Category: Specials

Adotas-“The Wall Street Journal’s front page is typically littered with mistakes now,” a coworker randomly commented.

“That’s because they laid off the proofreaders and copy editors to cut costs,” I snorted. “Huge mistake.”

I often lament not having a copy editor or proofreader at Adotas, not just because I’m in such a rush to produce content that I let mistakes seep through. Having another set of eyes examine your work before publication is invaluable. I see little errors all over the major tech sites I read — I figure the writers have to hit publish as soon as they type the last word, same as me. The Internet news monster must be fed… constantly.

“Isn’t there some kind of software publishers could use to copy edit?” someone else asked.

“Besides spell check, no, not really,” I replied. Grammar check is useless half the time because many English rules are elastic, and a good writer enjoys breaking the rules to draw attention to a point or sound colloquial. These are things a human can discern, but can you imagine an algorithm that could do the same? A computer can beat the hell out of a few “Jeopardy” champions, but it can’t replace a top-notch copy editor.

Yet copy desks tend to get axed at pubs when budgets are grim. Effectively, we’re killing our human quality control in published works, and there’s no machine to replace it.

I was thinking about the human element as I got up to date on the fallout from Google’s recent algorithm update — which affected 12% of searches and threatened to vanquish the hated content farms. One of the hardest hit by the update, human search engine and how-to video producer Mahalo, apparently has laid off a tenth of its workforce.

Mahalo founder and CEO Jason Calacanis announced the staff cuts were due to a serious dip in traffic and revenue, but that the company would not cut down on its video production. So just as much content pooped out with less actual humans involved — sounds like a winner.

Allen Stern over at Center Networks laments, “when Mahalo first launched, Jason told me numerous times he didn’t care about Google because he was going to build loyal users who would just come directly to Mahalo.”

That’s the dream, of course, but it seems hard to make it a reality as online publishers have become slaves to Google — the latest update shows King G can pick publishers off with a simple gesture. (Why do I keep thinking of the Queen of Hearts screaming “Off with his head!”?)

Although Demand Media, the company that epitomizes content farms for many tech journalists, did suffer a bit from the algo update, its flagship eHow site appears to have gotten a boost, much to the grumblings of the rest of the web. In addition, Demand seems to be bringing on higher-profile names to give the site the semblance of prestige. “Lifestyle expert” Racheal Ray, queen of the 30-minute meal, has been named the creative force behind eHow.com’s Food channel, putting her in charge of recruiting mules — I mean, talent — to create and be featured in original video programming.

Meanwhile, Associated Content, Yahoo’s content farm, admitted the algo change was cutting into its traffic. But sites having little to do with the mass production of cheap content also had the traffic rug pulled out from under them by the “farmer” update — Technorati, PR Newswire, Songkick, Slideshare, Complete Review, DaniWeb and Cult of Mac were slapped by the new algo.

But Cult of Mac has already been “reinstated” in Google’s search results — apparently Google Spam Czar Matt Cutts reached out to editor Leander Kahney after complaints about the delisting, and whaddayaknow? They’re back in.

Kahney suggests that the algorithm updates are still being tweaked, but ZDNet’s Larry Dignan thinks Cult of Mac simply got a pass: ”There will be more sites complaining about Google’s algorithm change and the search giant will probably make a few ‘one-off’ exceptions. The inflection point comes when Google has to make multiple ‘one-off’ calls. Ultimately, we’ve outsourced the quality call to Google.”

Doesn’t this sound horribly inefficient? And also terrifying in general?

Dignan asks a question I’ve been hollering for a while: how the hell does an algorithm decide something as subjective as quality? Dignan lays out the issues:

1. “What’s the unassailable definition of quality?
2. “Is an algorithm capable of making a subjective decision (one man’s spam is another man’s good read)?
3. “And do we trust Google to be judge and jury via an algorithm we know nothing about?”

Here are the answers:

1. There is none.
2. Not that we’ve seen.
3. Not a chance.

Quality control requires inputs and opinions from flesh and blood humans, and the search sector has technology now to do incorporate that kind efficiently. Of course, I’m talking about social search.

In effect, Blekko is basically crowdsourcing quality control with its upstart social search engine. Facebook has improved its search features because our friends make good curators, and Bing is highlighting Facebook data in its searches. Google’s social search injection the week before the algo update seemed to be far more useful, but Google has its hands tied without Facebook data.

The ineffectiveness of Google’s “farmer” update should be the final proof that we need a new discovery and research engine. Just like Mike Arrington commented, Google has become a resource mainly if you know exactly what you want — say I’m looking for the person who said such-and-such.

Just like publications need human editors to ensure editorial quality, it’s becoming clear search engines need human input to deliver quality results. And we publishers could really use a social search resource to emerge so we can escape from Google’s tyranny, gain some visibility for our insightful original content, build our ad revenue and hire back our copy editors.

Sound like a plan, guys? I know some great copy editors that could use work.

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Gavin Dunaway is senior editor for Adotas.com Previously he served as an editor at TheStreet.com and a staff writer at Mobility, the publication of trade association Worldwide ERC. He received a Bachelor’s degree in English from George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.  It is also rumored that he will be in the next season of The Bachelor.

 

Commission Crusher is the #1 Affiliate Product in the World. Learn how to Generate Free Traffic

ADOTAS – The relationship between an affiliate and an affiliate manager can be very rewarding over the lifetime of an affiliate program. However, there are times when as an affiliate manager you may experience the wrath of an angry affiliate.

Affiliates can feel hurt about a company’s decision to lower a commission, or eliminate a popular method of promotion. What’s more, a simple misunderstanding via email can turn into personal attacks on you, the affiliate manager, in forums or through unsavory email messages to your boss.

Below are just a few scenarios that you might face, and suggestions for addressing them. These are not absolute cures; however, consider them as tools for repairing your relationship with your affiliates.

Scenario 1: You lower the payout of your affiliate program, because your budget is not big enough.

Solution: If it’s absolutely necessary to lower your payout due to a small budget, then do so. But remember that reducing all the affiliates in your program to a lower threshold is not the best alternative.

Not all affiliates are the same. Top performers that send through a high-quality volume of traffic and sales shouldn’t be equated with someone who just learned about affiliate marketing yesterday and needs more time to optimize their campaigns. Try offering a tiered commission, so that your partners are compensated based on their performance.

If tiered commissions aren’t possible then at least segment a handful of top performers into a higher commission group. Give them a friendly phone call to notify them of this benefit. Also explore rewarding lower-tiered affiliates with a bonus if they have achieved a high threshold.

Scenario 2: You abruptly kick out affiliates from your program because they don’t make any money.

Solution: Ask yourself whether or not you clearly communicated your performance requirements to your affiliates. Did you send them an email threatening to remove them from your program? Affiliates can’t all be super performers from the start. Take a step back and evaluate your relationships with the partners in your program.

Forums and popular blogs are filled with negative comments about “break-up tactics.” If they’re talking about you, make a public statement and admit your error. There’s nothing more humbling to an affiliate when they see an affiliate manager or program representative admit their mistakes.

Offer the chance to those affiliates who felt they were wrongly removed to contact you personally to discuss the problem. Also, a peace offering isn’t a bad idea; what better way to show your willingness to work together again than offering a promotion.

Scenario 3: A new affiliate uses your forbidden keywords in their PPC campaign and didn’t realize it. You decide to blacklist him or her from all your affiliate programs.

Solution: I have seen merchants get extremely irate when they discover that an affiliate has used forbidden keywords in a paid search campaign. However, I have also seen newbie affiliates genuinely forget to scrub their keyword list upon, say, switching their campaigns from Yahoo to Google. Sometimes merchants also forget to make forbidden practices explicit.

Unless the rules are blatantly communicated, it’s best to halt blacklisting affiliates. Make sure to communicate the rules clearly rather than have them simply listed in your terms and conditions.

Explain the details through your welcome email to new affiliates, on your sponsored forums, in your affiliate program description and anywhere else affiliates are likely to read about you. Let’s be honest, terms and conditions aren’t always a guaranteed way to prevent prohibited activity.

As you can see it helps to establish a communication strategy for attracting and maintaining quality relationships. Make it part of your affiliate program’s objectives to start sending out clear and transparent messages in your affiliate program.

If your internal objectives are only about earning as much money as possible in your affiliate program during the next three months, then you need to rethink those objectives. The message you convey publically has to convey the same message in-house.

If you are seeking conversions of 8% or more from affiliates with a relevant website with organic traffic, it’s important to communicate this in the beginning. An explicit description of the type of partners you want will attract more niche affiliates.

In addition, if you’ve decided to message your affiliates about changes to your program, make sure it’s across multiple platforms. Assuming that affiliates will check their email or your terms and conditions is a misjudgement. Have a lateral flow of communication across your program and Facebook pages, and on Twitter.

There is no magic method for handling difficult scenarios with affiliates, but as an affiliate manager try to re-evaluate the way you treat your affiliates. Remember it’s easier to attract bees with honey than with vinegar.

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Maranda Moses is a communications strategist for Share Results and contributes some of their widely read blogs and articles on affiliate strategies, industry news, and trends. Over the years she’s honed her skills in the online marketing space as a senior account manager in the education, family, apparel and maternity insurance verticals.

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Learn more about Affiliate Management from Hydra GM in “Affiliates Need Facetime”

I’m not normally someone who pitches books to people, since I believe that a lot of information can be found on the internet for free. That being said, my parents actually gave me a Kindle for the Holidays and because of that I’ve actually started to read again. So here are  Five books that are “must have” books if you are involved in marketing. I’ve linked to the paperback versions of the books, but highly recommend also getting the kindle versions. That being said, I highly recommend also, if you haven’t already have one, getting a Kindle. Please note, I actually own (on the kindle) all these books and have read them.

Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions
Tim Ash is one of my heroes, if only because he’s managed to look really good bald, something I’ve been working on for a year now.

Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer
If you haven’t been using Google Optimizer, and would like to try it, this is a great introduction. It’s worth the $18 price even if you don’t use it because it comes with $25 worth of Google Adwords 

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Something that isn’t talked much in the industry is Usability. Many of the techniques are basic, but understanding them completely, very complex.

Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results
My friend Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock recommends this book, and so do I.  Simply put, if you don’t know how to get people’s attention, what gets them to actually buy, you’re behind the curve.

Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars
I love you Ann! Really, if you are engaged in any landing pages, PPC conversions, I highly recommend you also learn about content. Why? Just because you are sending customers directly to a landing page doesn’t mean you can’t also create content on that same site.

Learn how to Get Free Traffic

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What are some CPA Offers that Convert?

ADOTAS – I can’t stop grinning about Gavin Dunaway’s truth-sharing post, “Google Stands Up For Its Search“; no doubt bloggers like us “are giving big G a headache.” I applaud him for having the courage to write the truth as he sees it. (There is only ever what truth we can each deduce which the many will never agree on.)

Big G intentionally created these problems with their MFA (made for AdSense) offering that I explained in my post about Google Killing the AdWords Golden Goose and their official Google AdSense© for Domains offering that pays big bucks to people who have littered the Internet with parked domains full of canned ads.

These tactics are what PPC (pay-per-click — i.e. AdWords and similar ads) experts call distribution fraud because advertisers can not opt out of them and a page full of canned searches is not a search and will not convert like a search. (If anyone can provide proof that these do convert I invite them to send it to me and I will publish it.)

Another “groan-inducing defense” that is getting old is the company that creates the problem claiming they are “fighting” the problem. Oh please.

Big G is trying to “clean up” the Internet to favor big brands and that has very serious implications for small local and e-commerce businesses and bloggers alike. I commented in this post on SEOBook by Aaron Wall regarding the now-famous Internet Cesspool quote on what I believe their CEO meant.

The Google MayDay update slammed e-commerce sites. The PageRank update that occurred over this past weekend G-slapped my blog for the first time. That is not surprising because I am firmly in the DoFollow, CommentLuv, KeywordLuv camp and am a champion of supporting small businesses. Because of that, my posts have a ton of outgoing links in the comments.

Allowing those links runs contrary to what Big G wants, but bloggers like me should hold fast to doing what is right and not what G wants because reversing this economic decline requires understanding that marketing is not evil — it is how we find what we want and need from non-big-brand companies.

That last link contains statistics that clearly show what is destroying economies around the world and what we — those of us who are willing to make better decisions — can do to reverse that. I encourage anyone reading this far to open that last link up and read those statistics so they clearly understand how dangerous not changing our shopping behavior is.

By moving the dollars we currently spend to small local and online businesses, we can create buying communities that may escape the worse of the inevitable collapse of the U.S. dollar. Anyone who believes that the economy can recover is in for a huge surprise. As many have been quoted as saying throughout time, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”

The handwriting is on the wall and easily interpreted if we only look around and read the excellent information available on the Internet — much of it compiled in “What Caused the Great Depression is Now.”

The monopoly Google has on both organic and paid search — clearly seen in this spreadsheet of Google market share by country — gives them a guillotine over the heads of every business, blog and website owner. They are also behind serious threats to net neutrality that could further favor those with deep pockets and cripple independent websites of all kind.

We Internet users have collectively handed them this guillotine and only we — by using alternative search engines — can take it away from them.

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Gail Gardner is a Social Media Marketing and Internet Strategist at GrowMap.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Welcome to 2011! Well, not yet, but we’re just about there. With the New Year being just around the corner, it’s about time we lay out our predictions for next year’s major marketing trends.

Here’s what I think will both happen and be important for businesses owners and brand marketers.

• Offline Mobile Marketing will Grow
• Social Media will Mature
• Increased Importance of SEO
• More Small Businesses will Invest Online
• Metrics and Measurements will Increase
• Tracking will Become More Difficult
• Publishers will Increase Focus Online, and Struggle
• Brands will Minimize Social Platforms and Invest in Websites
• E-commerce will Become More Intelligent
• Offline and Online Advertising will Merge
• Convergence will be One Step Closer

It’s pretty clear that mobile marketing will be extremely important. Foursquare has been a great indicator of mobile marketing’s power.

Mobile marketing growing is not the trend I’m excited about though. I’m more excited about how it will continue to be integrated with offline marketing.

As much as I dislike it, Facebook Places is in an opportune position with the release of Facebook Points. It won’t be long before we see fully integrated loyalty programs for check-ins that become Facebook Points which consumers can use to buy product or get discounts.

The integration of the mobile world and the offline world (think Coca-Cola in Israel) will be huge. The ability to integrate consumer credits cards, cheap RFID chips, and more dependence on mobile phones will drive this trend.

We say this almost every year, but it’s finally reached a tipping point. Major brands have embraced the value of social media and the online world. Businesses across the board have realized its importance and have pledged significant resources to the new media medium.

Watch for an increased adoption of corporate blogs and dependence on riskier online marketing plans (I say risky in the sense that brands will begin to slowly move away from the tight lipped corporate culture, to a more consumer friendly culture). Social media will drive businesses to re-think their culture and create a shift in how we do business and how we present ourselves.

Maturity does not increase use of social media, simply more effective and intelligent usage. We’ll see less wastage and more businesses asking the question “Why”.

It’s easy to look at major brand websites and see that most have little to no interest in optimizing their sites for search. Many are created in Flash, ignore coding best practices, and are confusing even for humans.

Businesses are beginning to realize the important of optimizing their websites for search engines. There are too many consumers searching for specific products for businesses to ignore them.

Small businesses, especially, gain an advantage by having an optimized website. Online, small businesses and major brands, are on equal footing – a well optimized small business website has the opportunity to perform better than some major brand websites.

I alluded to it before – small businesses have realized the advantage the Internet gives them and are investing in it. The ability to connect with consumers directly without high prices (think cable television ads) is an appealing proposition for many business owners.

Online marketing is no longer a risk; instead it’s becoming a necessity. The ROI can be measured and when done correctly can be phenomenal. Also, year-by-year, business owners have grown to be more and more tech savvy, recognizing the power of the Internet and investing in it.

The trend has continued and 2011 will be no different. We’ll see a continued increase in online investments with small businesses paying closer attention to their website realizing their sites are their online storefronts.

As more people begin giving online marketing their full focus (no longer experimenting), there will be a renewed focus on metrics. The idea that certain things are not measurable will no longer be accepted; instead people will demand metrics and measurable achievements.

Already, in 2010, we noticed a growth in online marketing metrics theory and strategies; in 2011 this trend will continue. We’ve become more sophisticated in our marketing models and are looking at new indicators to track success.

As more monitoring tools appear and more data becomes available, we’ll be able to more clearly track and define what’s working and what isn’t.

Even though I say tracking and measurements will increase, there is a potential obstacle to the trend. Government has shown an interest in reducing the ability for publishers to track and measure consumers online.

Consumers fear a lack of privacy online, an idea that already doesn’t exist, and never will, and government may over-react.  Curbing publishers’ ability to track and understand consumers could hurt online marketing as a whole. When it comes to measuring results, we may be pushed away from strict metrics and be forced to use the same guestimates we already do for traditional media.

Not to be left behind we’ll see more traditional publishers begin focusing online, realizing that traditional media is too expensive to be sustainable. Print publications have already moved online, but in 2011 we’ll see a true focus given to the web property – they won’t be portals for subscribing to the print publication.

I say they’ll still struggle because most print publishers fail to realize that moving online is not as simple as re-investing into your website. It’s a culture shift from print to real-time writing.

Publishing on the web is extremely different than publishing in print – two different strategies that take time to learn. 2011 will be the year publishers truly realize this difference and will either evolve or become extinct.

As brands become more mature in the way they interact with consumers online, they’ll also mature where they interact with consumers. Instead of focusing on creating the optimal social media profiles, businesses will begin to strengthen their website’s integrations with social media features.

Businesses will realize that by integrating the features of a social media site, they’re able to connect with consumers without giving up the analytics and control of branding.

Watch for increase integrations with Facebook connect and Twitter @anywhere. These social media API’s help business websites merge seamlessly with social media.

How we buy products online continue to grow more sophisticated. E-commerce site have collected data by letting consumers like and dislike products, leave comments, and even rate the shipping. Using the data, sites are able to create algorithms to recommend products, based on what we looked at previously.

In the next year, expect ecommerce sites to become even more intelligent. Social media sites allow us to compile large amounts of data to find and present products that solve problems for consumers.

Instead of having to search for a wrench on Amazon – the site may be intelligent enough to recognize that I just Googled how to fix my sink and recommend wrenches that would help with my product. Ecommerce that is predictive and targeted is something we’ll see in 2011.

I spoke previously about mobile marketing and offline merging, bridging the gap for marketers. The same holds true for advertisers.

Google has already shown that advertisers will be able to buy billboards through Google’s Adword system. Similarly, we’re seeing the same system for TV ads and soon enough radio ads as well.

The basic trend here is that we’ll be able to easily bid and manage our offline advertising through online systems – introducing new people to advertising they were previously exempt from.

The second trend here is much more subtle. It relates to the actual ad itself. In 2011, we’ll begin to see more and more websites begin to be added to advertisements.

I propose that in 2011, brands will begin integrating their TV ads with customized landing pages. No more will we see a brand homepage, but instead a relevant information page.

The integration of online and offline is something that already happens, to a lesser degree, in 2011 it’ll be done intelligently and effectively – instead of as an after-thought.

Technological convergence states that one-day technology, our multiple devices, will come together. The theory states that in the future we’ll only have one device, to do everything. It’s already prominent, as we see the adoption of tablets increase and processing power becoming more mobile.

The next age of convergence will come from the web converging with our TVs. We already see this phenomenon with Google TV and Apple TV, a trend that will only continue to grow.

It won’t be long before our tablets are our computers, our TV’s, our phones and anything else we may need.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think 2011 will be a truly exciting time. There’s a lot happening and so many changes in technology. We’re on the brink of major adoption of social technology, businesses giving renewed attention to technology, and the potential for major break through in tracking and measuring marketing actions.

If you’re an online marketer, brand manager, or even small business owner, 2011 will not be an era where you continue doing what has worked. 2011 will be a year of risks and trying new things. It will force people to rethink how they reach consumers and what they think is important or effective.

That’s what I think, what about you? What are you anticipating in 2011? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please leave a comment and share!

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Samir Balwani is a digital marketing strategist, helping businesses create holistic marketing solutions. His areas of expertise include digital communications, online marketing, and new media pr.

The affiliate marketing industry has a number of parent/child teams working together, such as Greg Rice and Greg Rice Jr.; Andy Rodriguez and Andy Rodriguez Jr.; and Deborah Carney and Liz Fogg-Ababon. In recent years I have become more involved in working with my father, Bill Swartwout, in what is now our company.

Bill started planting the seed for my love of working in the Internet industry when I was a young teen, when he first got on the Web. I’m currently working on instilling a passion for technology with my three-year-old daughter, who has known how to find the browser on my iPhone so that she could see the sports page icon, since she was just 18 months old.

Now, at just three, she manipulates her two pages of apps on my iPhone like a pro. It just goes to show, it’s never too young to start teaching your child how to use technology, or to get them interested in our industry, for that matter.

In addition to affiliate marketing, my other job has been an elementary school teacher. It has been my experience that not every student is fond of working on a computer. As I have surveyed my student’s families to find out what kind of technology they have available in their homes, the students with no interest in computers often do not have access to them at home.

Kids need to have a foundation in computers, as proficiency has become essential in education and the workplace. . Today’s children will not have much choice but to learn to use computers as we are engulfed in a computer-centric society. As a teacher, I do whatever I can to introduce the use of computers into my students lives through daily lessons, kick-starting their computer literacy skills – and they love it!

As a mother, I am sure to include my daughter in learning to work whatever piece of technology I happen to be using whenever she is nearby.

That said, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it is never too early to encourage an interest in affiliate marketing. My three-year-old certainly doesn’t know how to do what I do as President and Affiliate Manager. But she does know that “Mommy works on the computer a lot,” Mommy works with these things called “checks that have cool pictures” on them, “Mommy types a lot,” and that Mommy has fun with her work. She even loves to wear Mommy’s company hats and ID badges from past Affiliate Summits saying that she’s going to work with Mommy one day.

Jill, affiliate manager of www.GirlyChecks.com, is president of the “parent” Beaches and Towns Network, Inc.

David Sendroff knows fraud. In his role as the Chief Information Officer of Spire Vision, a major education lead generation agency, he sees tons of networks and affiliates try to defraud his clients. As he himself points out, networks seemed to be ignoring the issues and just “collecting checks.” So he decided to make a system in-house that would detect this fraud and help improve the overall quality of the leads. Instead of keeping his secret private, David has launched CPA Detective, an innovative new company that provides an overall solution for fraud detection, and something everyone needs to look at. We decided to sit down with David and ask him a few questions about fraud and the industry.

Was there a specific incident that made you wake up and notice that affiliate fraud was a huge issue?
What I found to be interesting was that as specific fraudulent data sources coming from an affiliate or sub affiliate were eliminated from affiliate channels, the same fraudulent traffic patterns would later appear through an entirely different account. At that point, I created the CPA Detective fraud tracking service because I realized that fraudsters would stop at nothing and the only way to have a true impact was to protect advertisers at the source.

What do you think the most significant issue in affiliate fraud is right now?
Everyone doing legitimate business is impacted by fraud. For some advertisers, we’ve actually identified upwards of 20% of their traffic to be generated fraudulently.  They end up paying for leads that are irrelevant or have been recycled from other campaigns, which introduces inefficiencies to the system. Many advertisers have not been able to achieve the best ROI for their advertising dollar, so they do not realize the full potential of a well structured CPA campaign. Fraud detection corrects these inefficiencies by ensuring optimal lead quality so that legit publishers and networks are paid accordingly. Elimination of fraud will create more trust and transparency which will expand the number and types of advertisers who use performance marketing.

What is your opinion of the influx of CPA network companies that allow anyone to create a CPA network? What are the dangers?
The challenge is that the due diligence practices and preventative measures of many smaller networks are laxed because they lack resources. Affiliates opening their campaigns to these networks create a lot of vulnerability. Every extra link in a redirect reduces the transparency of the originating source, which introduces more fraud to the industry.

What is the most innovative or interesting method you’ve seen someone try to defraud an affiliate network?
It wouldn’t serve the industry for me to publicize all of the tactics. However, one of the most interesting tactics that I’ve seen was an affiliate using a distributed network of college students across the country to commit fraud by form filling leads. Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated in the way they infiltrate affiliate networks to generate leads. We have seen the tools for committing fraud become more widely available and the old-school fraud prevention tactics are becoming less useful.

Why are so many affiliate networks refusing to get on the wagon and actively combat fraud? Do you think that perhaps some networks are engaging in fraud themselves?
Many affiliate networks are looking at the bottom line revenue and see traffic quality being the responsibility of the advertiser to monitor. Even if they had tools to detect fraud, it’s easier for a network to collect a check and take action when notified. Many advertisers also do not have the proper solutions to combat fraud, so networks are able to ride the wave for a little while before it becomes obvious.

What are some steps that people can take, outside of using your product, to start the fraud prevention process?
Networks should look for inconsistencies between area code, address, and IP location or even the story during the initial call. Watch out for the bank routing or address switch. Fraudsters are able to purchase pre-approved affiliate network accounts for a nominal fee, which throws all of the due diligence out the door.

Beyond that, look for irregular patterns with the traffic once it has commenced. You can also stay informed and participate in Facebook discussions and forums – industrypace.com is a great starting point!

As an advertiser you need to carefully choose your partners! Do business with networks that are known for their intense affiliate screening and fraud prevention practices. Require affiliate networks to provide you with sub-affiliate values for each lead generated so that you can isolate bad data sources. The best thing that advertisers and networks can do to prevent fraud is to stop paying for it. Even the smallest payment will keep fraudsters coming back for more.

What specific feature does CPA Detective have that no other company has? What difference does this make for advertisers?
Fraudulent affiliates can cloak, mask, and manipulate every element of their traffic to try to cover their tracks, but we can still detect fraud with certainty. We are experts in affiliate marketing and have maintained a fraud intelligence database for years. Advertisers are able to leverage the power of our database which is comprised of fraud patterns from every case that we identify. We combine cutting-edge technology and sophisticated fraud tracking algorithms specifically for CPA advertisers along with a service element that is customized for each client so that we become a powerful extension of your compliance team.

Some other companies are trying to enter the game this year, what should people be wary of when shopping for a fraud solution?
There are various options when it comes to data validation, compliance, and fraud monitoring services. Click fraud detection services are mainly focused on clicks, but they are not well versed in CPA campaigns that attract all sorts of other games that fraudsters play. Data validation services verify that the lead information matches a known database, which is useful but oftentimes irrelevant to CPA campaigns and can easily be compromised by fraudsters. The data itself generally does not provide proof of fraud, it’s the mechanism by which the leads were submitted. Strictly automated fraud detection solutions that rely solely on technology are missing the human component, which is critical given the ever changing tactics. If you are in the CPA business, find a company that specializes in CPA fraud.

I’m delighted that someone is really taking on the issue of affiliate fraud. CPA Detective is a company to keep an eye on as affiliate fraud is a serious issue, and I’m amazed that CPA Detective is one of the only companies out there. – Pace

Affiliate Marketers who are members of Offervault can now view landing page previews for offers that show in the US, CA, UK, AU, regardless of where they reside in the world.

Offervault, the leading aggregator of online affiliate programs and cost per action networks (CPA networks), has added a new “Set Country” feature to the Offervault member’s area. The set country feature provides an automatic proxy function which allows Affiliate Marketers who are members of Offervault to view landing page previews for offers that show in the US, CA, UK, AU, regardless of where they reside in the world. For example, a US affiliate can now view landing page previews for Canadian offers and UK affiliates can now view landing page previews for US offers.

“Until now, the inability of affiliates to view landing pages from other countries was a major roadblock that hampered many affiliate marketers’ efforts to evaluate and promote offers from around the world. Now all Offervault members have this capability and can preview any of the 22,000+ offers listed in our system,” said Mark Roth, founder of Offervault. “We have plans to added several more countries in the near future including France, Italy and Brazil”

Offervault has acted as an aggregator of affiliate offers from top CPA networks and other affiliate networks since 2007. Committed to improving the overall industry, its breadth and depth of offers and its free training programs have been highly recognized by the industry. Offervault offers a free sign up process at its website for affiliates and others interested in the performance marketing industry.

As of November 1st, all CPA offers listed in Offers202 are supplied exclusively by Offervault. In addition to supplying offer data for searches directly on the Offers202 site, Offervault now feeds all sites dependant on the Offers202 feed including Affbuzz and Affilatepaying.

New York, NY (PRWEB) November 16, 2010

Offervault, the original and premier aggregator of CPA offer data from over 100 leading CPA networks, has solidified its leading position in the industry with this important partnership with Tracking202. The partnership provides Offervault listed networks with substantial additional distribution and exposure for their offers, with reach to Offers202 users and to the network of additional sites that Offers202 feeds via its real time data feed. Offervault data will soon be available to Prosper202 users as well when the next major update is released.

Networks wishing to be included in Offers202 must now be listed first in Offervault. Offervault will automatically feed the data to the additional sites.

“This has been in the works for a few months and we are very excited to have finalized this important partnership between our companies” said Mark Roth, founder of Offervault. Wes Mahler and I have served the same user base for the past several years so it is great to be working closely together on this partnership, he said. Roth stated that he is particularly excited to provide the new distribution to Offervault listed networks.

President of Tracking202, Nana Gilbert-Baffoe says “We feel that our users will benefit from this new agreement, because Offervault is fully dedicated to running and maintaining the most comprehensive offer search engine in the market. This will allow us to focus on our core competency of building exceptional tracking software for affiliates.”

Offervault, founded in July 2007 as the first aggregator of CPA offers has since grown to become the premier aggregator and hub for CPA networks and affiliates with over 100 networks, 30,000 offers and 40,000 registered members.

Offervault is free for affiliates and publishers. It enables them to quickly find top offers and compare payouts between networks. It also saves hours of time by helping publishers research niches, browse new offers that are updated daily, preview landing pages, receive optional email alerts for new offers based on their criteria and to sign up for new networks.

Offervault provides additional features including instant keyword and demographic data for each offer and weekly training webinars covering a vast array of internet marketing and affiliate marketing topics.

Affiliate and publishers can join free at http://offervault.com

Networks interested in getting listed should contact Mark Roth or submit an inquiry here

Contact:

Mark Roth
201-476-1204
info(at)offervault(dot)com

ADOTAS – For companies that are accelerating marketing efforts to make the most of the upcoming holiday season, it’s still not too late to initiate a performance marketing strategy. With the ability to literally add thousands of additional marketing staff to support your online presence practically overnight, affiliate programs can prove to be cost effective and revenue generating for advertisers and publishers alike.

For David’s Cookies, affiliates are key to boosting our company’s sales. Like many consumer-oriented businesses, the holiday season can represent the lion’s share of the company’s annual profits and David’s Cookies is no exception. In fact, in recent years we’ve seen our sales increase almost 700 percent in the last six weeks of the year. To sustain continued growth and expand our buying audience of individual consumers as well as corporate gift sales, we invested in a performance marketing program.

Through our affiliate program, David’s Cookies is able to quickly scale our team of online marketers to support the holiday season without requiring the traditional training, management or overhead associated with seasonal employees. Through the added army of online marketers, we can more easily be front-and-center delivering targeted offers at the right time to buyers. With the flexibility to test out marketing campaigns and evaluate program success in near real-time, we can also make adjustments immediately, which is especially important when every minute counts during the holiday shopping season.

What’s amazing? Affiliate programs are based on a pay-per-performance model. As a result, the profits are more immediately realized by the publishers which further incentivizes them to drive more traffic to our website. An additional benefit of our performance marketing program is the ease of building partnerships that are mutually beneficial to all parties in the network.

While there are many benefits to a performance marketing program, it’s not as simple as joining a network and waiting for the profits to roll in.

One of the first and most important decisions is to determine which performance marketing program, or programs, to join. While there doesn’t appear to be a shortage of options, determining the best program that most closely aligns with your business goals can be challenging. Since advertisers and publishers typically join between two to three different performance marketing networks, here are three questions you should ask yourself to assess which performance marketing network and program options are best for your business needs.

1. What evaluation criteria does the performance marketing network use to determine who can join the network — when it comes to both advertisers and publishers?
2. What is the cost to join the network? It’s true that you get what you pay for yet don’t let cost be your sole determining factor. A recent blog post on Affiliate Tip further underscores this point and outlines the dangers of low cost of entry/low return programs.
3. What’s the process for getting new publishers and retailers up and running with a performance marketing program? While many organizations wisely steer away from introducing new marketing approaches during the busy holiday season the team at LinkShare promises that advertisers and publishers can be fully up and running with their performance marketing program within two weeks.

Once the performance marketing network has been selected, the advertiser, publisher and performance marketing provider equally share the responsibilities to manage and ensure the success of the program. From retailers, here are some tips for proactively addressing and avoiding three of the most common challenges that face new entrants when they join a performance marketing network.

1. Motivating publishers. Many publishers participate in several affiliate networks so how do you make sure that you remain top of mind? One way to do this is to carefully assess the costs associated with your company hiring additional holiday marketing staff through a traditional model versus the cost of temporarily increasing the revenue structure for publishers in a performance marketing network. Depending on the percentage of cost savings gained through a performance marketing program, an advertiser can redirect a portion of those costs to their affiliate publishers.

For David’s Cookies, by increasing the revenue share for publishers by a few percentage points for six weeks, we have seen sales increase by as much as 300 percent. Along with boosting revenue share, an online merchant can also consider providing additional bonuses as well as free quality merchandise. We’ve also found that generating special offers for strategic partners helps to strengthen the relationship, increase traffic and boost sales.

2. Ensuring quality content. It’s no secret that many people read online content and blogs because they provide information and insight that is consistently current, accurate and engaging. When there are hundreds or thousands of publishers promoting your company’s offerings, you want to be able to maintain some control over how and where your company appears online. This is yet another reason why it’s worthwhile to join a higher quality performance marketing network because they carefully evaluate publishers before they are accepted into the program and consistently evaluate their progress and activities.

3. Successfully executing a performance marketing strategy. Since nobody knows your business better than you do, the most successful performance marketing programs can’t happen without commitment from the advertiser. While the infrastructure may be in place to succeed in terms of joining a quality performance marketing network and having a widespread team of publishers promoting your products, without dedication from the advertiser, the program will not yield the highest possible results.

To make the most of your investment in a performance marketing program, it’s important to build a relationship with the account manager at the performance marketing network. Since the account managers are equally dedicated to your company’s success, they’re an important ally and resource. Going beyond providing an in-depth analysis of the program status, they can also generate ideas, help with market testing, provide strategy and make recommendations for tactical execution of plans to further cultivate your online presence and avoid potential missteps.

While end-of-year activities can be all encompassing, prioritize the relationship with your performance marketing account manager to make the most of the holiday season.

For David’s Cookies, participating in a performance marketing network has proven to be a valuable investment that helps drive revenue and brand awareness for our company. Since we joined the LinkShare network eight years ago, we have been able to grow our direct to consumer sales by double-digit percent increases each year.

Harris Beber is vice president of e-commerce for David’s Cookies.