Your recent decision to invoke a manual penalty on the download page for Google Chrome will have lasting ramifications for the whole of online marketing, whether display advertising, affiliate marketing, and other performance marketing such as CPA models, making many such business models unworkable.

Policing every piece of content produced by marketing partners (affiliates etc) on the offchance that they inadvertantly linked directly to the traffic or buzz benifitiary without using a nofollow or otherwise blocking the direct link is commercially untenable.

In the following video I have outlined what has led to this unreasonable decision being made, and elaborated a little on some of the commercial implications not just for competitors in the online advertising space, but even for Google services such as Google Publisher Network, Google Affiliate Network & Doubleclick.

Here is a 720p 1280×720 mp4 of the above video (looking forward to supporting this in a player real soon now)

Sincerely

Andy Beard

Here is a specific example

This is an Amazon widget

Wow it is promoting a really cool Google phone!

Here is another iframe creative

Here is a text only link

T-Mobile G2 with Google Android Phone (T-Mobile)

So far I haven’t broken Google’s new interpretation of the webmaster guidelines

I love Amazon

Oops… sorry Amazon that wasn’t an affiliate link, but an editorial link… Google will now feel that they have to remove the Amazon home page from the search engine results and Amazon won’t sell 20M Kindle Fires this year… Just 19.8M – or maybe 21M if they replace the Amazon home page with the Kindle Fire product page. (yes I realise they are very similar)

Whilst pureists might argue that this wasn’t a video CPA advert but an affiliate link, a huge amount of the sites that Google filtered this year as poor quality thin affiliates were using Amazon and other affiliate networks for monetization. The purpose quite often for the content was to drive traffic to the ads in small quantities.
At scale the revenue from 1000s of websites earning just a few dollars a month above the hosting and domain costs add up.

Another comparrison is Google’s own Adsense program and the vast numbers of poor quality sites that have arisen because of it. The good often (in search visibility) outweigh the junk MFA (made for adsense) sites, but it really is a chicken & egg situation. The webmasters target specific topics and even optimize content not just for SEO, but to pull up the highest paying and possibly even specific advertising creatives for products, maybe even video content, and they get paid for clicks on that content.
If I write a blog about Android phones and included an Adsense advert at the bottom of each post, allowed video and display ads, the situation wouldn’t be vastly different to some junk content followed by a video embed of a Google commercial I was being paid for on a CPA basis.

People in the past made complete websites dedicated to the promotion of Google pack, their Adsense program etc, and even offered incentives such as training in online marketing, or included the Adsense registration links as part of the course material… of course without disclosure as that wasn’t allowed.

Google… Please Reinstate Chrome

Here are the links referenced in the video

Matt’s post on Google+
Aaron’s's post Sponsored By Google that started this huge mess.
Danny’s post on all the thin content
Unruly Media is clearly CPA (grats on $25M funding guys)
Wikipedia on CPA (will Wikipedia be the only independent content site soon?)
Wikipedia on Online Marketing advertising models
Andrew Girdwood proving Google has used this form of CPA before
Danny with Google’s statement throwing their agency and Unruly under a bus
Google’s staement and effect (from Danny) – Statement saying this was a violation of their guidelines, possibly from someone who hasn’t read them recently.
My post on Google pack and word of mouth marketing
Google’s policy statement for their Google pack CPA campaign No mention of not giving editorial links etc
The CPA video embed (the iframe contents) – I am not going to drag an individual blogger who may have given a quite nice editorial link to Google Chrome through the coals
The Unruly Media terms of service which have now been enhanced – the nofollow statement is a new bullet point – it shouldn’t be needed as payment is not for the content of the blog post, or links, but based on CPA actions with the video.
Webmaster help forums on Affiliate links Google repeatedly avoids answering questions regarding the use of nofollow with affiliate links and other forms of display advertising.
How to report paid links and selling links that pass pagerank

Disclosure: I work for an online video & affiliate marketing startup called uQast but I am posting this on my personal blog and the words and opions expressed here are my own and my volition and not of my employer (does that remind anyone of Matt’s disclaimer?) – I have been involved in affiliate marketing for 7 years and the issues discussed here have been a topic of this blog since I started publishing it in 2005.

Small update: just added a download link for the MP4 version in HD 720p

I applied for the beta a while back but didn’t make the cut… obviously they thought they had enough affiliates testing it.

Those affiliates obviously have no idea about business security.

They are asking for and storing Google Account passwords…

That is a high risk

It may also mean that users would give their Gmail account access, which might have other personal data such as hosting and domain registration information.

This could be partially overcome by upgrading to their premium service and running the software on your own server however…

Their automatic upgrade represents a security risk
I wouldn’t trust myself to secure a Rackspace server – actually I was recently helping a friend diagnose a hacked WordPress blog that was on a Rackspace managed server – do you think you are up to the task of securing one of their self-managed servers in the cloud?

One of the reasons I switched to a Liquidweb Storm server was because I didn’t feel confident keeping a server secure for myself, and paying a geek to do it for me just wasn’t working out time or cost effective.

Bevo Media (BevoRyan) stated this on their forums

Liquid Web not a recommended server

Because of the rigorous default permissions set on a Liquid Web server, we highly suggest against using Liquid Web as a way of hosting Bevo Self Hosted. We found that hosting on LiquidWeb creates a ton of issues, and bugs that do not show up when using Rackspace as using your hosting solution. Our self hosted version was made for Rackspace Cloud environment, and although it is possible to install the self hosted version on other servers, we suggest sticking with Rackspace. Rackspace is much less expensive yet more powerful than LiquidWeb, which is why we chose to use them over any other server companies.

I strongly disagree on the cost… I was paying $400/3 months for a good server jockey yet I find Liquidweb support to be better. That was just support.
My Liquidweb Storm server costs me $50 for the base server, $20 for Cpanel + support, and then maybe $20/month on top for bandwidth and backups. I could see the bandwidth going a little higher though I should farm most of that out to a CDN.

I admit using an API isn’t totally secure, but ultimately you can revoke access. You could create special Google accounts and give them access to particular Adwords & Analytics accounts, and then give those passwords to Bevo Media, but the majority of users won’t have the required tin-foil hat to even think about taking that precaution.

If I was using their self-hosted software (which whilst open-source is $200/month) then that is the direction I would have to go for now… creating new Google accounts just for use with Bevo Media.
You could possibly do that for their SAAS version, but that would require very specific training explaining why it needs to be done, and possibly why they felt they couldn’t use the API as provided by Google (which seems good enough for other competitors)

This isn’t that I don’t trust the guys at Bevo Media, I don’t trust people who hack servers to get hold of hundreds of Adwords accounts – it is a huge pot of gold for your average Russian or Chineese hacker to target (or any other nationality for that matter)

Bevo Media might well be great software, I plan to do some more testing with dedicated accounts granted access, but thought it important to get this “out there” before people use their primary Google account details with a 3rd party server.

Whatever you do, don’t give away your primary Google account details to anyone – they are the keys to your online business.

The reasons why I am mentioning this?

I think Erik represents the “good” human side of affiliate marketing and is learning his lessons well, and working hard. His affiliate blog is obviously wrtten by a person, not “admin”, has a privacy statement, and real about page which discusses why he is promoting the product as an affiliate, and lots of content.

But this also gives me the opportunity to offer a few tips.

It would be fairly easy to add some kind of disclosure statement in the sidebar about affiliate status, and depending on geographical location there might be a need for more contact details such as a P.O. box.

First link priority – Erik didn’t abuse my comment policy, but his second link with anchor text wouldn’t have counted, even if he had enough comments on my blog to get followed links, because there was already a link to the resource in his name field (where he used his name)

Email address – The email address used was for the new website – that might close some doors for spying out some of his other properties, but there are other ways to do that anyway, as I am sure he has multiple sites on the same domain, maybe common use of adsense etc.
However by not using a consistant email address over time, it is hard to build up a reputation on blogs like mine which enable dofollow links after a period of time, or after a certain number of comments.

The best practice, to be 100% above board?

• Always use a consistant email address
• Establish a real identity – gravatar etc
• Always use your name in the name field
• If your comment is just in response to a post, and won’t include a link to a resource, then you can justifiably link to your favorite money site (or maybe a pumper) as long as it is high quality and obviously yours (like Erik’s is)
• If you are going to include a resource, then for the name field link it is best to use a totally different domain, or at least link to the root domain there and use a deep link to real solid relevant content within the comment body

Including a link in the content you really need to be on target with a resource that is without doubt relevant to the conversation, something that if not mentioned would reduce the value of the discussion.

Quite often any link drop within the content will be held for moderation even on blogs where you have an existing high quality profile and reputation, so it must be up to human scrutiny.

Tom Critchlow of Distilled has quite a disturbing post today for affiliates on the SEOmoz blog, encouraging brands to rank for their own coupon codes.

The suggestion is that brands should try to rank for their own voucher codes and take that traffic away from affiliate coupon sites. Unfortunately in some cases that might be biting the hand that feeds you.

Many of the sites that offer various forms of vouchers & coupons are brand evangelists, and the page on their site which offers regular updated coupons to their audience also acts as a conduit to product reviews, in much the same way as product reviews would link to the most recent coupon codes.
If affiliates are smart, they also have access to coupons from competing products and brands.

Whilst you can stamp out the traffic pure coupon sites receive by ranking for your own brand… and that could quite easily make a visible “net gain” to justify SEO jobs, the negative effect is hard to quantify.

Lets take Tom’s example to extremes and rank for as many terms used by affiliates as possible.

[brand] review

[brand] sucks/scam/

[brand] vs

[brand] compared

[brand] cheap

[brand] coupon/discount/bonus/rebate/voucher/promo

These are all bread and butter terms for affiliates, but if you cut off all the terms affiliates can rank for, many affiliates will just write about your competitors instead.

This also happens frequently in reverse when vendors don’t supply affiliates with coupons, affiliates will rank for your “[brand] coupon” and offer an alternative product instead.

By promoting the existence of coupons to your primary user base, that increases the traffic for the search term, which makes it more lucrative for affiliates to rank for the term.
Also a higher percentage of your existing client base will search for coupon codes for every transaction. It is much easier to do this on the internet than brick & mortar stores where the coupons might have ended up with the junk mail, or simply forgotten.

Many online brands have been created or significantly enhanced by strong affiliate partners, and coupons often are provided to ensure affiliates get the sale and to add urgency/increase conversion rate.

There is a danger that some advice that might seem obvious could backfire and be very difficult to repair.

In his article Tom mentioned Argos, who I found ranking much higher than stated with their current “voucher” page, however they were also targeting the term via PPC.
UK search for Argos Voucher Personalization off
The problem with their PPC listing? It doesn’t link to a vouchers page.
Argos are however a store that makes vouchers extremely prominent, displaying them in a section on their home page “This Week’s Highlights”

Of course SEOMoz itself doesn’t rank highly for any of the terms highlighted, maybe that is a “Headsmacking Tip” too (they have an affiliate program)

Update 30/11/2009

I just want to tie this in with some more discussion and found some coverage by Scott Jangro of a challenge for coupon affiliates to prove their value.

I don’t think it is the right question to ask. For me the important factors are:-

• Did coupon affilaites in some way in the past help create an ecosystem where price concious consumers actively look for coupons online in Google because they could find them?
• Should coupons always be available to affiliates?

I am sure Affiliates did help create an ecosystem, so it would be wrong to say they add no value.
Affiliates should never be in a position that someone using their links has to pay more for a product than if they went to a site directly.

I also still feel that vendors should be careful competing with affiliates on what might be “cream” search terms where a coupon site might be a final destination within an affiliate’s value chain, or part of their overall SEO strategy. If part of their revenue for a product line is stripped away, it could affect their willingness to promote in other ways.

This guide or checklist is for product owners to think about. Very few of the points raised are a deal-breaker.

Deal Breakers

• Junk products
• Don’t fit my primary target audience
• Poor treatment of customers e.g.
  • Support tickets unanswered
  • Major product issues not addressed in a timely manner
  • Heavily moderated forum – only “happy bunny” threads
• Poor treatment of affiliates e.g.
  • Lack of or late payment
  • Sneaky changes in payment options bypassing affiliates
  • Change of affiliate system without notification
  • Radical change in deal structure
• Generally dishonest sales pages
• Skimming Sales

Major Issues

• Tracking problems
• Disappearing accounting data with no explanation – if I made a sale, and then it is refunded, I need a record of it all. I need the numbers to add up
• I really need SubID tracking to be able to use PPC
• I love the ability to deep link to content
• Upsell Hell
• Viral Hell – (see previous post)
• Major Sales Page leaks
• Excessive promotion of 3rd party affiliate products in launch materials – if your free ebook is crammed full of affiliate links that I don’t receive a benefit from, it is effectively the same as if I was sending my traffic to a PPC review landing page using someone else’s affiliate links.
• Promoting 3rd party offers on a mailing list built with my traffic rather than focusing on the intended launch product during the launch period.
• Excessive promotion of 3rd party offers in general
• Teaching some methods I don’t agree with
• Promoting products I wouldn’t promote due to major issues/deal-breakers
• Integration marketing – sounds nice in theory, in practice if your added value is a load of free offers from your cronies, that I don’t get a piece of the action on, there is a problem.
• No way to export SubID data
• No way to export, or be pushed sales data
• Elements of Proof – proof used on the sales page that is possibly factually accurate, but misrepresented
  • AWStats for traffic measurement?
  • Your Clickbank / Paypal sales didn’t mention PPC costs, affiliate payouts, established list just from previous product launches in the niche etc.
  • The testimonials are from direct business partners
  • When you tested your sales page for conversion, was it with a very warm house list of buyers? Thought so…

Significant Issues

• Payment period – if I am paying for traffic, I want to be paid by you before I have to pay my traffic costs.
• Checks (Cheques) – especially if low value – I can still sorely remember receiving my first cheque from Linkshare, for something like $2.73, that my bank wanted me to pay a $20 fee to cash, and I would receive the money in 6 weeks. I have a better bank now, but offer alternatives.
• Paypal – whilst I hate the transaction charges, especially currency, in many ways it is easier for accounting
• No IBAN support – Having to qualify by receiving a number of checks is just adding friction. If an affiliate knows about the benefit of receiving funds directly, they are going to make this worth while. (I am not sure if there are international banking regulations forcing a few checks to establish identity)
• Private tracking systems – I appreciate the advantages of using Infusionsoft for a publisher with a refined sales funnel, but why do I have to have a separate login and accounting panel for every single program?
• Customer/2nd Tier/Opt-in For Life That Changes – often caused by changes in affiliate tracking system. Suddenly the residual you were expecting dries up, and you had been ramping up on PPC
• Pushed Data or API – I want to be able to offer incentives automatically with all affiliate offers that allow it (where there is a transaction), and I don’t want customers to have to wait for it. I know there are solutions by offering the bonus directly on the thank you page, but in some ways that is a little clumsy.

The following might be looked on by many as “par for the course” of big launches

Stealing Sales

Imagine I sent you 100 opt-ins for your product, but you didn’t get any sales. A few weeks later you offer exactly the same product as a bonus if the prospective customer buys an affiliate product.

• It could be looked on that I didn’t do a good enough job in preselling or boosting my offer with bonuses, thus it is your right to enhance your offer of another product with the original product as a bonus and take all the cash.
• Alternatively I sent you a great prospect who is now a buyer, yet made nothing from my efforts – the lack of initial sales could have been your own value proposition, sales letter, etc, things out of my control.

This is something that is really hard to prove, because there is so much split-testing and list segmentation going on – I might have seen you make the offer only because I am on your buyers list, and that the prospects were sent something else

Solutions?

• Have products that you only ever offer as upsells or bonuses
• Extremely complex cooperative tracking

Many respectable marketers do the first option, and have tons of loyal affiliates possibly because of it.
The second option I might eventually have a solution for, it has been a constant gnawing problem in my head for 4 years.

Servers and Launch Material Delivery

This I can break down into 2 phases

• Primary server stability – I don’t care how much unexpected traffic a launch caused, you should have been able to handle it if you really have the high quality support team in the background.
• Video delivery – You have no idea how bad Brightcove video delivery is from Europe, and also Ustream recorded sessions. They don’t support the ability to buffer a whole video. Amazon is a little better, certainly from the UK, but in Poland half the time I have to open a browser and go and make a coffee.

Note: Amazon also isn’t an ideal solution for premium membership content – I haven’t seen an Amazon implementation yet that didn’t reveal the download location in the Http headers, though it is possible to secure more effectively, probably requiring an EC2 instance to feed unique expiring links.

Reciprocity, Karma & Great Stuff

There are tons of counter arguments – amazing free value can win against almost any issue. There are a few more I could add, but let me know your “pet peeves” in the comments.

Watch out for another post tomorrow, I won’t be pulling any punches

I spent the better part of a week and a few hundred dollars ($300-$400) on various WordPress sales letter and affiliate themes – I came to the conclusion that they weren’t something I would use.

• Some I would class as pretty but lacking substance (polite version of crap)
• Every single theme was designed around the concept that you run a single theme on your blog at a time
• They all suffered from what I regard as a horrible plague – theme option pages – if you need to set up lots of options after you have uploaded a theme, you have lost a sale, unless I can also import and export settings.
• The worst aspect of theme options pages is using them for the content that might appear on a page, because it is a nightmare to set up split testing, and when editing, you really want all the words on the page in front of you.

So I set about creating a solution for myself…

I started of with Thematic which I had already been playing around with for a good 8 months. Themeatic is an offshoot or branch of Sandbox of which I was also a fan, but built upon a grid system that hopefully I won’t totally destroy when I finally get around to theming on this site.

The first challenge was custom CSS for every page, and navigating my way through the maze of which functions initialized at which time within the WordPress core, such that the style sheet used is determined by the page selected in the default custom layout selector.

The end result is only 160 lines of code in functions.php, plus some in individual custom theme pages, and that may well get shorter as I optimize things, but the end result is something unique and useful.

I am a strong believer in doing things once

Once I have created a custom sales page theme for this system, though it is not limited to sales pages, it can be used without any setup overhead other than selecting it within a dropdown list and hitting save.

And of course, everything is created based upon a child theme of Thematic, thus when Thematic has one of its frequent updates, there will be very little if any pain in upgrading.

WordPress Split Testing With Google Website Optimizer

There are a number  of plugins that claim to provide support for Google Website Optimizer. Most only work with A/B split testing as the authors couldn’t figure out the best way to add tags to post content.

In addition often the GWO code was placed in the wrong place in the header, it needs to be after Doctype, but before the CSS to effectively fully replace the CSS – I realise CSS is meant to be cascading, and you can force your way through when it doesn’t quite work out, but sales pages are meant to load fast.

So our single CSS file by default no matter what style the page is gets wrapped with GWO selectors by default. The most important element on the page, the post title which most of the time is used as a headline also gets wrapped in selectors by default.

You don’t have to test them all the time, but they are there when you want them. 

I eventually selected one plugin solution, from an Italian company who do landing pages. I may end up tweaking things more, moving various thing from functions.php into the plugin, though many of the hooks I have used are specific to thematic, even the one I ended up using within the plugin to get the correct placement of the GWO code in the header.

Whilst I claim that this video would only be 5 minutes at the start, it is actually 8 minutes, but demonstrates the full process of setting up split testing with my current solution.

I am sure you are also curious about how it works, so here is the demo sales page from the video, with split testing currently enabled.

The reason I haven’t yet implemented shortcodes are 2-fold.

• I don’t need them
• Using PHP, it is quite easy to use most of the work I have done with any other split testing software, either javascript or PHP based, for those with tin-foil hats (most affiliates using Adwords extensively?)

The PHP plugin I discovered rocks – I tweeted about it a couple of weeks ago.

Implementation for other theme frameworks isn’t immediately planned, and code after some more tweaking will be made available in various ways (for the geeks whose shoulders I had to climb on to get this far), and I will probably package things in some way for those less technically inclined looking  for a “solution, along with modified versions of various themes I have rights for.

• Ed Dale with the 30 Day Challenge
• Sherman Hu with his WordPress Huddles
• Michael Cheney frequently holds free training sessions combined with special offers (I sat through 2 hours of one the other night)
• I know that crazy guy Jason Moffat is now into Ustream big-time

Another guy who has always been extremely forward thinking with video for affiliate marketing is Russell Brunson. He must have spent a fortune creating his “Zoobie” internet marketing videos. I am not sure whether it was a big success, but I am sure he learned a lot from the experience.

Affiliate Evolution on Ustream

I started writing this post whilst waiting in a room on Ustream of 500+ people, because Russell mailed his list. Unfortunately all I can see is the following:-

Fortunately a recording is available later, it looks like Ustream have problems with this many people at once.

Russell will be holding free training every day… LIVE at the following times

Wed. May 21st at 11 am EST
Thurs. May 22nd at 11 am EST
Fri. May 23rd at 11 am EST
Sat. May 24th at 11 am EST
Tues. May 27th at 11 am EST

This tactic is worth studying.

Russell’s team have created a landing page for Affiliate Evolution

That landing page is hosting the video – I have seen a few marketers do this recently

The new twist to this is that this isn’t some private sub page on the domain, but is being used to promote the primary landing page of Affiliate Revolution, and his opt-in list prior to launch.

If you are anything like me, an email notification before something is about to start is always handy, so don’t forget to sign up to Russell’s notification list.

Here you can find details of the Affiliate Program for Affiliate Evolution

Think I am insane?

Russell has a 2 tier affiliate program ;)

I actually have a good idea how Russell makes as much or more from an affiliate promotion than the person whose product it is, even though he might not be the top ranking affiliate.

p.s. Joy if you read this, you might want to get the tech guys to take a look at that 302 redirect

Here are some important notes

• The headline was chosen to be a little more appealing – it wouldn’t have affected people reading a full feed, or receiving my content by email (even though that was switched off), but it would affect links from social media and other blogs, and also platforms that only show headlines, such as Blogrush, Technorati Favorites, Alltop etc.
• I was sneaky – I didn’t have a suitable graphic, and a syndicated copy of the video wasn’t possible so I grabbed a screenshot from the video, which I also included in my excerpt on the front page
• I didn’t spend anywhere near as much time on the post as I did with the WordPress SEO software – there was nothing really to test – I watched the first 15 minutes of the video, knew it was a cracker, and started writing with the video playing at the same time. Sometimes it is important to get a post out fast.
• The Stompernet guys used a reverse squeeze page

Squeeze Page vs Reverse Squeeze Page

With Jeff Johnson’s WordPress SEO software, there is a classic squeeze page. In some ways I limited the effectiveness of the squeeze page because I went into detail about what you could expect when signing up. Most of the mailings I have seen so far for Jeff’s launch haven’t mentioned that he has created a hybrid WordPress installation, they have just stated that it is new SEO software.
I am sure by doing so, and leaving some mystery, they have achieved a higher number of opt-ins, and in affiliate marketing opt-ins are important because that means that the visitor has entered the sales funnel.

With Stompernet they take a different approach, with what they term as a reverse squeeze. I am not sure whether they pioneered the method, or Jeff Walker of Product Launch Formula.

The idea is that you provide a massive amount of compelling content on the front end without requiring an email address, and that those people who want to receive more similar content will hand over their name and email address to get updates on more content.

The Stompernet guys are great at providing free content, not only when they are launching their own products, but also as affiliates.
As an example recently they were promoting Shawn Casey and Tellman Knudson’s Listbuilding course, and Andy Jenkins wrote 2 cracking posts on the Stompernet Blog about listbuilding.

• A List Is Not A Bucket – Your email list are people, it is not just a machine to print money
• The art of the >>squeeze<< – here Andy went into detail about the difference between squeeze pages and the reverse squeeze method that they use.

I actually play an active roll on the Stompernet blog when I have something valuable to add to the conversation, and one of the reasons I can do that is that I subscribe to their email. It is great to leave valuable comments, but even better to be the first to comment on a new post.
I realise there are also tools such as Comment Sniper or Desktop RSS Readers that allow you to do that with RSS, but that can have a significant effect on your general browsing if you are polling 50 or 100 feeds every 5 minutes. Email once you have signed up is a push technology, and sometimes it is worth being interrupted.

Here are 2 examples.

• Stop Getting Links – this is one for the comment spammers out there to really read a few times and learn from. There is a vast difference between comment spam, and taking part in community discussion – notice I made the first comment – my comment was 299 words and added real value to the conversation.
• Stop Getting Links – Part 2
  – this time around they covered article marketing and approaching people to publish feature articles – I again left a comment, the second comment on the blog post (I was a little slow), 303 words – again adding value because linking to original articles on your blog is something rarely discussed

Is Reverse Squeeze More Effective?

From my experience as an affiliate it is… different, though it is very hard to measure if it is more effective.

By sending someone to a squeeze page I am cannibalizing my subscriber list, handing them over to someone for a free or cheap product. They then possibly turn into sales for that primary promotion, and for people with a long-term affiliate program over multiple products, it is possible I could also receive sales of other products further down the line.

At the same time, people who were only interested in the freebie would also have signed up to the list, and they may be less interested in the products or services being offered – they may however be warmer prospects for other affiliate products, but because those people are now on someone else’s list, they may buy through their link and not mine.

In the case of some marketers (I am confident with Jeff Johnson this is not the case), once signed up through a squeeze page they would be bombarded with offer after offer with no real valuable content in between.
Whilst a squeeze page can be very effective in generating more signups into a sales funnel, it is often best to be careful and in some way pre-qualify people. I gave a little more information than I needed to on the free seo blogging software – that was a pre-qualifying process.

With reverse squeeze pages, the content provided up front is the pre-qualification process.

Only people who watched Dan’s amazing video and were interested in improving their PPC campaigns would have signed up for the list to get access to previous videos (even though those videos were not all about PPC with Adwords)

For an affiliate that is both good and bad – good in that my subscriber base isn’t cannibalized, but it reduces my chances of a sale, especially with Stompernet offering a lot more than just PPC training.

As an example I know that they have some new software coming out this week. I know it is going to be SEO related, and a great fit for my audience.

From Click To Lead

If you do any kind of affiliate marketing, one of the aims is to convert traffic into leads. Some forms of affiliate marketing through CPA networks actually pay purely on the leads generated, whereas most of the affiliate marketing I do the only direct reward is based upon sales.
I don’t actually gain any direct financial benefit from encouraging people to sign up to the Stompernet mailing list, other than the possible chance of a long-term conversion. Not everyone is ready for Stompernet – if you throw in all the free conferences they have each year for their members it isn’t expensive, but there is a significant capital outlay.

Many super-affiliates in the information marketing niches won’t drive traffic to a sales page if it has any kind of opt-in form. They are not worried about reduced conversion from the prospect not being added to the list, but of longer-term list cannibalization, especially with lower priced products through Clickbank that are being sold purely to build a list of paying customers, but with no backend reward for the initial list owner.

Yet Another Poll

I will share that the number of clicks through to view the Stomper video, whilst possibly less targeted (not everyone is into Adwords) was higher than for the WordPress SEO software.

Based upon that, and the information I have shared above, how many people, after watching the Stompernet video subsequently signed up for updates?

The following poll you will again have to click through from your feed reader to complete.

[poll=6]

It is well worth signing up to the Stompernet mailing list. I believe their next video will be introducing some new SEO software. I haven’t been given any more details. Whilst they haven’t done this in the past, I really wouldn’t blame them if they restricted access to only those who have signed up to their mailing list.
There is only so far you can “move the freeline” without some form of reciprocation… even if it is just an email address.

The general rule in the US, as far as I can determine is that if you have a business presence in a state, you have to pay tax there. This applies if you own your own servers in the sate, or if you have employees.

Thus it might be beneficial for me, living in Europe to only rent servers, and to avoid hiring someone from the US as a full-time employee.

The New Law Amazon Is Fighting Affects All Affiliates

The chances are if you have an affiliate program, that at least one of your affiliates is based in the New York area.

If the logic Amazon is using is correct then anyone with an affiliate program is going to have to pay tax in NY, even if a sale is made though an affiliate link owned by a non-NY resident.

Impossible To Determine If Affiliate Has NY Presence

Whilst it is possible to limit an affiliate program to only affiliates from outside New York, it would be extremely hard to police.

An affiliate themselves could have employees in NY, or run servers there.

Can of Worms

Ultimately it seems to me the only fair way to handle things is an all or nothing approach. Tax all internet sales or none of them to New York residents.

If you run an affiliate program yourself, it might be time to consult your tax and legal advisors.

For more in depth coverage from a couple of weeks ago please refer to:-

Revenews
Internet Retailer
5 Star Affiliates Programs
Internet News

Judith at SEO Chicks was looking at the new UK Unfair Trading Regulations

Here is a link to the official guidance (PDF).

What follows are my own notes whilst reading through the document, which I thought some readers might find useful, though you should read it in full if you trade from the UK (maybe 400+ subscribers)

6 BANNED PRACTICES (SCHEDULE 1)

(7) Falsely stating that a product will only be available for a very limited
time, or that it will only be available on particular terms for a very limited
time, in order to elicit an immediate decision and deprive consumers of
sufficient opportunity or time to make an informed choice.

A trader falsely tells a consumer that prices for new houses will be
increased in 7 days time, in order to pressurise him into making an
immediate decision to buy.

That hits 50% or more of long page sales letters and many Product Launch Formula tactics such as closing the doors then reopening just a few days later after a “recount” of total sold.

How about those “slightly damaged” copies offers for physical products?

(10) Presenting rights given to consumers in law as a distinctive feature
of the trader’s offer.
A stationer sells pens. He advertises on the following basis: ‘Pens for
sale. If they don’t work I’ll give you your money back or replace them.
You won’t find this offer elsewhere’. If the pen is faulty at the time of
purchase the consumer would be entitled to a refund, repair or
replacement under contract law. The trader’s emphasis on the unique
nature of his offer to refund or replace would breach the CPRs.

Careful when wording guarantees either as a merchant or affiliate

(11) Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a
trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the
content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer
(advertorial).
A magazine is paid by a holiday company for an advertising feature on
their luxury Red Sea diving school. The magazine does not make it clear
that this is a paid-for feature – for example by clearly labelling it
‘Advertising Feature’ or ‘Advertorial’. This would breach the CPRs.

It looks like disclosure in the content is becoming law for things like paid posts and reviews on blogs.

It could be argued that this also applies to affiliate links.

(14) Establishing, operating or promoting a pyramid promotional scheme
where a consumer gives consideration for the opportunity to receive
compensation that is derived primarily from the introduction of other
consumers into the scheme rather than from the sale or consumption of
products.
A trader operates a holiday club which offers consumers, on payment of
a membership fee, the opportunity of earning large amounts of money by
recruiting new members to the club. The other benefits of club
membership are negligible compared to the potential rewards of earning
commission for

Pyramids, but this might also affect products sold as resale rights, especially if that is the only option, or closed affiliate programs.

(20) Describing a product as ‘gratis’, ‘free’, ‘without charge’ or similar if
the consumer has to pay anything other than the unavoidable cost of
responding to the commercial practice and collecting or paying for
delivery of the item.
A trader advertises a ‘free’ gift. He then tells consumers that in order to
receive their ‘free’ gift they need to pay an extra fee. This would breach
the CPRs.

Careful how you word those bonuses, not only in your reviews or emails, but especially email headlines and Adwords.

(22) Falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not
acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or
falsely representing oneself as a consumer.
A second-hand car dealership puts a used car on a nearby road and
displays a handwritten advertisement reading ‘One careful owner. Good
family run-around. £2000 or nearest offer. Call Jack on 01234 56789′.
The sign gives the impression that the seller is not selling as a trader,
and hence this would breach the CPRs.

Are you really just the average Joe making a fortune, or do you have an army of staff or outsources doing everything.

(30) Explicitly informing a consumer that if he does not buy the product
or service, the trader’s job or livelihood will be in jeopardy.

If your house burns down, be careful how you word a firesale.

7 MISLEADING PRACTICES (REGULATIONS 5 AND 6)
7.1 The CPRs prohibit misleading actions and misleading omissions (as
detailed in regulations 5 and 6),16 which cause or are likely to cause the
average consumer to take a different decision.
7.2 A practice can mislead by action or omission or both. These prohibitions
aim to ensure that consumers get from traders, in a clear and timely
fashion, the information they need to make informed decisions relating
to products. In addition, in some commercial practices (referred to as
‘invitations to purchase’) certain specific information must be given to
consumers, unless apparent from the context.

7.6 These are actions that mislead by:
• containing false information OR deceiving or being likely to deceive
the average consumer (even if the information they contain is
factually correct),17
and
• the false information, or deception, relates to one or more pieces of
information in a (wide-ranging) list (see below),
and
• the average consumer takes, or is likely to take, a different decision
as a result.

Which crappy traffic stats package are you using to inflate numbers?

Comments on the following are in bold inline:-

7.7 The list of information mentioned above includes the main factors
consumers are likely to take into account in making decisions relating to
products, for example the main characteristics of the product and the
price or the way it is calculated. The full list follows:

(a) the existence or nature of the product
You really are just a simple guy, and not a marketer trying to sell his ebook written on Elance.
(b) the main characteristics of the product
The whole truth, not the convenient truth
(c) the extent of the trader’s commitments
(d) the motives for the commercial practice
Does this afect loss-leaders, upsell, downsell process?
(e) the nature of the sales process
(f) any statement or symbol relating to direct or indirect sponsorship or
approval of the trader or the product
Testimonials
(g) the price or the manner in which the price is calculated
Include +VAT (Geotarget) on sales pages for Clickbank?
(h) the existence of a specific price advantage

Are you split testing your pricing? This might affect you

(i) the need for a service, part, replacement or repair
(j) the nature, attributes and rights of the trader or his agent
(k) the consumer’s rights or the risks he may face.

The ‘main characteristics of the product’ include:

(a) availability of the product

Thinking of using scarcity?
(b) benefits of the product
Get 1,000,000 subscribers overnight
(c) risks of the product
Did we forget to tell them about Google bans?
(d) execution of the product
(e) composition of the product
(f) accessories of the product
(g) after-sale customer assistance concerning the product
(h) the handling of complaints about the product
(i) the method and date of manufacture of the product
(j) the method and date of provision of the product
(k) delivery of the product
(l) fitness for purpose of the product
(m) usage of the product
(n) quantity of the product
(o) specification of the product
(p) geographical or commercial origin of the product
(q) results to be expected from use of the product
(r) results and material features of tests or checks carried out on the
product.

You need real proof…

The ‘nature, attributes and rights of the trader or his agent’ include:

(a) identity
(b) assets
(c) qualifications
(d) status
(e) approval
(f) affiliations or connections

Here is that disclosure thing again

(g) ownership of industrial, commercial or intellectual property rights
(h) awards and distinctions.

Misleading Omissions (regulation 6)
Giving insufficient information about the product
7.12 Practices may also mislead by failing to give consumers the information
they need to make an informed choice (in relation to a product). This
occurs when practices:
• omit or hide material information, or provide it in an unclear,
unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner,
and
• the average consumer takes, or is likely to take, a different decision
as a result
7.13 A misleading omission can also occur where a trader fails to identify the
commercial intent of a practice, if it is not already apparent from the
context. The presence of a price, or of a statement making it clear that
the practice is commercial (for example: ‘this is an advertisement’), are
examples of how commercial intent could be made clear.
OFT931 35
7.14 When deciding whether a practice misleads by omission, the courts will
take account of the context.18

Commercial intent = more disclosure

7.33 Information that is deemed to be material in invitations to purchase is set
out in regulation 6(4), which is summarised below:
• the main characteristics of the product – for example, what it is and
what it does – to the extent appropriate to the medium used by the
invitation to purchase and the product
• the identity of the trader, such as his trading name, and the identity
of any other trader on whose behalf the trader is acting
• the geographical address of the trader or traders

The geographical address has been required since December 2006 (si3429)

The document goes on to cover such things as

• Professional Diligence
• Material Distortion
• Compliance and Enforcement covering
• education, advice and guidance
• established means
• codes of conduct
• civil enforcement
• criminal enforcement

This document covers business or “trader” to consumer regulations, and specific that this does not cover business to business transactions where the product is intended for ultimate business use. If a product is sold to wholesale, then on to a consumer, a lot of this still applies.

I have no idea how this applies to foreign traders doing business with the UK, or where they have a satellite office in the UK or Europe.

I am not a lawyer, and note that the linked document is only guidance and not the full version.
I may very well be reading into this more than the law intended, but this seems to compliment SI3429 which has been largely ignored by many online businesses, and I assume isn’t enforced effectively for this to be the case over a year since publication.
So far I have only spent a couple of hours on the 88 page document and this blog post (speed reading the key information I need). You should read the document in full to extract the information you need.

I know Tim Nash knows a few lawyers who specialise in this kind of thing.

Update

Tim has just published an overview of which legal notices you might be expected to publish on your site. It is aimed at people in the UK and possibly Europe and many such regulations are universal.
Remember, I am not a lawyer, and nor is Tim

Update 2

It took a couple of weeks, but there now seems to be some mainstream online media attention to these new regulations.

Adage points out that this came into force across Europe in January though only goes into some of the most mainstream forms of WOMM.

Paid Content (UK) also focuses on the more corporate sector

Peter Parks has condensed things down to lots of bullet points.

Over on Daily Blog Tips, 10 Essential Legal Points For Bloggers covers other legal matters. I think Tims post is beter on legal paperwork, but it does cover a few other angles. It was written by lawyer Steve Imparl so has some level of credibility, I am going to have to delve into his blog archives to see if there is some more meaty content.