Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

Who Controls the Balance in Affiliate Marketing?

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Affiliate Marketing Balance
Who Tips the Scale in Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliates versus affiliate managers versus merchants. Who wins? Don’t we all have to balance together to be successful? Although I would argue that we do, I don’t think everyone would agree.

This week while I was complaining about merchants who lower commissions without notice or cause (HBO, Discovery Channel, etc), an affiliate manager was complaining to me about affiliates who demand higher commission rates without proving that they can convert. We went back and forth each telling our “war stories” of the week and complaining about the other side. “Don’t merchants understand that we as affiliates can just choose to promote someone else?” “Don’t affiliates understand that affiliate marketing is about paying for performance?”

What it boils down to is that we all need to be fair with our expectations. Sometimes things will happen unexpectedly to skew the balance. But on the whole there should be a fairness on each side and an understanding that we will all earn more if we work together better. When a merchant lowers its commission rate  to save money, it needs to know that it might end up losing a lot of affiliates and with that a part of its reputation. Is it a risk the merchant is willing to take? When an affiliate refuses to promote a merchant because the merchant will not give an exclusive coupon code or VIP commission, the affiliate needs to think about the reasons why that merchant cannot or will not give those things and if the affiliate truly deserves them.

Affiliate marketing is about business relationships but also personal relationships. It’s about negotiation and compromise. Should the merchant hold all of the cards because at any time it can cut the commission of the affiliate to 1% with a 5 hour cookie (I’m talking to you, FAO Schwartz)? Does the affiliate hold all the cards because he can out-SEO the merchant and send customers to a competitor?

Too many people think that their side is the one in complete control in affiliate marketing and refuse to take the time to see the opposite perspective. Do you think one side or the other controls the balance in affiliate marketing? If so, is it justified?

Buy Books, Save Boobies

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This has been one of those weeks where I feel like I am missing everything because I am running days behind. The good news is that although this post was supposed to be up on Monday, we all still have a chance to help! Breast cancer awareness is a cause very close to my heart (see why I am Walking 40 Miles to Raise Money for Breast Cancer). Because of that, I helped come up with an idea along with a group of affiliate marketers to sell our Kindle books this week with all of the profits going to Affiliate Marketers Give Back.

Purchase any of the books listed on the Books4Boobies website before February 18 and the authors will donate their profits to AMGB. There are a variety of different books, but I’ll highlight the ones below that are most pertinent to our industry. The 4 that I contributed to are at the top.

SEO for Blogs (Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare, Eric Nagel, Tricia Meyer) Basic Search Engine Optimization techniques that every blogger should be utilizing. This came from a podcast that the 4 of us did.

Choosing the Scope and Structure of Your Blog (Deborah Carney, Tricia Meyer, Liz Fogg) Starting a new blog? This is the transcript of a podcast in which the 3 of us discussed issues like self-hosting, which platform you should use, and how to determine the topic for your site.

Internet Marketing From the Real Experts (Shawn Collins, Missy Ward, and The Gang of 88) Collection of affiliate, email, blogging, podcasting, video, search engine, and social network rock stars that break down the how and why of Internet marketing in a clear, easy to understand way. [Read more…]

My Unpopular View of the Pinterest Links

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Pinterest Skimlinks Disclosure
Should Pinterest Disclose It Is Making Money?

Since the beginning of January, discussions about Pinterest have taken off everywhere. From my Bunco group to Affiliate Summit, everyone is talking about it for some reason. Initially it was because it was a cool, fun site that all my mom friends were using. Then it was because my affiliate marketing friends discovered a way to get traffic and make money from it. Now it’s because everyone thinks that they have been “misled” by Pinterest in some way. I have to voice my opposing view because it doesn’t seem like many people are.

At issue: Pinterest is converting user-generated links to merchants into affiliate links via a service called Skimlinks. As a result, Pinterest will make money if anyone makes a purchase through those links. In addition, affiliate marketers are creating links themselves and fear that their links may get overwritten by Pinterest’s affiliate links.

My disclosure: I’m a Pinterest user. I’m an affiliate marketer. I’m a Skimlinks dabbler.

The Affiliate Argument: I don’t think affiliate marketers have a right to be angry about anything. We’re using someone else’s site to try to make money ourselves. We never had a deal with Pinterest to begin with that we could place our money-making links on their site. If they do end up overwriting them, we can’t complain. They never said that we could place them there. We were taking advantage of their system and their traffic to make money. And we didn’t disclose it to anyone–Pinterest, our merchants, or all of the Pinterest users who click on our links. If it works out for us, great! If it doesn’t, it was a risk we chose to take understanding the way that social sites work.

The Pinterest User Argument: Pinterest users feel duped that Pinterest was making money off of them and they didn’t know it. From my perspective, we don’t have an argument there for a lot of reasons.

  • It’s a free service with lots of great functions. Surely everyone realizes that Pinterest had to make money somehow. There are no advertisements on the site. They aren’t selling our email addresses to anyone. How would they be making money?
  • The only links that they are making money on are the ones that you create to a merchant site. So you are already copying the content from the merchant when you “pin” it to Pinterest. How can you complain that it was your content to start with and Pinterest shouldn’t make money off of it?
  • Pinterest doesn’t in any way encourage you to buy anything through their links. They don’t review the merchandise. Your friends do. If you buy something, it’s not because Pinterest convinced you to, it’s because your friends did.
  • If you are going to buy the item anyway as a result of what you learned from the Pinterest site, why not allow Pinterest to make some money off of it? You don’t lose anything when they make money.
  • If you are pinning your own actual, unique content from your own website, Pinterest is not making any money off of it.
  • Do you know how many other sites make money off of you when you click on their links? Coupon sites don’t post coupons for you just to make you happy. Price comparison sites don’t exist just to help you out. Even a lot of forums let you chat away for free about whatever you want but then overwrite some of your words with Skimlinks. They all have affiliate links and make money when you click on their links and most of them don’t tell you. Are you complaining about those sites?

The Disclosure Issue: For some people, this is where it gets murky. Does Pinterest have to disclose that they are using affiliate links? The issue of disclosure in affiliate marketing is not clear. We do have to let our visitors know that we are setting cookies on their computers that collect certain data. The Pinterest Privacy Policy takes care of that. We also must not deceive our customers into buying something when we have a financial relationship with the seller. Pinterest isn’t representing anything at all. They aren’t writing reviews of products; the other users are. They aren’t encouraging you to visit merchant sites; the other users are. Does the fact that Pinterest might make money off of you if you make a purchase in some way take away from the experience that you are having on the site? I just can’t see why it would. The FTC Guides are about endorsements and testimonials, not links in general.

I’m truly interested in listening to opposing points of view on this. I’m sure that Pinterest will come out with some kind of disclosure policy just to make their users happy. They may also add something about affiliate links in general to their terms to warn affiliates about how they are treating their links. It would be helpful, but I don’t understand why it is required.

Links to other informational articles on the subject:

Pinterest is quietly generating revenue by modifying user submitted pins.

How Pinterest is secretly profiting from your links

What Affiliates and Merchants Should Know About Pinterest Links

Affiliate Tax in Indiana Update

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While I was away at Affiliate Summit, the State of Indiana was making a pretty big deal that could have an impact on my business. Governor Mitch Daniels announced last week that Amazon and Indiana have reached an agreement whereby Amazon will begin collecting sales tax for purchases in Indiana starting in 2014. Although the issue does not directly impact affiliate marketers in the state, I see it as fairly good news. Unfortunately, a new affiliate tax bill has also now been written.

Why was the Amazon agreement good for affiliates? First of all, much of the argument in favor of taxing all online purchases in Indiana was based on Amazon having fulfillment centers here. The issue of whether true out-of-state merchants whose only contact with Indiana are its affiliates became muddied into the discussion. The average voter/consumer did not understand where the physical location argument stopped and the alleged “nexus” argument began.  (See my full post Internet Tax Looming in Indiana?) [Read more…]

10 Best Choices I Made at Affiliate Summit West

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Although I’m suffering through a nasty cold and still behind on sleep, I couldn’t let the day go by without recapping the incredible experience that I had at Affiliate Summit West. Life’s about choices and here are some that I made in the last few days about which I am most happy.

Time With Friends

Affiliate Summit is about business, but for me that business is about working with friends. Whether we were chatting over a meal, bonding over sports teams, shaking it on the dance floor, singing along to karaoke, or just reconnecting in the hallways, the time that I spent with friends (both old and new!) at Affiliate Summit was invaluable to me. I especially enjoyed all of the time that I spent with my mom (Cindy Ballard) and Ashleigh both from a personal and a professional aspect. It’s always an adventure! [Read more…]