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Linkshare Enhances Affiliate Interface

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On January 26th, Linkshare sent out a notice to affiliates about improvements to their interface as follows:

Interface Alerts

To keep you updated on the latest news, enhancements, and system alerts, LinkShare has added a new section to the Home page of the Affiliate Interface in the upper left corner. This new section will enable you to quickly see information important to your program. Alerts will be posted by level of importance with red being the most urgent message and yellow being the lowest level.

Affiliate Private Offer Management

To make it easier to display all private offers that are extended to you, LinkShare has added a new Private Offer page to the Your Account tab in the Affiliate Interface. You will now see private offers from Merchants whose programs you are a part of, as well as from additional Merchants who wish to extend to you a private offer. You will have the ability to accept or reject these private offers.

Merchant Status Screen Update

In the past, when a Merchant's status changed in the LinkShare system, Affiliates partnered with that Merchant received an email to that effect, but the email did not include any reason for the change. Now, if a Merchant's status changes, Affiliates partnered with that Merchant will receive an email from LinkShare notifying the Affiliate of the change and the reason for the change. LinkShare will continue to update the Merchant Status Update page under the Your Account tab with the Merchant changes in the Affiliate Interface.

I dunno… I keep checkin' in, and haven't seen any Alerts as of yet. 🙂 Maybe that's a good thing?

Dell Sues Affiliates

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Dell affiliates Alf Temme, Lars Crispin Temme and Kim Temme are in big ka-ka for profiting from the avails of typosquatting.

The typosquatters registered d3ell.com, de3LL.com, d4ell.com, de4ll.com, dedll.com, derll.com and dxell.com, all of which redirected visitors to Dell.com through their affiliate links.

Dell has taken legal action on the basis of trademark infringement and wants the the defendants to hand over the domain names, and to pay legal fees and damages.

I dunno, but the terms and conditions of Dell's affiliate program at Linkshare are pretty darned clear and posted right there on the front page …

By partnering with Dell, you have agreed to refrain from the following activities, and any violation of this Section shall be deemed a material breach of this Agreement:

(a) Use or otherwise incorporate the word “Dell” or variations or misspellings in the domain name(s) of your Site(s), on any meta tags of Web pages comprising your Site, or in advertising or searchable keywords.

(b)You may not bid the following: all trademark and brand terms, including but not limited to “Dell” “Inspiron” and “Dimension”.

(Dell will probably drop me as an affiliate after their name shows up in the title bar of its post.)

Anyway, it'll be interesting to find out what happens. So, stay tuned.

Original info posted in the Inquirer on January 12th, 2007.

I Could Hardly Believe My Eyes

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I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this note in my Inbox a few mornings ago…

Hi, My name is Ian and I am an Account Manager here at Linkshare. Nice to meet you!

I saw your blog post about the iTunes affiliate program. I manage that program here at LS as well as Apple. The holiday season is indeed a big time for iTunes. I noticed that in your link to sign up as an affiliate you mention the Apple Store’s affiliate program and wanted to let you know that iTunes has a separate program. So if you want to sell songs you’ll need to be in iTunes, but iPods and Macs in Apple…so why not be in both!

Let me know if you have any questions and thanks for the good word.

Best regards,
Ian

WHY was I shocked? Well, for a couple of reasons…

First, I just celebrated my 9th anniversary of affiliate marketing on January 1st, and although affiliate managers have contacted me in the past to say they like one of my articles or endorsements — up until then, no affiliate manager has ever gotten in touch with me so quickly after I'd posted an affiliate link.

Talk about the value of blogging and Technorati tagging. WOW!

But better yet, here's an affiliate manager who is REALLY on the ball! Ian is obviously an enthusiast and knowledgable affiliate account manager, and his approach was absolutely perfect.

He introduced himself, mentioned how he found me and acknowledged what I'd said in the post. He was also helpful when he very nicely suggests that I should have mentioned joining the Apple iTunes affiliate program as well as Apple Store program. He then offered additional assistance and thanked me.

As affiliates, we shouldn't be shocked by good communication. Unfortunately, however, affiliate managers like Ian are few and far between.

For example, I applied for a program run through Commission Junction in early December. I waited a week for application approval and heard nothing, so I sent sent a couple of emails through the CJ interface, and still got nothing back. I then phoned the company and asked for the affiliate manager by name. They'd never heard of her. After being placed on hold for a few minutes, my call was redirected to her extension, so I left a message. I waited 3 more days and called again and left another message. FINALLY, after almost two weeks the application was approved without the courtesy of either a returned call or an email reply.

Quite frankly, I was disgusted — and that kind of shabby treatment doesn't inspire me to make a lot of effort towards promoting this merchant's products.

So, what's the point of this rave/rant?

Well, Dear Merchants – hire great affiliate managers who have business savvy and PAY them well for their efforts. Better yet, give them incentive to help their affiliates succeed by offering them a percentage of affiliates' sales. Best of all, make sure they get proper training.

And Affiliates – don't put up with crappy treatment from program managers or merchants. Do your best to get what you want out of a particular program, and DO make the effort to suggest improvement where you see problems. Too, give KUDOs where kudos are due.

This industry is still very much in its infancy — so there's still lots of room for hope and improvement.

Time to Affiliate with Apple iTunes

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A December 27th press release from Hitwise reported that Apple iTunes visits skyrocketed by 413 percent on Christmas Day.

NEW YORK, NY – December 27, 2006 – Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, today announced that the market share of visits to the iTunes website was up 413 percent on Christmas Day 2006 (December 25, 2006) versus Christmas Day 2005 as new iPod owners flocked to the web to download iTunes.

In addition, the market share of visits to the Apple Store (store.apple.com) showed an increase of 110 percent when comparing Christmas Day 2006 to 2005. The Apple Store was the fourth most visited website in the Hitwise Retail Index on Christmas Day 2006.”

So, isn't it time you signed up for the Apple iTunes and Apple Store affiliate programs and caught the rest of those folks who are downloading music for their new iPods?

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