See you in Vegas.

I look forward to seeing you in Vegas at Affiliate Summit next month.

The problem is that this never worked, except once (CJ LMI), because it requires that affiliates stick together and organize and put they money where their mouth is, which would be literally the case in this instance and thus unlikely to happen.

Affiliates (at large) tend to have a big mouth in public, but are reluctant to back it up, especially if they do behind closed doors what they publicly denounce, because money does not smell like shit, even if was shit that was making them that money*

*rough translation of a German saying, which is rooted in Roman history, when Emperor Vespasian illustrated to his son Titus that a taxation of public lavatories generates money that does not smell like a lavatory

Well, back to square one, I guess. It doesn’t get any easier anytime soon, doesn’t it?

waiting for, or even expecting, today’s large trusted third parties to develop technological answers to the real needs of merchants is however, foolish. being unwilling to police bad, i’m quite certain they won’t step up with tools that allow the merchant to measure, stratify and classify the various shades. which is why i suggested making the best of what exists, as it is, and as it will be.

“opportunistic clever pragmatism”, my buzz phrase for the coming new year.

yeah, as I implied in my post, networks would not have to fear to loose much, if any business, because their technological platform fits both needs, the affiliate marketing and the incentivized traffic. They should re-brand one of the two though to avoid confusion.

The only problem the networks with pixel-tracking might have, is the issue with tracking code being twice on one page. I know that it isn’t a problem for CJ, since it can happen today already that an advertiser has multiple 1 pixel images on his confirmation page, if the advertiser employs multiple actions.

One typical strategy might be to open an unpoliced free-for-all program at some catch-all mega network like CJ, and pay a commission rate that fits this particular traffic’s value. Measure which affiliates within this population are ethically bringing a majority of new prospects and customers, then offer to pull them out of the general population, into a well-policed separate program at ShareASale and pay a comm rate there, that’s also commensurate with its value (which is much higher). Don’t have a switch that de-dupes these two separate programs during checkout – pay them both when both have touched the sale. If you dedupe, you’ll demotivate the new customer producing affiliates. View your free-for-all channel as a time saving move, spend far less time and resources on it. Be public about your approach, so affiliates bent on providing value to you, know they just have to cut their teeth in the free-for-all, demonstrating they’re bringing you new buyers, then they get plucked into the high value program. Key an eye on the high value program and provide individualized resources and time to work in synergy with your high value providing affiliate partners.