Make Money with Affiliate Programs

eBay launched their eBay Partner Network on April 1, and affiliates were initially told they would have to migrate from the old affiliate program on CJ by today.

But the migration deadline has been extended to May 31, 2008, according to an announcement on the eBay Partner Network blog.

We wanted to thank all our affiliates for your effort in switching your links to the eBay Partner Network. We’re off to a great start and we are happy to report that in the three weeks since launch, more than two thirds of our affiliates’ traffic has already moved over to the new system.

Several of you have asked for a bit more time in migrating your links. Because we know there are some special circumstances that may require this, we have arranged to extend the migration deadline until May 31st. This will apply to Half.com and all eBay countries migrating EXCEPT Belgium, Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Singapore, which will still expire on April 30th).

The procrastinating affiliates lucked out, but don’t keep putting it off. As of May 31, 2008, affiliates will no longer earn commission through CJ links for eBay.

Interesting language in the announcement: “more than two thirds of our affiliates’ traffic has already moved over to the new system.”

I wonder how many of the 100k+ affiliates moved over to account for that traffic volume?

While on CJ, eBay boasted “The eBay Affiliate Program has more than 100,000 members globally and continues to be one of the most successful tools for driving buyers to eBay.”

The Amazon.com affiliate program has a neat tool I just found called the “Link Checker.”

This is exciting to me, because I’ve had concerns in the past that affiliate links that go through .htaccess redirects might not retain my affiliate ID.

The Link Checker tool enables you to paste your affiliate link and then load that link into a preview window.

Then you can click to check the link and there is a message indicating whether or not the link is tracking with your affiliate ID properly.

I think this is a great tool to provide affiliates with some peace of mind before launching a campaign, and I would love to see other affiliate programs and networks add this feature.

AdMob is launching AdMob Mobile Analytics, a free solution for advertisers and mobile web site owners to understand and optimize their offerings.

This new solution was created to enable more advertisers to ramp up their mobile advertising spend, since they can finally start to measure deeper effectiveness of campaigns.

Also, affiliates will be able to gain actionable insights into their mobile sites and deliver the best mobile Web user experience available.

Some highlights from AdMob Mobile Analytics:

1. Advertisers will be able to measure mobile campaigns beyond just how many “clicks” an ad campaign received.
2. Affiliates can see who their audience is comprised of, where they come from, which pages they are visiting, and for how long.
3. All of AdMob’s Mobile Analytics is free for unlimited use.
4. Advertisers can measure the effectiveness of various mobile ad campaigns across all networks, such as Third Screen Media or Google. The advertiser can compare the effectiveness of each campaign using AdMob Analytics. You do not need to use AdMob advertising to use AdMob Analytics.

Private beta sign-ups begin today at http://analytics.admob.com.

Epic Advertising has announced two new hires to further build their internal Internet Compliance Group.

Jonathan Gillman has been named Manager, Regulatory Affairs and Anwesa Paul has been named Privacy Officer and Associate General Counsel.

Previously, Gillman was the lead investigator of the Cyber Fraud Task Force for the Florida Attorney General’s Economic Crimes Division, where he was instrumental in drafting and implementing the division’s strategic plan for the task force and in leading investigations on companies involved in unfair and deceptive business practices.

Paul previously held the position of Compliance Manager for the Entertainment Software Rating Board and a law clerk for the New York State Office of the Attorney General’s Internet Bureau, where she reviewed cases involving consumer fraud, piracy, spam and trademark infringement.

“By adding these two very talented legal professionals to our team, we are sending a powerful message that Epic Advertising has the highest standards of compliance and the most robust integrity assurance programs in the online marketing industry,” said Don Mathis, President of Epic Advertising.

“With Jonathan and Anwesa, we plan to take our robust integrity assurance programs and enforcement capability to the next level in ensuring our marketing compliance track record remains industry-leading and frankly, the best in the world.”

It’s good to see these significant hires at Epic Advertising. Clearly, they’re not messing around when it comes to compliance.

More details at https://www.epicadvertising.com/news.php.

Download audio file (geekcast16.mp3)

Lisa Picarille was unable to make it on this week, so without the voice of reason, we ended up with a NSFW-cast with the chatter of Todd Crawford, Sam Harrelson, Scott Jangro, Jim Kukral, and myself.

We tackled lots of topics, including the Affiliate Summit Awards sans Wayne Porter, disappointment in the Web2.0Expo, and whether conferences should share video and audio of sessions.

There was a guessing game about Todd Crawford’s next gig, as well as a trip down memory lane for the one (merchant) that got away from Todd in the old CJ days.

The super nerds got into role playing games for a while (as if the gaming world doesn’t begin and end with Madden) with talk of Grand Theft Auto IV and Star Wars on the Wii.

There was a conspiracy theory about Jim unleashing Twitter bots on us all, and Todd introduced the gang to TellMe.com.

We journey into a weird place for a while in a segment where only adults and emancipated minors should listen, but then recover for discussions on Disqus, Evernote, and PBwiki.

Subscribe to the RSS of the entire GeekCast.fm network, or add us on iTunes.

Listen to the show at http://geekcast.fm/archives/sweet-16/.

Episode 16 lasts over 80 minutes.

There is a new login page up on ShareASale.com.

I like the new look - nice, clean, and intuitive. Though the login tab is sort of tiny.

The pages after login still have the (now) old ShareASale.com look.

Overall, I’m digging it.

One of the missions of Affiliate Summit is to bring together the industry to support worthy causes, and Affiliate Summit 2008 East will continue this mission as we raise funds for The LEAGUE through a variety of efforts leading up to the conference.

What is The LEAGUE?
Students are often recognized for their achievements on the field and in the classroom, but how often are they recognized for giving back? The LEAGUE is a school-based system that combines state standards-based lesson plans with community service events that teach students the value of giving and recognizes them for their efforts.

Affiliate Summit 2008 East, taking place August 10-12, 2008 at the Boston Seaport Hotel, will include sponsorships and activities to generate donations from the affiliate marketing community to The LEAGUE.

Past charity partnerships with Affiliate Summit include Big Brothers Big Sisters, March of Dimes, the Starlight Starbright Foundation, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

There will be auctions for conference sponsorships with 100 percent of funds received going to the The LEAGUE, as well as attendees being encouraged to make donations on behalf of their companies or themselves.

Affiliate marketers can make donations at www.leaguewordwide.org and they will be recognized on the Affiliate Summit site for their generous contributions.

Affiliate marketers can also mail their donations, made payable to The LEAGUE, at:

The LEAGUE
c/o Derrick Feldmann
35 James Street
Newark, NJ 07102

Please be sure to put Affiliate Summit in “note” line on the check, so we can recognize your donation.

Affiliate Summit will be matching up to $5,000 in donations to The LEAGUE.

My Affiliate Summit co-founder, Missy Ward, has organized a team of affiliate marketers to walk in the 2008 Seattle Breast Cancer 3-day, a 60-mile walk over the course of three days that raises funds for Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund.

Last year, when she teamed up with super affiliate Connie Berg for the walk, they raised $17,000. This year, they’re looking to double that.

There are a number of fundraising promotions going on currently, including the sale of “Affiliate Marketers Give Back” clothing, a T-shirt sponsorship, etc.

Also, there is a special fundraising promotion, “Give Back and Save,” where you can deduct donations from the cost of registration at Affiliate Summit 2008 East.

More details at http://www.affiliatemarketersgiveback.com/.

The latest issue of the Commission Junctions newsletter for affiliates had an interesting bit in there from Kerri Pollard, General Manager of CJ, about going green in our business lives.

This is something that has been on my mind lately, since myself and so many affiliate marketers work from home and have control over their work spaces.

So to varying degrees, we can determine the impact we have on the environment.

Some suggestions from Kerri…

One thing that publishers can do is support and promote businesses with a commitment to the environment. Taking a quick search through the “Get Links” section of the CJ Account Manager (start with keyword “environment”) will yield some great examples of these businesses. But that’s just one way to help out.

There’s a good chance that many of you run home-based businesses, so obviously not commuting helps the environment in many ways. I’m sure most of you take this one step further by shopping online instead of driving and possibly by conducting your business meetings online or on the phone.

Good points, Kerri. My way of doing business automatically helps the environment, but I could certainly do more - perhaps starting with not keeping my computers, printer, copier, fax machine, power backup, monitors, external hard drives, etc. on 24/7.

Gotta run… or rather walk… to the bank and post office now.

A couple months back, a free PPC affiliate tracking service called Tracking202 was released in a public Beta.

The same guys are back with a free, self-hosted PPC affiliate tracking software called Prosper202.

“It provides the same advanced PPC tracking that was publicly available on Tracking202.com. The software also comes with Export202, which is an application that allows you to upload PPC campaigns from your networks, and then export them to Yahoo, MSN and Google Adwords in seconds,” commented Steven Truong, Vice President, Media for Tracking202.

More details at http://prosper202.com.