AffiliatesNeeded.Com What's New In Affiliate Marketing

Editor’s Note: With the number of states considering the so-called Amazon tax or some similar tax growing it’s nearly impossible to keep up with all the iterations of the issue.  Traditional affiliate marketing is not the only advertising channel at risk. Peter Figueredo, CEO of NETexponent, posted an excellent blog on their corporate site (reprinted with his permission) posing the question can any network with CPA model afford not to get involved in shaping the outcome of this issue?

Ever since the “affiliate tax” issue appeared I have been wondering how each state will determine nexus. I mean, where do you draw the line? We already know that affiliates clearly constitute nexus because they are viewed as sales commissioned partners of an advertiser. If an affiliate is based in a state that has passed the affiliate tax law then advertisers working with that affiliate must collect sales tax. I get that. This post is not here to debate the pros/cons of the affiliate tax. I am trying to determine where you draw the line.

Lets take CPA ad networks for example. They pay their publishers (or affiliates) a bounty or revenue share for sales they generate to advertiser websites. Yet nobody mentions CPA ad network publishers when they discuss this tax.

What about Google? They now act as an affiliate for many advertisers who run their affiliate program

through the Google Affiliate Network. Google places product ads in search results and gets paid a bounty or revenue share for those sales. Google has offices in NY and many other cities so should working with Google constitute nexus for advertisers?

How about companies like Skimlinks and VigLink? They both work as a master affiliate and allow other affiliates to promote advertisers through their links. The advertiser pays the network like Commission Junction or LinkShare. The network pays VigLink and Skimlinks. They in turn pay affiliates. Some of those affiliates may be in states who have passed the affiliate tax. What happens then? Clearly companies like these think there is no danger to the advertiser. In fact, Vig Link is even promoting the fact that they will shield affiliates who reside in states who have an affiliate tax. Many advertisers are choosing to sever relationships with affiliates in states that have affiliate tax because they do not want to collect sales tax in those states. VigLink negates that decision by advertisers because it works with many affiliates who are in states that have an affiliate tax…yet an advertiser may never know. Could this hurt the advertiser? I don’t mean to pick on VigLink but they are the only site I have found to clearly advertise this practice as a benefit of working with them.

Where do you draw the line? What about CPC deals, aren’t they performance based?

Our agency has been monitoring this situation diligently and we continue to advise our clients to the best of our ability. However, many questions remain unanswered.

Successful marketing is built around accurate forecasting and benchmarking. In an industry like the affiliate industry which is not known for transparency, getting numbers to help you set accurate benchmarks is difficult. There are however resources that can help including: the ecommerce focused reports compiled by MarketingSherpa, eConsultancy’s affiliate marketing reports, and AffStat run by Shawn Collins co-founder of Affiliate Summit .

Recently NETexponent’s research division, AffiliateBenchmarks, has made available to the public our second annual survey of affiliates. You can see my post on last year’s survey here, when we had around 500 responses. This year, with help from our affiliate network partners, we got over 3500 affiliates responses, making it the largest affiliate survey to date.

Although I make it a point to not use the ReveNews forum for self-promotional content, I do believe that the interests, practices and expectations of the surveyed affiliates provide insights valuable to all affiliates wishing to learn successful practices, advertisers looking to forge lucrative relationships, networks, consultants and any other readers with an interest in online marketing practices and techniques.

The report is based on date provided by affiliates. It breaks down results based on the annual income of the participants. This allows us to outline the tactics and practices that highly successful affiliates are employing to get ahead in this increasingly competitive marketplace.

For example, those who are buying PPC keywords, utilizing flash and video widgets are seeing a much higher return from their affiliate programs than those who aren’t.  These insights are extremely valuable to all affiliates seeking new ways to improve their businesses.

Of the respondents 49% indicated they were new to the industry in the last two years.  This points to significant growth in the affiliate channel. However, it is apparent from the results that many of these newer affiliates are not yet taking advantage of the technologies and strategies that are helping more established affiliate succeed.

Among the other under-utilized opportunities beyond PPC search and the use of flash ads/widgets: new affiliates missed opportunities to gather up to date information from industry blogs in order to spot trends and failed to collect data on site visitors in order to promote the more relevant, higher-converting merchant programs.

For a limited time we’re offering all ReveNews readers a 30% discount off the price of the report! To get your copy of the AffiliateBenchmarks report click here and enter code RN30.

Affiliates/Publishers interested in benchmarking their business against thousands of other affiliate companies should complete the survey for a free copy of the results.

Marketing Research Company, AffiliateBenchmarks, Has Begun Gathering Benchmark Data From Online Affiliates That Will Be Used To Produce Their Second Annual Affiliate Marketing Research Report.

AffiliateBenchmarks, a research division of outsourced affiliate management agency NETexponent, has released an affiliate marketing survey to be completed by affiliates and website publishers by July 31st 2009. The survey results will gather best practices for several aspects of affiliate marketing, including how best to communicate with affiliates, what advertisers can do to optimize affiliate relationships, what tools and information affiliates crave, and what challenges they face. Results will be analyzed and used to identify marketing trends and projected changes. Affiliates who complete the survey will receive a free copy of the results and others will have the option to buy a copy once released.

AffiliateBenchmarks produced their first study in 2008 and the research report was met with an extremely positive response from the online marketing community. The positive response from last years research report and continued need for industry benchmarks prompted AffiliateBenchmarks to produce the 2009 survey. This year the AffiliateBenchmarks survey has been significantly expanded and improved based on the knowledge and feedback from the industry leaders. The 2009 survey includes a wide range of questions about topics such as affiliates’ experiences with different types of ad performance, site visitor demographics, technology and communication preferences, motivations for joining an affiliate program, experiences with emerging technology, and more.

“We were very proud of last years effort and the industry’s response but knew we had room for improvement,” said Peter Figueredo, CEO & Co-Founder of NETexponent. “This year survey is not only bigger and better but it also has the support of major affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Google Affiliate Network, LinkShare, PepperJam, Shareasale, and Media Trust. Thanks to the support of these major networks we have been able to optimize our study and significantly increase the number of respondents.”

If you are an affiliate/publisher and are interested in benchmarking your success by completing this survey, we will send you a copy of the results. Your time and input is greatly appreciated. Be sure to complete the survey before July 31, 2009. Affiliate Benchmarks respects the privacy of affiliates and only aggregate information will be shared.

AffiliateBenchmarks designs and executes affiliate marketing research with the purpose of increasing industry education and providing useful data and statistics to the affiliate community. We focus on the benefit of the affiliate marketing industry as a whole, and strive to provide reliable information that is interesting and useful to a wide range of people involved with affiliate marketing. Follow us on Twitter @AffBenchmarks.

I just denied another Facebook request to connect and I will tell you why. First let me say that it was certainly nothing personal and the connection was not irrelevant because he knows 54 people that I know also. However, I don’t know this person and have never worked with them. The reason I denied this person is because I am trying to keep my social networks (Facebook and LinkedIn primarily) filled with real connections not virtual connections. For me, real connections still mean I have talked with the person on the phone or met them in person more than once. I am not completely sure how this will ultimately benefit (or hurt me) but I do like knowing that when I see “432 friends” that I can go through the list and recognize each person and maybe that is enough.

There are folks out there who try to connect to everyone who is even remotely relevant to their business. I can see why sales folks may want to do this but not really sure why their targets would accept. I prefer to keep my facebook network personal and would love to hear from folks who disagree.

While I don’t approve everyone, I try to explain why when I “ignore” a request. (for the record I like the option on LinkedIn to say “I don’t know this person”. Here is an example of the type of message I would send to someone. I am not sure if I am better off not sending anything but I feel like an explanation maybe warranted.

Thanks for the friend request but I am only approving folks who I know very well, and forgive me, but I don’t think we have had much contact, if any. I would love to chat with you at an upcoming conference and get to know you before connecting on facebook. Please don’t be offended, this is just my way of keeping Facebook very personal and manageable.

Anyway, I know this may not be the exact content you are looking for on ReveNews but I figured if it is a question that plagues me, some of you may be dealing with it also. I would love to have this post spark a discussion through comments so please let me know your thoughts. There is obviously no right or wrong answer to this…that is the beauty of social networks…everyone can make them what they want.

Thanks for listening,

Peter