Wow… It seems that I’ve grown into a pretty talkative microblogger. Per #wdyjt, I’ve been on Twitter for 1,041 days, and in the course of this time I’ve already tweeted for 15,000 times:

It has been a greatly rewarding experience, and I highly recommend microblogging to everyone who loves making connections, educating yourself on an ongoing basis, as well as sharing your knowledge with others. Focused use of Twitter can yield invaluable fruit providing for a real-time monitoring of your industry news and developments, as well as a lot of great education on the subject(s) of your interest.

I thought it would be nice to commemorate my microblogging milestone by starting a Word Association game; but not exactly in the way it’s normally played. In my game let’s list the words and phrases (including negative ones, or fallacies) with which affiliate marketing associates for you.

I’ll start with my 15 words (in no particular order):

1. freedom
2. flexibility
3. get-rich-quick
4. expertise
5. performance
6. sales
7. niches
8. measurable
9. outsource
10. unmanageable workforce
11. professional secrets
12. hammock
13. laptop
14. home
15. autopilot income

Care to join me? If so, please use the “Comments” are below to add your associative words and phrases. Maybe together we’ll be able reach 15,000 associations as well.

Wondering how the U.S. online retail will look over the next few years?

Clark Fredricksen of eMarketer has forwarded me some interesting projection data for the period from 2008 through 2013. Here’s the table:

As you can see, the above summary was prepared by eMarketer in June 2009 (so the 2008 numbers are based on actual data, while the rest represents their revised forecast). It looks like no major boosts are expected in the growth of the numbers of U.S. Internet users, or online shoppers. However, the Internet-generated retail sales (travel packages, digital downloads, and ticket sales excluded) are expected to really pick up between 2011 and 2013, growing from $164B in 2011 to $182.5B in 2012, and then – to $201.4B in 2013 (that’s a growth of over 52% from $132B in 2010). Good stats. Thank you, Clark.

I have just received an affiliate-geared newsletter from the affiliate program manager at FootballFanatics.com, and it instantly reminded me of the topic I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. It’s the topic of dynamic affiliate banners. Are you using these in your affiliate program? If you aren’t, you should be, as it will immediately make you stand out among your competition.

Definitions first, and then I will provide you with a few exemplary contexts.

Traditionally, “dynamic banner display means that the same banner advertisement changes with each refresh of the page” making it possible to display “a myriad of ads on a Web site without having to clutter a single Web page” [source]. In affiliate programs the situation is similar, yet a little different. When a merchant offers a dynamic banner, it essentially implies a self-renewing creative, which does not need any maintenance on the affiliate side (beyond the initial placement, of course). An affiliate just places the banner code on his/her site, and every time the merchant decides to update this particular banner, they just do it on their end, and it self-updates on all affiliate sites that use it.

Some of the most suitable contexts for the use of dynamic banners are:

• Seasonal (or holiday-related) banners
• Deals of the day (week, or any other time period) banners
• Coupon banners

Here’s that example from the FootballFanatics.com affiliate newsletter that I have referenced above:

We are … moving to making our banners “Dynamic”. What does this mean? That we will automatically update these banners with current events such as a championship, signing or current season. This will allow you to take advantage of what is selling at any time! These banners are named “NCAA Mens (Dynamic)” in our banner inventory so they will be updated with any events in the NCAA Mens sports world.  (For Example: These NCAA Men’s banners will promote NCAA Basketball now during March Madness but will be switched to Baseball when that season starts)

This is a perfect example of how to make your seasonal creatives dynamic.

If you aren’t doing this in your affiliate program yet, today is a good day to start!

One of my favorite affiliate networks, AvantLink, has just announced the launch of a mobile phone application – AvantLink Mobile:

AvantLink Mobile allows both affiliates and merchants check their stats on the go (right from their mobile). Affiliate program managers can also review and make decisions on pending affiliate applications, while affiliates may review recently launched affiliate programs, and decide whether they may want to join any of them:

Considering the rapidly growing popularity of Android phones (Nexus One, Motorola Droid, HTC phones, Samsung Behold, Dell Aero, etc), this is certainly a very nice development by AvantLink. It is also good to know that a similar iPhone application is already in the works too.

Should you care to know, today is already the 80th day of 2010 (seems like it’s been just yesterday that I’ve made my New Years resolutions, and we’re already that far into the year… wow). This being a nice round number, I have decided to analyze which of my 2010 already-posted blog thoughts/posts/articles have been most popular judging by how many people retweeted them (i.e. decided to redistribute them via Twitter).

So here comes my Top 10 Posts list:

1. Online Guide to Affiliate Marketing — Hugely popular, and this doesn’t surprise me. To my knowledge, it is one of very few free (and constantly expanding) online manuals on how to start and run and affiliate program.
2. Affiliate Marketing: My Predictions for 2010
3. CPA Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, and the Confusion
4. How So-Called “Amazon Tax” Harms Thousands of Small Businesses
5. MLM versus Affiliate Marketing
6. Most Profitable Affiliate Marketing Niches
7. How to Budget an Affiliate Marketing Program
8. Drs. Foster and Smith Terminates Virginia Affiliates [tie with previous post]
9. 400th Day Contest: Computer & Internet Jokes
10. Affiliate Tax Prospect Now Clouds Virginia Sky

Thank you for all those RTs. It is always exciting to learn what makes the strongest resonance in the hearts and minds of my readers.

In the course of this week two affiliate networks sent out newsletters: Google Affiliate Network (GAN) – to advertisers/merchants, and ShareASale (SAS) – to affiliates.

Google Affiliate Network’s Newsletter to Advertisers

I really like the way GAN is providing their merchants with a “monthly dashboard” report where Google gives a good visual overview of what’s been going on in an affiliate program. It is a brief, yet information-packed two-page report which tells you a number of things about your affiliate program (and does it by means of graphs, and lists): 12-months program performance, weekly sales going back 15 weeks, info on top publishers, and a number of other useful pieces of data. The two graphs that I personally liked most of all are the following ones:

Publisher Productivity Report

Pie Chart on Percentage of Active Publishers by “Business Class”

Good, and useful information. I wish more affiliate networks were providing their merchants with these on a regular basis.

ShareASale’s Newsletter to Affiliates

ShareASale is one of the most consistent affiliate networks in keeping affiliates up-to-date on what’s happening in the overall industry, as well as on ShareASale itself. Two highlights from their newsletter:

Double-Digit Growth for Online Retail Forecasted

Quoting Forrester, SAS pointed out that “online retail sales will grow by 10% a year for the next 5 years” taking more and more of the brick-n-mortar businesses’ pie. “The report also notes that 154 million U.S. consumers made online purchases in 2009, representing 67% of all online users.”

New Affiliate Traffic Report Available

To simplify split-testing of links, as well as viewing your overall performance across a number of merchants, ShareASale has added a new report for affiliates to use — the Affiliate Traffic Report which “enables you to see a traffic and sales breakdown over a given time range for any particular merchant or banner”. Here’s a sample of how this report looks (I had to remove one column, merchant’s “Website”, to make it display well on my blog):

As you play around with it, it becomes apparent that SAS has started gathering data for it on January 5th, 2010. Also, at this time affiliates can view data for a “range of one month or less”, which may be viewed as a disadvantage by some affiliates. This may be limited due to the potentially huge amount of data SAS may have to process, but longer periods (e.g.: 90 or 180 days, if it does have to be limited like this) may be better for some. Finally, it would also be also be good to see Reversal Rate displayed on this report (see how the only sale to merchant #3 from the top was reversed).

Over the past few months my wife and myself have become huge fans of Darrell Bush’s art, and shortly after falling in love with his paintings we were happy to find out that Buffalo Games produces jigsaw puzzles based on his artwork. We bought our first one some two months ago, and when my wife finished putting it together, we were simply stunned by how vivid and realistic the minor details of the painting become when they are composed of puzzle pieces. Every log and the roof of the log house, pier boat and leaves on the trees just came to life! So we decided to frame that puzzle:

I think it turned out to into a pretty impressive item wall decor for our basement. We weren’t expecting it to turn out this way, and it was both a pleasant surprise, and a start of a hobby… Since then we bought and put together another one, and it also turned out gorgeous. We looked over the Buffalo Games selection again, and decided to purchase our last one (“Winter Bliss”), but couldn’t find it anywhere in local stores, and I turned to the Internet.

I’ve found the new puzzle at several online stores, but as I was going through the checkout process with each (ended up testing four: PuzzleWarehouse.com, PuzzlesAndBeyond.com, PuzzBuffs.com, and SeriousPuzzles.com) to find out how much shipping would cost me, I’ve bumped into something that I believe to sometimes pose a real problem that negatively affects some merchants’ conversion rates. I am referring to disclosure of full shipping and handling costs conveniently for the user. And by “conveniently” I mean by not demanding that the shopper opens an account first, entering their detailed personal information (including email, full name, full address, and making the phone number information as mandatory). This is exactly the method used by PuzzleWarehouse.com and PuzzlesAndBeyond.com.

PuzzBuffs.com (I’m giving them and the next merchant backlinks here, as they have really deserved it), on the other hand, has a convenient “Estimate Shipping” option, while SeriousPuzzles.com allow you to calculate your shipping options right within your shopping cart. Interestingly enough, in my particular situation, the merchants that did require me to open an account with them first, ended up displaying shipping costs 50% or even 100%+ higher than those that didn’t have the compulsory registration in place. Guess which two merchants I ended up choosing from…

Whatever you sell, do some competitive intelligence, and make sure you do not end up being less attractive to your customers: neither in the usability of your website, nor in the competitiveness of your offer (the first two merchants in my above example failed on both fronts). And if you are selling something that requires shipping, do not decrease your own conversion rates by demanding compulsory registration before the customer sees and agrees to the shipping cost. That contact information you will receive from them won’t be worth anything unless it is contact info of a satisfied customer.

I couldn’t find any statistics on the exact impact of non-disclosed shipping cost on the conversion rate (even though I’m positive it does affect it negatively). So if you know of any, I would certainly appreciate you sharing it in the comments area below.

Here’s the latest news from the “affiliate tax” battlefields:

Colorado

The bill did pass motion yesterday: 6 “yes” to 5 “no”, but there is still hope. Read more in Rebecca Madigan’s Colorado Affiliates Rocked the House! post.

Update (as of late evening 01/29/10): 33 voted for the Colorado HB-1193 “affiliate tax” bill. It has passed in the House, and is now moving to the Senate.

New Mexico

Over the past few hours the affiliate marketing world has been holding its breath following Daniel M. Clark‘s tweet-casting from the committee meeting regarding the House Bill 50 (aka the “affiliate tax” bill); and here’s the latest:

Good news (at least for now). But see this tweet by Daniel too (where he elaborates on the “tabled” part).

Edit (of 01/29/10): For details on NM see today’s “Fighting Against House Bill 50 in New Mexico” blog post/podcast by Daniel.

Many of you I’m sure have seen the below tweet about a plumber coming out to my place to give me an estimate for a replacement of a kitchen sink (with installation of new faucet and disposer):

RotoRooter has never responded back (even though they are very active on Twitter). But a friend recommended trying to find a plumber through Angie’s List, and they tweeted right back offering a coupon to use should I decide to give their membership a try. I may very well do so some time soon, but for now — great job on AngiesList.com’s part monitoring what is being said about them in the Social Media! Especially shines in contrast with the RotoRooter’s silence.

Has anyone else noticed that in most instances when you tweet a complaint, or something negative about a company, you do not get an open response? I’ve had this happen with Starbucks once before too (and I had a really serious incident to report/deal with). Just silence… I guess, they don’t know that negative reviews increase sales too; but most importantly, when addressed properly, build a brand up (instead of hurting it).

Well, today I got started on this exciting project (replacing an old cast iron sink with a stainless steel one, and installing a nice new faucet and a more powerful in-sink garbage disposer). The job turned out to be much harder than I thought (the old sink was not only terribly heavy, but also very well glued to the countertop), and required an extra trip to a home improvement store, but I’m done with the most difficult part of the job, and should have it all finished by lunch tomorrow.

One thing that I got reminded of while removing the old pipes is my health. Yes, you’ve read it right. Our pipes didn’t look as bad as the pipe shown on the right, but they were also clogged with grease, and this reminded me of an analogy I’ve heard some time back. If we don’t take care of our health, eat greasy foods, don’t exercise and don’t monitor our cholesterol levels, our our arteries get clogged just as badly. I must admit, I haven’t checked my cholesterol level in years. I don’t eat bacon, hardly ever have steak, and do exercise, but my kitchen pipes reminded me that I need to check my cholesterol, and monitor what’s going on in my own body more carefully/systematically.

Now it’s time to get some rest… See you all again tomorrow, my faithful readers. Enjoy your weekend!

Ben Edelman, a Harvard Business School assistant professor, well-known in the affiliate marketing circles for exposing parasitic affiliate behavior, click fraud and affiliate commission fraud, has posted an online advertising Bill of Rights proposition. He proposes 5 rights to help safeguard advertisers “from increasingly powerful ad networks”, from “wasting advertisers’ budgets, slowing transition to online formats, and reducing payments to online publishers”.

These are:

1. An advertiser’s right to know where its ads are shown.
2. An advertiser’s right to meaningful, itemized billing.
3. An advertiser’s right to use its data as it sees fit.
4. An advertiser’s right to enjoy the fruits of its advertising campaigns.
5. An advertiser’s right to resolve disputes fairly and transparently.

All of the above have direct relation to the area of affiliate marketing, and you may review Ben’s thoughts behind each of these rights here: Towards a Bill of Rights for Online Advertisers. I, in my turn, second Ben’s proposition.