6 Comments

Affiliate Marketing, Open Source, Amazon and Web Videos

Jan 17, 2008
by

iheartmiro.png

Miro is an open source video podcast player that sits on your desktop. It is a fabulous program and one of my favorites as it works on Linux, Mac or Windows and has provided me with countless hours of video feed aggregation (works via bittorent) over the last few years (it was the Democracy Player before being rebranded as Miro last year).

They’re doing something very interesting via affiliate marketing, Amazon and Firefox to raise money for the non-profit org that runs and develops Miro now:

Just install this Firefox extension and anytime you shop at Amazon.com a small portion of the proceeds will go to support Miro (it doesn’t cost you anything). Try it out and help us build the open source video world.

Then, they include these notes at the bottom of the clever iheartmiro.org page:

# The extension works by simply adding our referral code to the URL when you browse on Amazon.com. When you buy something, the Amazon referral fee is donated to PCF, a 501c3 non-profit.

# This extension collects absolutely no information about who you are or where you browse — the connection is always made directly to Amazon.com. You are 100% anonymous to us.

# It’s super easy to uninstall.

# Once you install it, that’s it. When you shop at Amazon.com, a portion of the proceeds will support our work. You don’t have to do anything else.

# If you follow an Amazon referral link from someone else’s site, this extension will not override their referral code.

What do you think? I think this is affiliate marketing at its best and hope to see other open source projects or non-profits explore monetization practices this way.

You can basically subscribe to any video podcast through Miro. I can’t say how much I love this application, so if you haven’t tried it out for your video blog needs (they’re currently featuring 3383 of them), give it a go.

And yes, they have Diggnation in HD.

About Sam Harrelson

Former ReveNews and CostPerNews Publisher, Former Affiliate Marketer, Current Middle School Science Teacher, Current Publisher of AffiliateHack

Twitter: sbharrelson22
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing + Micro Transactions
  • http://www.revenews.com Sam Harrelson

    What's your beef, Jonathan?

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    Are you serious?

  • http://www.wayneporter.com Wayne Porter

    Interesting development. Amazon tested relationships with many other causal type of sites, but dropped most of them.

    The "show stopper" might be the CRM issues caused by conflict with other cause based sites, or interference (unintentionally) with commissions.

    However, I note from site:

    "If you follow an Amazon referral link from someone else's site, this extension will not override their referral code. "

    I don't see any problems from 20k feet…especially with what Miro is trying to accomplish strategically.

    wayne

  • http://www.affiliatefairplay.com Kellie

    It's loyaltyware based on "charity". Nothing new or particularly interesting about it IMHO. Been there, seen that many times over….iGive, DonationTree, Care2, Buyersport (execs currently looking at 50 years jail time on tax evasion and money laundering charges), etc etc.

    I question the ability technically for it to stand down on overwrites on *all* affiliate traffic. That statement has certainly been made by many others over the years and didn't hold up to scrunity.

    Even if they were able to accomplish what most others haven't technically, it still devalues the affiliate marketing channel in general since they aren't referring any cosumers who aren't already on the Amazon web site. They make that pretty clear in their own description.

    This type of download has not been allowed in Amazon's TOS in the past. I haven't looked at their TOS lately, so I'm not sure of the current status.

    Miro's motivation behind the toolbar (supporting open source development) is neither here nor there for me with regards to the business model as it relates to affiliate marketing.

  • http://www.rhinofish.com Pat Grady

    We should first discuss what the purpose of affiliate marketing is, for the merchant (the one who chooses to set up and manage and fund an affiliate program). What is their purpose for having an affiliate program?

    I don't think it's to allow other groups (no matter how they paint themselves) to claim credit for making sales using software that triggers tracking for buying visitors on amazon.com that somebody else (another marketer, the brand strength of their own name, etc) caused to arrive there.

    "Affiliate" means partnership (not mugger). "Marketing" means doing things that will cause more sales to happen. This thing does neither.

    This cookie popping video player isn't even Affiliate Marketing, but if it's allowed in that channel, I'd say it's Affiliate Marketing at it's worst.

    If Amazon wants to create a separate channel called "pilfer, plunder and pillage", with it's own separate tracking cookie, and tell the world they've set aside a small piece of their profit margin to give away to anyone who can find a way to be the looter that's last recorded in that cookie, then this video cookie plopper would be a fine example of how to get that job done.

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com/ Carsten Cumbrowski

    I am not overly impressed with the player, but that has not much to say, because I am also not very impressed by Apple's iTunes player and still on the lookout for something that fits my personal needs. I am looking for nothing revolutionary, only a podcast management software that can proper archive things and also allow to categories podcast by priorities. Some podcasts I would like to have in a separate area and know right away if there is a new episode, while there are others, where it is not so important, and even may I decide not to listen to the latest episode.

    Anyhow, regarding the tracking and the not overwriting an existing referrer cookie. The question is, if they simply don't get any money, if a referrer cookie exist or if Amazon would pay them on top of the affiliate commission due.

    There are two possibilities here

    1) they have a special agreement with Amazon and the tracking of the supporters purchases happens independent of the affiliate tracking system. No problem here, if Amazon considers this expense PR or tax deductible donations or something.

    2) they don't have a special agreement and use Amazon's affiliate tracking system for their purposes. Regardless of what Amazon's TOS says about what they are doing, is there the question how they avoid to overwrite an existing affiliate cookie. The affiliate tracking mechanism works in a way, that an 3rd party does not know if an affiliate tracking cookie was already set or not.

    Cash-back/Incentive BHO are usually triggered if the user hits the advertisers site. They can find out based on monitoring the http traffic that the user clicked an affiliate link prior to getting to the advertisers website.

    They should not look for a cookie and I believe that they are also limited in what they can access. I guess that depends on the BHO application itself and the level of access it has. The IE security object model is a subject of debates and complaints for years. Despite of its problems and shortcomings, does it usually requires at least special permissions to get a software which requires special access to sensible data, installed on the machine. Not my area of expertise. Maybe I am mistaken here.

    Okay, the player is its own software and I believe it requires admin rights to be installed on a users machine. However, I hope that they are not fizzling around with the users permanent and/or session cookies for a specific domain to be able to detect an existing affiliate cookie with their plug-in.

    That would be a step into a direction that does not comfort me at all. To mess around with those kinds of data on an users computer has not so much to do with "can do", but "should or should not do". It is an ethical barrier that must be breached.

    You simply don't mess with the users personal data that are not relevant for the use of your application. If you don't see a problem with accessing such private information whenever it suits your own needs, the question that remains is, at what point you see actually a problem with it, if ever.