Quality is never an accident …it is always the result of high intention,
sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution
–William A. Foster

If you’ve attended Affiliate Summit West 2012 (or are subscribed to the magazine) you have a copy of the latest FeedFront. For those of you who don’t have it, I’d like to draw your attention to my newest published magazine article — one entitled Seven Precursors of Affiliate Marketing Failure.

I believe that there are 7 major ways to fail at affiliate marketing. In the article I outlined 4 reasons why merchants/advertisers fail, and 3 reasons for affiliate failure. Here they are:

◊  Merchants fail in instances when they

(1) have unrealistic expections of what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and what it will do for them,
(2) try to manage affiliates who are 100% self-managed and hate that “managerial” approach,
(3) expect something for nothing, and/or
(4) launch their affiliate program, and then let it roll on “cruise control”.

◊  Affiliates, on the other hand, fail when they

(1) aren’t devoting the time to thorough due diligence and education,
(2) fake passion, interest, and/or hard work, and/or
(3) fail to diversify and focus on only one niche, or one marketing method.

Whether you are an affiliate or a merchant — the problem most frequently “lays in the misalignment of hopes, goals, expectations and realities” of what works and what doesn’t.

You may download the full issue of this FeedFront here. My article may be found on page 10. It’s got a number of other excellent article in it, and I certainly recommend at least flipping through it.

Over the past few days I’ve been talking with a new client whose affiliate program’s budget (let me stress: one of the top programs on a popular affiliate network) is being routinely cannibalized by trademark violators, pseudocouponers, and other types of unethical affiliates. In close to 5 years of the existence of this affiliate program they haven’t done much to prevent unwanted affiliate activity, and as a result, they’re now losing money (big money, I should add).

It doesn’t have to be that way! There are both good tools (see some examples here) and methods that help affiliate program managers detect and fight affiliate fraud, and coincidentally my newest FeedFront Magazine article is devoted to this very topic:

This particular issue of FeedFront (issue #15) is going to be distributed at Affiliate Summit East 2011 (that’s happening in less than 3 weeks in New York City), but you may already read (and download) it online here. My article on affiliate fraud prevention may be found on page 32.

In case you haven’t yet heard, Affiliates4u.com has released its 2011 “Performance Marketing Guide”, and I’ve just picked up my copy.

It is an impressive 143-pages-long reference book on all things performance marketing, and the best part of it is that it’s available for a free-of-charge download (so, it’s an eBook of a kind).

On the first 60 pages of it, the Guide gives the reader an overview of Search Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Display Marketing, E-mail, Social Marketing, and Behavioural Retargeting.

Naturally, the largest part of the Guide is devoted to Affiliate Marketing. In it, the authors discuss different types of affiliates, affiliate networks, commission types, role of cookies, product feeds, and much more. There are plenty of examples, case studies, and up-to-date statistics that you don’t want to miss.

The part in the “Affiliate Marketing” section that I’ve appreciated the most was the “Analytics” part. Web analytics is an area that deserves significantly more attention that many affiliates and merchants currently devote to it. The authors of the Guide outline 4 processes and objectives of web analytics: (i) data gathering, (ii) identifying business goals, (iii) understanding your visitors and their intent, and (iv) making actions based on factual data [p. 122]

Here’s an excerpt from this part:

When it comes to performance marketing, wheather you are on the advertiser or publisher side, data analysis is essential to working well with the other party and producing the best results possible. Performance marketing is a win-win situation… but making it work well requires a lot of in-depth analysis and once you… have started tracking the visitors who are converting, you will need a program which will let you drill down the data to establish what people are buying, when they are buying it, where they are buying it from and how much you are paying out versus how much you are making. [pp. 127-128]

If you haven’t downloaded your copy of the Performance Marketing Guide yet, you may do so here. It’ll be worth your time. I’ve really enjoyed it.

The newest issue of Search Marketing Standard (SMS) has just come out, and in it you will also find an article by me. SMS has approached me earlier this year to write about affiliate marketing for SEM experts, and I decided to tackle the subject from two angles: (a) paid search expert as an affiliate, and (b) paid search expert/agency as an affiliate management company.

The article may be found on pages 51-53 in the newest issue:

The digital edition of the issue may be found here. Enjoy it, and, as always, any feedback on my article would be highly appreciated.

By the way, should you wish to subscribe to the Search Marketing Standard, here’s a 25% off coupon code you can use on a 1-year subscription: SMS0610.

I quite liked Econsultancy’s idea of putting together a list of the top blog posts of the year that’s coming to an end.

So, I’ve just finished analyzing all of my 2010 posts (yes, close to 350 articles altogether!) , and today I’d like to bring you just the most popular ones. I’ve relied on PostRank’s scoring system in this task, and  below you will see the 25 affiliate marketing posts that have generated the highest social engagement over 2010:

1. Online Guide to Affiliate Marketing [for Merchants] — An online guide on how to start and run an affiliate program

2. 35 Affiliate Marketing Predictions for 2011 — Twelve top notch affiliate marketers are giving their voicing out their predictions and expectations of 2011.

3. Top 20 Affiliate Plugins for WordPress — A compilation of 20 plugins affiliates may use to monetize their blogs and WordPress-based websites.

4. Digital Marketer’s Twitter 100+ Master List — A comprehensive list of people every digital marketer must follow on Twitter. Categories covered: web analytics, branding & PR, content, conversion optimization, mobile, reading & learning, research, and social media.

5. Affiliate Marketing: My Predictions for 2010 — These are especially interesting to re-read now that year is coming to an end.

6. Most Influential Affiliate Summit West 2011 Speakers — My attempt to arrange Affiliate Summit West 2011 speakers by their Klout scores (or social media influence).

7. Google Instant and Its Impact on Affiliate Marketing — Eight active affiliate marketers speak up their first thoughts on Google Instant, and what it may mean for affiliate marketing.

8. Pay Per Call Advertising Draws Impressive Conversions — Think that a steady conversion rate exceeding 20% is too good to wish for? It can actually come true with pay-per-call.

9. 9 Internet Marketing Magazines To Subscribe To — The title says it all (most of them are free too).

10. Most Profitable Affiliate Marketing Niches — Post where I address the question of “Which niches are more profitable when it comes to make money being an affiliate?”

11. Interview with Jen Goode on Colorado Internet Sales Tax — One of my favorite affiliate marketers gives her perspective on the Internet sales tax bill, Amazon’s termination of Colorado affiliate accounts, and other related questions.

12. Effective Affiliate Recruitment Through Affiliates’ Eyes — Learn how affiliates themselves want to be find out about affiliate programs.

13. How to Read Affiliate Program Statistics & Calculate Commission — A “how to” post for merchants who are trying to determine how much to pay their affiliates and stay competitive.

14. Effectiveness of Online Video: CTR, Conversion & Other Data — Interesting data on online video. Relevant not only for affiliate marketers.

15. Affiliate Links — Third Most Popular Blog Monetization Method — According to Technorati in their popularity affiliate links beat paid postings, rich media ads, and is third only to display ads and search ads.

16. Affiliate Payments: Preferred Methods and Frequency — How often do affiliates want to be paid, and what are the most preferable methods of receiving their compensation? The answers are here.

17. European Affiliate Networks — A list of over 60 affiliate networks split by countries and regions of Europe.

18. ShareASale ThinkTank 2010: Recap in Pictures — Photo report on another excellent conference by ShareASale.

19. 2010 State Budget Shortfalls and Affiliate Tax — When it comes to state budget shortfalls, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2010 is the worst year of this century. This will directly connect with more state looking towards affiliate tax.

20. How to Budget an Affiliate Marketing Program — Learn how to plan your budget for an affiliate program, and what expenses to keep in mind.

21. Best Platform for Affiliate Blogging — Which platform to choose: WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, Movable Type, or something else? The answer is in this post.

22. 10 Must Read Resources for Affiliate Summit Attendees –  Blog post put together a few days before Affiliate Summit East 2010. Represents a collection of other people’s online articles on how to get the most out of Affiliate Summits.

23. How To Guide to Affiliate Marketing [for Affiliates] — Practical online guide (100% free) to getting involved in affiliate marketing as an affiliate. Over 50 questions answered.

24. MLM Versus Affiliate Marketing — Regardless of what some may believe, they are not the same at all. Read about the drastic differences here.

25. Affiliate Application: Watch Out for These 10 Red Flags — Find out what should raise a red flag in an affiliate application.

Enjoy the above posts, and thank you, everyone, who read them, “liked” them on Facebook, tweeted and bookmarked them. Without this we would’ve never known which of them were most engaging.

A new issue of FeedFront Magazine has come out last week, and on page 62 of it I talk of the three main types of content publishers (bloggers certainly included):

1. Reporters — love to write about breakthrough ideas and technologies, new studies, and fresh statistical data. They love to announce, analyze, and draw conclusions or provide commentary of their own.

2. Theoreticians — they are about connecting the dots between scientific researches/studies and our day-to-day reality.

3. Coaches – teachers that share their generally experience-based “how-to” knowledge with readers who want to master in this or that subject.

More in the article, and here’s a shot of it:

You may also find (and enjoy) the full issue of this FeedFront here. Thanks to Missy Ward for also including my thoughts into her “Is Your Social Media Expert a Fraud” on page 9.

If you’ve attended the most recent Affiliate Summit East in New York (August 15-17, 2010) or Search Engine Strategies in San Francisco (August 16-20, 2010), you have probably already seen the newest August 2010 (issue 5) edition of the Revenue Performance magazine. This issue has published my recent interview with Jason Spievak, the CEO of RingRevenue, a platform widely used by many affiliate networks for the support of their pay-per-call programs.

Here’s just an excerpt from that interview:

Geno: Can you give me any examples of how pay-per-call has opened up new opportunities for either merchants or affiliates?

Jason: Sure. ServiceMagic is an online marketplace that connects homeowners with service professionals. Until recently, they offered no offline opportunities for their affiliates, but in the last few months they have been using the LinkShare pay-per-call service. As the interest of their pay-per-call affiliates in these opportunities has increased, they began to expand the variety of offline marketing channels they were offering. As a result, ServiceMagic affiliates can now drive traffic via flyers, radio and print ads, for example, using unique phone numbers that enable the company to track and then compensate affiliates accordingly.

Mobile is also proving to be strong channel for many merchants. The challenge with many mobile campaigns is that many mobile publishers are able to drive a lot of calls, but they aren’t always well qualified. Historically this has presented a problem for the merchant because they don’t want their call center agents spending time answering calls from unqualified callers. Pay-per-call platforms can allow the merchant to screen, survey and filter these calls before they reach the call center. By doing this, the technology creates a win-win where mobile publishers can run broad based promotions and merchants only accept and pay for the quality calls.

To take my company as an example, just over 50% of calls generated across our partner platforms in the past month have come from offline publishers, including mobile.

Geno: An issue that I have been campaigning about is the danger of “phone leakage”, where if a merchant has their own phone number displayed on their website it may take sales credit away from a referring affiliate. It’s critically important that affiliates are credited with the sales they are entitled to. Can concerns about phone leakage be addressed with your technology?

Jason: Yes, our solution allows the affiliate’s trackable phone number to be injected into the merchant’s website in place of the merchant’s default number. When a potential customer clicks on the affiliate’s ad, the click URL passes a unique identifier that the merchant can use to switch out their main phone number with the publisher’s phone number so that anytime the site visitor is on the merchant’s site, they will see the phone number that was assigned to that specific publisher.

The full interview may be found both in the magazine, and online here.

There’s no merchant that hasn’t ever wondered what makes an affiliate pick one program over another. Is it commission rate, conversion, EPC, or a combination of all these? Or maybe there’s a significantly larger number factors? There is.

I believe that there is a set of 15 factors all of which are closely intertwined and interdependent; and since an affiliate’s performance with a affiliate program is always dependent on a bouquet of all these variables, a smart affiliates analyzes the whole set.

I’ve highlighted the top 5 of them in my recent post at Econsultancy, but haven’t spoken much about definitions, or explanations… These may be found in my “15 Guidelines to Choosing an Affiliate Program” which is featured in the September 2010 issue of Website Magazine which is already hitting its subscribers’ mailboxes [for those not subscribed to it, here's a PDF for you].

Based on a poll I have conducted among affiliates, the prioritization of these factors is distributed as follows:

1. Commission amount (47%)
2. Website usability, leaks, etc (37%)
3. Merchant’s reputation / reliability (36%)
4. Conversion rate (27%)
5. Tracking / reporting platform used (26%)
6. Cookie life (23%)
7. Prices / competitiveness (23%)
8. Market saturation (19%)
9. EPC (18%)
10. Creatives (18%)
11. Tools (16%)
12. Commission recurrence (13%)
13. Management & approachability (14%)
14. Terms of service (11%)
15. Reversal rate (7%)

I hope this information gives good food for thought both to affiliates and merchants.

If you’re an affiliate that hasn’t cast your vote yet, please do so here. And, as always, your comments will be appreciated.

“It is interesting that we do not see much written on affiliate marketing analytics, whereas if there is one industry that relies on analytical data especially heavily it is affiliate marketing” — this is how my newest article starts. It is one of the feature articles in the Summer 2010 issue of the Visibility Magazine.

In the article I look at 3 basic KPIs for affiliates/publishers (EPC, Conversion Rate, Reversal Rate), and 5 key performance indicators that merchants/advertisers should be measuring and analyzing on an ongoing basis (Affiliate Recruited, Activity Index, Activation, Traffic, and Transaction Volume). Visual examples of data presentation on three different affiliate networks (AvantLink, ShareASale, and Commission Junction) are also provided.

The article is coming out in the print version of the magazine, but you may also read it in the digital edition here (on pages 38-39).

Have you ever wondered if there are any other motivators available to affiliate program managers besides cash bonuses, prizes, and other extrinsic means of affiliate motivation?

There are!

It has also been proven that the more cash bonuses you give out, the more the per-bonus amount is expected to increase to create the same drive next time you decide to motivate by cash.

Super affiliates, who are also in this business for the money, are not picking affiliate programs based on the amount of an activation bonus, or even performance bonuses interwoven into the payment structure. Most of the time they have a longer term plan on how to succeed with this or that affiliate program, and their motivation comes from the challenge, the interesting work they’re getting themselves involved in, and the opportunity for further learning and advancement.

Read more in my newest article on affiliate motivation in the April 2010 issue of the FeedFront magazine, which may be read online or downloaded here.

See also the post on how the CSN Stores’ affiliate program manager uses some of the principles I’ve written about in the above-quoted article. Whether they are doing it intuitively or not, I certainly applaud the approach.