Was just trying to figure out what affiliate marketing is and here is what google suggested… Affiliate marketing is dead, it is a scam and it is hard.

I have not tried affiliate.com yet because I always thought that they specialize in email campaigns since Scott Richter is the CEO. However, after having an email conversation with them I will be signing up as they  seem to have quite a few interesting offers. I have been really busy lately and hope to set some time aside for the weekend, hopefully enough to make at least a couple of landing pages just to check out their best converting offers.

As you may know, I made a post earlier about cool shirts that they sent me. Well, today I received a starbucks gift card in the mail from them and this card would probably last me a year.

It was completely unexpected and I just want to thank affiliate.com for the gift.

I also heard a lot of good things about the network from top affiliate marketers before and the company definitely has a great reputation. I am going to sign up and probably have another update within a few months once I test things out. Meanwhile, you can do the same here – www.affiliate.com.

I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with a few well performing landing pages lately trying to increase the click through rates and conversions. Starting from basic stuff like changing text, images, font type, size and color, background color, color of the buttons and ending with complete redesign. While most changes had an expected result, other had something new to think about.

Sometimes one creative works better for male vs female user. I got mostly female subscribers using one of the creatives and when I switched to another, it all changed to male. That was interesting, however, my conversions didn’t change much.

Next I tried adding both creatives and it did work, however, it worked even better when I implemented image rotation. Since these creatives were images, I was able to add a simple javascript to have them changed every few seconds (2-4 seconds worked for me), attract both genders and catch more attention.

Here is how my creative looked before I changed it:

<a href='site url'><img src='image url' border='0' /></a><div style='position:relative left:-1px; top:-1px;'><img src="tracking pixel url" height="1" width="1"></div>

And here is how it became after a simple javascript edit:

<a href='site url'><img id="Rotating" src='image url' border='0' /></a><div style='position:relative left:-1px; top:-1px;'><img src="tracking pixel url" height="1" width="1"></div>
<script language="JavaScript">
function RotateImages(Start) {
var a = new Array("image url","second image url");
var b = document.getElementById('Rotating');
if(Start>=a.length)
Start=0;
b.src = a[Start];
window.setTimeout("RotateImages(" + (Start+1) + ")",3000);
}
RotateImages(0);
</script>

This script rotates the images every 3 seconds (3000 miliseconds).

You can add as many images as you like, such as:

var a = new Array("image url","second image url", "third image url");

Complete redesign was also a good experiment. While I spent a lot of time on some good designs, many didn’t convert well at all. For some reason ugly pages convert better.

It’s been a few weeks since I got back from the affiliate summit west 2010. There were many affiliate networks at the event and almost every one had something to give out for free. Most of the time it was some cheap promotional waste such as a t-shirt with a company name printed all over or some rubber ball and this is one of the reasons why I didn’t even look at the free items or grabbed them. Besides, I didn’t feel like walking around with a bag full of promo items that I would never use or wear. The only things that I took home were whatever came in the welcome bag and shareasale shirt since I wanted to show somebody how it was packaged (pressed) and it was right at the entrance.

Being affiliated with custom apparel company, estores by zome, regular promotional items do not really attract me since we screen print, direct to garment print and embroider pretty much anything. However, I like the items that are not ordinary but I usually don’t even look around since you don’t see them too much as they fall in the “a little more expensive to produce” category.

Well, I guess there was something that I like. I didn’t see the shirts that affiliate.com was giving away at the event, however, I saw it all over internet a few days later. It is nice that they actually run a contest but it is not the main reason I blog about it since I don’t think I have much of a chance to win it anyway.

Anyway, I asked them to send me two shirts – a king and a queen for my wife, which arrived just couple days later to my doorsteps. I was out for over a week, just got back home a couple days ago and tried it out. You can see the men king shirt I received on the picture above. The women shirt is similar, except that it has a queen of hearts. It makes sense, and I would definitely ask the queen of my heart to put it on next time we go out.

I should have payed more attention in Vegas and grabbed a couple there – it is definitely a good shirt to wear while gambling. I went out to local casino yesterday wearing that shirt and won about 500 bucks in blackjack after losing couple hundred in craps. Not that a shirt had much (or anything) to do with luck, but it definitely has a good card theme… I think the dealer got a clue who was a king at that table, now I just need another shirt with hard six and hard eight for craps.

It is great to see the shirt that is not too branded. It says AFFILIATE (part of affiliate.com) on the back written in bigger letters which kind of tells who you are, but of course, the brand needed to be somewhere. It fits nicely into the design on the back written in smaller letters. The shirt is two-color, but I don’t think savings had to be a factor there as it doesn’t need any additional ones. As a matter of fact, it is not a standard screen print job and costs twice (if not more) the amount it would have cost if it had a company name in the standard screen print mid-shirt printable area.

I hope that it would be a trend and other companies will take a note. I have a ton of branded shirts in a closet that I would never wear. Why not print something that people would actually want to wear? Affiliate marketing companies should know how to get impressions…

At last, I want to thank affiliate.com for the shirts and quick response. Good work on the shirt!

More and more states start to introduce the affiliate tax. Seems like its a pretty hot topic as one state after another is bringing it out. There are a ton of updates on twitter, blogs and forums. Geno from AM Navigator just wrote about Vermont joining the list along with a brief update and links to the posts for the other states.

Now, why do these bills matter? Who cares if people pay sales tax on the items they buy online or not? Tax-free shipping is one of the top reasons why people shop online. It drives sales and helps to offset shipping charges and keep the prices low. Theoretically, online retailers are not supposed to charge tax on items shipped to the states in which they have no physical presence. The new tax bills define affiliates as “contractors” working for these online retailers in the state and this is how they try to justify the presence for the most part.

As for the thoughts, I think it will hurt the states more as they are just killing affiliate businesses and will end up losing tax dollars that these businesses could have earned. It looks like it is more profitable to terminate “tax state” affiliates then start collecting taxes in these states and these is what online retailers have been doing. Some say – well, this is why Circuit City got closed, which I think is a crap. Circuit City has always been struggling to compete with Best Buy and Wal Mart. They tried to charge and save every penny possible, just like these “tax states” do. Cheaper unskilled labor, higher prices, crappier service – that’s what killed them… Best Buy reported profits while Circuit City was slowly going out of business and thinking of opening up “The City” instead of focusing on improving their service. By the way, in case you did not know, online division of Circuit City is still selling. They actually have better email marketing now , but I think that the prices still suck comparing to new egg and amazon. Even if online merchants had something to do with the closing of Circuit City stores, what are these states trying to do? They are not going to get sales tax from them anyway, just lose more people who actually make money and pay taxes on the money earned. Will they drive more sales to local stores? I doubt that it will be noticeable. Affiliate marketers will shift the focus, move, do anything they can to keep working with these merchants…

The opportunity will still be there for some states. For instance, Amazon already charges sales tax for Washington residents and since I live here, it makes sense for me to keep working with Amazon since if Washington tax bill ever passes, it will not affect Washington affiliates. It makes sense for Utah affiliates to keep investing in their Overstock.com affiliate sites, California affiliates – newegg, etc. However, what would you do if you work with all of these merchants and do not want to lose a big chunk of earnings? Move to another state? How can you be certain that the other state will stay away from the bill? At this point I can only think of states like Oregon where there is no sales tax… Let’s all move to Portland! Just kidding, but not really.

Now, would you be pissed if you would have put years of SEO/Development/Design/Brand Building work into your affiliate site around a merchant and received an email saying that the merchant is done with your state? Some can lose a significant portion of the income and it would just make sense to move out to another state. “Tax states” may lose in a long term. America may end up losing in a long term too. Imagine if you did all the work moving to another state which would change something because of the budget deficit too… All the work for nothing? Oh well, time to move to Canada… or India… or whatever… May be… May be not… Just thinking…

Most affiliates I know do not work with just one merchant and wouldn’t move to Washington just because Amazon is here. However, as I said in the interview with Murray Newlands a few days ago, I see the growth in local and international affiliate marketing. I already have a few landing pages for the local retailer and will probably put more effort into Amazon since I am not planning to move anywhere yet. International market is cheap, not too many merchants want to go there yet, but it is a growing market.

There are a lot of changes in affiliate marketing industry. It gets harder and harder. Sometimes I am thinking to shift all of my focus to web development, but I don’t want to drop something that I just started…

Anyway, just personal thoughts out loud…

01.30.10

Seems that Colorado is getting closer with a 6-5 vote to join New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island in passing affiliate tax bill HB  1193. Overstock.com sent emails to Colorado affiliates earlier saying that they will sever relationships with the state affiliates if the bill passes, just like they did in the other 3 states. A few other companies will follow. I wonder what would the majority of Overstock affiliates in Colorado do and if the bill will help the state.