affiliate program | Croncast - Life is Show Prep

I've got a new blog

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:20:40 -0400

I've got a new blog! But you have Croncast, Kris. What gives?

I realized a couple weeks ago that all of my nerd talk on the Croncast blog about RSS, API's, photo blogging, affiliate programs and the other tangents doesn't really suit Croncast all that well. Some of you are interested in that stuff but others of you could care less. So I am spreading out!

My first new blog is Talking RSS, http://talkingrss.lokwat.com. Where I can fill my quota of geek for the day by talking about RSS.

Tags: Talking RSS photo blogging geek quota lokwat.com

Major eBay Affiliate Program Changes

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:40:03 -0400

No clue how I missed this but one of major contributors to keeping the Croncast server humming, the eBay affiliate program, is being overhauled by eBay.

eBay will no longer use Commission Junction to run their program they will be taking it in-house. It will be interesting to see how eBay changes the program and what their reporting interface will look like. Hopefully, it will be easier to read and offer more information about the types of sales and leads that affiliates generate for eBay.

My only real concern is what the payout structure for affiliates will look like. With all the recent changes in seller's fees and feedback it makes me a bit nervous that eBay will lower the payouts to affiliates. I've become accustomed to accepting their money and very much like the $25 for new signups and fifty-percent of sellers fees.

The new program goes in to effect on none other than April Fools Day 2008.

Are they trying to send affiliates a message?

Tags: iPod eBay affiliate program commission junction

Apple Affiliate Program, Giving It Another Shot

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:47:16 -0500

I have no clue why I am giving the Apple Affiliate Program another shot. When you look at the numbers you will think I am crazy for trying again. I just can't get passed the fact that they sell a ton of iPods, MacBooks and now the MacBook Air and that we could possibly make a couple bucks from it.

Last year we were paid $0.00 by Apple after running a pretty aggressive campaign on Croncast and Resale Queen and in our RSS feeds. There is no way that in hades that not one single individual didn't buy the item they clicked on from the online Apple store in the 3 month span we ran the ads. It is illogical to look at the numbers (first table) and think that not one items was purchased from the online store within the cookie expiration period.

Advertiser	Commissions	S_Amount	Items	Sales	Leads	Clicks	Imps	CTR
eBay	$ XX	$ XX	47	598	84	351,500	59,514	590.61
Apple Store US & Apple Store Canada	$ 0.00	$ 0.00	0	0	0	218	31,192	0.69

Here's where we are in the last 4 days since I started running a couple ads in Betsy's Resale Queen feeds: blog posts and her podcast feed. The ads are for iLife '08 and the new MacBook Air. They are placed after the post item content and before the post tags.

Advertiser	Commissions	S_Amount	Items	Sales	Leads	Clicks	Imps	CTR
eBay	$ XX	$ XX	3	105	6	26,354	4,949	532.51
Apple Store US & Apple Store Canada	$ 0.00	$ 0.00	0	0	0	57	82	69.51

The clicks and impressions both are higher than I would have expected but maybe I did better targeting of the audience this time around. I doubt it. I think I was dead on during October, November and December to run iPod ads for shuffle, nano and video iPods.

I did contact the Apple Affiliate program through CJ during the second month to ask what the issue might be and never received a response.

For some reason I feel a need to go through with this again and hope that we can get our payout on a purchase from a lead that we created. I'll let you know how this goes.

Anyone else have experience with the Apple Affiliate Program?

Tags: MacBook Air iLife 08 Apple Affiliate Program Commission Junction eBay affiliate

Raise your Google PR, add 'nofollow' to affiliate links

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:59:56 -0500

For the last six weeks I have paid the price for forgetting to upload updated scripts that had the "nofollow" attribute added to text links. By not getting this done when I wanted I suffered the wrath of Google's PR (page rank) drops for those with "paid" text links.

Though, mine weren't paid, they are a home grown system that I wrote for the eBay affiliate program. Turns out the Google algorithm never asked if I was being paid for those links. Stupid robots.

The impact has been that our Google search referrals went down by over half!

This cut my average monthly take from Adsense and the eBay affiliate program to less than $200 combined. Barely enough to cover my server and not enough from Adsense to even get a payout last month. Bluh.

Since Monday I have been watching search referrals steadily climb and our Adsense and eBay money generation increase accordingly.

My recommendation to anyone that currently relies on search traffic to make some loot add rel="nofollow" to all of your text links that might be interpreted as paid.

And if you are using a text link ad company, ask them if they are using it. If not, make your own affiliate links and blaze a DIY trail that Google won't punish you for.

Tags: Adsense eBay affiliate eBay developer Google PR text links