Affiliate Citizen

Time to Clean Up!

Ive been meaning to write about this for a couple weeks but have been a tad busy with various pressing matters so here goes. The announcement in question from Google can be read here.

Basically this means that the actual display url used in adwords PPC adverts will have to match EXACTLY the landing page domain. So what does this mean for paid search affiliates?

The Redirect

Most large sites have registered several domain names to cover themselves, usually the .com, .co.uk or .net. Now because it is not wise or sensible in Google’s eyes to have domains with mirrored content most merchants will redirect (301) to the main domain where the majority of the content lies. Usually the .com or .co.uk.

Clever affiliates can take advantage of this by using one of the limited slots available on the SERPS to get their ad shown even if another affiliate (or the merchant) is using the dominant domain url for their own campaign.

Lets say a merchant is using cheapholidays.com for their own PPC campaign, both brand and generics. They also own the domain cheapholidays.co.uk. The .co.uk domain redirects to the main domain cheapholidays.com. Therefore the affiliate can use the .co.uk domain in their own PPC campaign and the merchants has twice the coverage in any given SERPS for a targeted keyword. Add in other domain extensions and you can see where this goes…

The same happens with display urls missing the protocol prefix. For example http://www.adomain.com and http://adomain.com are presently considered unique domain urls in the adwords system.

Of course this makes a mockery of the ‘one domain per result’ rule that is put forward by Google and hence this crackdown has come into play - long overdue in my opinion.

Grubby

Im sure a fair few affiliates use this method and just quickly I have found this example for Pitchwell TV on AW. At the time of writing this I can see both a protocol ad and a domain redirect ad in place there. So the merchant (or affiliate on the dominant url) is competing with 3 other bidders who should not be there according to the adwords clampdown.

It would be good to get some merchants opinions on this as some will stand to lose out with less coverage in the SERPS from affiliates bidding via their redirecting URLs.

Quick and Easy way to Make Phrase and Exact Match Keywords

One of the most time consuming aspects of manually entering keywords into a PPC campaign on Google Adwords is having to put speech marks (phrase) or brackets (exact) around keywords you wish to use on these options.

Now unless im being stupid there is no way apart from using the keyword tool to automate this process - if someone knows please let me know!

A Solution

Ive come up with a quick and dirty solution using a bit of PHP:

Click Here for the Adwords Tool!

Simply enter your keywords in the textarea on the left as you would do if you wanted to use the broad match option on adwords (that is no ” ” or [ ]). When you have done that press the convert button and your keywords will be nicely arranged into phrase and exact match for you to copy and paste straight into adwords!

I hope everyone finds this useful, please comment below!

CPC, CPA, PPA? Eh?

If you are new to affiliate marketing you may well be daunted by some of the jargon that flies around the industry blogs or in conversation with merchants. Ive started this post to explain some of the abbreviations and jargon that surround marketing online, not only affiliate marketing. Lets start with a good one:

CPC - Cost Per Click - commonly referenced in relation to paid search (see later) cost per click is a measurement used to assess the cost to the advertiser (or affiliate) per 1 unique click from a user. A common value may be £0.25 CPC.

EPC - Earnings Per Click - This is very common in affiliate marketing as it provides a fair reflection of a program’s performance over time. Usually measured per 1 click (and sometimes per 100 but still referred to as EPC), the figures found here can help you make decisions about whether to promote a program. Good networks such as affiliate window list EPC for all of their merchants. The figure is calculated by taking the total commission made by affiliates promoting a particular merchant and dividing it by the number of unique clicks into that merchants program. So, for example if I made £50 from a merchant and I achieved that with 100 unique clicks the EPC would be £0.50.

Merchant - Merchants are the companies that participate in affiliate programs and provide commission to affiliates depending on various actions, usually through their website.

Networks - Affiliate networks are sites that bring together the advertisers (merchants) and publishers (affiliates). Advantages of networks over independant (in house) programs include network protection and ease of use.

CPA/PPA - Cost per Action  - The basic model for affiliate marketing, this abbreviation is used mostly by merchants to describe the cost to them for a particular action - which may be a sale or lead commonly.

Referrals - Similar to CPA, referrals in affiliate marketing describes the process of visitors being sent to a merchants website via an affiliate link and therefore being eligible for a CPA.

Tiered Program - A tiered program refers to a merchant’s offering to affiliates that pays out commission in increments depending upon criteria. These criteria are most commonly: volume of sales in a month or most improvement compared to the previous month.

Two Tier/2nd Tier - Two tier or 2nd tier refers to programs that allow affiliates to refer OTHER affiliates to the same program. The referring affiliate then is eligible for a commission % of the referred affiliate’s commission.

Paid Search - A favourite saying among agency types paid search refers to the advertising models of the search engines. So for example Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing.

Organic/Natural Search - Organic search refers to the search results returned that are NOT PAID FOR. Sometimes called natural search, results are determined by a complex algorithm, taking in factors such as ‘pagerank’ and ‘trustrank’.

PPC - Pay per click - Commonly referenced in the context of paid search, pay per click refers to the advertising model by which most of the search engines charge their advertisers participating in their paid search programs.

Conversion Rate - Conversion rate is a relatively simple concept based around a percentage value. A conversion is achieved when the target user completes a specified action, which may be a sale or sign up. In general conversion rates around the 2-5% mark are seen as good in affiliate marketing.

Cookie Length - Cookies store the tracking information on the user’s browser which is vital to recording the origin of their click and therefore awarding the affiliate a CPA. The length of a cookie specifies when the tracking will expire. A common length is 30 days - so any sales made by that user in the 30 day period on the participating website will be credited to the affiliate.

Last Man In - Relevant to the cookie above and the usual model for affiliate marketing, last man in is the term used to describe how a merchant determines who to pay for a referral. If a user has gone through two or more affiliate links before making a sale the most recent (last man in) cookie is attributed the sale. Be careful of merchants who bid on their own brand in paid search and replace affiliate cookies with their own. When the ad is clicked any affiliate cookies are overwritten and commission is invalidated.

Cost per Acquisition - Easily confused with cost per action, cost per acquisition is used usually by merchants to assess the cost to them of ‘acquiring’ a customer or ‘acquiring’ a sale. Part of the cost in our context is the commission paid to the affiliate who referred the customer.

Product Feed - Product feeds have been the standard way of importing a merchants products into an affiliates site with the ability to deeplink into the merchant’s site via urls provided in the feed. Feed formats are usually in .csv (comma seperated value), .tsv (tab seperated value), .xls (excel) and standard html. Product feeds are one of the most useful aspects of an affiliate merchant relationship and form the basis for many of the more advanced techniques used in affiliate marketing.

API - A step up from product feeds and a method I strive to use as much as possible where redundant product data may be a problem. The Application Programming Interface allows affiliates to use the merchant’s internal systems via a common gateway. Messages are sent usually in the format of XML packets and are particualy useful in applications where data changes frequently.

 Ok thats all I can think of for now - ill add to this list when I think of more! Please do point out any ive missed by commenting!

PPC Basics

This post is inspired by a recent merchant who has just signed up to Affiliate Future. However ive seen numerous examples of what im about to go into over the past few months as merchants try and squeeze every last drop of CASH where they can.

So what am i talking about? Read this:

PPC campaigns can also be run on our behalf as long as your ad does not bid higher than any ad we are already showing.

I presume by this statement they dont want any affiliate ads physically above theirs and they assume (certainly in adwords) that bidding a lower CPC will ensure the ads stay below. Well ive got news for them - It doesnt work as simply as that!

One of the more redeeming features of adwords and indeed yahoo search marketing is a small thing entitled the ‘quality score’. The quality score takes into account a whole host of factors and influences the position of ads across any particular SERP. Therefore I could bid 20p on a keyword with a brilliant quality score and still be in a higher position than the merchant who might be bidding 50p with a crap quality score.

So therefore to assume that the affiliate can control the ad’s position simply by bidding lower is pure ignorance on the merchants part and should not, in my opinion, be included in any requirements for PPC. Im suprised the networks dont give the new merchants some advice in this game.

Rant over, comments welcomed!
 

The Script

This post takes the affiliate redirect script tutorial I posted previously here and suggests ways you can build upon it, apart from the obvious redirection to the merchant’s page.

The Redirect

Now although users dont actually see any kind of redirect because the PHP script is server side it is nonetheless something they do pass through and so we can take advantage of that fact. Ok lets get down to some cool ways in which you can enhance your simple redirect:

Cool Thing 1: Make a ‘Popular Products’ Database

If you have a site which relies on a datafeed to populate it, whether it be from a sole merchant or in the form of price comparison, you can use this method to create a pseudo popular products section on your site. I say pseudo becuase you wont be able to tell which products have actually been sold, just which products interested the users (and prompted a clickthrough your redirect script).

Im not going to go through the technical aspects of this completely, im just going to cover the theory but suffice to say you will need a database backend of some kind installed on your server. If anyone wants to explicitly know how to do this please email me and if there is enough demand I will set it out in a single post. The same goes for the other 4 cool methods ill outline later. Now..onto the ‘Popular Products’.

Ok so you have a page of products infront of the user, lets say for example you have 10 different mobile phones. Each one is connected to your redirect script which then queries the database for the correct deeplink to carry the user over to the merchant. All well and good. To make the popular products DB you will need to also get additional row values from the DB. This could be, in addition to the deeplink, the name, price, id (unique id) and description. You will then need to construct a new query which adds this information into a NEW popular products DB. Be sure to also add a datetime value for each row as you can then display a ‘recently viewed’ popular products bar on your homepage which is constantly freshened by users clicking on your site! Why not also add deeplinks to the product pages on your site into the DB?

Cool Thing 2: Send Yourself an Email when a product is clicked.

This is for those of you who are really analytical in your approach and require that extra level of granularity without using a DB or log. I use this approach to guage the popularity of some areas while using PPC or sometimes SEO. It gives me a sense that the site is live and things are happening. You can also get a good feel for tallying up clicks on either the PPC engine you are using or the merchant/network’s reporting interface.

Ok, heres an example bit of code. It assumes you have queried the DB already and pulled out any info you may need to send in the email  to yourself.

///////////////////////////////SENDTRACKING MAIL///////////////////
$emess = "CLICKTIME: $time\n\n";
$emess.= "PRODUCT NAME: $name \n";
$emess.= "LINK: http://www.yousite.com/productdeeplinkpage.php"\n";
$ehead="From: YOUR WEBSITE";
$subj = "CLICKTHROUGH FROM PRODUCT SECTION";
$mailsend=mail("you@yoursite.com,","$subj","$emess","$ehead");
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


So this little bit of code will send you an email with the clicktime (using PHP’s time functions to establish the NOW time), the product name (pulled from  the DB) and a link to the page the user has clicked on - just for fun.

Tmesis

‘Tmesis’ - a feeling that you may have missed something. A vague feeling of guilt that intelligent marketeers can use to their advantage to keep shoppers or indeed online browsers around for longer. Comparison sites thrive on this by convincing consumers that the need not look elsewhere and their time has been well spent. Of course, in the current climate of instant gratification time is vital to a lot of people.  This also applies to choosing a suitable merchant, when faced with so many, on the various affiliate networks you may frequent during your time as an online marketeer.

Metrics

How do most people in the offline world overcome the feeling of tmesis? They justify their shopping experience by going for special offers, discounts or top of the range items to ensure they can stave off the guilt of ‘having missed something’. They look to metrics and figures - ‘buy 1 get 1 free’, ‘ 20% off’ and so forth.

In the affiliate-merchant relationship where remote communication and interaction is commonplace affiliates must rely on metrics and figures to gauge a good program and whether to promote it with their precious time. When a market is competitive and many similar merchants are available to the affiliate how can the successful marketeer be sure they have chosen the correct partner and avoid massive tmesis?

We are bombarded with a huge amount of statistics: EPC, CPC, CPA, 90th EPC, CAVE DATA, NETWORK RATINGS, AOV, CONVERSION RATE to name a few. These metrics and figures are extremely useful in measuring the relative performance of merchants against each other but of course the only real test is a live PPC campaign or inserting the merchant onto your content site. Both of which take time and in the former’s case, money.

Gut Instinct

What it comes down to, in my opinion anyway, is a general positive gut instinct feeling about a program. When considering several programs with similar metrics and commission deals consider the ‘added value’. This may well result in you choosing a merchant that could possibly offer a lower %, but the additional aspects will help you run a more profitable campaign.

So what would I consider to be ‘added value’? Read on:

• Tiered program with REALISTIC goals for the affiliate based on sale volume through the month
• Communication and support is viewed as essential by the merchant. This point is crucial in my opinion, especially if you are planning to promote in a market you dont know a lot about. Support via MSN and phone is invaluable in these situations. However, dont stand for agencies who contact you on MSN or offer support and then take days to resolve any problem with ‘their’ merchant.
• The program offers an in house solution. Usually an in house program offers a higher % than the network program as merchants dont have to take into account network costs.
• A reasonable approach to PPC. If you see a merchant’s program that says ‘the affiliate must not bid in a higher position than us’ that is a sure sign of ignorance on the part of the merchant towards how PPC works (notably google) and the long term aspects of an affiliate-merchant relationship.
• With regard to the above point, if the merchant bids on their own brand and restricts affiliates from doing so (commonplace), check whether affiliate cookies are overwritten by the brand bid. This effectively means if anyone comes back to the merchant site by searching on their brand having discovered them at your site - you get nothing. Some merchants do this, some dont.

There are many other added value factors that may come into play for different types of merchant depending on the vertical but those are some of the main ones. Hopefully that will help new affiliates choose the right merchant for a long and fruitful relationship - without too much tmesis!

Lets Start with a Bang!

Ok so to kick off the new blog im going to post about a technical solution to a problem that was raised recently on the A4U forum. The subject raised was how to implement affiliate link masking using a server side scripting language. Now as im fairly fluent in PHP and have also made said scripts it seems a great idea to share them. You need to be able to code a little in PHP to use this and also able to upload to your server (which im assuming most readers should be able to do!).

The Elements

There are three elements we need to get the masking going:

• The robots.txt file - a simple txt file than is specifically targeted towards controlling the behaviour of search engine robots. Its proper purpose is to restrict some areas of websites that are considered private or have some kind of security sensitivities, or, are out of date.
• The redirect page. In this case we we call our page redirect.php - easy.
• The new affiliate links. These will be the links to the redirect page that you will need to write into your pages when everything is in place.

The Robots.txt File

Open up a text editor of your choice (notepad for purists ;)) and the following code is all you will need:

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: redirect.php
User-agent: msnbot
Disallow: redirect.php
User-agent: slurp
Disallow: redirect.php

The ‘User-agent’ refers to the robot of a certain search engine. So googlebot for Google and msnbot for MSN etc. Different search engines have different bot names so if you want to block others aside from the big three you’ll need to find out their descriptions before you go ahead and add lines to your robots.txt file. The ‘disallow’ line tells the robot that it cannot crawl that file. In this case the redirect.php file will be in the root of the server to make it easier.  Save and upload your completed robots.txt file to the root of your server.

The Redirect Page

Open up your favourite text editor or website creator and begin a new PHP file. You’ll need to add the following lines of code:

<?
$linkid = $_GET['linkid'];
if ($linkid == "") {$link = "http://www.yoursite.com";}
if ($linkid == "1") {$link = "http://www.merchant1.com/";}
if ($linkid == "2") {$link = "http://www.merchant2.com/";}
header("Location: $link");
exit();
?>

Lets look at the code. The $linkid variable is provided in the links we will use from the pages with affiliate links on  -  more on that in a moment. Each link is assigned a number and placed into a conditional statement. The statement compares the $linkid value and assigns the $link variable the correct url. The final two lines then forward the browser to the $link location url using the header function in php. Add as many links as you need, most probably every time you add a new link to your site that needs masking. Save this file as redirect.php and upload to the root of your PHP enabled server. We now need one more essential element….

The New Affiliate Links

Previously your links may have looked like this for all to see:

http://scripts.affiliatefuture.com/AFClick.asp?affiliateID=xxxxx&merchantID=xxxx&programmeID=xxxx&mediaID=x

Take the raw affiliate links and place them into your redirect.php file. Assign them numbers as described above. Lets say for now the affiliate future link above is named as ‘1′. Now you are ready to write your new link just like this:

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com/redirect.php?linkid=1">Affiliate Future Merchant Name</a>

And voila! The new link should now go through the redirect page and the search engines (well those that obey the robots.txt file) won’t see it. If you are really paranoid about search engines following afiliate links try adding rel=”noindex, nofollow” to your masked links.

There are many other things you can do with a redirect script to help with analytics and monitoring of your websites, one example is to add popular links (or products) to a database on the fly. Another is to send an email to yourself if a link has been clicked. Ill cover that in another post soon!