Marketing Pilgrim

Affiliate marketing can be a very rewarding endeavor for the ambitious online marketer; however, there are several things you should be aware of before you take the plunge. To help you on your journey, I’ve compiled a list of some of the top 6 pitfalls you may face as you deploy your own affiliate marketing advertising campaigns.

While this list is by no means comprehensive of all the challenges you’ll face in your campaigns, it’s a good place to start and might help you avoid some headaches along the way.

1. Double Commissions

When you run your campaign you might decide to promote your offer on multiple affiliate platforms (networks, home grown, etc.), but be warned! Affiliates can register for your offer on multiple platforms and with a little cookie stuffing, earn commissions from both platforms for the same order. Yikes!

I live in North Carolina. It’s a pretty state. You get a taste of the winter months but you don’t get a lot of winter weather per se. Sure the summers are hot but that’s what air conditioning is for. Overall, it’s a great place to live and raise a family.

That is except for the state government and their attempts to collect taxes on online purchases made from Amazon. They have already pushed Amazon far enough that the online retailing giant ended its affiliate programs with North Carolina residents in 2009 thus depriving residents of the chance to bring money into the state that would be spent in the state and would give some ailing jobless folks a chance at survival. Nice move!

“We met for dinner in Chicago. We liked each other.  Our companies had very complementary strengths.  One thing led to another.”

Sounds like an influential CEO confessing to an elicit affair, but it’s really VigLink CEO Oliver Roup talking about how his company happened to acquire rival DrivingRevenue this past Friday. It began with an email from Revenue’s Raymond Lyle and Jack Bafia saying they should talk. That was in May, so it was quite a rush to the alter. Says Roup;

“We’re very excited to be joining forces. Ray is going to lead the sales and merchant relationship team and run our Chicago office. Jack will be moving to San Francisco to assume leadership of the product team. Everyone else is keeping their job as well.  They’ve all made a big bet on the future of the combined business. They are doubling down, not cashing out.”

California based Commission Junction (a division of Value Click), announced on June 15th 2010 that 63% of online retailers who use third party affiliate companies used Commission Junction. This was more than twice as much as any other affiliate provider. The data backing this claim came from online retailers surveyed for the 2010 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide where CJ was the top seed for the 5th year in a row.

Commission Junction also scored 64% of the top 100 online retailers and lead in every sub category. The combination of all these points clearly indicates that Commission Junction is the affiliate network to beat.

As both a publisher and an advertiser, I am not surprised to read about CJ’s dominating presence with online retailers. While networks like Sharasale, Google and others offer compelling affiliate offers, there is no questioning CJ’s brand awareness and ability to snag advertisers.

Back in April, Google added a Monetize tab within Blogger to help its users earn money from AdSense on their site and in their feeds. Now they’re adding a new feature to that stable—Amazon Associates integration.

We’re used to hearing about the two companies as “frenemies” in the emerging eBook market—but hey, if cooperation makes things easier for users (and make the users and Amazon a buck), it’s definitely a good thing, right?

You’ve always been able to use Amazon Associates “manually” in a Blogger blog, but now there are options to make it fast and easy to use from right inside Blogger. (And I’m pretty jealous.) The above screen shows the default. Once you set up or enter your Associates ID, you’re given the option to add the Amazon Product Finder to the Edit and Compose New Post pages. The finder not only locates products within the Amazon store:

Let me guess: you’re looking for a way to get your clients’ products placed in all kinds of media—but you can’t afford any celebrity endorsements. Well, if you’re okay with your products being hawked by nobodies, you might be in luck, according to an AdAge article on Udorse.

Okay, at first it doesn’t sound so appealing: pay everybody and his dog for taking pictures of themselves with your products sounds like a good way to bankrupt yourself. But naturally, these people aren’t pulling in the same endorsement fees the big stars are.

But the real genius of the system isn’t from paying people to be pictured with your product—it’s the implementation. Udorse automatically uses Facebook photos for images with tagged products. Join the system and tag the product, and you’re taken to a short endorsement form to fill out.

If you’re an affiliate marketer, 2009 doesn’t hold much growth for you, but Forrester predicts a healthy rise in spending after that–through 2014. In fact, US affiliate marketing spend will increase to $4 billion over that 5 year stretch, realizing a very healthy 16% growth rate.

However, if you’re hoping Facebook, Twitter, and others social networks will be your secret to success, you may wish to think again.

Sixty-two percent of US online buyers use social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace.com for communicating and keeping up with friends. Only 2% of US online buyers have purchased products through social networking sites. Affiliate sites get paid based on transactions they drive, not simply click-throughs. Thus, affiliate sites currently experimenting with social networks may be getting traffic from these sites, but they are sending very few qualified leads to marketers. Little money will therefore change hands in this scenario.