Last Thursday 24th January I attended my first meeting of the AMC (Affiliate Marketing Council) which was held at the offices of the IAB (Internet Marketing Bureau). As one of two possible three affiliates there I was surprised no-one else had turned up, however I was surprised at the informality of the meeting and I can say I did enjoy it, especially the beers in the pub on the corner afterwards. The next meeting will be at the same place on Thursday 28th February, it would be nice if more affiliates and merchants could make it (only one merchant present).
Here is a link for the Affiliate Marketing Handbook which was ‘put together’ by the AMC last year, I told Dan I would post the link on my blog, it’s taken me a week but in my defence I’ve had a very busy week. I know they worked very hard on it and it is full of excellent information - especially the links on the last but one page ;-).
I think a lot of people were shocked when Next won the award for Best New Merchant at the Expo in October, James Little started a thread on it on the forum. Now after all the reductions in commissions and not only what happened yesterday, but also their zero communication by email or on the forum I feel the right thing to do would be to revoke the award, they are not worthy of it.
Seriously, what do Next bring to the affiliate space - apart from demands and hassle? Do we need it or them?
With all the talk about how bad Commission Junction are from both Kirsty and John I thought I’d throw my 2 pence worth into the hat. I can honestly say that we’ve not had any service from CJ since Nicky Iapino left all those years ago. CJ has got so bad that if it were an animal you’d do the humane thing and have it put down. They have no idea how to talk to or even respond to the simplest query from an affiliate that I have to say if they treated merchants as shoddily as they’ve treated us they wouldn’t have any merchants left on the network.
One example a few months back was when I called them after receiving an email from the ‘Network Quality’ team (which is a contradiction in itself), the person I needed to speak to was ‘on the other line’ I asked to hold and was rudely told that I couldn’t as she needed to use the phone (!), obviously they only have one phone in the office, I re-iterated that I wanted to hold so, instead of putting me on hold she hung up on me. I called back and said she must’ve cut me off by mistake only to be told that no, she hung up on me because she needed to use the phone. The scary thing is she didn’t realise she’d done anything wrong and people phoning up were just a nuisance. So, instead of being a further nuisance I’ve taken the majority of my business elsewhere.
To quote a newspaper from years back - ‘Could the last person to leave Commission Junction please turn out the lights’
Today whilst browsing through the blogs on A4U, I came across this Dodgy Bidder - Name & Shame? I, being me, put me 2 pence in. Almost immediately I was pinged on MSN with a ‘have you seen this?’ re the blog, ‘Yes, I have I’ve commented on it’ was my reply, ‘why do you ask?’ I was absolutely horrified at the answer - ‘because the word is it’s you’. Now, I know I’m not perfect but for one I’m female and this quite clearly is about a bloke - he mentions the word ‘him’, two - I’m not sure I’m high profile, three - I tend not to break the rules where brand bidding is concerned PROVIDING I’m given all the information when signing up for a program and the merchant or agency doesn’t change the goalposts without adequate notice or in some cases no notice at all and four - I can categorically state that I do NOT ‘gripes about “dodgy affiliates” bidding on brand terms and giving the industry a bad name - my pet hate is Closed Bidding Groups that are not disclosed on Networks (but that’s something I’ve bored you all with before and I’m sure I will again. Within 15 minutes I receive an email from TD saying the usual stuff - take it down or within 24 hours we’ll stand you against a wall and shoot you, so confused as at this point I don’t know it’s me, I log into TD and check the program information. This is what it says :
Sponsored Keywords/Adwords:
Important: We allow affiliates to buy sponsored keyword terms relating to the Jessops brand including miss spells, but excluding the exact term JESSOPS.We allow affiliates to buy sponsored keywords/adwords on search engines, so long as they are clearly marked as affiliate links (”affiliate” or “aff” in the supporting text). However, we DO NOT permit affiliates to buy keywords relating to our competitors brand names or trademarks. e.g. “Dixons”, or “CamerasDirect”, etc. Any affiliates who do so will be removed.
Okay - I’m sticking to the rules on this program and even have the word -[Jessops] in as negative exact match, why do people think it’s me, why have I just received the email from TD saying it’s me and why is Rob B now seemingly back tracking on what he had earlier said.
The moral of this story is ‘Get the facts right before you accuse people of wrong doing’ Several times we have been wrongly accused of deliberately ‘Brand Bidding’ but never have the accusers been proved right. Please don’t shoot yourself in the foot with comments like these :
It isn’t really my style to do this, but why should this affiliate get away with these dodgy tactics while pretending to be white as white at the same time?
