Going Global, one nation at a time...

Well it would appear my desire to see some Asian networks (outside of Japan) running will soon be fufilled if any of the emails I am getting are to be believed (ClixGalore and Zanox both saying "China Coming Soon" and Zanox having a large part of it's funding coming from Asia) , however to me they generally all (other than Zanox) seem to have the same issue, that being, seperate affiliate and merchant accounts for seperate nations.

LinkShare and several others are already in Japan with fully not integrated solutions, tough luck if you want to easily roll out your program from the US/UK/Oz to Japan.

Which for me makes no sense at all (but from a programming sense of course is way easier) If I have a client runing in across the APAC region I don't want to have to sign up for 10 different accounts just so I can promote in Japan, Australia, China, Thailand, Singapore and so on, no matter what sales spin a network might think they can sell me on. I want one access, where I can dynamically select the language of the admin system upon entry (and set a default per user account) and see the data I need in the language I choose.

Ultimately the network that wins in Asia is going to be the one that gives the best fully integrated solution across the region.

On the affiliate front to, affiliates will want to be able to access all active countries via a single login, select a language and grab banners for their Hong Kong or Singapore or Korean site in a flash. Assuming Affiliates will operate only within their own country is short sighted and will again mean the best network will be the one that gives the simplest access to all countries.

Of course with the massive amount of affiliate fraud that comes out of Asia is certainly going to be a major challange for any network. Seeing how networks solve this will be interesting... time for an Asia Pacific Affiliate Event maybe.

Starting the day off right!

Diamond sales really get me pumped, there's nothing like checking on the affiliate sales for Mondera and seeing three affiliate sales going out the door with diamonds priced at $9,749, $12,388 and $12,453. That last diamond with a commission of over $1,400 US on it.

I actually feel like turning off my PC and going home, end the day on a high at 7 a.m. , knowing that on the other side of the world some one ( three people even) is going to check their LinkShare stats today and probably spill most of their coffee over the keyboard when they see their data.

What a rush!

Right I'm off home.....

Communication and The Affiliate List

Communication with affiliate partners is always fun, what's too much, what's too little, how to contact them in the first place and why the heck do they never reply to things like this;

"Hi Jimmy (not his real name :) ) , you've sent 750 clicks this month promoting Tae Bo to a page that doesn't promote those products, in fact we don't even sell Tae Bo , you're better off sending them to another merchant called XYZ.com"

Yep we'd rather he send traffic to some one else and make money than send them to us and not make money.... but still the clicks keep coming....

Three attempts, no joy, granted we're using Commission Junction's stunted communication platform, internal ( aka Trash Bin) only and no contact info ... so we thought we'd ask CJ for their help to get us contact with the affiliate "Oh no can't do that, against the rules that is, but we'll follow up" Yea right, but not in the way we want to or plan to even if it is done.

Well obviously I'm missing the point, because this affiliate who has a good site, is burning money on a dead end, and helping doesn't seem to be in anyone's best interest... more and better ways to communicate with affiliates are needed, though some would argue that they'd rather not hear from an AM at all unless they ask to be.

Which brings along an interesting new product from Jeff Molander... The Affiliate List which everyone knows affiliates are going to have issues with as it is packed with all the contact info that Affiliate Managers are eager to get their hands on and many affiliates would rather they didn't have. The list contains not only contact info but also details on how and where affiliates market, how well they do, what areas they focus on and whether they use software / BHOs to do their "marketing". All good stuff for AMs.

Certainly sure to catapult Jeff to the exhaulted position of Most hated Personality in Affiliate Marketing, "I hate Jeff Molander" Merchandise is on sale already ! The big question to be asked is how will Shawn Collins react ? Get your "I hate Jeff Molander" Merchandise in Vegas now...

... talking of Vegas , as I suffer from a lack of Visa, the Vegas Affiliate summit is well underway.... Vancouver Canada for 2006! Vote Now! From all reports it is going very well and I hope to get a few more links to plug as details and pictures surface.

eXact Advertising Gone from Commission Junction

There are several "marketing firms" and I use that phrase very loosely that leave me with a bad taste in my mouth in the affiliate marketing business, first and foremost being 180 Solutions/MetricsDirect and another is eXact Advertising... two affiliates I always zeroed in on when taking over a program to boot them. With both LinkShare and Commission Junction having removed 180 Solutions it left eXact Advertising as my number one target... so I got a bit of a surprise today when I logged into the Century Fitness back end to boot eXact only to find that Commission Junction has already removed them.... so what can I say, "Nice once CJ!" , looks like Linkshare are lagging behind a bit on this one.

HLS 3 - 0 Chris

Things are looking grim in the latest attempt for me to crack the US Visa system. The nice folks at the US Embassy gave me that pained smile and said "You know how it is right?" to which I could only smile in return and say "Yep".... "We can send it to HLS in Washington but I doubt it'll get approved...will take 2 weeks" , "Hmmm more like 6" says I, and that was that.... no doubt in 2 weeks time I'll still be waiting, but what puzzles me is why I have to wait 2 months to be told this, my file is so thick that surely someone would say "Forget it Chris, you're doomed" before I even handed over my $100... if this was an affiliate program it'd be a great one, get commission on all transactions EVEN if they are rejected, Whoo Hoo sign me up for that one.... right back to learning Chinese, I hear the Chinese Textile industry is going to need affiliate support to get into the USA...

What is wrong with Affiliate Marketing?

If you didn't already see them there are a number of interesting comments and ideas posted over at Shawn Collins' Affiliatetip.com, from people in affiliate marketing about what is wrong with the industry and how they believe it can be improved, read comments from; Nicole Russell - Affiliate Managers Need Better Communication Skills , Nishank Khanna - Treat All Affiliates Like Super Stars , James Green - The Red-Headed Stepchild of Marketing , Brian Appel - Affiliate Marketing Needs to Clean House to Move Forward , Mike Allen - Take Things Offline and Gain Trust in Affiliate Marketing and Craig Danuloff - Three Points for Affiliate Program Excellence.

So what do I think is wrong... many things...

Firstly a lack of knowledge sharing, which is understandable, but ultimately holds people back. If there were more affiliates sharing tips, ideas and ways to do things then we would see more and better affiliates, with better ways of adding value to the transaction chain. Naturally it's not considered to be in a good affiliates best interest to help train up potential competitors. This leaves the work of training affiliates squarely on the shoulders of the Affiliate Managers, and then it comes down to a time, effort and return equation, of how much time can an AM spend on each new affiliate to get them to get beyond the basics. There are a lot of "Affiliate Manager" Training courses starting up now, perhaps what is needed is more affiliate focused training sessions done in collaboration with merchants and key affiliates, something Andy Rodriguez and I were chatting about the other day, especially outside the USA in growing markets such as APAC and Europe.

Secondly a lack of sharing, didn't I say that already, but this time from Merchants, I often see a lack of trust between merchants and affiliates "How will this person use my content", "how will they use my product data", "will they steal my ideas", "will they create competition to me", as many others have said, Merchants need to look at affiliates as Sales Partners, not anonymous faces in the crowd.

Next, a lack of sharing... again. and here I know I'm guilty as much as the next person, but there needs to be more sharing between merchants and affiliate managers, sure we all share some ideas but there really as yet is no massive pool of information that everyone can dip into, as well as that always elusive affiliate marketing standards, that ultimately can only exist in an atmosphere of sharing.

Last one for the day, BHO and software based systems need to be moved to a different channel, with Ebates / BuyersPort / SAHS sitting side by side with affilates rather than on top of them everyone can benefit (assuming, where relevant, they clean up their distribution methods of course), but if Ebates really do believe they 'add' value and help with conversion then let them do that to the benefit of all marketing channels, and not obliterate the traces of where those sales first came from. Can't remember if it was Brian or Jeff who first floated that idea, but it's a good one, but one only the Networks can resolve.

Pay Loadz ... or not as the case may be

So being a Godin fan I bought the book, of course using an affiliate link to see how well things went at PayLoadz. I can safely say that if Seth is dissapointed about the amount of affiliate sales he is getting (reported) then he really needs to check the tracking by PayLoadz, one click direct to Pay Pal... no side trips no coffee breaks between clicks ... and nothing was tracked or reported... On top of that it is a royal pain to track down where the sales info is even displayed. No click reports listed either, so any affiliate working with PayLoadz really is working blind. That's if you can be bothered to check Product by product the sales info as their is no consolidated report...

So after giving Seth's new ebook on web design a brief look over, I can conclude that PayLoadz really do need to read it... that'll be one network I certainly don't work with ( So I got a nice eBook and a tip on where never to take clients, all for $9, thanks Seth! )

A couple of neat things about Seth's new book; the first that being promoted as an 'incomplete' book on web design, Seth is offering to promote any additions that people send him for the book. So it should gradually develop into a rather neat collection of guidelines from some key people in the industry. The second thing being that if you can't stretch to $9 now, it'll be availalble for Free in September.