Here's where I'll be curating affiliate marketing subjects. I can't decide where to do this. AffBook.com was created to capture a site chock-full of affiliate information, but that's been too overwhelming with everything I have going on. In the meantime, this is where I'm dumping the goods.
Browse sub-lists
Bummer for Skimlinks. Or maybe not. Who knows if it was a good deal for them.
Pinterest has stopped using Skimlinks to monetize some of the “pins” that its users were publishing on the site and, in other news, the company also says that copyright issues haven’t been a “significent issue” to date.
One thing's for sure...they did get an incredible amount of press.
Really great discussion going on over at Tricia's blog...
Understanding how Pinterest is making money off of user content and why I think it’s perfectly acceptable.
Skimlink's Alicia Navarro speaks out about the recent uproar about Pinterest monetizing links with Skimlinks, and not disclosing.
Secondly, some of these articles raise the point that Pinterest has not been vocal to their community in disclosing that they work with Skimlinks. While we fully encourage transparency and disclosure, at the very least because it is a nice thing to do, legally it is required only where the content creator is making endorsements that they financially profit from, like when a blogger is paid to encourage their readers to buy something, or a price comparison site encourages the purchase of a particular insurance product where they get paid for that referral. By providing a platform where people can post things they like, Pinterest isn’t endorsing particular products for the sake of financial gain, just providing a valuable forum for products to be browsed by their community. So it is understandable that they didn’t want to make a big deal of this, especially as so many other content sites also use Skimlinks and affiliate marketing technology to help fund their operations.
Here's what I commented on her post. It's still in moderation, I'm sure it will show up at some point, but I though I'd post it here as well.
I think that it is great that Pinterest is monetizing on their links. I see nothing wrong with that. Congrats to you guys for having grabbed onto this rocketship!
I just wish that they had the foresight to disclose it *somewhere*.
I want to give them he benefit of the doubt and see this as just something they probably didn’t think of, or didn’t realize that this would cause a stir among some subset of their user base.
If there’s nothing to be ashamed of (which I don’t think there is) then why hide it? Not to make a big deal out of it, not because it’s legal or not, but just to *not* be seen as sneaky.
We as an affiliate industry get hurt when people see what we do as sneaky. There’s already stigma and suspicion tied to what we do, and this just exacerbates it.
The fact that this has made it to the New York Times blog questioning whether it should be disclosed or not, and you having to step up to defend them demonstrates this.
That NYT press should be celebrating what they’re doing like some of the commenters that you point out are. But instead it is tainted with ethical questions.
Since you guys are a particularly high profile member of that industry, with a technology that is bringing us mainstream perhaps more than ever, I believe that it’s on you to help improve that perception.
And how the Pinterest founders respond will speak volumes. I hope they don’t blow it.
BTW, Cloudflare does a similar thing with Viglinks. They hid this behind an outbound click tracking service that also turned links into affiliate links that Cloudflare benefitted from. I say “hid” because it was turned on without telling me about it, and I had to sleuth it out. Was that illegal? Certainly not, but it felt pretty crappy to me.
What's truly sad is that had Pinterest handled this better from the start, this whole thing could have been major success story for both startups making money early and for the affiliate marketing industry.
Granted, just a small blog post, but this issue is gaining steam.
Pinterest, a buzzed-about young start-up that lets people create collections of their favorite items on the Web, may be adding affiliate links to its users' posts, without notifying the users, to generate revenue from purchases made through the site. Read more...
Most people who use Pinterest are there for the cool things they can find and re-pin. Many of those find and pint new items themselves, adding to the experience overall. Lots of people have expressed dismay that someone might want to use Pinterest for anything commercial, while other see no problem with it so long as they don’t wind up feeling “sold to” every time they visit the site. Some items pinned on Pinterest are for sale. Not necessarily directly by the pinner, but somewhere. And, Pinterest is taking advantage of this to make money. If an item is available through an affiliate marketing arrangement, Pinterest uses a program called SkimLinks to add their unique identifier to the link, thus generating a commission for themselves if you buy the item.
Well, that's not to mention that Pinterest's terms prohibit you from using it for commercial purposes.
But more importantly, as Mike From WPN also writes:
Apparently, Pinterest told no one. So, if a pinner happens to work through a program that has an affiliate element within it, and spends the week pinning up interesting items that are for sale, they have no idea that Pinterest is adding its ID link to all their pins and that htye could end up with a commission payout for all their personal efforts.
I called this out a few weeks ago here. And as the rest of the world figures this out, Pinterest is probably going to need to come clean.
Honestly, there's really nothing wrong with it, unless they're trying to hide something. in which case that makes me wonder what else they're hiding and/or capable of.
It just not a good start, is all.
The big thing I got out of this is tracking and measuring links.
The first step to incorporating outbound links into your monetization strategy is to understand where you are sending traffic. And what value is created after a reader leaves your site.
Tracking outbound links is the easy part.
But what happens after the user leaves your site? We need to do full-loop tracking and reporting so we know what pages and what links produce what ROI.
Once you've got this down, then you can start to really turn the dial on optimization of your pages and content, and where you spend your marketing efforts, and even PPC money.
I have to admit, I was part of this "big lie" back in the days of working at affiliate networks (as were some of the people now at Impact Radius). People often said this message. Though it never sat well with me.
The Big Lie: We Must Accept the Breakage Failure to attribute every referred action is a big issue for performance marketers. The numbers whispered in private conversations cite between 5-30% lost. That’s a big, expensive problem. But a bigger problem is that somewhere along the line we’ve all grown to accept the breakage. We believe that technology deficiencies can’t be overcome. The message “this-is-as-good-as-it-gets” is not only a big problem: it’s a big lie.
I'm glad to see some light being shined on this issue.
Though maintain your healthy skepticism, as Impact Radius is marketing their solutions with this message. I'm not saying they're wrong. Just sayin'.
I just read through this whitepaper/compilation and I'd say it's a worthy download and read.
Articles, discussions, and expertise from the Impact Radius team. In the summary of our #2012Marketing Challenges Series, we referenced our plans to post solutions for each of the topics listed in the series. We’re pleased to announce the publication of our 2012 Marketing Solutions e-booklet. It’s available for free from our resources page. The advice and action items for each of the 12 topics were developed in collaboration with a group of guest authors (listed below) — and we’d like to thank them all for their contributions!
I love the idea of taking this successful Affiliate Summit session to a webinar.
Affiliate Marketing is growing by leaps and bounds. We regularly meet folks who have an interest but don’t know how to start. That’s where we come in.
The next session is tomorrow, Saturday at 2pm.
Big time for my friends Tim Storm and Karen Hoxmeier!
Moves by states to collect sales taxes from retailers that use affiliate marketers, which direct Internet traffic to the retailers, are costing marketers heavily.
This article sheds important light on the affiliate nexus issue, but why must they dredge up the crap about adding value? The man in the picture has added incredible value, both to the merchants he drives traffic to, as well as the many dozens of people who have worked for him.
Why take away from that by bringing up some bad apples that exist in every industry?
And to make matters worse, a side piece which does nothing but question the value of affiliate marketing.
WTF NYT?
This book is now available on Kindle, just $2.99.
It contains a collection of anectotes, how-tos, and nuggets on many marketing topics, from 88 different contributors (I'm one of them).
Jeremy "Shoemoney" Schoemaker delivered the closing keynote session at Affiliate Summit 2012 in Las Vegas.
Jeremy's message:
1. "Opportunities of a lifetime" now come around about once a year, if you know what to look for
2. Those with the balls to act on them win.
Jeremy is a pull no punches kind of guy and one of the most successful entrepreneurs I know, and an inspiration. And it was entertaining to say the least. Check it out.
Affiliate Marketing. Business Strategy. E-commerce 3.0 I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept having the question asked of me in my interview with Daniel M Clark of QAQN.com yesterday “What do we need to do to turn this industry around and give it the positive name it deserves.” repeat in my head.My initial answer was “People need to be more accountable for their actions and what they do. Education is also key and will go a long way.” In return I asked Daniel what he thought and he replied “We just need some good PR”. Yes. We do.
Sarah's got some great thoughts here.
It'll take more than press releases for sure. But that's not the only form of PR.
I see from her website that she's a member of the Performance Marketing Association. In addition to blogging, that association, I think, is the platform from which the voice of change can be focused and amplified. People just need to get involved.
Round 2: Ding Ding...
There's some strong feelings going around today about Pinterest and their undisclosed use of Skimlinks to monetize links that are posted.
According to GTO Management, if you post an affilate link, Pinterest will follow it through to the final destination URL and use that as the Pin's link instead. That not only removes your affiliate link, but clears the path for Skimlinks to act on the url as it is now pointing directly to the merchant or website in question.
There is a workaround, whereby you can edit the pin and put your affiliate link back in. I think this is probably a loophole that they'll close eventually.
Personally, I have no issue with Pinterest using Skimlinks to monetize their site. They need to make money. They have a lot of VCs to carry. I'm not comfortable with the fact that they do this on the sly, with no disclosure.
It does raise the question in my mind as to who owns the content that you post to Pinterest. Maybe you do, but you grant Pinterest the right to modify and exlpoit it to their heart's content.
And can you expect any more from a free third-party service, where you're posting on their own website?
I don't think so. But I guess it's about expectations.
Their terms are pretty clear on this...
From Pinterest's Terms:
"By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services."
(bold mine)
and in fact, they don't even want you to make money off the site in the first place...
"You agree not to do any of the following...Use the Site, Application or Site Content for any commercial purpose or the benefit of any third party or in any manner not permitted by these Terms;"
So there you go.
Even though I don't see Shareist as a competitor to Pinterest (maybe at a meta level; you could actually build an entire Pinterest-like service with Shareist), we are thinking about these exact same issues for Shareist.
We actually do a similar thing as Pinterest when you post links and strip out the affiliate links and replace them with the clean links. But that's not for our benefit, but for the site-owner's benefit. In the case they allow others to post links on their site, random people can't post their own affiliate links.
On the Pro version of Shareist, the site admin can put in their own affiliate links, which Shareist will use when someone clicks. We give this feature away to our private beta testers, but eventually, the pro version will not be free.
Anyway, again, I think the whole issue here is transparency and disclosure.
Image credit: superwebdeveloper
Shawn Collins wrote:
I noticed a Tweet a couple days ago that touted: “Deal Ends Today! Affiliate Summit – Save 10% on all orders using this Affiliate Summit Coupon Code: Save 10% on …” But there was a problem with the Tweet –
So my question is this... what should we, as an industry do about this sort of practice.
Good on Shawn for blowing the whistle. At least some merchants will see that and take action.
Can a "wall of shame" approach work?
What else? Merchant education?
These guys truly are giving us a bad name, consuming resources at merchants and networks, and generally gumming up the works.
Geno Prussakov's top ten bloggers to watch in 2012
1. Sarah Bundy
2. Dave Cupples
3. Existem’s Team
4. Sam Harrelson
5. Impact Radius’ Team
6. Scott Jangro
7. HasOffers’ Team
8. Owen Hewitson
9. Tricia Meyer
10. Shannon Weidemann
I think I might be part of the reason for his mention of "back after long absences". And then of course, there's Sam.
It's always nice to be included in "top" lists. Thanks Geno.
TweetThere has been a steady drumbeat for years that we’re on the verge of video and/or mobile dominating the affiliate marketing landscape, but neither have really happened, yet. But I think this is the year curation becomes the new affiliate
I think so too! :)
As part of the ReveNews 2012 Affiliate Industry Preview Series, I interviewed affiliate marketing industry leaders to get a sense of their plans and goals for 2012. Today’s interview is with Brian Littleton, Owner of ShareASale.
This is an encouraging and upbeat interview. Check it out to read insights from Brian on big issues like Affiliate Tax Legislation, SOPA, Mobile marketing, and more.
Love that picture, thanks for coming to my session Eric!
Notes on Digital Curation from Scott Jangro's session at Affiliate Summit West 2012
Yeah, in case you don't know, I gave a presentation on Curation at ASW12.
(Eric's one of those guys who when I see in the audience I think, "Now that guy should be up here".)
I’ve been watching very closely the trends in eCommerce and affiliate marketing and have put together my predictions for what we’ll see in 2012 and beyond. As 2011 came to a close, we saw a record in the number of cross-platform and cross-channel sales that defined eCommerce last year. Online coupons redeemed in stores, offline promotions redeemed online, and the use of social and mobile commerce to drive incremental sales was stronger than ever. The marriage of offline and online sales mixed with social and mobile commerce is an incredible step toward the eCommerce industry hitting almost $300 billion in sales by 2015.
Sarah has lots of great thoughts about the coming year -- definitely put a lot of thought into this post.
Our industry has lots of challenges ahead of us, which Sarah touches on a few big ones: Fraud and training. Bad guys and newbies, both making a mess. Educuation can certainly take us a long way toward a better industry. That's both internal and external education.
When Affiliate Summit Co-Founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward announced my name as the winner, I honestly was in shock. The reality didn’t sink in until afterwards when I was sitting next to Lisa Picarille, looking at my trophy, and listening to Eric Thomas speak. And that’s when I started to cry.
As Shawn and Missy started to announce this, I leaned over to Todd Crawford and said, "It's going to be Kim"...
How about that...
Sam Harrelson, a long time affiliate marketing veteran, has launched an "OPM" (Outsourced Program Management) firm specialized in affiliate marketing program and social media management for merchants.
Caterpillars to butterflies.
Congrats and Godspeed, Sam. Here's to making a difference.
Just saw my first affiliate terms of service prohibiting posting of links on Pinterest. I guess they have hit the big time now.
Big time indeed. When the spammers and quick-buck marketers move in, you know you're doing something right.
JeremyPalmer and I were having this exact conversation over a scotch at Affiliate Summit on Monday afternoon. Plenty of social media sites are prohibited by affiliate programs for posting links, but Pinterest is special in that it is particularly well-suited for affiliate links as it is strongly geared toward the posting of products. And it is currently pretty easy to get some good visibility with re-pins.
Because it has happened so early in Pinterest's life, I expect that the spammers and marketers are hitting them by surprise. If they're not ready for this, they're going to be doing some pretty major scrambling in the next few months. If they can't get their arms around it, it could be their undoing.
To be clear, What Joe is talking about in this tweet is an affiliate manager prohibiting posting of their affiliate links on Pinterest. Pinterest hasn't taken any action at this point as far as I know, and I'm guessing they probably won't.
Squidoo didn't and look where that got them.
Good luck Pinterest. Don't underestimate this bunch.
Congrats to all the winners and nominees of the Pinnacle Awards at this year's Affiliate Summit. I was in the room for the awards, and this one was exciting as a few underdogs took the prizes.
Here are the nominees and the winners...
Affiliate of the Year
Affiliate Manager of the Year
Exceptional Merchant
Affiliate Marketing Advocate
Best Blogger
Affiliate Marketing Legend
The Online Advertising's Blue Book, published by mTHINK places LinkShare at the top of the list, with the top 10 list looking like this...
I find lists like this very suspect, and based on their description the whole thing seems very subjective. Here's how they describe their method:
It is important to note that these rankings are not just a popularity contest. If we only evaluated the sheer number of votes for each network, then the biggest networks would simply swamp the smaller ones. What we try to do is also look at the quality of support for each network; enthusiasm, reputation and influence all play a part in reaching our final opinions. The result is a list of the world’s best CPA [sic] networks, with a good mixture of huge networks and small, and of boutique, invitation-only networks and million-affiliate behemoths.
Not to take away from those at the top, the only way I'd be able to give any credence to this list is if I could see the methods and the data. Without that, it's just mthink's opinion.
What I can see objectively is this right now on mTHINK's homepage. Just sayin'.
@TurboJared
Jared L Saunders Day 3, it never gets old XD #ASW12 (@ Affiliate Summit West 2012 w/ @akagorilla@qaqn) http://t.co/3GfQzgEG
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Day 3, it never gets old XD #ASW12 (@ Affiliate Summit West 2012 w/ @akagorilla @qaqn) http://t.co/3GfQzgEG
Great ideas in this post by John McTique:
Despite your best efforts in 2011, traffic and leads are leveling out. What can you do to revive your inbound marketing mojo? You're doing your best with blog posts and social media updates, but somehow the momentum has flagged in recent months. Is it simply that you've had other priorities, like keeping the company afloat, or is it your content that's become stale and lifeless. Maybe you should put some eggs in other baskets that may help you gain some inbound marketing mojo again.
The best advice I take from this post is to grow your audience by expanding into new ones.
I just doubled traffic on this site by adding a section about the Skylanders video game. Since they're not anywhere near my core audience... wait, I don't really have a core audience... since they're a new audience, I need to treat them differently than the others, but there's an opportunity here nonetheless. And I'm excited about the new topic and the new traffic.
That's sure to break even the deepest rut.
Then he's got some other suggestions that break your rut by taking you into some pretty major projects, like video production, book writing, and app building.
All worthwhile projetcs, but I don't see how they help the root (rut) problem, (as I define it ,maybe not how he defines it).
Is your routine too onerous?
Maybe your rut is because the process of discovering great stuff to write about and creating new content, and distributing it out to your social media networks and email lists is just too much of a chore.
If so, you don't need yet more projects to manage, but instead, maybe you need to fix your workflow with some streamlined tools and processes.
This is what we're doing with Shareist -- making it easier to discover, create, and share great stuff with less effort. When you spend less time dealing with the boring stuff like posting tweets and facebook updates, you've got more time and energy to do the creative stuff.
This annual tradition by Joe has become one of my favorite posts of the year. If he doesn't himself get best blogger one of these years, it's a travesty.
I'm in general agreement with Joe on these, except the Legend award, which I think will go to Brad Waller. (Sorry Kim.)
I'd also like to see Sam win if it could seal him into a several year affilaite blogging contract. Oh wait, he won it in 2008. So much ? That might not work.
At dinner last night with a particular CEO of a particular affiliate network, we were discussing (lamenting about) how affiliate marketing gets essentially zero press while doing so well as a marketing channel. We concluded that it's basically not sexy enough.
...consider the way the affiliate channel has evolved. It’s no secret that the early days of affiliate marketing consisted of a few shining stars among a mass of less-than-sophisticated operations. The bulk of affiliates lagged in terms of SEO skills and depth of reporting capabilities, and they failed to present fresh content and offers. Those days are very much in the rear-view mirror.
© 2012 http://www.jangro.com/
