Affiliate Summit West 2009

For anyone wondering, I’ll be heading to Affiliate Summit West in Vegas from 1/10-1/12. Last year’s Vegas show was great, and I’m looking forward to it once again.

The show is at the Rio, but I’ll be kicking it at Steve Wynn’s new hotel, Encore. I’m excited to see the new hotel since the Wynn has been my favorite Vegas hotel so far.

See you there?

This post originated at the Online Marketer blog, home to marketing consultant John Coronella.

Random Pictures Can Make Duplicate Content Look Authoritative (Philip Wilson Steer: The Black Hat)

In the affiliate days of old, you could take a data feed full of product descriptions and slap it up on the net, buy yourself a PR9 link and you were off to the races. Champagne for everyone. It was long tail before the phrase existed. Google got wise, and in addition to de-linearizing PR, they started doing very sophisticated duplicate content filtering.

The cliche term “Add Value” was born sometime thereafter, and augmenting commodity content has become an art form. The key is to add enough new and unique value so that you can have oodles of keyword rich content without tripping the duplicate filters. I’ve said ‘add value’ again and again at conferences, and I really mean it. I really mean add value to my wallet, that is, but if that means making an original site then so be it.

Now, I just started blogging a couple months ago. (I made one post on Netflix several years ago, but abandoned it like so many blogs). I’m really not qualified to speak on blogging, but I do — and I’m not alone. But as I blog, and read more blogs, I can’t help but make the conclusion about SEO Blogs: They take some commodity piece of information, rewrite it, paraphrase, reorder it, and call it their own. It’s crap.

Chop it up, slice it, add a picture you probably don’t have rights to, and presto you have yourself an Affiliate Data Feed Site SEO Blog. Now I didn’t count the steps, but it could be 10, 20, 48, 5, 7 who cares. It’s the same old shit.

Now go think of something new to say.

This post originated at the Online Marketer blog, home to marketing consultant John Coronella.

Bankruptcy May Turn Your Dollars into Dimes

I was just over at WebmasterWorld reading a thread discussing a WSJ article on how small ad networks are being threatened by the current economic downturn. There has been an explosion in small ad networks in the last few years, and some of them bound to be punished by the coming contraction, and we all know that recession and bankruptcies are coming.

More than 300 online-ad networks have cropped up over the past couple of years, making the business of brokering ads on the Web one of the most popular — and crowded — niches on the Internet.

Two such networks, Adzilla and JellyCloud, closed their doors this month, and more are certain to follow. Other more established networks such as Burst Media are publicly seeking buyers.

It is critical for all affiliates and webmasters to understand, that if you are using an ad network to put ads on your site, or sending arbitrage clicks to an ad network, you are not only a member of that network, you are a creditor.   If the ad network runs into financial trouble and files chapter 11, you may only get 10% of what they owe you.  Even worse, some affiliate networks have clauses that only require them to pay you if THEY get paid. That means that you could be liable if one of their merchants goes under.

Google has made it easy for every college dropout to buy PPC ads and send them to an affiliate network, or an MFA site, or lead generation network. What’s more, when the big affiliates get really big, they start their own ‘ad network’.  Maybe you grab an out of the box software from DirectTrack, maybe you roll your own PHP script, or maybe grab an affiliate feed throw it in a flash widget and call yourself a ‘widget ad network’.

Is your business reliant on payment from these types of networks? Some punk kid’s first ‘business’?

Protect Yourself

Don’t let someone else’s irresponsible financial practices destroy your business.   Be proactive, and watch out for customers who may not be in good financial shape.

1. Use advertising only from companies that are in good financial shape.
2. Don’t Give Customers Credit.  Prepay, prepay, prepay.
3. If they don’t prepay (most affiliate networks don’t) be proactive if payments run late
4. Call, call, call. They may have SOME money, and it should be YOURS
5. You need 3 creditors to force a company into bankruptcy. If you think that a newtork is paying some creditors but not others, find other creditors and at least threaten to file a petition if you don’t get paid. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Regardless of what happens, being proactive and keeping a good line of communication is critical. Know what is happening on the writing end of those checks.

This post originated at the Online Marketer blog, home to marketing consultant John Coronella.