Affiliate Fraud:

• Bogus activity generated by an affiliate in an attempt to generate illegitimate, unearned revenue.

Commonly referred to as Black Hat activity, unfortunately there are lots of tactics that unethical affiliates can use to generate revenue.  Click fraud, redirects, adware, software programs, tool bars, etc.  There are many active affiliates out there that are working to bring ethics to the forefront of the affiliate marketing community.  Some great resources if you’re interested in reading up on what’s going on today in the affiliate industry regarding ethics and fraud, check out:

1. Affiliate Fair Play
2. UNEthical Affiliates Sub-Forum at ABestWeb
3. Parasiteware Sub-Forum at ABestWeb
4. Cookies, Adware, & Spyware Forum at 5 Star Affiliate Programs

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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Freemium:

• A business model that offers basic services for free, or is ad supported, but charges a premium for advanced or special features.  The model is popular with Web 2.0 companies that acquire companies through referral networks, organic search marketing, and word of mouth.

The most obvious example of this is within the online pornography industry.  Many porn sites will give visitors a free trial or free gallery of abbreviated clips, enticing visitors to pay for the premium membership to gain access to all the content.

Less lascivious websites and services also use this model, of course.  Webmaster Radio is a good example, giving free access to the last 30 days of content with commercials.  If you sign up for membership, you get commercial free listening & access to their full archives.

The reason this model works is simple - get the audience or target market hooked with the free content and generate that desire to pay for the premium content.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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Linkspam:

• A company attempts to place as many inbound links as possible to it’s site regardless of the context of the originating site.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen this before in practice.  Uninformed manager put their stock entirely into metrics, so that inbound link metric and page rank can be heavy hitters.  Professionals truly versed in proper SEO strategies know that the originating content matters almost just as much as the presence of the link.

It can be difficult to push back to overbearing and uneducated managers sometimes, so remember that you have your industry peers to help you to formulate convincing arguments for your side.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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Clickthrough Rate (CTR):

• The number of clicks an ad receives, divided by the total number of times that ad is displayed or served (represented as: total clicks / total impressions = CTR).  For example, if an ad has 100 impressions and 3 clicks, the CTR is 3 percent.

Knowing the CTR of your ads will help you to drill down & tailor your ads best to your visitors.  This can only help to increase your conversions and boost sales because your visitors will see the ads that are the most relevant to your content.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

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Okay, there was a glitch in the matrix last week and I somehow forgot to post what I’d been working on.  Fail for me.  Anyway, this week’s cribbed content will include some self-aggrandizing points from last week and some really nifty stuff going on this week.

• StickerGiant was kind enough to feature me on their blog last week.  I placed my first order with them while I was in Boston and was really happy with the quality of stickers I received :)  So I slapped their logo on my laptop!
• I never win anything, yet while at Affiliate Summit I won $1000 in a contest.  So with that I will be going to BlogWorldExpo!  I’m excited as this will be my first BWE and a lot of the good people I met at Affiliate Summit East will be there.
• ShareASale, always the innovator, launched their Make-A-Video widget, allowing affiliates to make - and monetize - videos for advertisers’ products and services.  I’m excited - I don’t do much on ShareASale yet, but soon I hope to have a bit more time to play around with this.
• Fellow AffSpot.com forum poster Daniel M. Clark just published his first widely available book, The Big Book of Spam: Subject Lines.  This is volume one, and volume two is already in the works.  I’m waiting for my copy and will dutifully review it for you!
• Motive Interactive affiliate manager Luke Jeffery Smith has a good audio eBook out there, Luke Jeffrey’s Affiliate Marketing Fast Track. It’s just $0.99 - I plan on buying it and giving it a listen this weekend, again, complete with review!

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