Everyone who knows Brian Littleton knows of his fashion saavy and how he can make a sweater vest look stylin. Recently I bid on and won one of Brian Littleton’s of Shareasale’s sweater vests that was up for auction to benefit fundraising efforts for the Avon Breast Cancer Walk in Chicago.
My daughter Hillary was excited to model the official Brian Littleton sweater vest!

Several months ago Hillary created a one of a kind sweater vest for Brian, so she was honored to model this one.

Lisa Picarille came up with the great idea of a sisterhood of the travelling sweater vest, so who better to share it with first than her. Be on the lookout Lisa!

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Perhaps you’ve heard about anti-affiliate state legislation that can have a devastating impact on affiliate marketers.
This has occurred in several states, and now it is being battled in Minnesota.

Today I attended the Senate Hearing regarding Bill S.F. 282, at the Minnesota State Capitol. According to sources, there are about 2500 affiliates in Minnesota yet I was the only one in attendance.

The basic premise of S.F. No. 282 is flawed and incorrectly targets affiliates.
Affiliate marketers are not traditional associates or an extended sales force for these retailers.
Rather, we are paid for performance marketing advertising. Affiliate marketers do not sell for the retailer – affiliate marketers advertise. We do not own the customer or know who the customer is; we do not transact a sale; we do not accept money for sales; nor do we deliver products or services to consumers. S.F. No. 282, Minnesota is attempting to define affiliates as a physical sales presence for out-of-state merchants such as Amazon or Overstock.com, so that out-of-state merchants would be responsible for collecting sales tax from all residents in Minnesota.

Many merchants have stated their intention to sever their ties with Minnesota affiliates if this bill is passed. So instead of gained tax dollars, the state will end up with more people out of work, more families devastated and in need of aid. If merchants sever affiliate programs in Minnesota, the state will not gain tax dollars, and many businesses will be devastated as a result.

The hearings ran long and they ended up postponing the hearing until Monday the 20th of April.

The Author of the bill, Senator Thomas M. Bakk is also the committee chair. He is a democrat.
Democrats have the majority in the house and senate. Unless we take drastic measures this bill will pass.

According to paperwork, the state isn’t expecting that much revenue from this bill.
We need to make it clear that while this may seem like an easy way to increase state tax revenue
they need to consider the devastating ramifications this bill can have.

Email your senators.
Use this Minnesota Senator Letter Template as a guide.
Email the newspapers.
The Star Tribune is a good place to start.
Do something, do anything!

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I can’t remember the last time I got so many frustrating emails in one day.

Here is one:
“As a valued XXXXX affiliate partner, I wanted to let you know that we are currently working to make our program, and our partnerships, as successful as possible. In order to continue to support the success of our current partnership we are unable to continue to offer you a flat 4% commission on all goods. Starting at the end of February, our new offer will be lowered to 1.5% on all goods.”

This merchant is on all the big loyalty sites, which have software applications and toolbars. Many times they end up paying commission on sales where the shopper directly went to the merchant site, but then the toolbar reminded them to go through the loyalty site, or it automatically set their cookie so the merchant pays out where they never should have. These same affiliates cost them extra money when a shopper goes through the merchant paid search link but then the loyalty software overwrites the cookie and takes credit for the sale. So the merchant pays for their paid ad and pays commission to the loyalty site.

Maybe if they worked on cleaning up their program, maybe lowered the commission on those who really did nothing to make the sale except activate their software, us hard working honest affiliates who play clean could earn what we deserve.

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From an email recieved a few minutes ago:

“As you may know from previous experience, XXXXXX works each month to a set budget. While in the past, if they surpass that budget, we have been forced to remove partners. This is never ideal and we want to prevent this from happening as much as possible. As of right now, we are on track to surpass our February budget. To prevent this, we are asking you to take a 1% commission cut through the rest of the month.

We ask that you opt into the lower-commission offer immediately, or we will have to remove you from the program. This is only a short-term adjustment, so we thank you, in advance, for your cooperation and understanding.”

So do they want us to make sales or not? If we make too many then they might go over budget and we will be removed. To make sure they don’t go over budget they want us to send the same amount of shoppers but get paid less?

I don’t understand companies that lump affiliate marketing into their advertising budgets. There should be no budget as they don’t pay out more unless more sales are made.

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Rumors have been swirling that Twitter had noticed big brands using Twitter for customer support, general conversation and brand promotion and was planning on charging fees for commercial use.

Twitter, a micro-blogging service where users write short updates about what they’re doing, has attracted companies who want to create buzz online as well as those who want to see what customers are saying about them.

The source of the speculation was an interview with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, which appeared on the Marketing magazine web site early on 10 February. Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone told Marketing: “We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.” He would not comment on the level of charges. Stone said it could also create revenue-generating features to tap into the way brands use Twitter as a hybrid marketing and customer-service tool.

Twitter denies reports that it will charge companies.

In a Twitter blog post, titled “Nothing to report just yet”, Stone noted that Twitter had been “thinking out loud” for over a year about the use of the service by commercial organizations, and how the offering could be improved.

“We hope to begin iterating on revenue products this year,” Stone said. ” However, it’s important to note that, whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone – individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we’re thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services.”

Stone has stated that there was no official announcement at present as the plans are still at a very early stage but plans are afoot to generate cash from value-add services.

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Linkshare announced in their blog (looks like Linkshare now removed the blog post) today that they are parting ways with long time partner Overstock.com.

No word from Overstock.com on this yet to affiliates, as a matter of fact we just got their affiliate newsletter with a ton of Linkshare affiliate links to put up. I don’t know if Overstock is going to go in-house, move to another network or what, hopefully they let their affiliates know soon.

Overstock is a huge program and will be a big loss for Linkshare. There must have been some major issues if Linkshare decided to not work with Overstock. Or Did Overstock quit Linkshare and Linkshare is just posting damage control before word gets out from other sources?

Let the speculating begin!

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With all the talk of toolbars and loyalty sites lately, it reminds me of an issue that I have heard discussed at almost every network advisory board meeting I have been to.

Many times loyalty site members forget to shop through the loyalty site and perhaps either go direct to the merchant site or go through a different affiliate site. When that member then asks the loyalty site why they didn’t get their reward, the loyalty site does a transaction inquiry with the network. “Missing transactions” seem to be a big issue. The real issue is user error most of the time, but usually the network will fix it so that the loyalty affiliate gets their credit so the member gets their reward.

It doesn’t matter if that person actually went through your site, you have no way of knowing that do you? But the loyalty site has that member who will give them their information that they can in turn forward to the network.

Is it fair that the loyalty site gets credit just because they have the information needed to claim credit for a sale and no one else is none the wiser? Isn’t this just as bad as having a toolbar that overwrites a cookie or pops on another affiliate’s site or links? Does it matter to the network who brings in the money as long as they get their cut?

Shareasale in the past did not allow software or toolbar affiliates into their network. This was one of the things that made them well liked and trusted in the industry. When well respected affiliate Fatwallet, with a long history of ethical behavior, let it be known months ago that they were going live with a toolbar, Shareasale decided now was the time to revisit that choice.

Shareasale held a Roundtable on Tuesday February 3rd to discuss the issue with affiliates, merchants and others in the affiliate industry. I was quite disappointed in the webinar, I had expected there to be much more discussion and more passion in the debates. To me it seemed a non event considering all the vocal people voicing their opinions on affiliate forums; I didn’t hear any of that at the webinar.

Was it because people decided it was futile, did they assume Shareasale had already made their decision? The timing did seem to many to be questionable, that right at the time Fatwallet was coming out with their toolbar, Shareasale was discussing letting toolbar affiliates into the network. Is it because historically Fatwallet has been upstanding and ethical and Shareasale thought it would be good to make this exception? And is it really just about Fatwallet as many had assumed or is Shareasale getting pressure from their merchants wanting to have software affiliates in their programs?

And even though word had been out to networks and some merchants for quite a while about the Fatwallet toolbar, why now say this issue has just come up? Some think Shareasale was waiting for the right time, figuring out how to handle letting Fatwallet stay in the network.

Even if the Fatwallet toolbar follows all the rules of fairness, does this open the door for less scrupulous affiliates to enter Shareasale? Will there be constant compliance checks? Bigger networks can’t seem to do a good job of it with their compliance and quality control departments, how will Shareasale a smaller company be able to keep up? Would they just limit the number of software affiliates to a select few? Has affiliate marketing lost its white knight? Or are we all in an uproar about nothing? Time will tell I suppose.

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As a coupon site, many times we will work with merchants and offer special placements or special terms in order to get exclusive coupons. One longstanding problem has been other coupon sites taking other coupon site’s exclusive coupons and posting them on their own site. Many times these coupons include our site name, FlamingoWorld or another coupon site’s name or some variation there of.

There are some merchants that track the sales back to those exclusive coupons and they make sure that the affiliate given the coupon code gets credit for all sales. This way the site that lifted the coupon from another site does not benefit financially at all. But most of the time whatever site the shopper clicks through the link on will get credit for the sale no matter what coupon code they use.

Coupon Cabin, a popular coupon site has decided they aren’t going to take it anymore. Coupon Cabin has decided to take legal action against competitors who have been posting and financially benefiting from their exclusive coupons that include their trademarked name. They have started to send cease and desist letters to those using their exclusives, or suing for damages.

There are a lot of coupon sites out there that claim their coupons are entered by users of their site and that their model is a community based website and they have no control over the content. In reality many of these sites are actually posting these coupons themselves and using the member’s as an excuse to post coupons they shouldn’t.

The networks don’t do anything about these websites, They get away with posting any coupon they find whether it belongs to another affiliate or if it is unauthorized for affiliate use. Some merchants kick these affiliates out of their programs while some networks give them awards.

Coupon sites beware if you post other coupon site’s exclusive coupon codes there may be consequences.

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