Affiliates

Affiliate Marketing has been around for over ten years ever since Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, pondered the idea of having others advertise links on their sites to Amazon.com and receive a commission on sales for doing so. Well that’s how legend has it that the first affiliate programme on the internet launched. Since that time Affiliate Marketing has grown into a multi-million pound industry which forms an integral part of an advertisers marketing strategy.

As new affiliate models are created and existing models are developed, account managers continue to adapt to the different ways of managing a client’s brand. Affiliate Marketing has greatly advanced especially over the last six years where affiliates have grown from the “back bedroom” operations of the past to corporate businesses that have spent years developing and promoting websites enabling a larger reach. But just as Affiliates have grown so have internet shoppers who have all become a savvy bargain hunting nation looking for the lowest possible prices.

These “lemon squeezers” spend hours surfing the net for discount vouchers and other deals such as a two-for-one offer at a pizza restaurant, free delivery codes or limited-time discounts. Unfortunately there are also a hard core of internet users looking to exploit the many loopholes out there and Affiliate Marketing is no different. It’s easy to get stung if you don’t fully understand the world of Affiliate Marketing. You have probably already heard of things such as “brand bidding” and “cookie dropping” where individuals are looking to make easy money on your natural traffic but there are many other pitfalls which we have to be aware of in order for an affiliate programme to fully succeed.

With experience we can build up knowledge of the pitfalls that advertisers can suffer. One example of this is taking advantage of misspelt URLs. If you take a look at the WHOIS for a domain listed as wwwretailer.co.uk (missing the leading period) for example, there is a good chance you will find the domain is registered to an individual who more likely than not will use an affiliate link to re-direct the user to the retailer site. It’s very simple and can easily be missed if you don’t look out for it. Things like this are very preventable and you could save thousands by taking certain steps when launching an Affiliate Programme. Read more…