Generally, there are three affiliate marketing situations you may get involved with as a web content publisher:
The affiliate program is managed by an affiliate aggregator (see next).
An extremely well-known entity offers a broad and well-thought-out affiliate program. The Amazon.com Associate Program is probably the best example, as explained in The Amazon.com Associate Program; both AllPosters.com and B&H Photo, mentioned earlier in this chapter, are very well-known and successful businesses with affiliate marketing programs.
A vendor with a limited line of products or services starts its own affiliate marketing program (see Ad Hoc Affiliation).
Major affiliate aggregators provide the following benefits to web publishers:
The publisher can use “one-stop shopping” to work with many different merchants.
There’s only one software interface to learn.
Reporting and commission payments are consolidated.
A third party (the aggregator) provides consistent tracking software and provides some recourse in case of disputes over sales.
Of course, from the viewpoint of the merchant, there are some major benefits as well; primarily:
Off-loading the complex business of tracking and reporting the numerous transactions to accurately pay sales commissions
Being able to attract more affiliate sites through the site of the aggregator
Note
Don’t forget: affiliate aggregators are paid by merchants, not publishers. They exist to provide a service to merchants who want to effectively manage affiliate programs without having to roll their own. They primarily represent the interests of the merchants who are their clients, not the interests of the affiliates.
You’ll need at least one content-based website to enroll with an affiliate aggregator. Once you’ve signed up with an affiliate aggregator, the aggregator will provide access to a single website that allows you to:
Apply to individual merchant affiliate programs
Get HTML for creatives
Generate activity reports
Note
It’s pretty easy to add multiple websites to your account with an affiliate aggregator once you have obtained an initial account. This is such an important point that it is worth rephrasing and repeating: as a publisher, you can use a single account with an affiliate aggregator to manage your relationship with multiple merchants and multiple content websites. It’s also, as I’ve noted, one of the primary benefits to merchants.
Nothing good, however, comes without some potential risks. In this case, there is the possibility that if you create very successful programs, and all of your efforts use the same ID, your competitors will find out. Like a good fishing hole, some good affiliate programs are easily spoiled once the word gets out.
Probably the three most active and well-known affiliate aggregators at the time of publication are Commission Junction, Kolimbo, and LinkShare. Each of these is described in this section. In addition, you’ll find more affiliate programs listed in the Open Directory Project in the Affiliate Networks category and in the Yahoo! Directory in the Web Site Affiliates category.
Note
At the time of this writing, there are rumors that Microsoft will be introducing an affiliate network. If so, it would certainly introduce a bigger player and a new element to this space.
Commission Junction represents more than 1,000 merchants, ranging from Buy.com and Discover Card to Half.com, dating sites, software publishers, and companies selling clothes—just about any kind of merchant you can imagine. Owned by NASDAQ-traded ValueClick, if any legitimate product or service can be bought over the Internet, you can probably figure out a way to make a sales commission from selling it via Commission Junction.
The signup procedure for Commission Junction is pretty simple. You give them a content website, description, and your personal contact info. Once you’ve agreed to the Terms of Service and verified your email address, you can logon to the site. Before you can add affiliate links to your site, you need to complete an electronic W-9 (for businesses in the United States) and provide a SSN or TIN.
The Commission Junction home page is shown in Figure 5-4.
By choosing Account – Web Site Settings, you can add a new website for deployment with the Commission Junction affiliate programs or change the information about your current site (Figure 5-5).
Figure 5-5. It’s easy to add websites to your Commission Junction account or edit current site information
Note
If you look carefully at Figure 5-5, you’ll notice that a PID has been assigned as a site setting. The PID is the number that Commission Junction uses as its tracking ID.
The Run Reports tab, shown in Figure 5-6, provides a very complete set of metrics covering how many times ads have been displayed on your pages (called page impressions), how many times your ads have been clicked (called click throughs), and the sales commissions you have earned.
Figure 5-6. Commission Junction provides advanced reporting facilities you can use to learn about your page views, transactions, and sales
The heart of the Commission Junction interface is the Get Links tab, shown in Figure 5-7.
Using the Get Links tab, you can find merchants—called advertisers by Commission Junction—by category, by searching using various filters, or by listing the merchants with whom you have an existing relationship. You can browse the entire list of Commission Junction merchants by clicking Advertiser List. You can also do a search based on the name of a specific advertiser.
Once you’ve found a merchant you are interested in, you can apply to join the merchant’s affiliate program by checking the program application box and clicking Apply to Program, as shown in Figure 5-8.
Note
You can view the creatives a merchant provides, the merchant catalog of inventory items (if applicable), and statistics such as earnings per click (EPC) before you join a program.
Your application to join a merchant program will be approved either automatically (if the merchant has decided to approve all would-be affiliates) or manually. During the manual approval process, which may take up to several days, your status with the merchant is set to “Pending Approval.” With manual approval, you will be notified by email whether you’ve been accepted or rejected.
Note
These days, more and more applications to become affiliates are not automatically approved. This is a reaction to the huge increase in spam the Internet has seen, and you should not read anything personal into it. Businesses need to protect their image. The vast majority of appropriate websites are approved as affiliates, although the process takes a bit more time than it used to.
Once a merchant has approved your application to join its affiliate program, you can grab the HTML required to make links. To do this, use one of the mechanisms provided by the Get Links tab to find the merchant that you have the relationship with.
If you are responsible for web content across more than a couple of sites, you know it can be tough to keep track of content details. Merchant relationships are no exception. A good approach to finding the merchants who have approved your affiliate application is to open the Get Links – By Relationship page shown in Figure 5-9.
Locate the merchant you want to add to your site. Click View Links. You can now scan all the creatives offered by the merchant. For example, Figure 5-10 shows some of the creatives offered to participating affiliates by Henry & June Lingerie.
To grab the HTML for a specific creative, either click the creative or check the box next to it and click the Get HTML link to the right of the page. In either case, a Get HTML window, like the one shown in Figure 5-11, will open.
Note
If you are managing multiple websites, make sure to select the right one on the website drop-down list before copying HTML. You can also use the Get HTML window to set a variety of options, notably setting the affiliate link to open a new browser window (an important choice because it helps to keep visitors on your site longer).
The HTML for the new affiliate link is pretty simple and includes the web publisher’s PID (tracking identification) as part of the link:
<a href="http://www.dpbolvw.net/click-3282274-156060" target="_top"><img src="http://www.lduhtrp.net/image-3282274-156060" width="234" height="60" alt="Shop for sexy lingerie at Henry and June" border="0"/></a>
If you paste this HTML into the code for your web page, the new creative will now appear on your site.
Alternatively, you can display the affiliate link using JavaScript. To get the appropriate code, click Get JavaScript (instead of Get HTML). A new window will open as shown in Figure 5-12.
Note
There’s not much functional difference between the HTML and JavaScript approaches, so this is essentially an issue of your preference and style as a webmaster.
Here’s the corresponding JavaScript code:
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.tkqlhce.com/placeholder-3456743?target=_top&mouseover=N"></script>
Note
To maximize affiliate revenue, it’s important to constantly tweak ads—for example, to respond to seasonal conditions such as holidays. To facilitate ad changes across a range of pages, it’s important to use an architecture that facilitates flexibility of presentation, as explained in Chapter 1.
Kolimbo bills itself as the “open” alternative to closed affiliate network sites:
Both affiliates and merchants can work with whomever they choose, on their own terms.... Unlike traditional networks that tend to be more controlling over the affiliate–merchant relationship, Kolimbo merchants have full access to all data about their affiliates. This allows merchants the opportunity to work closely with their affiliates to help build a profitable long-term relationship for both parties.
While Kolimbo is probably in more widespread use as infrastructure software for one-off merchants like B&H Photo than as an affiliate relationship marketplace, there are still plenty of merchants you can find, as you can see on the Find New Programs index page shown in Figure 5-13.
The mechanics of working with Kolimbo as a publisher don’t differ that much from other affiliate aggregators like Commission Junction, except that reporting and commission payments are between individual merchants and publishers. You sign up, providing a website, description, and taxpayer information. Next, you apply for merchant programs, some of which automatically approve anyone, while others require manual approval.
To integrate the merchant links with your site, you grab graphics and code containing your tracking ID, like the creatives for the March of Dimes shown in Figure 5-14.
LinkShare is the oldest major affiliate aggregator, currently representing several hundred merchants ranging from American Express to iTunes to Macy’s and beyond. Owned by Rakuten, a publicly traded Japanese company, LinkShare provides roughly the same functionality as Commission Junction.
The LinkShare home page is shown in Figure 5-15.
Within LinkShare, you’ll find five tabbed windows in addition to the home page:
- Programs
Used to apply for approval to merchant’s affiliate program (as with the merchant members of Commission Junction, some approvals will be automatic and some will be manual)
- Links
Used to build and select merchant creatives (requires prior acceptance in a merchant’s affiliate program)
- Reports
Used to generate detailed reports about site and program metrics
- Messages
Provides an email system for communication between publishers, merchants, and LinkShare
- My Account
Used to change account information (for example, add a domain)
To obtain a creative, click the Create Link tab (you can also navigate to this point by clicking the My Advertisers tab on the Programs page). A list of the affiliate programs for which you have been approved appears (Figure 5-16).
Note
If you have registered multiple websites with LinkShare, be sure the one you want to use the creative with is selected from the drop-down list that will appear at the top of the page.
Click the name of the merchant you’d like to link with—for example, Sierra Trading Post, a discount retailer of sporting goods and clothes. A page that will let you generate creatives specifically for Sierra Trading Post will open. Choose the kind of creative you’d like to create from the Available Link Types box, shown in Figure 5-17.
Note
The Dynamic Rich Media category tends to produce creatives that are “blue plate specials,” such as rotating deals of the day.
For example, suppose you want to add a box to your website that searches the Sierra Trading Post product database. To do this, you’d click the Search Box link. A page showing a number of possible search boxes, such as the one shown in Figure 5-18, will open.
Figure 5-18. If you add this search box to your site, visitors can search outdoor clothing discounter Sierra Trading Post’s product database
To add the search box to your site, copy the code and paste it into your page. Here’s the code that generates the Sierra Trading Post search box:
<table width="150" height="150" border="0" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0" style="padding: 0px; background-image:
url
(http://www.sierratradingpost.com/assets/images/ppam/ad_images/LSsearchbox.jpg);">
<form action="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/statform" name="form1" id="form1"
method="get"><input type=hidden name=id value=RQUescWsfWI><input type=hidden
name=offerid value=42083><input type=hidden name=bnid value=740><input type=hidden
name="subid" value="">
<input type="hidden" name="Ntk" value="All">
<input type="hidden" name="Nty" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="Ntx" value="mode+matchallany">
<input type="hidden" name="track" value="true">
<input type="hidden" name="DCMP" value="LS05">
<input type="hidden" name="KC" value="LS05">
<tr>
<td width="150" height="65"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="150" align="center" height="25">
<input type="text" name="Ntt"
value="enter keyword or item #" maxlength="50" style="font-family:
arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; width: 140px; padding-left: 2px;">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="150" align="center" height="25">
<select name="N" style="font-family:
arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: #000000; vertical-align:
top; font-size: 11px; width: 105px; height: 18px; width: 140px;">
<option value="0">All Departments</option>
<option value="9000310">Outdoor Gear</option>
<option value="9000154">Men's Clothing</option>
<option value="9000230">Women's Clothing</option>
<option value="9000342">Shoes & Boots</option>
<option value="9000335">Kids' Corner</option>
<option value="9000331">Home Decor</option>
</select>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="150" align="center" height="35">
<input class="submit" type="submit"
value="Search Sierra Trading Post" style="font: 11px arial;
color: #ffffff; width: 140px; height: 30px; border:
outset 1px; background-color: #447744;">
</td>
</form>
</tr>
</table><IMG width=1 height=1 border=0 src="http://ad.linksynergy.com/fs-
bin/show?id=RQUescWsfWI&bids=42083&type=5">Note
The Sierra Trading Post search box code consists of an HTML
form formatted using table tags. The value of the affiliate tracking
ID is passed using a hidden form variable named id.
With this code pasted into your web page, the Sierra Trading Post search box will appear on your site.
If a visitor to your site enters a specific item—for example, men’s socks—in the search box and clicks Search Sierra Trading Post, the results page for the item will open (Figure 5-19). This helps to increase the rate of conversion of clicks to sales because visitors are looking only at items they have some interest in, which therefore increases the likelihood that you will make a commission.
From A to Z, with stops along the way for Viagra and web hosting, there are a great many merchants that offer their own affiliation programs. I started this chapter with an explanation of how affiliation works with examples from two of the bigger merchants on the Web: AllPosters.com and B&H Photo. But there are also many quirky, independent, and smaller merchants you can affiliate with that may actually be better commercial opportunities for your specific site.
You might want to affiliate with an individual merchant for one or more of these reasons:
You know and appreciate the merchant and the merchant’s product or service.
You believe your site visitors will buy from the merchant.
You can’t find comparable offerings through an affiliate aggregator.
But bear in mind the good reasons for working through a single aggregator rather than multiple individual affiliates:
Third-party oversight of sales tracking and commission payment
Fewer administrative headaches with only one or two programs to work with
Stability and reliability of merchants and program administration
A merchant that provides its own affiliation tracking (and related tools) generally provides the most important functionality, such as that you’ll find at Amazon.com or one of the aggregators, but when you work one-on-one with a merchant, you may find that systems are not as smooth as when you work with an affiliate aggregator or an established “super-store” merchant like Amazon. Still, it’s perfectly feasible to work with smaller merchants. If you choose your merchants wisely, monitor your sales commission accounts, and match your content to the merchants you choose, you should be able to do well. Here are two different examples of specialty merchants with whom it might make sense to work.
Note
If you don’t see your sales being recorded, find out why and get the merchant to fix the problem.
Fred Miranda Software makes inexpensive plug-ins for advanced users of Photoshop. This specialty product fits very well with a content site focusing on serious photography, particularly when the affiliate link to Fred Miranda can be put in the context of a specific problem and solution, as shown in Figure 5-20.
In Chapter 3, I described the benefits of using a specialty service such as iContact to manage your email marketing. It probably will not surprise you to learn that iContact has its own affiliate marketing program. And what better place to embed affiliate links for an email marketing solution than in your own HTML marketing emails?
From a coding viewpoint, the mechanism for embedding an affiliate link in an HTML email is precisely the same as it is for placing the link in an HTML web page.
Figure 5-21 shows iContact affiliate creative and text links in the footer of an HTML email newsletter.
If you belong to just one merchant’s affiliate program, Amazon.com is probably the one to join.
Note
In Amazon’s terminology, affiliates are called associates, just as the sales help at a brick-and-mortar Wal-Mart (and other fine stores) are also associates. Becoming an Amazon associate sounds like the better of the two options to me, but then I am a virtual kind of guy!
Amazon makes a great partner for an affiliate (particularly if the affiliate is only going to be associated with one merchant program) for a number of reasons, including:
Amazon is one of the oldest businesses on the Web.
Amazon has a great reputation with customers for reliability and fair dealing.
Amazon—at times in combination with partner merchants—can supply almost any conceivable product to your customers.
Amazon.com provides creatives with great variety and flexibility; it’s easy to use them to link to any product or Amazon.com search result, and the creatives fit well with most site designs.
An Amazon-supplied widget allows your customers to search almost any part of the vast Amazon inventory.
Amazon’s “site stripe” allows you to easily link to any page on Amazon you happen to visit.
Amazon’s seasonal promotions—at Christmas, for example—are incredibly effective.
The application process for becoming an Amazon associate can be accessed at https://associates.Amazon.com/gp/flex/associates/apply-login.html. Essentially, Amazon.com approves all applicants who provide a valid email address and the required Social Security number (or EIN).
Amazon pays between 4 percent and 10 percent sales commissions, with the bulk of the commissions in the 4 percent to 7 percent range. In some cases, performance bonuses are given to affiliates who are extraordinary producers.
Note
As is the case with many lucrative programs on the Web, Amazon doesn’t spell out the precise percentages that you get. (In this respect, Google AdSense operates in the same way.) You just have to trust in the fairness of Amazon (and Google), which, for the most part, works out.
The home page for the Amazon Associate program, called Amazon Associates Central, is located at http://associates.Amazon.com. Once you’ve joined the program, you can log in to update your account information, generate reports, and obtain creatives.
Click Build Links to specify creatives and obtain the corresponding code. There are five varieties of Amazon creatives:
- Product links
Link to a specific product that you select and display a product image
- Recommended links
Link to Amazon recommendations by product category or keywords
- Banners
Wide variety of banners, both rotating special promotions and by shopping category
- Text links
Text link to any Amazon page, such as a product page or a page that results from an Amazon search
- Search boxes
You can put an Amazon search box on your site
Figure 5-22 shows the launch panel for building this wide selection of creatives at Amazon.
For example, suppose you want to add a box on your digital photography site that will display a digital camera that Amazon recommends (and let Amazon take care of the specifics of which camera is highlighted).
To start, click Build Links with Recommended Product Links selected. The Choose Content panel, shown in Figure 5-23, will open.
In the Choose Content panel, select a product line and enter keywords or choose a subcategory. For example: if “Camera & Photo” is the primary category, “Digital Cameras” might be a good subcategory (but you could also limit the recommendations to a specific brand by entering “Nikon,” “digital,” and “camera” as keywords rather than selecting a subcategory).
With a content type selected, click Continue. You’ll next be asked to select a size for the creative. With a size selected, you can now move to final adjustments (for example, to the colors used in the text and background of the creative) and copy the HTML, using the window shown in Figure 5-24.
Here’s the HTML produced for this creative:
<iframe src="http://rcmAmazon.com/e/cm?t=XXXXXXXXX&o=1&p=8&l=bn1& mode=photo&browse=281052&fc1=&=1&lc1=<1=&f=ifr&bg1=&f=ifr" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" width="120" height="240" border="0" frameborder="0" style="border:none;" scrolling="no"> </iframe>
Once the HTML is copied to your site, the creative will appear to your site visitors.