Affiliate Trust

Affiliate Marketing - Leaky Merchants

In thinking about a couple merchants that were reported as having “leaks” on the Affiliate Trust Forum, I feel it necessary to find some value consideration in the method from the merchant’s perspective. Two very large merchants, Amazon and Overstock.com, were reported as having leaks. eBay has leaks as well. These are very large profitable corporations that can’t be passed off as being clueless to some negative impact from inclusion of external links (leaks) on their ecommerce sites. In fact, you can safely assume that these links are beneficial to the bottom line in one way or other since ROI drives corporate marketing methods. <SPECULATION>The links included on these big brand sites must belong to sister companies, companies having some vested interest, or companies with mutually beneficial agreements in place.</SPECULATION> There are undoubtedly other motivations for external links.

But as a merchant myself, with no sister companies or special agreements, external links make no sense whatsoever. Once we’ve attracted a shopper to visit the site, the only external link I want them to take is the one that authorizes their credit card.

So where does the smaller merchant fit into this grand scheme? At the Amazon end, the small independent merchant end such as mine, or somewhere in between? Is that “somewhere in between” simply the result of observing the methods of the big guns and following suit without an understanding of the ramification, lost sales?

For the marketing affiliate, leaks are another black hole that sucks potential commissions when they’ve delivered the customer. Affiliate Trust provides a mechanism for observation and reporting of leaky merchants. Merchant alert emails are sent as a result of these reports and a merchant representative invited to join the discussion and address the concerns of their affiliates. As we interact with leaky merchants many of these questions will be answered and published.

AffiliateTrust.org

Now The twitter Rush …

There was the gold rush, then the Internet rush, and now the twitter rush. I’m reminded of the early days of the Internet. Remember when domain names were free to register as many as you wanted? And to publish anything that remotely resembled commercialism was looked on with disdain? Had the pundits won out we would still be reading science journals and thesi in static form with gray backgrounds. So goes a market driven society where demand shapes services and drives development. Participating in an active marketing forum tends to keep one on the cutting edge of the latest fads and raves as they ebb and flow. So this twitter thing began coming up in conversation. Statements that such and such twittered this or tweeted that [or chirped... oh, pardon me] were heard, but any sort of standard terminology seemed to escape many. So what is this new service that turns an adult business professional into a twit… uh… tweeter? It’s twitter, the so called micro-blogging platform, where you say in 140 characters or less, what you’re up to… as if most people would care. It’s the latest pet rock phenomenon. No, it’s a pet rock that talks back… sometimes. More often though, tweeps [twitter peeps?] talk to themselves. And even more intriguing is that hundreds, if not thousands of other tweeps follow them around listening to them talk to themselves. Well, I sound knowledgeable enough that it almost sounds like I’ve taken the twitter plunge… on my own defense, I resisted, clawing the floor, kicking and screaming. Some of the AT members insisted that resistance was futile. And thus I was dragged in. I had been successful for so long in avoiding that time pit called twitter, but now find that the gravity is too great for any firm stance. I’m not convinced that such a service will produce any sort of profound social benefit for it’s users, but I do recognize a market represented by this growing society of tweeps that’s skyrocketing into huge numbers. The jury is still out in how twitter will monetize their service, but they’ve let it be known that there are no restrictions on user’s commercialization of it. This leads to the next question, how can we leverage the service for the benefit of our businesses? About the Internet rush and those free domain names that have faded from our memories, same goes for twitter usernames. twitter has rules in place to prevent them from becoming a commodity. But, if you want names that relate to you and your business, better move quickly… even if you currently have no interest in twitter. There are continuing discussions in the Affiliate Trust forum about using twitter to market and profit. Join us for this next great rush… Forum.AffiliateTrust.org