Associate Programs Newsletter #101
I’ve updated my Top 10 best-sellers list again. Ken Evoy, the guy who helps affiliates more than anyone else on the Net, is back at the No.1 spot where he belongs.
It’s really almost magical how good this program is. I refer people who buy Ken’s brilliant book. Then Ken launches another excellent product and I earn money when they buy that product, too – because they are “my” customers for life. Ken sells to them, and then pays ME commissions on sales HE works hard to make.
No wonder this program has hit No.1.
There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth when Ken closes his program SOON and says, “No more affiliates,” and it suddenly dawns on webmasters that they’ve missed out on joining the best affiliate program on the Net. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Join now before it’s too late:
https://www.associateprograms.com/affiliates
CONTENTS:
1. Gomez drops outrageous clause in contract
2. Dan Gray gets slashdotted
3. 12 lessons for affiliate program owners
4. The price of killing affiliate commissions
5. AddAce saves time and gets results
6. CJ’s cheeky $50,000 giveaway
7. Respond’s appalling “misunderstanding”
8. Warning on domain names sites
9. Situation vacant: Marketing Assistant
10. Odd Spot
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1. Gomez drops outrageous clause in contract
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I received a complaint this week about an astounding clause in an affiliate program contract.
“The Gomez Advisors program at alliance.gomez.com actually has a provision that requires Gomez to be your exclusive provider for 24 MONTHS after any termination of the agreement,” an alert webmaster told me.
“This is shockingly objectionable! I hope you will warn your readers about this particular program, and perhaps also warn them to read affiliate agreements VERY carefully,” he said.
I checked the contract. Sure enough, here’s what it said:
“You agree that we will be the sole and exclusive provider(s)
to you for use on your website(s) of promotions and services
which are the same as or similar to those promoted on the
Gomez.com website, such as promotions whereby consumers are
paid cash for opening an online brokerage account. In
particular, but without limiting the generality of the
foregoing, you will not offer on your website(s) promotions
offered by companies promoted on the Gomez.com website. The
foregoing provisions will remain in effect for the term of this
Agreement and for a period of 24 months after it expires or is
terminated.”
So if you quit the program, you couldn’t sign up with a Gomez.com competitor for TWO YEARS!
What made this even more outrageous was the fact that there was no limit on what Gomez might offer in the future, so apparently if they offered anything new, then that’s something you would be chained to for 24 months.
If they offered a product similar to, for example, “Make Your Site SELL!” – https://www.associateprograms.com/myss – [UPDATE: Now free!] would that mean that you’d have to quit offering MYSS immediately and for 24 months after you cancel the Gomez program?
I complained to Gomez – it’s one of those odd companies whose site doesn’t tell you the name of a person to contact – and asked why Gomez considered it necessary to be an exclusive provider for two years after termination of a contract.
I received a prompt reply from Tom Wong of Gomez:
“Thank you for bringing this issue to my attention. Please
understand that our intent was not to lock affiliate Web sites
from signing up with other programs. Gomez has signed up many
exclusive arrangements with our merchants and this has been
standard language we use to protect our relationships.
“However, after further review, we have decided to remove this
language from our Terms and Conditions of the Gomez Alliance
Partnership in order to avoid any confusion or
misinterpretation.”
I checked the contract again today. The offending clause has disappeared.
Perhaps I also should have complained about this clause:
“We may modify, revoke or cancel the Alliance Partner Program
or any of its terms and conditions at any time, with or without
notice.”
Clauses that mean “We can do whatever we like whenever we like without telling you” are fairly common in affiliate programs. They won’t disappear until affiliate program owners stop treating affiliates as cannon fodder and start treating them as associates.
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[UPDATE: This program has closed.]___________________________________________________________
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2. Dan Gray gets slashdotted
============================
You know what they say about being slashdotted? It’s true, says Daniel Gray.
The popular Slashdot site – “News for Nerds. Stuff that matters” – reviewed Dan’s book, “The Complete Guide to Associate and Affiliate Programs on the Net” –
slashdot.org/books/00/03/13/1033214.shtml
“The Slashdot review cranked my book’s Amazon ratings, big time – that’s *without* a direct link from the page and *with* all the Amazon bad patent karma,” Dan says. “I think your review pumped it up to 700 something, which I thought to be simply amazing. Slashdot pumped it all the way up to 352.
“I have dreams of a top 100 book, but hey, I have dreams of driving a bright red Ferrari one day, too. (Until then, I’ll just have to borrow my son’s Matchbox cars … and keep pounding out the geekbooks!)”
A little of Dan’s success rubbed off on me. On the message board at Slashdot, Dan mentioned AssociatePrograms.com as the “granddaddy” of the affiliate program directories.
I just checked my stats: I’ve had 140 visitors from Slashdot in the last few days. If you like using message boards as a way to increase traffic to your site, the wild and disorderly Slashdot message board is worth adding to your list.
You can buy Dan’s book at:
https://www.associateprograms.com/dan
(That’s an Amazon.com referral link. If Jeff Bezos actually does something greedy with the patents which Amazon registered, then I’ll start boycotting Amazon.)
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[UPDATE: This link is obsolete.]___________________________________________________________
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3. 12 lessons for affiliate program owners
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Treat affiliates with respect, Wayne Porter says in a 12-point message to affiliate program owners which he posted on the Associate Programs Message Board.
Here’s Wayne’s advice:
Advice for merchants from an affiliate:
1) Post your sales and leads policies where they can easily be found by affiliates. Explain them clearly. Have internal staff review them for clarity.
2) Provide an extensive FAQ section to cut down on questions you must field from affiliates. You can also prepare some ready made response material for questions that affiliates seem to ask anyway.
3) Provide an autoresponse system for the person handling affiliate questions. This way affiliates know that their questions have been received by a live person and will elicit a response.
4) Post a time reference in which you will answer email questions from affiliates.
5) Provide an “Affiliate Handbook” by email autoresponse as well as on your site. This handbook should detail the program, tips, suggestions, past performance and future expectations. Solicit contributions from your existing affiliate force. Give them credit for their submissions. You will trade publicity for expert knowledge.
6) Resist the urge to price up offers only to slash prices after a day or two. While you will generate some cheap traffic in links left up, in the long run the cost will be high. You will alienate quality affiliates and they will tell others about their negative experience. It is better to start small, gauge traffic, and then increase the bounty.
7) Treat affiliates with respect. Webmasters and ezine writers talk among each other frequently. One bad experience will be broadcast through a large network of individuals.
8) Be clear about sale or lead time frames. For example, how long it takes for an actual sale to be made as opposed to how long it will appear in their earnings report.
9) Link to the product or offer you are selling. Do not link to your main website, unless your site is specifically engineered to make sales. If you are not aggressively trying to close a sale or lead, affiliates will note this as traffic tapping. Eventually you will be dropped.
10) Give your affiliates latitude to presell your products. Provide ready made sales materials, numerous sales blurbs and press releases. Let the affiliate customize content to match their site’s tone. It is not beyond question to even build complete “mini-sites” for affiliates to deploy.
11) Allow customers to make express purchases. Do not force them to open an account each time they come to your site. The good affiliate has presold your merchandise or service already – let the customer buy it.
12) Do not think of affiliates as merely traffic sources. You compensate the superior affiliate for the recommendation of your product, the personal testimonial and the goodwill they spread about your product or service. This is not print media, this is hypermedia – the Internet. The Internet is not about advertising. The Internet is about people, information and how they relate.
Wayne Porter
Affiliatehelp.com
Is Wayne right? What do you think? If you’d like to have your say, please do so at the Associate Programs Message Board:
https://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php
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4. The price of killing affiliate commissions
=============================================
Last week, eToys sharply scaled back its affiliates program, eliminating commissions on sales and paying business partners only one time for a customer referral, CNet reported.
From April 1, eToys will pay $10 per new customer, instead of $5 and a percentage of the sale.
Analysts say eToys’ move represents the next step for many big sites: dropping contracts they once depended on to get off the ground because they became big enough to draw their own repeat customers, CNet said.
This is scary stuff for affiliates.
Full story:
news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-1580087.html?tag=st.ne.1002
(The story incorrectly reports that Amazon pays 15% on the first purchase and a smaller commission on subsequent purchases. Wouldn’t that be nice!)
The eToys share price is slipping:
finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ETYS&d=t
The eToys decision has outraged webmasters who have contacted me.
“So what can be done to prevent large e-commerce sites from following in eToys steps? The answer is to sign up for a competing affiliate program and drive traffic there,” says Joe Tracy, author of “Web Marketing Applied”.
You can read Joe’s angry opinion here:
[UPDATE: This old article has been deleted.]=====================================
5. AddAce saves time and gets results
=====================================
You may believe that submitting websites to search engines is too important to be trusted to a submission tool. However, if you do want to save time by using one, AddAce is worth a try.
Steve Johnson says he used the free version of AddAce to submit his new website Ozarks Property For Sale by Owner.
“This website features homes, land, farms and commercial properties available ‘For Sale By Owner’ in the beautiful Arkansas-Missouri Ozarks Region, where sellers can list their homes free,” Steve says.
“With the help of AddAce, we quickly submitted Ozarkspropertyfsbo.com to several major search engines. The software does all the work, and it went quite quickly. Best of all, I was simply amazed to discover that not only did our website get listed at Yahoo! within one week (practically a miracle in and of itself!), but better yet, when we did a search at Yahoo on ‘ozarks + fsbo’ we wound up as the #1 listing!”
Well, Steve, I’m glad AddAce gave you good results, but I don’t think you’re listed in Yahoo! yet. You’re actually listed in Inktomi, which Yahoo! and other search engines use. Perhaps a careful manual submission will get you listed in Yahoo!
===============================
6. CJ’s cheeky $50,000 giveaway
===============================
Commission Junction has cheekily launched a $50,000 cash giveaway as a way of drawing attention to the exclusivity clauses in Be Free and LinkShare contracts.
CJ says it will pay $50,000 to the person who is able to guess correctly when Be Free and LinkShare will end their exclusivity clauses.
“We believe this clause is a detriment to the affiliate marketing industry as a whole and want to bring attention to our commitment to non-exclusivity in this novel way,” says Linda Woods of CJ.
What’s worse – for CJ’s competitors – is that CJ is offering to pay affiliates to promote the contest: You can earn 5 cents for a click-through and $1 for every registration in the contest. Ouch!
Here’s my guess on when the exclusivity clauses will be dropped:
VERY soon.
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7. Respond’s appalling “misunderstanding”
=========================================
Beware of Respond.com if you’re a non-United States resident.
Dale Reardon of localhost.net.au is angry over the outrageous treatment he received.
He says that until January 31 this year Respond.com had a referral program whereby you earned money depending on how many referrals signed up to become users/sellers.
“Their affiliate type program wasn’t perfect as the person signing up had to say who they were referred through but I accepted that risk and promoted it as I thought it was a good program and free,” Dale says.
His online stats showed he had earned $US250, but he wasn’t paid and asked why.
“Unfortunately, I believe we have a misunderstanding,” Referral Rewards Program Manager Wendy Weiden told Dale. “Due to the rules of running referral programs in the United States, we were not able to send rewards to sellers from other countries. I’m not sure if you received erroneous information from us or if you had been counting referrals on your own, but either way, I apologize for the misunderstanding.”
Dale, naturally, is appalled.
“I accept that I have to pay a currency conversion fee but they should send me the money,” he says. “I’m horrified at their attitude. They let me use the service and promote it to their benefit and now won’t pay out. I hope not too many others have been caught.”
Respond’s online stats are a bit difficult to understand, but it certainly looks as though they say that Dale is entitled to a payout. If Dale wasn’t wanted because he’s not a resident of the United States, Respond shouldn’t have accepted his application.
Respond really ought to just pay up.
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8. Warning on domain names sites
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Thanks to all you wonderful readers who wrote to me with tips about domain names sites. Which domain names site has the worst clause in its contract? I’ve misplaced the article which someone sent me on that. More next week – I hope.
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9. Situation vacant: Marketing Assistant
========================================
Fabjob.com is looking for a Marketing Assistant (Affiliate Programs) to build a network of targeted affiliates to sell Fabjob.com career guides, says Tag Goulet. Information about the position is posted at https://www.fabjob.com (click on “Jobs with Fabjob.com”).
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10. Odd Spot
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How To Marry A .Com Millionaire – New York Post
nypost.com/business/26302.htm
All the best
Allan Gardyne
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