29 Comments

When Merchants learn about SEO

Aug 16, 2006
by

David Lewis blogged about Affiliates and using Merchants Brand Names and Trademarks for SEO Spam in May earlier this year.

There is currently also a very interesting discussion about Merchant name in Affiliate Site title tag going on at the Affiliate Manager Forum (requires account). If you are a Merchant and have an Affiliate Program, check it out.

In addition to that did I have multiple encounters with some Merchants we are affiliated with within the last 8-12 months myself, which made me realize that there is an Issue out there today, that should not be an issue at all. An Issue that arose from decisions made by people based on poor or insufficient information. Let me explain.

Search Engines are around for a long time and Affiliates were among the first to leverage the power and importance of them and spent a considerable amount of time and efforts to make sure that their sites are well represented in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). They sent well targeted traffic to their Merchant Partners. The merchant made a lot more sales and affiliates made good commissions, everybody was happy.

In the last few years are more and more Merchants are “discovering” Search Engines and their power to drive traffic to web sites. They realized to their surprise that Affiliates already occupied that space and to an overwhelming majority dominated the top results for the most competitive search terms.

What they also realized was that Affiliates also often dominated the search results for the Merchants own Brand Name or Trademark, often even outranking the Merchants own Website.

Once they discovered this, most Merchants did the right thing and started looking at their Website and asked themselves what they have to do to

a) Be better represented with their own website in search engine result pages for important keywords to get a piece of the traffic pie without paying their affiliates a commission for doing the job for them

b) Be at least represented with their own Website in the Search Engines for their own Brand Name or Trademark

Search Marketing and in particular Search Engine Optimization (SEO) became either a position or even department in-House or they hired one of the now many available SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) firms.

All this is nice and good and you could ask yourself the question, why a lot of Merchants start doing this now and shouldn’t they have done that much earlier already. Of course, but how goes the saying? “Better late than never”, right?

Merchants can not change the fact that they are being “late to the party” and now try to catch up and even surpass everything and everybody within a short period of time without taking the time to learn the background and history of search engines and SEO to understand why we are currently where we are today.

Sending some guys to SEO Training and attending a Search Engine Marketing Tradeshow like Search Engine Strategies (SES) which was last held in San Jose last week is usually not enough to be able to make educated decision that affect the various details of all your online Marketing efforts.

A good example of newly, but “semi-educated” Merchants making bad decisions are the increasing numbers of cases where Affiliate Managers start sending Emails to their Affiliates with updated Terms of Service that prohibits or restricts the use of the Merchants Name or Trademarks in the HTML Code of Affiliate Websites.

The Emphasis is on USE rather than ABUSE.

Anybody who knows at least some basics about SEO can see in an instant that the list of things Affiliates are not supposed to do with the Brand Name or Trademark reads like a list of Search Engine Ranking Factors or Google SEO Checklist.

The person who wrote the new Terms up was clearly doing some Self-SEO Research or read an Article about “How to rank no.1 on Google in 7 days”. If the knowledge comes from Sessions at a SEO Tradeshow, the person should also have attended the sessions about Search Engine Friendly Design.

Listen! Do not force your Affiliates to make their Sites USER unfriendly. It happens to be the case that in almost all cases User Friendly Site design is also Search Engine Friendly Design. There are still some exceptions, but they are getting fewer and fewer because Search Engines are working on improving on that. Why? Read the mission statement of your favorite Search Engine and you will get the answer to this question if you do not already know it.

Do your Homework first. Search Engine Optimization is not a synonym for Search Engine friendly. At one point will the phrase “Search Engine Friendly” be obsolete because the Goal of the Search Engines is to see as friendly to them, everything that is being friendly for the User. Search Engine Friendly will become a synonym for User Friendly. The Search Engine (Crawler, Bot or Spider) is just another user you will not have to pay special attention to, to “convert”.

An easy way for Merchants is to refer to Webmaster Guidelines provided by all major Search Engines and also recommend their affiliates to follow W3C Web Standards.

You should also point them to the Site Friendly Design Articles I referred to in this post to educate them.

If a Search Engine considers something on an Affiliate Site Spam or Violation of their Guide Lines or even terms of Service, you are in a very good position to see it as a violation of your service as well and should act on it.

If the Search Engines and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are perfectly fine with it and your Brand is not misrepresented, you should be fine with it as well.

The Webmaster Guidelines and a lot of other Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Resources can be found on my Website.

About Carsten Cumbrowski

Internet Marketer, Entrepreneur and Blogger. To learn more about me and what I am doing, visit my website and check out the “about” section.

Twitter: ccumbrowski
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing + Search Engine Marketing
  • http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/ Carsten Cumbrowski

    Regarding the W3C. They defined the HTML Standards. Things like what the TITLE Tag is for H1 etc. Most Search Engines processing not compliant pages (and buggy HTML code) because a large number of pages on the Internet have "bad" code.

    You already provided an opinion which is not the opinion of a growing number of merchants.

    If you did not got an issue because of that, watch out for it. I for my part already had the case that an affiliation was terminated because of the refusal to throw out the basic rules of user and search engine friendly site design and structure and forget about the proper use of HTML tags as they are specified by the W3C.

    The Merchant I am talking about was ignoring these basic things and was just going over his SEO for Dummies – Ranking Factors list.

    It is obvious that the Merchant did not want to have any affiliate rank for his Merchant Name, Trademark, Brand Name and Product Name (which was all the same in this case)

    We ranked in the top 10 at some Search Engines and within the Top 30 on others without doing any SEO. The merchant himself ranked #1 for his name at all major Search Engines. No Problem in your opinion, a problem in the eyes of the Merchant.

    It wasn't hard to rank for the name obviously if no SEO whatsoever but Search Engine Friendly Design and using HTML Tags as specified by the W3C gets you on page 1 of the serps. I don't know if that happened because the merchant booted already a lot of affiliates who's sites were ranking for his name.

    Points:

    1) Protecting your Brand, fine

    2) Preventing Affiliates from out-ranking you for your name, trademark etc., fine, if the affiliate used "black hat" methods to rank that high.

    3) Trying to force Affiliates to change their site to become less user (= search engine) friendly and forget about W3C HTML Standards, such as changing the H1 Tag to a B or STRONG tag because the Headline happens have the Name of the Merchant in it due to the fact that the Page is about the Merchant and changing the TITLE of a Page to something that is NOT descriptive for the Page (same example as for the HEADLINE). Get the hell out of here and do your homework.

    (because the merchant does not require to force affiliates to do this to achieve what he wants. Contact you favorite SEO Company to find out why or read the SEO Ranking Factors list more carefully and start THINKING)

    This are the points.
    Does it now make sense to you?

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    "Get the hell out of here and do your homework."

    Ah, you should do your own homework. Feel free to visit Google Video and search on Matt Cutts where he talks about what you just mentioned. You're so off it's funny. If you have trouble finding the video, let me know. I'm here to educate you.

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    I just reread your posts, I think I was reading some of that wrong.

    Yes, affiliate sites should be user and search engine friendly.

    As far as the w3 standards, I think most people get the basics. I was referring to how sometimes people go nuts trying to get their sites to validate which makes no difference whatsoever in the SERPS. That's not in the algo.

    I'm not sure about the example you gave with the merchant terminating an affiliate because they didn't meat "the standards" You didn't give enough info on that. If you're talking about termination of an affiliate because they spam or do some black hat type stuff, ok. But if you're talking about terminating because they didn't meet some other kind of w3 standards, such as site validation, not ok.

    As far as affiliates and ranking in the SERPS, I agree with myself in that merchants should want their affiliates to rank on their terms. They can only occupy 1 spot. There are 9 other spots on that first page. Like I said, better your affiliates to be there than some other sites that could have negative stuff about you.

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

    Data Center is hooked up again, Sites too.

    Jonathan. Here is the link to all the Matt Cutts Videos and others.

    I believe you will find the stuff interesting.

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    I already watched them all when they came out, also made a thread about it:

    http://video.google.com/videosearch?sourceid=navc…

    I've always used basic SEO and haven't had any problems. Basic SEO is also user friendly. You make a page, the title should reflect what the page is about along with your meta tags, etc, basic stuff. It can be both user and SE friendly at the same time.

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    I’m not understanding the point you’re trying to make. What’s w3c standards have to do with affiliate sites and why do you want merchants to tell their affiliates to follow them? An example are some affiliates going crazy trying to get their affiliate sites to become w3 compliant when it doesn’t matter as far as SERPS.

    As far as merchants and TM’s, not sure the message you’re tying to get out either. I see a lot of merchants making mistakes with the restrictions. Many could benefit from affiliates having good SERPS for their TM and major terms. It’s better than complaint pages ranking on their TM and other not-so-nice to merchant pages coming up when someone does a search.

  • http://www.thoughtshapers.com Jeff Molander

    Carsten:

    I find this to be one of the most thoughtful entries re: affiliate marketing here at Revenews in quite some time… although you didn't fall all over yourself kissing anyone's fanny. You should work on that part ;-)

    Your observations are all very astute. At the root of this "problem" (for affiliates) is not ignorance of merchants. At the root (and this may sound trite but here me out) is value.

    1) If affiliates, in aggregate, were known to add value beyond leveraging brand names and trademarks there would be far less backlash (cue violins playing from the 'good kind of affiliates' and a reply by David Lewis) from merchants as a whole.

    2) Most merchants do not, IMO, have the capacity appreciate the value of an affiliate occupying space in the SERPs (based on a brand/mark search) versus negative PR, a competitors' affiliate, etc. They don't often enough think strategically. I didn't until David came along (there… I just made up for your lack of fanny kissing, Carsten).

    While I contend that the "negative PR blocking" is not a good thing to pay for with marketing dollars (just as I believe "blocking" competitors with affiliate ads in paid search is a dumb idea) some do it and find it to be a great marketing spend.

    "Search Engine Optimization is not a synonym for Search Engine friendly."

    I'll take it further — SEO, by definition, is all black hat. To paraphrase Shari Thurow the minute you consider a 'what if' when building a page you've probably crossed the line.

    Her point (and mine) is that search engines publish simple guidelines. Stick to them. You'll be rewarded. Period.

    Also, I predicted a long time ago (as have others) that users would be slowly trained to use Google less and Froogle, Become.com and others more. It's happening and affiliates know it — they're moving into that turf but watch out for merchants!

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

    Hi Jonathan,

    I have links to all Matt Cutts Videos on my Site (among other Videos about SEO and Affiliate Marketing). The Data center (yes, Data center, not just Server) where my Site is being hosted is currently being upgraded (well its in the middle of the night and could not be avoided). Visit my Site later when they are done.

    I did not reference to the W3C for SEO reasons.

    The other way around.

    Proper use of HTML Standards like having a Title Tag for every Page and have a title for every Page that is not the same for all of them and accurately reflects what the page is about is not SEO.

    The purpose of it is different and has to do with HUMANS = user friendly and not with Search Engines.

    It happens to be a SEO factor (one of the most important) as well. Now if you ABUSE the Title Tag for SEO purposes at your Affiliate Site and the Advertiser does not like that, perfectly okay, but prohibiting the proper use of Tags as defined by the W3C just because the merchant heard somewhere that the Title tag is one of the most important SEO factors is wrong.

    It shows that the Merchant does not understand that following the W3C Standards will automatically make your pages User friendlier, which will also make them Search Engine friendly (and that is not a coincidence).

    It is not SEO! It sure can be and if you forget about the intended use of them your Pages or whole site might disappears from the Search Engine Index altogether for the reasons I already stated.

    It also shows that the Merchant has not really a clue about SEO either, but I don’t want to go into that.

    Your argument about the SERPs is worth a separate discussion, but not the issue I pointed out in my post. I did not make that issue up. You can believe me that. You obviously did not encountered this problem yourself yet. I don’t know your Affiliations, but if you are affiliated with a lot of merchants you probably will one day. It starts out with emails from Merchants about a change to the Terms of Service.

    I tend to ignore those emails and hope that what they clearly spell out in the updated terms is not meant that way. They might only enforce it in clearly abusive cases. I learned the hard way that I was wrong. A affiliate relationship came to an end because of it.

    The number of emails with those clear but often unrealistic terms increased over the months. That concerns me and should you too.

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/ Casten Cumbrowski

    Thanks for the kudos Jeff. Well, I am not a big fan of fanny kissing. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth :) .

    Let me quote an a line from an updated Terms of Service I received via Email from a merchant I won't name here.

    Affiliates may not use XYZ's name, or any variation thereof, directly or indirectly in (a) metatags, (b) in hidden text, page titles or source codes, and/or (c) in Affiliate's domain or sub-domain.

    That is all. No further Details or explanations. I hope "source codes" refers to "source code comments" that are invisible to the user, but it does not say that. To follow the terms as they stand now (the Terms were not corrected or changed as of today) is the only way to show the merchants name to a user via an Image that includes the merchant name (Logo) with no descriptive alt tag that could tell visually impaired people what it is.

    Now how am I supposed to do Marketing for this Merchant on a Page that is exclusively dedicated to the merchant, his products and services, promotions, coupons etc.? Linking to him from other places that are not exclusive will also become tough in a lot of instances. If I have a site that allows user comments, I would have to add the Merchants name to the blacklist of words which I won't use here.

    But lets go back to the case where only things like Title Tag is prohibited and lets assume every single affiliate complies with that. Guess what, the SERPs are still full with affiliate sites because of other factors.

    The only way I can explain this policy is the attempt of the Merchant to rank #1 for his name and be the only listing that shows his name clearly visible in the attempt to get all or at least as much as possible users to click on his listing due to the lag of missing reference in the other results. C'mon, give me a break.

    I don't think that this has much to do with the opinion of some people that affiliates don't add other value than leveraging brand names and trademarks although it should be one of the reasons why you have an affiliate program in the first place. If it does, then somebody threw the baby out with the water.

    Referring somebody to a merchant without mentioning the name or recommending a product without using the trademark does not make sense not just from a Marketing point of view but even more from a Sales point of view.

    Prospects might heard about a brand but never bought anything from it. They now get exposed recommendation for a product from that brand on an Affiliate Website.

    Will the Brand Name support the persuasion process to convert the prospect into a product buying customer. Most Sales and Marketing folks out there would agree on that. Not mentioning the brand only adds to the factors that prevents the conversion.

    Regarding SEO = Black Hat. I don't agree entirely. I agree that less and less SEO remain not Black Hat (= okay) and this tendency will continue until User Friendly and Search Engine Friendly will have the same meaning. Search Engines are getting closer and closer to it, but they are not there yet.

  • http://jacksretail.com Jack Mitchell

    It always amazes me to see these kinds of emails when noone in their right mind would adhere to them. I usually ignore them and if they kick me out, then oh well. Move on to a competitor.

    As far as the ridiculous value argument, all affiliates provide value in some way. It all depends on what the visitor is looking for. This is why a search engine will never be able to accurately determine "value" of a site.

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    "I'll take it further — SEO, by definition, is all black hat."

    That is one subject you don't know much about, you've proved that over the years.

    "Also, I predicted a long time ago (as have others) that users would be slowly trained to use Google less and Froogle, Become.com and others more. It's happening and affiliates know it — they're moving into that turf but watch out for merchants!"

    Yes, that was one of your biggest flops. When Froogle came out you were all excited thinking it was going to be a mom and pop killer. The thing has been in beta for years and they even removed the link to Froogle from the home page in recent days.

  • http://jacksretail.com Jack Mitchell

    Froogle who LOL

    I can not seeing Froogle playing a large part of traffic any time soon.

    SEO is black hat? Where did you get that idiotic idea? SEO by itself doesn't try to trick the search engines. Black Hat does. You better read up on the differences between white hat and black hat SEO. There is clearly a very large difference.

  • http://www.thoughtshapers.com Jeff Molander

    Jonathan, you should work for our current Administration who would also have the world believe that Iraq isn't engulfed in a Civil War and that we're all safer from terrorists now. You must toss all night long over me, eh? You're getting more inventive on my so-called flop predictions.

    As far as the ridiculous value argument, all affiliates provide value in some way. It all depends on what the visitor is looking for. This is why a search engine will never be able to accurately determine "value" of a site.

    Aaah, blogging. I love it. It's a ridiculous argument and value isn't determined by the guy paying you it's determined by the guy you're passing on to the guy that pays you. Such is affiliate marketing. Circle the wagons!

    Sorry, Carsten. I still think this is a very well thought out post despite the comments.

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/ carsten cumbrowski

    Hi Jeff, I am watching the comments. This post is not about SEO, white hat, black hat, gray hat, pink hat whatever.

    It is also clear that any affiliate that:

    - does not have to hide anything from the Merchant or search engines

    - tries to create a user and search engine friendly site (and any of the few white hat SEO maybe or may be not)

    - moves the merchant and the merchants offers into a positive light

    - does as much pre-selling as possible to help with the conversion

    are shaking their head about what some merchants expect their affiliates to comply to. I would be surprised about any affiliate that wouldn't.

    Any affiliate that is guilty of abuse of black hat seo methods will be crying too. They always do. Honestly, I don't care about those affiliates right now, because they are almost for certain "the problem", or at least part of it.

    I would like to have merchants provide some comments.

    Specifically the merchants that updated their Terms of Service to restrict their affiliates organic search ranking abilities. I would like to hear their take on this this. Their goals, concerns and reasoning.

    I bet some threw some terms out without knowing what they are asking their affiliate to do. They might did not intended to hit legit affiliates with it. Legit affiliates ignoring it would be safe doing so. The problem is, that you can't tell what the case is with a merchant. You will find out when you find yourself terminated "all of the sudden".

    A personal experience that resulted in the termination with one merchant so far (and I heard from others that they had a similar issue), shows that some merchants actually do mean it the way they spelled it out, regardless of hitting legit affiliate or not.

    I would like to know about their agenda as well.

    They might have a goal that can not be accomplished with their employed methods.
    The merchant would be killing his own affiliate program in this case.

    I appreciate your opinions, but I'd like to remind you that this is not a forum to spin off to other related or unrelated topics and discuss them without thinking about the post you comment on. That is what a Forum is for. Or post about it at your own blog :) .

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    I agree with you above points. There are merchants that get it and some that don't.

    "I would like to have merchants provide some comments."

    "That is what a Forum is for."

    "You're getting more inventive on my so-called flop predictions."

    Just pointing out the truth. Why don't you blog about your latest flop prediction/conspiracy theory. About how LMI was just to weed out the mom and pop affiliates. Have you heard LMI is now dead? At least you're consistent.

  • http://jacksretail.com Jack Mitchell

    The post started out as a good beginning. But I feel there is just too much vagueness in what she is trying to say.

    1. The idiocy of merchants trying to dictate what you can and cannot optimize for

    2. Black Hat vs White Hat SEO

    3. value in affiliate sites

    I think al three of these realte to each other and ae what make a merahnt reconsider their terms.

  • jimbot

    I partner with well over a hundred merchants but don't believe I've received an e-mail like the example above.
    If I do, I'll have no problem dumping the merchant, leaving the merchants name in my titles, something like: "Looking for (merchantx)?, heres a better alternative! along with links to a competitor.

    I wonder how many 'big performers' get these e-mails?
    Of course merchants should protect their good name, but maybe some merchants don't really want or need an affiliate program. They should just make seperate deals with certain publishers.

  • http://www.ecomcity.com Mike Hyland

    Interesting read considering Revenews seldom peaks under the covers to see what the Adwhores are doing behind closed doors. The networks, outside of SAS, cast the die years ago to court and monitize the very best of their herd of affiliate traffic spammers. Rules were bent to harbor those who could get in-front of the most cookied EyeBalls… regardless of methods.

    Pretty pathetic when the Networks ignored the one issue at the Code of Conduct summit that could have stirred the affiliate industry in the right direction. Transparancy requiring a PHYSICAL Click on a network generated tracking link from an affiliates viewable creative. This would have forced affiliates to work on their sites customer facing value, e-mail message relivency, and even PPCSE landing page. None of which pisses off the SE's, Merchants, nor the consumers.

    Instead white-hat SEO, combined with natural SERP friendly pre-sell content, was forced into the cookie landmine of Blackhat SERP and PPCSE spammers, BHO Browser spammers,cookie stuffers, and Merchants own cookie washing schemes. The commission spicket was turned off for those playing by the network and merchant rules in favor of those who could hijack/influence cookied traffic at either the source… or final checkout destination.

    My merchant clients are not effected by any of these SERP SEO & SEM rule changes. They all still maintain a traffic conversion ratio the major merchants would die for if they just concentrated on the value consumers find at the end of every click. I can throw up a promo page or showcase Ad at any relivent traffic source and get great results for my merchnat clients. Get them into the comparision engines, Build them additional niche sites, ocassionally e-mail existing customers, prod normal affiliates for more on-domain page exposure, while maing the Super affiliates pay their own PPCSE traffic promotion costs. All never causing a hickup in their overall conversion ratio year after year.

    I cannot do the same for any Ecomcity.com network enabled merchant because I refuse to do any Blackhat SEO, advertise on the BHO's, or drink the PPCSE "buy traffic" coolaid. My site gets Google penalized for all the antics of the Adwhores and POS (POINT OF SALE) ATTACKDOGS the moment my pages show network links. Guilt by association.

    To me the above merchant PPCSE and SEO terms letters are dictated by the merchant's hired gun blackhat SEO/SEM team. They know it's getting harder to compete in the online advertising underworld as the consumers scream at those who try to trick them into some middleman no-value add click trap. It's simple to run an affiliate program when you level the playing field. All legit referral traffic converts the same today, as it did 8 years ago, and requires physical clicks originating from each affiliates domain pages. Anyone else out there running a steady 1/20 conversion ration on all traffic sources?

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

    We are talking about Ranking of Merchant Names and Trademarks in organic Search Results here. You should have the Domain Name that is your Brand Name and/or Trademark. How much SEO does it take to rank for your own name that is also the name of the Domain?

    If your Site is not completely un-crawlable and/or SE Spider trap and you know a few people that would link to you because they like you, you should be ranking right where you should be ranking.

    If you don't have any friends or people that like you and link to you, get listed at the Yahoo and BOTW directory.

    Something that you should do anyway, if you have a legit business. Not because of SEO, but because you are a legit business … and because they also drive some traffic to your site as well. Not only Spiders.

    If you don't have the $299 per year for Yahoo! and the $150 one-time fee for life for BOTW, then you don't have a brand and nothing to put into your terms and conditions that could cause issues with the affiliates which you also don't have in this case :) .

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

    If you are outranked by black-hat affiliates, prohibiting anything that has to do with things ON the affiliate site won't do nothing, except prohibiting the placement of an affiliate link altogether.

    I don't recall to have seen the phrase "miserable failure" anywhere on the website of our current president and yet he "managed" to Rank number one on Google for it for some time. …. does the phrase "Google bombing" rings any bells? … anybody? He still ranks #1 BTW. with and without double quotes.

    $20 via PayPal for the first merchant that comments on the issue (on topic) and can explain how you can rank no 1. for a keyword or phrase at Google that does not exist anywhere on the page itself at all.

  • http://jacksretail.com Jack Mitchell

    That's easy. It's because there is anchor text pointed to them with that phrase in it.

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

    Thanks for killing my "bait" Jack.
    I am sure you know it, but if you would have read the terms and conditions for winning the 20 bucks, you would have realized that you don't qualify.

    This was meant for merchants that already added stuff to their terms of service or think about doing it. I would like to hear some reasoning for this very much debatable issue and especially what they think about the strict, no exceptions made enforcement of such terms.

    It is not added by merchants out of boredom. There is a reason for it. That reason needs to be addressed. As it looks to me now are merchants throwing the baby out of the windows together with the bath water.

  • http://jacksretail.com Jack Mitchell

    The reason IMO is simple. They don't want the competition and have not invested resources in how to optimize their site properly. These merchants will learn eventually tho as once the word comes out about their ridiculous terms they will lose affiliates left and right.

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    "$20 via PayPal for the first merchant that comments on the issue (on topic) and can explain how you can rank no 1. for a keyword or phrase at Google that does not exist anywhere on the page itself at all."

    No offense but trying to pay people to post is your blog is…

    If you want merchants to comment on the issue, go to where the merchants are. ABW.

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

    "No offense but trying to pay people to post is your blog is… "

    Think about that one a bit longer Jonathan
    No comment

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    Not following, explain.

    Some examples of merchant participation:

    Promotions for customers
    http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=77506

    Getting affiliates active:
    http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=77435

    Good stuff. Free too.

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

    Jonathan, Forget about the money for a moment, substitute it with something else, make it glass Perls if you like to or the "Commenter" Contest winner of the month, whatever you like.

    I am not explaining it further.

  • http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/2006/08/is_0xy_1000_no_longer_true.html ReveNews – Carsten C

    Is 0.X%/Y > 100%/0 no longer true?

    I came across Brook Shaaf's VEO Book Report post here at ReveNews which also had some interesting comments. It just ignited a Chinese band of fire cracker thoughts that I felt obligated to write down no mater the fact how…

  • http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/2006/10/you_want_to_pretend_to_be_me_s.html ReveNews – Carsten C

    You want to pretend to be me? Sure, no Problem. May I help you?

    Back in August did I write two posts about Trademarks, Merchants that just learned about Search Marketing, in particular SEO and take actions based on incomplete knowledge and understanding such as adjustments to their Affiliate Agreements which are in…