Time for the AMAB!!
It's that time of year again, big sales are ready to start coming in through the affiliate marketing channel and everyone is worrying about who is going to "Do over!" who, and of course no one has anyone to turn to and ask "Did they really do me over?"
So yet again affiliates are going to be facing off against affiliates, against merchants, against networks, and merchants against networks and affiliates and the networks will all just be happy if they can get through Christmas without any "tracking has failed" / "Server down" issues... Yes tis the season of love thy neighbor as long as sales are "in line with what I expected".
Of course on top of this everyone is also watching and waiting for google to through in a spanner and make it all a moot point anyway.
But back on track, what do you do when you're 110% sure that a merchant has not tracked, where do you go to find out what's what and what are your final options.
Certainly for many people Abestweb has been the ultimate resource since time began, for both merchants and affiliates in need of alerts, resources and background info. But ultimately ABW is a community forum and not (as such) a force that can set defined industry standards. Though it has been (and remains) one of the only locations that can demand change and accountability, it has brought about a lot change in the industry through peer pressure through the years.
Many people have discussed the creation of a "Affiliate Marketing Advertising Board" or the like, and ultimately each one has failed due to lack of planning or lack of trust (a lot of the later). So it's with great interest I see another motion kicked off to get things up and running.
So lets get the killer question out of the way :
If the industry right now can not come to an agreement on whether running consumer end software against a merchants domain is adding value or stealing value then how do we get merchants, managers, affiliates and networks to agree to stand by any decision that is made by the organization?
Maybe my question trivializes the idea, but this has been a question that has been discussed since before I got into affiliate marketing and despite numerous meetings, discussions, rules and concepts... It's still not a point everyone agrees on.... without agreement and enforceable "rules" there's no "next step"
I certainly welcome the opportunity to participate and I hope the new initiative can succeed in the areas where all others have failed.
So yet again affiliates are going to be facing off against affiliates, against merchants, against networks, and merchants against networks and affiliates and the networks will all just be happy if they can get through Christmas without any "tracking has failed" / "Server down" issues... Yes tis the season of love thy neighbor as long as sales are "in line with what I expected".
Of course on top of this everyone is also watching and waiting for google to through in a spanner and make it all a moot point anyway.
But back on track, what do you do when you're 110% sure that a merchant has not tracked, where do you go to find out what's what and what are your final options.
Certainly for many people Abestweb has been the ultimate resource since time began, for both merchants and affiliates in need of alerts, resources and background info. But ultimately ABW is a community forum and not (as such) a force that can set defined industry standards. Though it has been (and remains) one of the only locations that can demand change and accountability, it has brought about a lot change in the industry through peer pressure through the years.
Many people have discussed the creation of a "Affiliate Marketing Advertising Board" or the like, and ultimately each one has failed due to lack of planning or lack of trust (a lot of the later). So it's with great interest I see another motion kicked off to get things up and running.
So lets get the killer question out of the way :
If the industry right now can not come to an agreement on whether running consumer end software against a merchants domain is adding value or stealing value then how do we get merchants, managers, affiliates and networks to agree to stand by any decision that is made by the organization?
Maybe my question trivializes the idea, but this has been a question that has been discussed since before I got into affiliate marketing and despite numerous meetings, discussions, rules and concepts... It's still not a point everyone agrees on.... without agreement and enforceable "rules" there's no "next step"
I certainly welcome the opportunity to participate and I hope the new initiative can succeed in the areas where all others have failed.
posted by amwso @ 4:27 PM
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2 Comments:
At 6:20 PM,
Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC said…
Chris,
The Idea is to create a communication platform and information center. You can not create an organization that dictates something or passes rules everybody has to follow without having A community where it emerges from.
Everything else is outside oppression. How well that works can be seen around the world by looking at the extreme examples.
The break up of Yugoslavia after the Tito-Regime that ruled with an iron fist was gone, Genocide started.
Now the opposite example is east Germany. Larger getting communities that engaged in non-violent resistance unified reaching its climax when over 1 million of them showed up to the NON official demonstration at AlexanderPlatz on October 7. 1989.
That was in the evening after the official parades and demonstration were over that praised the Stalinist-regime style head of state who was celebration their own greatest on the 39. birthday of the GDR.
The night ended in turmoil, injuries and hundreds of arrests, but just over 1 month later was the whole government resigning. I government that could not call the community their own.
I hope the two examples demonstrate how it things should not be done and why.
The Affiliate Industry is Germany or better the colorful mix of German Kingdoms, counties and dukedoms during the 1820's. It took until 1848 to be able to take the step to unify the nation and become a country with one central government.
World History is somehow interesting, isn't it?! :)
At 10:57 PM,
Anonymous said…
Thanks for the post. I definitely see the opportunity for a new affiliate marketing forum other than ABW. I have been seeing a lot of activity on ewealth lately. I am a memember of both sites and actually prefer ewealth - they are very friendly.
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