Affiliate Teacher

Last week it was announced that independent digital agency i-level had unfortunately entered administration. Step forward a week and it has subsequently slipped into liquidation. The decision followed a seemingly tough year for the 10 year old agency who cited cash flow problems and lack of new funding as the major causes for the collapse of the company. The news will come as big shock to many as the company was deemed to be the largest of its kind in the country with an estimated 40% year-on-year growth over the last couple of years. Almost 90 employees have been made redundant and media owners including Google and Microsoft are set to make big losses following the news.

Of course, the worry is that this will have repercussions for the affiliate marketing industry. The agency managed a string of high profile clients and looked after a variety of affiliate programs, including, Next, Specsavers and Lovefilm.

Affiliates may be concerned about commissions already earned from programs, as well as whether they can proceed to advertise these merchants. However, according to reports, i-level’s largest clients have been temporarily placed under alternative media agencies. This means it should have little effect on affiliates  and publishers can continue to promote merchants as usual.

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Linzie Hodson is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow ProfitBite on Twitter

In the 21^st century, more and more businesses are using online services as a way to of promoting their brand to their audience. Affiliate and network marketing is becoming a key component of this marketing effort as a way to maximise their return on investment from internet advertising. The rise in popularity of social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook has certainly not gone unnoticed by companies who can see the potential in communicating with more people in a less traditional manner. Today, more than half of all companies use Facebook as part of their marketing strategy, while Twitter marketing has risen considerably to almost 50% in 2009. Until recently it was primarily websites and blogs that were referring affiliate sales rather than individuals via a social media platform.

Companies realise that a product recommendation made through social networking websites is simple; it can be embedded within a post/tweet and it can reach out to all of the users’ followers. This route has had a powerful impact on the affiliate marketing industry, with a progressive increase in the use of blogs and social networks meaning that virtually anybody can become an affiliate. Domino’s Pizza recently launched a trial “social affiliate” widget that enables anybody with a network page or blog to advertise a selection of brands. People using the widget can plug products and subsequently earn commissions from sales. The idea was developed by BLM Quantum in partnership with Domino’s. Publishers simply sign up and download the dashboard to track generated sales, which works through the Affiliate Window network. Dan Clays, Managing Director of BLM Quantum says “Brands benefit by aligning with sites run by fans who are more likely to drive a sale, while site owners can generate revenues from their Facebook page or blog”.

Domino’s is the first brand to integrate affiliate marketing and social media this way, although similarly social networking site Facebook has launched their own tools to connect their users with the affiliate marketing industry. At their most recent regular F8 conference, the connection between social media and users respective interests was examined and as a result, 3 unique tools were launched which would also connect social media with affiliate marketers. One of these is the new Social Plug-in which includes already recognisable features such as the current ‘Like’ button. This is has been extended to publishers to allow users to see when their friends have clicked the ‘Like’ button on a site outside of the Facebook network. With this tool affiliates can bring a bigger level of social media to their sites in a more cursory way. There are also graphs to enable users to see how promoting a product can reach out into the user’s circle of friends and Facebook can then offer targeted recommendations according to what the user’s interests are, based on their promotions. One of the most significant developments will be the consequence this will have on Google. In theory it should reduce a websites individual reliance on Google for traffic, and ultimately rank higher in future Google searches.

On face value, the launch of the new tools would appear to be a positive move in creating an effective Facebook relationship with affiliates; however, it is clear there will be challenges associated with this new form of marketing.

It will be interesting to see how users react to both the Facebook tools and the new Domino’s ‘social affiliate’ test. The way they form a relationship with their sub-affiliates could be crucial. Communication is essential to maintaining a healthy relationship between the brand and affiliate and if this overlooked it could have a detrimental effect on the payment process. Social media users are unlikely to remain committed to the brand if they have no form of commissions for their referrals, therefore an ordered system of payments would be effective as a reward for the affiliates work. The brand also needs to effectively manage these new affiliates so that they continually drive traffic and in a favourable manner. Social media is becoming increasingly significant to affiliate marketing. Once these challenges have addressed then the benefit of this new form of sub-affiliate could be a big advantage to an expansive range of brands.

For more information go to:

• http://www.utalkmarketing.com/Pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=17035&Title=Domino%E2%80%99s_Pizza_trials_world%E2%80%99s_first_%E2%80%98Social_Affiliate%E2%80%99_tool
• http://www.affiliates4u.com/news/2010/04/what-do-facebooks-new-tools-mean-affiliates/

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Linzie Hodson is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow ProfitBite on Twitter

There has been much talk of how affiliate links affect a website’s page rank and listing on the search engine Google.  The advent of advanced affiliate marketing tools such as ProfitBite has further complicated this situation.  This article goes through how to avoid losing your page rank with Google whilst participating in affiliate marketing.

Traditional Affiliate Networks and Google

Traditional affiliate marketing stipulates that links point to an affiliate network’s website.  After a series of redirects, the user will end up on an retailer or merchant’s website.  The redirects at the affiliate network are typically “http/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” redirects.  Google will follow these redirects, and end up on the retailer’s website.  In this way, you are contributing to the link juice of that retailer.

Automatic Affiliate Marketing and Google

With an automatic affiliate marketing tool like ProfitBite, the links to retailer’s are created directly to the retailer.  ProfitBite intercepts clicks on these links with JavaScript and automatically converts them to affiliated tracked links.  Google doesn’t follow JavaScript links.  Since the ultimate target for the links is the retailer’s website, links redirected through ProfitBite will contribute to the link juice of the retailer in the same way as standard affiliate links.

ProfitBite can also be configured to insert links into a website using JavaScript where the retailer’s brand name is mentioned.  Since the links never exist in a static context, Google will not index these links.  These links will therefore not affect a website’s Google ranking.

If users specifically request it, ProfitBite will function with links that use the “rel=nofollow” attribute to stop Google following links.

Will Google Penalize me for Affiliate Linking?

The body of evidence at the moment points to Google not detrimentally penalizing websites for creating affiliated links to retailers.  However, link spamming will reduce your Google ranking.

The best practice is to always to link to relevant content.  If links originate from valuable, relevant, trust-worthy sources then there will be no detrimental effect to your Google ranking.

Further useful information on Google can be found at:

• http://www.searchjohnston.co.uk/2008/10/affiliate-links-paid-links-google/
• http://hugi.to/blog/archive/2003/10/02/googlebot-and-site-redirects

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Nick Woolley
Nick is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow Nick on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/woolleynick
Connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/nickwoolley
Follow ProfitBite on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/profitbite

Many of the presenters at the October 2009 a4uexpo mentioned the use of 3rd party applications to make your website and affiliate campaign more attractive to your users.

3 of the latest technology helpers for your website are reviewed within this article.  These include:

• eBay content widgets
• Easy Content Units
• ProfitBite

eBay’s affilaite campaign was relaucnhed in September 2009.  As well as changing their pricing model (as discussed at length on this blog (Quality Click Pricing), eBay have introduced a new method plenty of new content widgets for you to use on your website.

Check out: https://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com/files/hub/en-US/tools.html for more information.

Easy content units provides a simply plug and play method for integrating product feeds into your website.  If you are not into XML, or don’t want to bother integration yourself, then they are very straightforward.

Check out: http://www.easycontentunits.com/ for more information.

ProfitBite provides a website owner with a very simple method of keeping all of the links on a website affiliated.  It will automatically affiliate any links you place on your site, and also affiliate brand names and selected keywords.  This reduces the amount of effort needed to run your affilate campaign.

Check out: http://www.profitbite.com for more information.

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Nick Woolley
Nick is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow Nick on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/woolleynick
Connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/nickwoolley
Follow ProfitBite on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/profitbite

It’s a simple fact: affiliate sites require traffic.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your site, but the one that comes above all else is natural search engine optimisation (SEO). There are plenty of strategies and tactics that you can employ to push your traffic up and this article contains some tips and tricks which you might find useful.

Starting with the basics – why is SEO important? Quite simply, your site will gain more exposure if it has a higher position in the search result listings for your target key phrases. When you use a search engine to find out information, how often do you browse past the first page? If your site isn’t listed there, chances are it won’t be found by the vast majority of potential users.

You have to consider just how key SEO is to your web marketing strategy. If you are considering placing all your eggs in one basket and looking for big results then obviously you will need to think about your how site is structured and how content is written and presented. Building your site in standards-compliant code is crucial, as is populating it with original, unique content. Google (and the other major search engines) doesn’t like cookie-cutter sites made up of the same content as every other affiliate site. If you are serious about being highly ranked, you should be thinking of ways to generate unique content that your competitors simply don’t have, and filling your site with it. This is the first major step towards achieving that page one listing.

Original, interesting content isn’t just good for the search engine spiders – it will also attract human attention, generating those all-important inbound links and further viral traffic through word-of-mouth recommendations.

Careful thought should be given to the keyword phrases that you choose to optimise the site for. Consider the terms that your users might enter into a search engine to find the products/services that your site contains information on. It’s better to target 3-4 word phrases than those consisting of only one or two words. Working in this way is known as targeting the “long tail” – those terms where search volumes are low, but competition is also low. The long tail is where the money lies.

So what is a long term keyword? Take the term “marketing”, or even “affiliate marketing”, which is extremely broad and would be very difficult to achieve a page one raking for. If you were to add on a couple more words to make it “affiliate marketing services” however, the level of competition might decrease. If you were to further specialise to “affiliate marketing services teacher”, page one is looking much more realistic. The number of people searching for this phrase will be a lot lower, but if you build pages and structure your site to cater for a multitude of similar long tail phrases, your traffic volumes will increase accordingly. These keywords need to be littered all over your website to increase its visibility.

Another idea is to create a supporting blog and fill it with original content, linked to your website. If you create the blog on a sub-domain e.g. blog.mydomain.com, you will squeeze more ‘SEO juice’ on the inbound link front; if you put the blog in a subfolder e.g. mydomain.com/blog, then you will benefit from a better internal linking structure. Whilst having different web pages for your website is fine, a sub domain paves way for a new category, topic or blog. So how does this benefit you? Well firstly they are usually free to add to your hosting account and easy to create, and secondly bring lots of added value to your website as the sub-domain is viewed as an entirely unique domain, meaning it will usually appear as a separate site in the search results.

Link building is one of the major aspects of SEO. You can build your inbound link base naturally by writing interesting articles that will attract the audience’s attention due to their content, which will then be likely to be linked to by other people. You could try writing something outrageous or eye-catching, a technique commonly known as ‘”link baiting” which has become a powerful way of generating natural link building but may not be suitable for corporates.

Some other ideas for generating inbound links include writing a topical article, talking about something newsworthy, being controversial or humorous, engaging in a debate. You basically need to use your imagination and make it interesting to as wide an audience as possible. For example if you specialise in Halloween products, write an article about safe trick or treating, or the top 10 costume ideas.

Another tip is to try guest blogging on a site that relates to your field. If your website blog has barely any visitors it makes sense to build a profile on one that does. Some blog owners will allow you write a small biography about yourself and include it at the end of your guest article with a link to your website. You should know your industry well enough that you know the best blogs to contact. Try using Google blogs to find ones that are suited to you. For a general blog, Blogcatlog.com offers a range of topics and lets you submit as many articles as you like.

This might seem obvious but analysing your competitors is a great way to get ideas. Look at the websites which are ranked number 1 for your target keywords and try to work out what it is that they did to get there. Look at their inbound links by entering “link:competitordomain.com” into Google. Have a look at the websites linking to them and decide whether or not you could request/win a link from the same sites. There are lots of handy tool available that you can add to your browser. In particular, there are some very strong addons for FireFox from seobook.com. Downloading the tools is free and gives you access to a range of facilities for gauging search engine performance and comparing competing websites.

Directory submissions are commonly used by webmasters to try and increase traffic to their site by building their inbound link base. However, this method has good and bad points to consider. Links from directory sites are generally very low value so they won’t really give your site much of a leg-up. They are very good at hiding your high value links from competitors though. Do not buy links as it could be disastrous – Google has been known to de-list sites faster than you can say “page rank” on discovery that link buying has been used.

Consider article submissions as a way to build up a profile for your site. They work in a similar way to guest blogging. Some websites enable users to post their own useful, interesting articles and if considered newsworthy, you may even get paid a small fee! Once the article is live, there will be a link for readers to find out more about you/your website. One website to look at in particular is Nettuts.com. They pay up to $150 for one article and are constantly updating the topics that they require from readers. Of course, the article will be reviewed to check its relevancy and content, but if you find a website tailored to your interests then it’s a good idea to look into.

Another good way to optimise your search engine results is to enlist the help of a PR company. They will be able to submit an article about your company or about a development in your industry on your behalf, and might even be able to write the article for you. You can submit to some online PR companies for free, whilst others charge. The more companies you submit to, the more likely it will appear on a search engine linked under the press release site.

Finally, it is important to remember that the best inbound links are the ones that take a lot of work or that your competitors can’t get. If it’s easy, it’s worth nothing. It may be more time-consuming, but will give you better results in the end – after all the ultimate aim is to drive traffic to your site.

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Linzie Hodson is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow ProfitBite on Twitter

As innocuous as they may seem, links are the very building blocks of the web and without them, it would be practically impossible to navigate from one site to another… or even from one page to another within a single site for that matter!

Corporates can be very particular about who links to their sites, and in what context, with guidelines on precisely how they want in-bound links to be formatted.

Search engines place great value on the links within a website (the actual text within the link, the address of the target page, the HTML markup used to outline it), but also on the links to a website. Links from more ‘important’ sources are worth more than those from the lesser sites, but a link from even the smallest of sites is a form of marketing for the target site.

There is an entire market place for people to bid for the position of their links at the top of the search engine listings.

Clearly, links are a big deal.

With this in mind, what is the value of a link?

A literal value could be calculated by taking the average value per unit of traffic to a particular site. The various sources which provide the traffic and their resultant revenue would need to be considered in isolation as the value might be higher or lower depending on the specific context and content of the link.

In CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) affiliate marketing, merchants only pay commissions for traffic which actually generates sales and the amounts paid are based on figures negotiated and experimented with in the past few years. Typical commission rates range from less than 1% to over 20% depending on the merchant.

As a publisher using affiliate marketing to generate revenue for your site, the value of your out-bound links is going to be a function of the likelihood of the user converting into a sale and the number of click throughs your link gets.

To maximise your chances of generating revenue from the links you create, use the following tips:

1. Make your link part of a call to action – rather than saying “click here” or “more info”, try using positive, descriptive text such as “the best book I ever read” or “my favourite clothes shop”.
2. Place your links within original, interesting and keyword rich content. Optimising copy for the search engines is an article in itself, but the more effort you put into making your content both search engine friendly and interesting for human readers, the more traffic you’ll generate for your site and the more click-throughs your links will receive.
3. Be genuine – try to avoid placing links in your content for the sake of it and make sure that the readers will see value being added by what you write. This will make them more likely to trust you when you suggest a good deal that you’ve seen.
4. Quality over quantity. Although you have to be ‘in it to win it’, simply filling a site up with lots of out-bound links is no way to make a success of your affiliate marketing activities. Make sure you are diluting the number of out-bound links down with editorial content.
5. If marketing via social media such as Twitter, don’t post a link with every single update. Try to maintain a ratio of 1 affiliated tweet for every 5 general updates – noone is interested in following a user who simply spams them with link after link!
6. Take your time – you can’t build a high-value, affiliate marketing supported site overnight – be patient and experiment with your linking strategy. Make sure you have a suitable web analytics package installed so that you can monitor your visitor trends and use heat maps to highlight where the hotspots are in your content. Continual improvement is the way to ensure that your site provides you with the best possible return.

To conclude, the value of a link is the value you give it. Follow the above steps to have the best chance of maximising your potential revenue whenever you add affiliated links to your website and you’ll be making commissions in no time.

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Chris Smith is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow Chris on Twitter
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The October 2009 a4uexpo (attended by ProfitBite), featured several seminars aiming to crystal ball gaze into the future of affiliate marketing.  The seminars were varied ranging from where affiliate marketing fits into the online media mix, to questions about the sustainability of the business model presented by the modern affiliate networks.

In a two part blog feature on affiliateteacher.co.uk, this article addresses the views of affiliate marketers on affiliate networks.  Can the suited and booted big boys of affiliate marketing remain nimble and prosper within the increasingly innovative affiliate marketing arena?

Affiliate networks sit between a merchant (or retailer), and an affiliate who works hard to promote the merchants products or services.  Merchants and networks encourage their affiliates to write content rich websites that review, blog or critique a merchant’s products.  Networks exist because integrating with every merchant is a complex and bespoke technical task.  If each affiliate had to integrate with every merchant individually, the barriers for entry into affiliate marketing would be prohibitively high.  Networks technologically enable merchants to work with affiliates.

Networks also add value by allowing affiliates to track every link and campaign element they place on their site.  This allows affiliates to maximise the output from their affiliate campaigns by targetting the content that works best.  It also allows merchants to see the ROI from their affiliate campaigns.

Networks get their money by charging merchants a fee for becoming part of their network.  They also take a slice of the commission from the affiliate called the network override.  This is typically 30%.

It all sounds great.  Networks bridge the gap between merchants and affiliates allowing them to monetize their content.  So what’s wrong with this seemingly harmonious relationship?

There are several areas where the values that networks are adding to affiliate campaigns are being questioned.  The service that networks offer to their merchants is a typical bone of contention amongst merchants.  There is anecdotal evidence that there are sometimes over 30 merchants to one account manager at some of the leading networks.  With perhaps thousands of affiliates spanning these merchants, it is difficult to see how those campaigns can be managed effectively.

There is also a perception that most of the major affiliate network technology for tracking is somewhat outdated, and does not offer affiliates the transparency and capabilities they would like to see.  However, some of networks are currently refreshing their control panels: for example, Affiliate Window have recently released Darwin.

Despite these grumbles, affiliate networks are the only technological solution for affiliates wishing to interact with online retailers.  They are ever expanding the range of interactive content affiliates can use (through widgets and feeds), and their APIs are becoming increasingly open for tech-savvy affiliates to integrate into their sites.

There is also a new nimbler range of technologies that use the affiliate network as a platform to build their technology: easycontentunits allows users to drag and drop components from any affiliate network and ProfitBite aggregates all the major affiliate networks under one roof to give affiliates seamless access to any merchant on any network.  Many merchants also get around the variable level of service provided by affiliate networks by being a member of several networks.  They can then offer their affiliates different offers within different networks.

The big area that may change significantly (and alter the structure of networks in affiliate marketing) is tracking.  There are many issues around tracking that could change significantly in the not too distant future: de-duplication, and the last click wins policy are two much talked about issues.  Expect to see networks keenly developing their control panels and perhaps even some open standards emerging to target these issues.  The network’s dominance in tracking could be upset further, if a 3rd party tracking solution was to emerge.  If this could outperform current network technology this may give affiliates the transparency and enhanced functionality that they desire.  A target area for the Google affiliate network perhaps?

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Nick Woolley
Nick is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow Nick on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/woolleynick
Connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/nickwoolley
Follow ProfitBite on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/profitbite

Affiliate Marketing is a form of internet-based marketing in which one company rewards a website for each visitor or customer brought about by their promotion of the product. The website is commonly referred to as the affiliate and is great way for them to earn money from their website.

Affiliate Marketing normally consists of three central players: the advertiser, the affiliate, and of course, the customer. The affiliate drives traffic to advertiser, by encouraging the potential customers to click on the links. So if you are an affiliate you’re basically sending people to a website. If they then buy or sign up for something you get commission for directing them there and for many website owners, its an easy way to earn extra money without actually having to “do” anything. Pretty much like being a salesman, without actually promoting or selling the product. The affiliate can just relax knowing that they are making a profit.

Affiliate marketing is also beneficial to the advertiser, commonly known as the merchant. By placing affiliate marketing advertising on various websites, he has free advertising. Therefore the merchant’s products get a lot more exposure, merely by placing an ad for their product on the affiliate’s website. The more affiliates the merchant is registered with, the more promotion the product gets!

There are different programs for the affiliate to earn commission: either pay-per-sale or pay-per-lead. Pay-per-sale means that the customer has to pay for the product you have linked to before you are rewarded, whereas pay-per-lead pays works on the premise that the customer is interested enough to purchase the product just from the link. Commission varies between the types of program but no matter what you will earn from them, the amount will clearly vary depending on how much effort is put in. After registering with the appropriate program, a link is then placed from your site ready for someone to click.

One of the most crucial points to consider first and foremost is the target audience. The website needs to be built around the audience to stimulate traffic and success in the products being promoted. For instance, if the website is of a particular theme then it would be beneficial to select the appropriate affiliating marketing to coincide with this. It’s no good having traffic if the products aren’t good enough to promote in the first place! For example, if your website relates to a clothing, links to books or home improvements might look out of place. Likewise, too many affiliate advertisements on the website will only drive people away.  It helps to build trust to keep people visiting your site, writing a product review may determine the likelihood of the whether the customer is interested or not.

In conclusion, affiliate marketing is a great way to reap benefits from a website. The affiliate relies on quality products to therefore make money out of a sale and the merchant has the incentive of free advertising and so is mutually beneficial to both parties.

Some helpful resources to get you started:

A forum offering helpful hints on affiliate marketing: http://www.affiliates4u.com

An affiliate network for publishers with access to lots of merchants across many of the big networks all under one simple account: http://www.profitbite.com

Some of the larger affiliate networks that will help you promote your product with affiliate marketing: http://www.affiliatewindow.com, http://www.cj.com/, http://www.buy.at/, http://www.tradedoubler.com, http://www.linkshare.com, http://www.webgains.com, http://www.paidonresults.com, http://www.dgm-uk.com

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Linzie Hodson is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow ProfitBite on Twitter

From October 1st, the eBay partner network will go live with quality click pricing (QCP) (http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/news/quality-click-pricing-preview-report/).  QCP is a new payment structure that will reward affiliates who drive incremental transactions on eBay.  It works by changing the payment model for eBay affiliates from a CPA (cost per action) model to a CPC (cost per click) model.  The amount paid to the publisher will depend on the quality of the traffic being driven to eBay.  eBay will pay more to publishers driving higher quality longer lasting traffic to their site.  In their own words:  “The greater the incremental revenue and the higher the expected lifetime value of the customers an affiliate sends, the higher the EPC and total earnings the affiliate will receive”.  Earnings per click (EPC) will be set daily for the previous day’s traffic.

The implementation of this scheme will no doubt cause high profile winners and losers amongst the web publishing affiliate world.

However, eBay’s ideas represent the forefront of a movement to significantly change the way affiliates are paid for their commissions.  eBay’s ultimate motivation for QCP is to encourage affiliates to drive quality traffic to their site.  Rewarding these affiliates encourages them to invest in more affiliate marketing. eBay then hope these high quality affiliates will drive more and higher quality traffic to their site.

eBay’s introduction of QCP also represents a shift to paying variable commissions to affiliates based on traffic quality.  At the moment affiliate marketing largely works on a fixed sales commission expiring after a 30 day period.  There is strong argument that there is more value in a click closer in time to a sale.  eBay are also arguing that clicks from traffic with a higher EPC are more valuable than those from a low EPC source.

I believe that the model being presented by eBay will open the door for more affiliate networks and companies to experiment with variable pricing models.  I expect this will be the first in a long list of ideas that will slowly iterate towards a significantly more equitable model for affiliate marketing.

References:

• http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/qcp_faq_english_new.pdf
• http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/ebay-partner-network-quality-click-pricing.html
• http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/news/quality-click-pricing-preview-report/
• http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/news/announcing-quality-click-pricing/

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Nick Woolley
Nick is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow Nick on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/woolleynick
Connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/nickwoolley
Follow ProfitBite on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/profitbite

Amazon recently came out and said “No” to affiliate marketing via Twitter. They are a massive player, so it is understandable that they are keen to protect their brand. Opening their associate program up to Twitter could just encourage Spam … or will it generate quality leads?

But are they wrong to miss out on this opportunity? And what about smaller retailers and merchants?

For smaller retailers the issues around brand protection and incrementality are less poignant.  Small retailers are interested in any traffic that boosts sales.

The main problem is that Twitter is full of spammers.  I am constantly amazed by the number of spammers trying to follow my burblings on Twitter.

For affiliate marketing to work on Twitter, marketers will have to become a lot more intelligent.  Genuine recommendation (as with all marketing) is the most valuable whilst spam links add no value.  Indeed a genuine recommendation from a big celebrity, even to a large Internet player like Amazon, will have enormous value.  It follows that recommendations from reputable but less high profile Tweeters will also add value: less than the celebrity but more than the spammer.

But can Twitter get its house in order and curb the spammers?

It may be too soon to tell.  Twitter is a relatively new service, and is still having teething problems; it was down again
yesterday evening for me in the UK for example.

I also suspect that affiliate marketing networks and merchants will need convincing that Twitter is a manageable and safe place for their affiliates to promote their products.  This will take time.

Users will also need access to better tools to allow them to link to a wide range of retailers quickly and easily.  Tools like these are becoming available, ProfitBite is one such example.

Affiliate marketing through Twitter is already happening.  I suspect it will develop and grow into a large industry that will once again attract back the big Internet marketers like Amazon.  It will take time though.  The tools and technologies will be required before anyone can run successful affiliate campaigns with confidence from Twitter.

References:

• “Damn Marketers.  Affiliate Links on Twitter.” – http://www.jangro.com/affiliate-marketing/damn-marketers-affiliate-links-in-twitter/
• “No Precedence For Social Media – Amazon Hangs Us Out To Dry” – http://www.searchenginejournal.com/amazon-affiliates-social-media/11654/
• “Affiliate Links in Twitter, Amazon Says No” – http://www.jangro.com/affiliate-marketing/affiliate-links-in-twitter-amazon-says-no/

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Nick Woolley
Nick is currently based at ProfitBite, a new Internet startup based in Manchester, England, UK
Follow Nick on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/woolleynick
Connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/nickwoolley
Follow ProfitBite on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/profitbite