permanent waves - Latest Comments in An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

Patrick — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:38:26 -0000

Mike,

One of the greatest problems plaguing affiliate sales reporting is the lack of standardization. One network might track record visits as clicks, another might report page views as visits and clicks as actual clicks. This creates a mishmash of data that is very difficult to integrate.

Additionally the abundance of clickfraud that I've seen on most of the 1st and 2nd tier media outlets render the EPC data provided by the affiliate network close to useless.

If the affiliate networks you are using are open to placing a tracking pixel for you (most are) you can use a hosted Ad Tracker like Prosper202 to create your own reporting system, use your own product names, and track the ROI on each traffic source and each product you are selling.

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

Michael J. Pratt — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:08:15 -0000

We are enabled for Linkbuilder but it is a mess! It fails to generate the proper code half the time. Often kicks you out of the merchant's site and the problems of link management and reporting still remain. I suspect that, given it doesn't appeal to LinkShare's primary audience and only those of us who build links one at a time, that's the reason. Just a guess.

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

Michael J. Pratt — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:06:08 -0000

Thanks, Rebekah. I will def check out Skimlinks as well. It's all about making it easy for the person creating content as their primary objective, not just slapping up sites with links. I know you guys appreciate that at SheFinds

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

LSuser — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:40:26 -0000

Merchants enabled for LinkBuilder on LinkShare allow you to build your own textlinks or product links with a specific landing page! Great for content sites!

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

Facebook User — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:17:28 -0000

This is all the things I think about affiliate linking every day. Well put. Have you seen Skimlinks? I'm looking into them for SheFinds, they've found ways around some of this that seem viable, at least at first gloss.

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

Michelle — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:03:33 -0000

It's my understanding that deep linking still is VERY slow on linkshare. We need a master search like cj.

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

Michael J. Pratt — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:02:57 -0000

Thanks, Evan - I was browsing my Linkshare account just yesterday and must have missed the "deep linking interface" part. Of course, Linkshare's own web design team isn't huge on usability :-). I will check out PopShops and give you a shout.

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

Evan W. — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:55:00 -0000

wow great post Mike. Check out Linkshare's new deep linking interface. Also you should check out Popshops.com it's free and lets you pull product code into posts...keep up the great work! Maybe we can work together, my company manages several large affiliate programs in CJ.

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

rdeichert — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:14:59 -0000

Great point Mike - I'll let the product manager know.

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

Michael J. Pratt — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:11:04 -0000

Rob - Great heads up. buy.at looks very promising, if only for their approach. I do wish, however, that they'd say who their 300 programs are (instead of a sampling) because, in keeping with our methodology, we are product driven, not program driven so we have to have merchants that carry products we care about. Now I am forced to join just to see who the merchants are. If they aren't appropriate, I joined for no reason.

Re: An appeal to Affiliate Manager programs

rdeichert — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:56:18 -0000

Mike would love your feedback on Platform-A's affiliate solution - buy.at - http://www.platform-a.com/b...