2012 - Page 16 of 20 - Affiliate Marketing with Missy Ward, Affiliate Summit Co-Founder & Co-CEO

OneLoad (Powered by TubeMogul) Updates TOS Regarding Affiliate Marketers

by Missy Ward

Back in February, TubeMogul moved its video syndication and analytics service to its own site, OneLoad.com.

If you're not familiar with OneLoad, its a tool that gives folks the opportunity to upload their videos to multiple sites (like YouTube, Vimeo, MetaCafe, Facebook, Twitter, Blip.tv and more) at one time and track the results from all of the sites, in one place. I've been using the service since 2007 and found it to be a great time saver. It's free (for non-commercial use) and offers different pricing tiers for its commercial use customers.

After receiving notification of the name change, I didn't think much of it (other than having to remember the new website address) until I read a blog post on Daniel Clark's QAQN blog, where he discussed his dissatisfaction regarding OneLoad's policy as it related to affiliate marketers.

At the time, their sign up page indicated:

Old OneLoad Terms of Service

and Section 4e of their Terms of Service stated:

“…upload, post or transmit unsolicited commercial email or “spam”. This includes unethical marketing, advertising, or any other practice that is in any way connected with “spam”, such as (a) sending mass email to recipients who haven't requested email from you or with a fake return address, (b) promoting a site with inappropriate links, titles, descriptions, or (c) promoting your Content by posting multiple submissions in public forums that are identical. Also defined as “spam” are any videos involving affiliate marketing, network marketing, cash gifting, multi-level marketing, phishing, or any videos that a reasonable person would consider to be a scam or misleading. Further, “spam” can include any content that TubeMogul deems not entertaining or informative;”

After reading that post, I reached out to the folks at OneLoad, and although sympathetic, they were not ready to change the language in their Terms of Service. That was a problem for me, because many of the presentations that I've done in the past as well as one scheduled for an upcoming conference in June, promoted the service as an efficient way for affiliate marketers to upload their quality videos to top video and social networking sites and track their effectiveness.

But, what was most upsetting to me was the fact that OneLoad was still wary of the affiliate marketing industry overall, despite its dramatic growth and positive forecast. I knew I had to reach out to Brett Wilson, their CEO to get a better understanding of their past issues, to see if there was a way that his company and affiliate marketers could work together in the future.

Oddly enough, TubeMogul had a booth down the same aisle as Affiliate Summit during SXSW in March. This afforded me the opportunity to talk with Brett quickly and follow up after the show. To sum it up, some of the issues that they were experiencing with a portion of the affiliate marketing videos, directly related to policies the video sites had themselves — they just don't want overtly commercial content.

I get that. I don't want to watch overly commercial content either.

Brett mentioned that OneLoad would be happy if affiliate marketers used the service with well-produced videos that have some entertainment value. (More commercial use customers means more $$ for OneLoad.)

I explained that in order for that to happen, they'd have to modify the language in their Terms of Service so that legitimate marketers could feel confident that their accounts were not going to get shut down just because they tagged a video as “affiliate” or “affiliate marketing”.

And so, they did. Here's the new, re-worded section, which offers protection to affiliate marketers who are producing quality videos that are not scammy or misleading.

“…upload, post or transmit unsolicited commercial email or “spam”. This includes unethical marketing, advertising, or any other practice that is in any way connected with “spam”, such as (a) sending mass email to recipients who haven't requested email from you or with a fake return address, (b) promoting a site with inappropriate links, titles, descriptions, or (c) promoting your Content by posting multiple submissions in public forums that are identical. Also defined as “spam” are any videos involving network marketing, cash gifting, multi-level marketing, phishing, affiliate marketing with low quality content or any videos that a reasonable person would consider to be a scam or misleading. Further, “spam” can include any content that TubeMogul deems not entertaining or informative;”

I'm glad that OneLoad.com was open to changing their policy because their service really saves marketers a lot of time and definitely helps with getting a better idea of what their customer base wants.

If you're new to OneLoad or need some help getting started, they offer a New User Webinar every Friday, which you should check out.

Let me know your thoughts.

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For the Entrepreneur

WAHMspiration for Work At Home Moms

by Missy Ward

Back in October 2011, when Rae Hoffman and I launched itsaWAHMthing.com our mission was to help work at home moms create better lives for themselves, their families and communities by providing them with networking opportunities and business tips from other successful WAHMs.

Our goals were simple:

We wanted to create a site that featured tips from successful WAHMs and Mompreneurs, so that aspiring work at home moms could find real information to help them run their business – whatever they may be.
We wanted to build a non-typical WAHM site; one that was drama and scam-free where Moms can focus on building a business, rather than getting freebees or discounts.

Fast forward, 5 months and 150 posts later, it’s truly wonderful to see our dream come to fruition; with the website exponentially growing in page views and comments and our search engine rankings moving up quickly for really tough terms (hat tip to Rae).

itsaWAHMthing.com home page

But more than that, I’m consistently impressed by the talents of our featured WAHM writers, Deb Carney, Liz Fogg, Liz Gazer, Jen Goode, Lisa Martin, Tricia Meyer, Loretta Oliver, Mary Poiley, Carrie Rocha, Eva Rosenberg, Lynn Terry, Shannon Weidemann and our token WAHD, Michael Gray. Each day, they share their first-hand experiences on dozens of WAHM-related topics including productivity, business tools, marketing, balancing family, tax issues, finances and more.

I should also share this secret…. The wealth of information our writers are providing benefit work at home dads, too. In fact, anyone that works from home or is growing their own business from their home can benefit greatly from the content provided on itsaWAHMthing.com.

One of my favorite features is our Success Stories, in which we feature successful work at home moms who are juggling their family and careers. Their stories are fascinating and very inspirational. Here are a links to a few of them:

WAHM Success Story: Lynn Terry of ClickNewz

WAHM Success Story: Sara Sutton Fell of FlexJobs.com

WAHM Success Story: Rae Hoffman-Dolan of Sugarrae, Inc.

(and me) WAHM Success Story: Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit

So, if you’re looking for a daily dose of WAHMspiration or some business and family balancing tips from other work at home moms, swing on over to itsaWAHMthing.com and join our community. Don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter while you’re there.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

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Affiliate Marketing

Join the Affiliate Summit Central 2012 Virtual Community

by Shawn_Collins

Affiliate Summit has partnered with Vivastream to provide a platform for Affiliate Summit Central 2012 attendees to network before, during, and after the conference.

If you’re registered for Affiliate Summit Central 2012, take advantage of the agenda planner and networking site.

Once your account is set, you will have a customized, interactive guide to help you plan out your conference experience, as well as assistance in finding fellow attendees who match your highlighted interests.

Be sure to get the Vivastream app from the iPhone, Android, or Blackberry app store, or go to http://www.vivastream.com/m on your mobile device.

We will be sending access codes via email to registered attendees. Anyone can join and access the main parts, but only Affiliate Summit Central 2012 attendees will be able to access the area to network with speakers, exhibitors, and other attendees.

Join the Affiliate Summit Central 2012 virtual community.

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Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing Glossary

by Missy Ward

I was recently asked for definitions of some common affiliate marketing terms. Affiliate marketing definitely has a language all its own. Below is a collection of some of the frequently used affiliate marketing terms which we've included in previous AffStat reports through 2010.

If you think of other terms you'd like to include in this post, please leave a comment.

Affiliate: a Web site owner that earns a commission for referring clicks, leads, or sales to a merchant.

Affiliate Agreement: terms between a merchant and an affiliate that govern the relationship.

Affiliate Information Page: a page or pages on your Web site that explains clearly and concisely what your affiliate program is all about.

Affiliate Link: a piece of code residing in a graphic image or piece of text placed on an affiliate's Web page that notifies the merchant that an affiliate should be credited for the customer or visitor sent to their Web site.

Affiliate Manager: the manager of an Affiliate Program who is responsible for creating a newsletter, establishing incentive programs, forecasting and budgeting, overseeing front-end marketing of the program, and monitoring the industry for news and trends.

Affiliate Program (also an Associate, Partner, Referral, or Revenue Sharing Program): a merchant pays a commission to an affiliate for generating clicks, leads, or sales from a graphic or text link located on the affiliate's site.

Affiliate Program Directory: directory of affiliate programs, featuring information such as the commission rate, number of affiliates, and affiliate solution provider. Associate-It, AssociatePrograms.com and Refer-it are among the largest Affiliate Program Directories.

Affiliate Solution Provider: company that provides the network, software, and services needed to create and track an affiliate program.

Auto-Approve: affiliate application approval process where all applicants are automatically approved for an affiliate program.

Commission: income an affiliate receives for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a merchant's Web site. Sometimes called a referral fee, a finder's fee or a bounty.

Cookies: small files stored on the visitor's computer, which record information that is of interest to the merchant site. With affiliate programs, cookies have two primary functions: to keep track of what a customer purchases, and to track which affiliate was responsible for generating the sale (and is due a commission).

Contextual Link: integration of affiliate links with related text.

Conversion Rate: percentage of clicks that result in a commissionable activity (sale or lead).

CPA (Cost Per Action): cost metric for each time a commissionable action takes place.

CPC (Cost Per Click): cost metric for each click of an advertising link.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand): cost metric for one thousand banner advertising impressions.

CPO (Cost Per Order): cost metric for each time an order is transacted.

eCPC: stands for ‘effective Cost Per Click’. Affiliates that earn on a CPA or CPO will back their numbers into an eCPC. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by their number of clicks. For example, if an affiliate earned $1500 from 3000 clicks, the CPC would equal $1500/3000, or $0.50.

eCPM: stands for ‘effective Cost Per Thousand impressions'. Affiliates that earn on a CPA or CPO will back their numbers into an eCPM. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by their number of impressions in thousands. For example, if an affiliate earned $1500 from 75,000 impressions, the CPM would equal $1500/75, or $20.00.

Hybrid Model: affiliate commission model that combines payment options (i.e. CPC & CPA).

In-house: alternative to using an affiliate solution provider; building affiliate program architecture within a company.

Lifetime Value of a Customer (LVC): the amount of sales in dollars that a customer in his lifetime will spend with a particular company.

Manual Approval: affiliate application approval process where all applicants are manually approved for an affiliate program.

Merchant: an online business that markets and sells goods or services. Merchants establish affiliate programs as a cost effective method to get consumers to purchase a product, register for a service, fill out a form, or visit a Web site.

Pay-Per-Sale: program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sale of a product or service that they refer to a merchant's Web site. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the highest commissions and the lowest conversion ratio.

Pay-Per-Lead: program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sales lead that they generate for a merchant Web site. Examples would include completed surveys, contest or sweepstakes entries, downloaded software demos, or free trials. Pay-per-lead generally offers midrange commissions and midrange to high conversion ratios.

Pay-Per-Click: program where an affiliate receives receive a commission for each click (visitor) they refer to a merchant's Web site. Pay-per-click programs generally offer some of the lowest commissions (from $0.01 to $0.25 per click), and a very high conversion ratio since visitors need only click on a link to earn the affiliate a commission.

Predatory Advertising: method that creates or overlays links or banners on Web sites, spawns browser windows, or any method invented to overwrite or redirect affiliate links.

Residual Earnings: programs that pay affiliates not just for the first sale a shopper from their sites makes, but all additional sales made at the merchant's site over the life of the customer.

ROAS: stands for ‘Return on Advertising Spending'. This is the amount of revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. For instance, a ROAS of $1 means you're generating $1 in sales for every $1 in advertising spend, and a ROAS of $5 means you generate $5 in sales for every $1 in spending.

ROI: stands for ‘Return on Investment'. This is what all marketing managers want to see from the money they spend on their marketing and advertising campaigns. The higher the sales, the larger the number of shoppers and the greater the profit margin generated by sales – the better the ROI.

Super Affiliates: that small percentage of sites – the top 1% of affiliates, based on performance and earnings – that generate the lion’s share of the revenue for your program. They are born marketers and are very successful with the affiliate program they promote from their sites.

Two-tier: affiliate marketing model that allows affiliates to sign up additional affiliates below themselves, so that when the second tier affiliates earn a commission, the affiliate above them also receives a commission. Two-tier affiliate marketing is also known as MLM (Multilevel Marketing).

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