Affiliate Program Management

FTC on Guidelines, Affiliate Disclosures, Compliance

The new Federal Trade Commission disclosure Guides are coming into force tomorrow (December 1, 2009). I have just finished listening to a webinar where Jim Edwards is interviewing Mr. Richard Cleland of the FTC, and it does shed some light on both the FTC’s overall stand on the issue, and […]

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Online Holiday Shopping in Full Swing: Stats and Trends

The holiday shopping has really picked on the Black Friday (November 27 this year), and continues to grow. The chart on the right shows an increase of affiliate-referred sales within just one affiliate program. I have noticed a very similar picture across several affiliate programs: a considerable slowdown in sales

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Customer Promotions versus Affiliate Motivation

With the Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the peak of the online holiday shopping activity coming up, it is sad to see some affiliate program managers (and advertisers) mixing, and often misunderstanding, the target audiences for these two types of promos. The traditional meaning of sales promotions has always implied

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Free Tool to Monitor Paid Search Trademark Violations

A friend, and fellow affiliate marketer tweeted: If you are looking for tool to monitor affiliate (and competitor) bidding on your trademark, AdGooroo does seem to have a free option offering a “24/7 monitoring of 6 search engines in 20 countries” with a “deep analysis of over 155 ad servers

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Trademarks in Affiliate Subdomains and Subfolders

I blogged about the trademark use in affiliate domain names. But what about subdomains? Amazon, for example, deems it “unsuitable” for affiliate websites to: …include any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, or any variation or misspelling of any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, in any domain

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Since When Has Typosquatting Become Acceptable?

Definitions first: lawyer Kelly M. Slavitt, in her Protecting Your Intellectual Property from Domain Name Typosquatters article, wrote: Cybersquatters register domain names based on a company’s trademarks and then attempt to extort payment from the actual trademark owner in exchange for returning use of the domain name… Typosquatters are a

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Free Shipping — The Beloved Holidays Deal

The pre-Christmas shopping season is gaining speed and volume every day, and it seems appropriate to look into what seems to be the best converting, and most demanded holiday offer. Many consumers will be looking for coupons, but merchants that cannot offer these can still offer something for their affiliates

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Improve Banner Conversion with Competitive Intelligence

You’ve made a decision to start an affiliate program, decided on the tracking platform to use, and now you’re facing multiple questions, one of which may be worded this way: How do I put together best possible banners for affiliates to use for my program? To a great extent, this

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Top Internet Marketing Strategies & Affiliate Marketing

Interesting survey data has been published by eMarketer.com with a reference to an August research conducted jointly by Internet Retailer and Vovici Corp.: As look through the above statistics, the two things that I see in it are: 1. Social Media Channels Are Top Priority While I am not entirely

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Automatic Decline of Affiliate Applications — Bad Practice

Yesterday I have mentioned how some advertisers/merchants choose to automatically decline affiliates that fit (or don’t) certain criteria. Today I have done some testing, and would like to illustrate what I mean. I started a brand new affiliate account with Commission Junction, placing my affiliate website into the “Marketing” category,

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