affiliate Programs

A practice which I find particularly annoying in the New Zealand affiliate market which I believe is due to the small size of the market itself is when a website joins more than one affiliate network and also has an affiliate program on its own site as well.

Affiliates don’t need choice when they are on a website and select the link to sign up for the program to promote the site. Choice in this scenario just creates confusion, specifically if the affiliate is not already part of one of the networks that the site is offering.

The example of this I found this week has a site showing the options to sign up to it’s own program, the Commission Monster Network or the ClixGalore Network when you click on the “Affiliate Program” link on their site.

My first question on coming to this page is which program gives me the highest commission? Affiliates are invariably motivated by higher commissions so if you’re an affiliate program and expect to have affiliates sign up through a page like this then you’re going to have to spell out the pros and cons of each program. A flat choice just doesn’t work.

The program in question has the following quote on the page;

All programs provide outstanding affiliate tracking resources that will help you make fantastic profits from the range of products. Each program automatically calculates and tracks your commission and arranges direct payment to you. You can check the commissions you’ve earned 24 hours/7 days a week, simply by logging on to the relevant management interface.

In the end I couldn’t see what the pricing differences were and didn’t have the time to compare terms and conditions on each network so left the site without joining!

Labels:

Google Adsense / Google Adwords tidbit

I learnt something new yesterday which may have been common knowledge to a fair number of people but changed one of the assumptions I had about how the Google Adsense program shows adverts.

We’ve all seen how Adsense can sometimes show only a single advert in a large advert box. So you’ll end up with a skyscraper advert (120×600) which only has a single advert in the entire area in huge text.

Now here’s the thing; I always assumed that this was due to the lack of inventory (that is people who are bidding for the adverts that are listing on your sites keywords) however it turns out that this is actually a feature of Google Adsense where, if an advertiser is bidding well more than the next few bidders, then that advert will take precedence over both of the next adverts and only it will show. This can also happen if a Google Adwords advertiser is specifically targeting adverts to your site.

I can’t say I really like this feature much from a design stand-point as you can end up with some pretty glaringly ugly adverts on your site when you though you were going to have some nice text listings. The main positive is really that this will increase the revenue on your site.

Labels:

Next Page →