We’ve received 20 entries for the 400th Day Contest: Computer & Internet Jokes. It’s time to choose the winners, and I need your help with this. I’m posting a public poll below, and inviting you to vote for your favorite joke(s).

The poll will be open from now until 02/25/2010, and it is a multiple options poll — so please check all of the jokes that you like before hitting that “Vote” button:

Best of luck to all the participants, and looking forward to announcing the winners!!

It seems like this has been just yesterday, but another 100-day period has passed, and since in the course of it I have consistently blogged at least once a day, I feel like it’s a good time to celebrate. Yes, we’re gonna have another contest!! This time we have over $1,000 worth of prizes from 7 different sponsors, and I would like to thank them all for contributing.

On this 400th day of my non-stop blogging I think it is good to have some laughing fun, and the contest I’m starting now is going to be about jokes. The details, rules, and information on prizes may be found below…

– CONTEST RULES –

1. Topic: computer & Internet-related jokes (jokes about developers, webmasters, online marketers, web analysts, and anyone related to computers or e-commerce qualify!)
2. Restrictions and details: 1 joke per comment, no more than 3 jokes per contestant
3. Deadline: to participate in the contest, post your jokes by February 19, 2010
4. Further process: once all entries are in, I will post a poll so that people could vote for their favorite jokes. The poll will run from 02/19 till 02/25/2010 which is when the winners will be announced
5. Prizes: we will have three prizes (details below)

– PRIZES –

1st Place

• Gold Pass (~ $280 value) to Affiliate Summit East 2010 [affiliate program: on ShareASale]

and:

• Course of your choice (value $249-269) from Legacy Learning Systems [affiliate program: on ShareASale]

2nd Place

• $100 gift certificate from JensonUSA.com [affiliate program: on ShareASale]

and:

• $100.00 gift certificate from UpscaleLighting.com [affiliate program: on ShareASale and Google].

3rd Place

• $50 gift card from DaySpring [affiliate program: on Commission Junction]

and:

• $25 gift card from LCI Paper [affiliate program: coming up]

Additionally, each of the above three winners will also receive an Estrella Journey ring (~$90.00 value + free shipping) from TopJewels.com [affiliate program: coming up].

Looking forward to reading your entries!

Today is the 300th day of 2009. My New Year’s resolution for this year was to produce quality blog content on a daily basis. Therefore, today marks the 300th day of my non-stop blogging (at least one post a day). To celebrate it I have decided to put together a contest.

The idea for the contest was born yesterday morning when I was enjoying breakfast in beautiful California with fellow affiliate marketers, Shawn Collins, Mike Allen and Sabrina O’Malone. We chuckled over how our kids are describing what their parents do. Some tell people that their parents just play the computer all day long, while others believe that money is not really earned, but received from cash machines when needed.

What do your children say about your work? Post these precious explanations (or views of our industry through kids’ eyes) of your children, grandchildren, nephews, etc below, and on October 30, 2009 I will pick three winners. The prizes to be awarded exceed $700.00 in value, and they are:

Prize #1

Thanksgiving Dinner for two from GourmetStation.com

and

Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2009 (thank you, Shawn!)

Prize #2

$50 gift certificate from HalloweenMart.com.

$50 gift certificate from UpscaleLighting.com [added to the prizes on 10/29].

Prize #3

Any one of my two books — autographed.

Looking forward to reading your entries.

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Edit: 2 follow-up posts: (i) FTC Says the $11000 Fine “is Not True”, (ii) How to Word Disclosures & Agreements to Meet FTC Rules
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On 1 December 2009 the new Federal Trade Commission’s endorsements/testimonials rules are coming into force. I am referring to the “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” the text of which was announced by FTC yesterday. Changes will affect “testimonial advertisements, bloggers, celebrity endorsements” and affiliate marketers employing any such techniques. FTC stressed that regardless of the undertone of a blog post, “the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product” will be  “considered an endorsement”. Therefore “bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.” [more here]

The full 81-pages long FTC’s Guides document may be downloaded in PDF here. Below I am quoting just a few of the excerpts that affiliates and affiliate program managers should pay attention to.

Imposing liability… hinges on the determination that the advertiser chose to sponsor the consumer-generated content such that it has established an endorser-sponsor relationship. It is foreseeable that an endorser may exaggerate the benefits of a free product or fail to disclose a material relationship where one exists. (p. 15)

Shift of responsibility from advertiser to publisher:

When the Commission adopted the Guides in 1980, endorsements were disseminated by advertisers… through such traditional media as television, commercials and print advertisements. With such media, the duty to disclose material connections between the advertiser and the endorser naturally fell on the advertiser.

The recent creation of consumer-generated media means that in many instances, endorsements are not disseminated by the endorser, rather than by the sponsoring advertiser. In these contexts, the Commission believes that the endorser is the party primarily responsible for disclosing material connections with the advertiser. However, advertisers who sponsor these endorsers (either by providing free products — directly or through a middleman — or otherwise) in order to generate positive word of mouth and spur sales should establish procedures to advise endorsers that they should make the necessary disclosures and to monitor the conduct of those endorsers. (pp. 38-39)

So, while the disclosure responsibility has  shifted from advertisers to publishers, advertisers should have both a policy for endorsers to follow, and policing procedures in place.

The Commission does not believe, however, that it needs to spell out the procedures that companies should put in place to monitor compliance with the principles set forth in the Guides; these are appropriate subjects for advertisers to determine for themselves, because they have the best knowledge of their business practices, and thus of the processes that would best fulfill their responsibilities. (p. 49)

It is also important to understand that:

Advertisers are subject to liability for false or unsubstantiated statements made through endorsements, or for failing to disclose material connections between themselves and their endorsers. Endorsers also may be liable for statements made in the course of their endorsements. (p. 61)

Connections must be clearly disclosed:

When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement … such connection must be fully disclosed. (p. 75)

And a helpful example:

A college student who has earned a reputation as a video game expert maintains a personal weblog or “blog” where he posts entries about his gaming experiences. Readers of his blog frequently seek his opinions about video game hardware and software. Ad it has done in the past, the manufacturer of a newly released video game system send the student a free copy of the system and asks him to write about it on his blog. He tests the new gaming system and writes a favorable review. Because his review is disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious, readers are unlikely to know that he has received the video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product, and given the value of the video game system, this fact likely would materially affect the credibility they attach to his endorsement. Accordingly, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge. The manufacturer should advise him at the time it provides the gaming system that this connection should be disclosed, that it should have procedures in place to try to monitor his postings for compliance. (pp. 79-80)

The whole document is chock-full of examples, and while it is not a quick read, it is a document every affiliate and affiliate program manager should study to arrive at their further course of action.

Shawn Collins concluded that affiliate program managers “should get acquainted with this issue fast and update their terms and conditions accordingly” — the sooner, the better. Affiliates, in their turn, should also review the full text of the above-quoted Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and, regardless of whether the merchants advise them on this question or not, disclose of the fact that they are acting in partnership with the merchants that they are promoting. I do not believe this should have any negative effect on affiliates that are really adding value for the end user. To provide a simple example, if a blog with a built-in shopping comparison engine (run by an affiliate) that receives commission of every sale they refer to merchants offers a helpful tool for shoppers to compare products across several different merchants, and blogs about them and their products daily, discloses its relationship with these merchants, it will only spell out their honesty and add more credibility to the affiliate’s website.

The new FTC’s rules do raise many questions (e.g.: how do you disclose when you only have 140 characters?, how exactly do you word the disclosure policy? etc), leaving plenty of food for thought. While there are still many things to clarify, overall, I believe this to be a positive development. It helps us all move on to a more transparent online environment, and that is good. I am sure much more will be written on the subject in the coming days and months, but for the time being everyone who is involved in affiliate marketing (on both the affiliate and the merchant sides) must make the necessary adjustments to their strategies. After all, $11,000 is indeed “a steep price to pay” for violations of the new rules and guides.

More to read on the subject:

• FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials – official press release
• Soon, Bloggers Must Give Full Disclosure by Tim Arango /The New York Times/
• FTC Sets Endorsement Rules for Blogs by Cecilia Kang /The Washington Post/
• FTC: Bloggers, Testimonials Need Better Disclosure by Deborah Yao /Associated Press/
• FTC Values Sponsored Conversations at $11,000 Apiece by Brian Solis /TechCrunch/
• The FTC and Affiliate Disclosure by Scott Jangro
• New FTC Thing Is A Bigger Deal Than You Might Think by Frank Kern

Many people come to my blog searching for “free affiliate tracking software”. There are a number of free (and inexpensive) scripts that merchants can install on their server to start an affiliate program. Here’s just a brief list:

• Affiliate Program Script
• Cosmic AffiliateClick
• SimpleAffiliate
• TigerTom’s Affiliate Program Software
• TWSC Affiliate Lite

Additionally, some shopping carts offer free affiliate program plug-ins. See a list in the second half of this post of mine.

Finally, there is also a number of affiliate and CPA networks that charge merchants no setup fee for joining them. These are:

• Click2Sell
• clixGalore
• CyberBounty.com
• DirectAssociate
• e-Affiliatez.com (looks almost identical to DirectAssociate)
• Paydot.com
• Profitistic

I would caution affiliate program managers and merchants from using anything that is marketed as a free product. I personally have never tried any of the above (so, in no way does this post constitute any kind of endorsement), and one of my favourite sayings — which comes from Benjamin Franklin — goes like this: “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.” No, don’t take this as any kind of conclusion. Just be cautious, and do a thorough due diligence prior to starting using any of the free affiliate tracking solutions.

All over the world the countdown to Christmas begins around this time of the year. In the U.S. today is, of course, the Black Friday.

I am a firm believer that those who work hard deserve to play hard. Today I hope to bring in a little more excitement into the pre-Christmas sales by bringing to you this new affiliate contest. Here are the details of the contest:

Contest type: Performance-based affiliate contest

Dates: 11/23/2007 – 12/23/2007 [contest ends at midnight PST]

Conditions: To qualify for the prizes announced, an affiliate has to generate a set qualifying number of sales either within one of or across the following five affiliate programs we manage:

• BrandLet – Fashion for Less 
• DazzlingRugs – Top Quality Wool Rugs
• GourmetStation – Fine Dining Delivered [also available through AvantLink]
• HomelivingStyle – Furniture & Decor

PRIZES:

FIRST PRIZE: 500 or more sales — Cruise around Europe for Two (with Holland America Line; round-trip airfare to Europe included)

SECOND PRIZE: 300 or over — Latest MacBook Pro (4GB 250GB 17″ Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz and much more)

THIRD PRIZE: 100 or more — 500 Gallons of Gas (valid for continental U.S. only, any state; non-US affiliates will be remunerated with a prize of equal monetary value [approx. $1,500])

Important: There is one first prize, two second prizes, and three third prizes. Prizes will be awarded on the “first come – first served” basis (or rather: first qualified – first awarded, of course).

Restrictions: Affiliates that bid on trademarks with programs that prohibit it, will not qualify regardless of how many sales they send.

Looking forward to a hot season of pre-Christmas affiliate sales now!!