Online Marketing Glossary: Distribution Network
Distribution Network:
- A network of websites or search engines and their partner sites on which paid ads can be distributed. The network receives advertisements from the host search engine, paid for with a CPC or CPM model.
To be completely honest, I don’t have an example of this or any experience. If you do, please share it in the comments so we can all learn from YOUR expertise! You have all weekend to “school” us!
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Affsum Session: Affiliate Marketing Basics for Merchants
Apparently this same session has been given for awhile now, and is usually referred to as Developing the Right Merchant Mindset. The speaker was:
- Andy Rodriguez, President, Andy Rodriguez Consulting Inc.
Overall there were some good basics here… but I guess I’ve graduated to where the basics are too basic for me.
Bullet Point Review!
- Lots of merchants don’t understand how affiliate marketing works and hence end up abusing the system.
- Affiliates work when they want and for whom they want – once you understand this you’re going in the right direction.
- Affiliates cannot be fired – they’re not your employees.
- Affiliates don’t work for you, they work with you.
- Affiliates have no fixed work hours and no time requirements.
- Affiliates have no fear of loss of compensation or sick days.
- Affiliates have more work than hours in the day.
- Affiliates don’t need you, you need them.
- Affiliates’ most important asset & ROI is TIME.
- Merchant’s most important & ROI is TRUST.
- Build the relationships and the sales will follow.
- Be sure your commissions are comparable.
- Most sales happen in the first 24-48 hours, but long cookies are still appealing to affiliates.
- Affiliates talk – so make sure it’s good.
- Important to notify affiliates of any downtime ahead of time.
- What does it take?
- Merchant mindset
- Affiliate’s first impression
- Program information
- Registration/Application
- Approval Letter – make sure all letters are genuinely personalized
- Rejection Letter
- Creating links – make it simple for affiliates to get links
- What’s in it for the affiliate?
- Commission rates
- Return days
- Creative inventory
- Clear call to action
- Deep linking
- Tools of the trade
- Link options
- Commission structure is flexible
- Affiliate relationship
- Trust
Points brought up during the Q&A
- Goldencan, popshops – some tools that are easy to help affiliates.
- Successful merchant/AM has 1st hand experience as an affiliate & is able to help partners to improve conversions, drive traffic, & motivate them.
- Just search for your top key words + affiliate to do a vertical analysis.
- There are pros & cons to direct linking that are based on the merchant – in general direct linking will have higher conversion rates.
- Stronger brands = not so good idea to allow TM bidding
- Smaller, weaker brands = might be good.
- Should have a program on one network
- There are problems with different networks and compatibility (adware).
- Transitioning is different – just be open & clear.
- How do you find niche affiliates to recruit?
- Tools Aurelius, visit forums like ABestWeb.
- .5% – 1% – 25% of affiliates in a program are active usually. 8-12% is about average.
- Don’t remove affiliates unless they’re doing something unethical or against terms – many will apply with an idea in mind but may not get them in gear right away.
- Continue to reach out to inactive affiliates offering assistance.
- Is everything okay?
- Can I help?
- Have you had a problem with this merchant?
- Is there anything I can do to help you?
- Remember to include links, promotions, CAB (Cash Activation Bonus) and incentives
- Merchants that have their program across multiple networks with different offers are probably looking to switch networks & are offer better terms on the network they’re moving to as an incentive to get affiliates switched faster.
- If you need contact information that your network doesn’t share, there are tools that will help you go around the network to get information – the network is more of a software application.
- Have contests – it’s a great motivator to get a non-performing affiliate active.
- A low percentage of active affiliates are usually due to bad activation emails or poor merchant support.
- Banners are becomming passe, articles are great, and data feeds are here to stay.
Days 2 and 3 of Affiliate Summit East 2008
Well, while I’d intended to recap each day… that didn’t exactly happen as you can tell. I do intend to post the notes I took from the sessions and the impressions to help everyone learn the great stuff I learned. Some of the more hot button sessions can’t be covered in mere bullet points, so it will take me a day or so longer to get my thoughts together for those.
I covered Saturday & Sunday (mostly… the ShareASale party was nice although I didn’t stay long), so let’s jump right into Monday & Tuesday, the busiest days of the conference.
Day 2 – Divide & Conquer
- In many ways this is the day that the summit starts. In the past the breakout sessions have only been on Monday & Tuesday, however this year they were extended to Sunday. Regardless, the keynote was given on Monday by Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker. If you didn’t want to jump up ready to go, you didn’t listen to what Mayor Booker had to say. It was a great speech, and I already posted my thoughts about it.
- The blogger’s lounge helped save my sanity. It was nice to be able to go in there in the 30 minute breaks between sessions & chat with people and do a little bit of work. Had the wifi worked out better for me (not sure if it was my ancient laptop or the actual connection that was the issue) I would have been able to get more posts up during the actual conference. I hope to have a better laptop by the next show I go to so I can just live blog it!
- Of the 3 sessions I attended, the best was Content That Kills. It was informative, had great tips and information, and there were good questions asked by the audience. I may be biased being a writer by heart, but it was good stuff.
- The other sessions I attended that day were the Performance Marketing Alliance Q&A, which turned more into a witch hunt filled with personal issues unfortunately, and How is Social Media Changing Affiliate Marketing, which apparently it isn’t because that question was never really answered. More on those in their own posts.
- The Great Affiliate Road Rally was a slaughterhouse win! With just three cars in it this time, the first place car took off like a shot and left the others in their dust! Congrats to them & to the others? Well remember the entry fee went to charity & you won’t feel so bad 🙂
- Monday night I had dinner with a lovely group of new friends & colleagues and then headed over to the LinkShare event at Tia’s. The event was a whole new group of people to talk to and had a great time talking some shop and reminiscing over Police Academy flicks with Wil Reynolds & Jim Kukral.
- Oh no, that wasn’t the end! After that we headed back to the hotel where we shut down the bar there and moved across the street to a small bar by the water & had a great time chatting with people and generally schmoozing before rolling into bed.
Day 3 – Epic Games
- It was a matter of sleep vs. sessions I wasn’t overly excited about attending, so I missed the Ask the Experts table discussions & The Future of Affiliate Marketing to sleep in & get refreshed for the Copywriting Clinic, which I very much wanted to attend. I hear I didn’t miss much.
- Speaking of the Copywriting Clinic, Lisa Riolo did an excellent job moderating and the panelists were excellent. I took 3 full pages of notes on this session, so you’re in for a huge post later on!
- The Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing session turned into the biggest fail session of the conference for me. The moderator Haiko de Poel Jr was doing a pretty bad job… usually when you’re the moderator of a panel of “experts” your job is to pass questions to the best suited panel member, not challenge the question back to the audience member who asked it. I have much more to say, so I’ll save it for later.
- The un-keynote was very relaxed and I actually got up & talked…which was big for me knowing that it was being video taped! I just hope when I look back at it that I don’t look like a fool lol.
- Luckily I was able to attend the Red Sox vs. Rangers game at Fenway with some fellow baseball loving conference attendees. Being a moderate baseball fan I was really thrilled to be there & the game was crazy! The Red Sox almost blew a 10-0 lead in the 1st but came back in the last inning to tie it up and then ultimately overtake the Rangers with an epic score of 17-19 Red Sox. We only spent a few innings in the stands before the rain started, but I got some great pictures and we continued watching the game from inside near the concessions so it wasn’t a waste.
- More bar shenanigans, then some piano playing until late kept me up long enough to decide not to go to bed before my early flight out of town. Overall what a great end to a great conference.
Final Thought – Springer Style
Overall I had the best time at this conference – not just because it was fun and I met a lot of terrific people who I’ve had the chance to get to know online and now have had the opportunity to meet in person – but because I just learned so much that I “get it” now. I remember back in February going to the Affiliate Summit West and having a conversation with my husband that I was actually starting to understand more and more about the industry and that I really felt like this was an industry I could get excited about.
And I have… and this reinforced so much for me how much I really like this industry! I’m back to the “real world” here and ready to conquer it!
Read MoreOnline Marketing Glossary: Affiliate Manager
Affiliate Manager:
- The manager responsible for overseeing the marketing of a merchant’s program including forecasts and budgets, as well as communicating with affiliates regularly, establishing incentives and monitoring industry news and trends.
Yep, it’s back to the AM grindstone for me today! The “vacation” that is Affiliate Summit is over and I had a terrific time and met a lot of great people! So now I get to snap back to reality and return to weeding through affiliate applications, answering emails, and all the other hats I do!
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Chargeback
Chargeback:
- An incomplete sales transaction (for example: merchandise is purchased and then returned) that results in an affiliate commission deduction.
Unfortunately this is an unavoidable occurrence when dealing within the realm of retail. Customers change their minds. Products don’t always meet expectations. So of course when a merchant is forced to refund the customer, they’re also forced to not pay the affiliate who referred the sale.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Web 2.0
Web 2.0:
- Also referred to as the Semantic Web. In this iteration, sites, links, media and databases are “smarter” and able to automatically convey more meaning than those of today.
Okay while I’m not going to argue with Alexandra’s definition here, I will say that it’s different from the explanation I’ve always been given about what “web 2.0” is. It’s my understanding that web 2.0 is all about social interaction and user generated content. Sites like YouTube and Yelp are great examples of content-rich sites that are reliant entirely on the users who submit that content.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
