Episode 44: Social Media Marketing Tips, AOL, Google, Calacanis (about 22 mins / 22 mb's)

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Show Notes

- AOL Launches Coupon Service: DM News
- Google Ad Manager
- Who Is Andrew Wee.com: Jim Kukral
- Searchers Poaching Aff’s AffiliateTip Blog
- GeekCast with Calacanis: GeekCast.fm
- Lijit Search Widget
- LivingDot Hosting for Blogs (My Favorite)

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Episode 7: Evidently, it’s social media day since that’s mostly what I talked about. I’m not even a huge “social media marketing” person. I also talk a bit about how I podcast. Give it a listen. (about 22 mins / 22mb’s)

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Show Notes

- Logitech Headset: BestBuy
- Tata’s Mini Car: Engadget
- 40+ Social Media Sites: Dosh Dosh
- Twitter as a Business Tool: BobAngus.com
- Getting Your Feet Wet in Social Media: Ignite Blog
- Star Wars Design Presenation: Brian Oberkirch

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Feeds and subscriber stats are now included in Google’s always handy Webmaster Tools.

Google’s Webmaster tools keeps getting better and better as more features are rolled out. Aside from the new look of the webmaster tools interface which was recently introduced, the webmaster tools now tracks subscriber statistics of every blog that users listed in their respectective accounts. The subscriber statistics tracks down all subscription made to blog feeds of enrolled sites, using the different Google services such as iGoogle, Reader and Orkut.

Google Rolls Out New Webmaster Tools Features

There’s no doubt that we’re entering an age where mobile, web browsing, and video are all meshing together. Being able to monetize that sort of experience is one of the difficult issues facing marketers today.

Thanks to Jeff Doak for passing along this interesting piece which hints at a possible model for the future… 

“US patent office documents released Thursday show that a startup named Pelago is seeking a patent covering Pay-For-Visit Advertising, which uses GPS, Bluetooth, or RFID on your mobile devices to track your travels to see if you wander into a place of business that appeared in an ad shown earlier on your cellphone, PDA, or laptop. To maximize ad revenue, phone calls are also tracked to see if you dial a number associated with an ad, and financial transactions are examined to see if you make a purchase from an advertiser. The application goes on to note that the system may be of interest to government agencies. Pelago just raised $7.4M from the likes of KPCB and Jeff Bezos.”

Slashdot | Pay-For-Visit Advertising

Mashable has put together another great toolbox, this time focused on analytics packages…

From analyzing your RSS feed to counting page views to visual representations of where your visitors are clicking, there is no shortage of companies looking to help you better understand your web site?s traffic. In our latest ?toolbox? installment, we analyze (pun intended) the wide variety of applications and tools available for keeping tabs on how your sites, feeds, blogs, emails, or even your intranet is performing.

analytics toolbox - Mashable

Carsten Cumbrowski has the best run down and explanation of Google’s new Pay Per Action platform.  He’s thrown in some nice data, comparison reviews, and historical analysis…

Google announced today via a press release that they expand the Google Pay-Per-Action beta program to include beta testers around the world. As of today are willing advertisers and publishers outside the United States able to participate and apply for a beta account.

Worldwide Expansion of Google Pay-Per-Action (CPA) Beta

Pranav covers the increasing usage of Facebook as a marketing medium by more “1.0″ type merchants…

It is good to see though, that already, more traditional ‘web 1.0′ e-businesses have started to figure out how to use facebook to further their marketing objectives and expand their audience.

Blue Nile - one of the biggest jewelry and diamond retailers is one of the first in the e-retail world to do this by allowing shoppers to share their blue-nile wishlists on facebook.

As Pranav points out, the fastest growing population of users aren’t broke college kids (you can find me there under “samharrelson”)…

e-Retailers taking advantage of the Facebook API - Final Tag

TechCrunch has coverage of the opening of Yahoo’s Panama search platform’s API.  This is a good move for Yahoo, but Arrington raises a couple of other questions about the announcement:

Opening up Panama to free API access can be either of two things: inspired thinking or desperation. Given the huge lead time it took to deliver Panama in the first place this feels like a decision that is the former, after all nothing at Yahoo moves quickly enough to act from a position of desperation. Developers will likely pull apart the new program in the coming days and strictly from that viewpoint the offer will definitely be welcomed in the industry and could potentially throw down a stronger challenge in the quest to topple Google’s dominant Adwords platform.

Yahoo Opens Panama Gates with API Program - TechCrunch

Interesting interview from Eye For Travel with a large travel affiliate program. The questions concerning customer acquisition costs and the effectiveness of the affiliate channel in lowering these costs are particularly interesting.

Definitely worth a read, even if you’re not a travel affiliate…

In our market, as a wholesaler as well as a product owner, we face not only increasing customer aquisition costs, but also suppliers who believe the Internet offers an ‘easy/cheap’ route to market. Therefore the biggest challenge has to be one of efficiency. If you manage an affiliate programme in house, this carries it’s own costs, if you utilise an affiliate network with monthly network charges and commission fee’s you may face paying a higher unit commission than you desire to stay competitive and appealing to the affiliate market. The real question is do the affiliates produce incremental business and add value?

Do the affiliates produce incremental business and add value? - EyeForTravel.com

Affiliate marketing and the search industry are blood relatives.  To understand affiliate marketing, you must understand how and why the search engines, such as Google, work.

Here’s a little glimpse into the world of Google search courtesy of the NY Times…

Mr. Singhal has developed a far more elaborate system for ranking pages, which involves more than 200 types of information, or what Google calls “signals.” PageRank is but one signal. Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years.

Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine - NYTimes

Video is all the rage as everyone tries to figure out how to monetize video within the context of affiliate marketing.

Qoof is entering the video race, but with an interesting slant towards affiliate marketing.

Here’s the basic pitch:

Usermercials™ are user generated recommendations that leverage the power of broadband video content delivery and enable the creator to finally generate solid revenue from their partnerships with online retail affiliate programs. Qoof allows for affiliates to link and tag their Usermercials™ to the associated product page so that they can earn money for every sale generated by their customers click throughs from Usermercials™. It is a completely free service that enables them to improve their marketing strategy and thereby increase their commissions. Members of Qoof can also upload their Usermercials™ to their favorite blogs, websites, and online social networks, thereby increasing viewership and ultimately sales. After that, all a customer has to do is click on the Buy It Now button, and they will be directed to the webpage appointed by the affiliate that sells the product they are advertising.

Currently, they are offering a $5 payout for the first 250 affiliates to register and upload a “usermercial.”

There’s no doubt that the line between content creation and monetization will continue to blur as we move into this brave new world of interactive advertising/marketing/content creation.  I’ve always said that affiliate marketing has an incredible chance to lead the charge to monetize these new platforms because of its nature of relationship.

So, Qoof looks like an interesting step in the right direction.  Give it a go and see what you think.

Qoof - Usermercials and Affiliate Marketing 

Hi everyone.  This is my first blog entry ever and I decided to start with a bang. Sam pointed me to an issue that has been raised a few times over the years but most recently in a podcast that Sam was on.  Namely: Who should be the rightful receiver of an affiliate commission in a situation involving more than one channel or affiliate…the first affiliate to drive the sale or the last affiliate to do so? Jeff Doak was on that podcast and raised the issue and said some interesting things about how this should be handled involving a hybrid payout.

On a thread at ABestWeb started last night, the member Trust brought up the issue and pointed to a poll started in April which measured what affiliates on ABW thought of the issue.  Geno Prussakov raised the question on the original thread…

QUESTION: Who do you think the commission should be paid to - the first or the last affiliate that sends the customer?

It looks as if the affiliates overwhelmingly think the last affiliate is the rightful receiver of the commission.  This is an issue near and dear to my heart since some of the affiliate sites I’ve started are related to this issue. I’ve always thought it was common sense that the last affiliate that drove the action receive the payout, but maybe I’m missing something?

Sam says I should ask you lots of questions.  So, what do you think? Is the system of paying the last affiliate the commission for a registered action working, broken or in need of repair?

I am looking forward to great discussions and making more posts!

Thanks to Jonathan (Trust) for the link and idea for the post.

Despite what some armchair pundits might prophesy, 9 out of the top 10 companies listed here have affiliate programs. Yet another reason to take this industry seriously and for all of us in this industry to act professionally:

Top 500 Guide from Internet Retailer