Rob Berrisford.com

A good friend of mine and affiliate marketing consultant legend Matt Brown is conducing a survey on the merits of a multiple referrer payment model.

This suggestion has been knocking about for a while, but as far as I know nobody has started running their campaign like this yet. (if anyone has experience with this please let myself or Matt know)

The basic premise, for those who are not aware, is that more than one affiliate receives payment for a sale if they were involved in the click stream.

I think this could be good for affiliate marketing, and welcome the change if testing proves successful. From a paid search point of view, statistics are everything, so if we are getting payments on more sales we can collect more statistics meaning we can work more efficiently.
There are some obvious problems with this system. Firstly cashback sites, I cant see this working for cashback, who lets be honest are one of the reasons this is being suggested. How can cashback sites offer £70 cashback on car insurance when they dont know how many other affiliates have been involved in the chain.

There is also the matter of deciding how much influence each click has had on the sale, will clients just pluck a number out of the air? Or will this be done on a more accurate basis.

I have put the list of questions below, if you want to email them over to Matt or feel free to discuss here.

1. What is your opinion on the current interest in multiple referrer payment models?
2. Do you think it would be fair to reward more than one affiliate?
3. Would you be happy to be involved in such a commission payment scheme?
4. As a Paid Search affiliate do you accept that your cookie often overwrites previous affiliate cookies, thereby rewarding you with last referrer sale?
5. Do you also accept that other affiliate cookies often overwrite your cookies, thereby rendering the sale obsolete (to you)?
6. Would you be happy to receive a lower commission per sale, but a higher number of commission payments?
7. What do you see as the biggest risks associated with this model?
8. What do you see as the greatest opportunities with this model?
9. Are you aware of any other merchant programs who have adopted this model?
10. Would you be prepared to operate an “open book” policy where a merchant would divulge commission splits, and name all credited affiliates?
11. How would you feel about this system being opened out to all of a merchant’s online advertising channels, rather than only affiliate?
12. Do you think affiliates will accept this model going forwards?
13. Do you have any other points you’d like to raise regarding this concept?

What I’m wearing now: Jeans and a blue shirt, it is Scott Gallacher’s leaving drinks tonight, I thought I would make an effort.

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It is now the final day from the Affiliate Summit here in rainy Boston, I am flying back to London tomorrow night .I have been to a few seminars over the last couple of days, some more interesting than others.Yesterday (Monday) Matt Wood and I went to “PPC Super Affiliate Strategies you MUST know” from the lad at Super Affiliate mindset.First off I have a minor touch point over affiliates who call themselves “Super”.The “Super Affiliate” then proceeded to massage his own ego, by talking about how much money he earnt and how many companies he owned. I think that has its place if it is used to inspire new affiliates, but this was used merely as an ego boosting exercise.On the plus side there were some interesting sessions on “How to and How Not to Use Social Networks to Drive Performance Marketing” and a very interesting panel on “The Future of Performance marketing.I think the thing I have learnt most in Boston is that the US Affiliate Marketing industry isn’t ahead of the UK on most issues, they are still dealing with the multiple referrer idea that is constantly being discussed in the UK at the moment. I have also learnt that all bars in Boston shut at 1am, and if you want a decent night out you need to fill your hotel room with booze or start early.Finally a big thank you to Sean and Missy for the press pass to this conference, to Tyson Pearcy’s credit card company for his card not working anywhere, meaning I had to bank roll his trip to Boston and to Amy for giving me her lunch token.

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Greetings from Boston, I am here for Affiliate Summit East 2008.

There are a few members of the UK affiliate community here including the usual heads from buy.at UK and Team America, I have seen Matt Wood and Chris from Existem doing some interviews, Jlil and Mary from Affiliate future and Webgains.

Boston is a strange place, very nice but all the bars shut at 1am, including the hotel bar. It is a good job we went to duty free.

There have been a couple of parties and a meet and greet with the seminars starting today.

The people involved in Affiliate marketing are very different from the UK, very niche sites can make decent money in the states and the average age is much older than it is in the UK. By 12:00 at the buy.at party most people had gone home to bed, i suspect that has never happened in the UK.

I have managed to do this trip on the cheap, flying economy and blagging a press pass, and with Cable at 2 this could be a cheap trip.

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Kieron has just published an interesting article on Internet Marketiers and their Cars, and he has managed to get some greats to contribute including Shoemoney and John Chow.

There are a lot of Aston Martin’s knocking about, as both the current car and car of choice.

I am frankly surprised that i don’t have the worst car in the bunch, which wouldn’t start last night by the way,  Chow what are you thinking? I know you have the reddies to buy something better than an Acura.

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This is a guest post from a good friend of mine and Head of Shop Window Amo Sokhi.

I’m pleased to announce that we have launched v2 of ShopWindow this morning.

Since launching last year, we have been collating feedback from all of our partners (both brands and affiliates) with the intention of refining the shopping service further.

Eight months on and we have v2 which offers a much better search function and an improved user journey through to click. Ultimately a major focus has been on ensuring a user is driven through, increasing conversion rates from the product pages within the shopping service. A demo of the new functionality can be seen at www.shopwindow.com , with all new versions available within the interface as of this morning.

Managed Widgets

Along with this release, we’ve also released a managed widgets service, offering managed content to all affiliates within particular categories.

Affiliates can now log into their accounts and select a widget to integrate that has products pre-selected within it, managed by us (ShopWindow).  This basically allows affiliates to integrate widgets and not worry about the maintenance side of things as we will update them every week.

Our launch demo is within the entertainment categories (books, CDs, DVDs, and gaming), for which we have integrated some managed charts and new releases widgets. Check it out at http://entertainment.shopwindow.com .

As always, our system takes custom templates which you can integrate yourselves, so the widgets can still look exactly as you need them to. 

I think that our main drive for this has been the fact that many of you guys have portfolios of sites for a variety of sectors, and where possible we should help you make content relevant and fresh.

It’s all really good stuff, and we are pleased with our developments so far. I’d definitely recommend taking a look at the managed widgets if you don’t work with ShopWindow already, and if you do, upgrade your shops now J

Cheers

Amo

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