As I have come to learn affiliate is NOT easy so when we spend time and money to develop a site and to have it go down the drain because of not fault of mine it not easy to take.

Thanks for the heads up on this one

This does not stop ‘cyber flight’ where a phishing/scam/whatever site can hop around ISP’s without being stopped. A scam site can be up, active and moving around inside a few hours. The ‘lock’ element of the tool prevents this.

To me, it is a ‘power’ thats already there, but this streamlines and standardises it and in turn allows both Registrars and those with complaints to be educated / access the right systems to not only enable a positive response but one with some form of consistancy and overview.

I do not think its perfect but I think its a first step that can be built on and evolved as cybercrime gets more sophisticated and needs more rapid responses.

To me the question is should .UK take a lead in developing processes to counter such problems, or sit back and be a ‘wild west’ extension.

Long term such things will evolve and add trust value to .uk which can only benefit biz on it.

In real terms today, as you say it allows people to take action either becoming a registrar, or, innovative ISP’s providing an extra USP for added info/services/policies!!

With my hypothetical hat on however, what I will say would put be off-putting in submitting a design would be that of copyright control and assignment. It’s something may designers, especially in the early days don’t think about.

By submitting a design or concept, that unique piece of work should be, by rights, the property of the designer. Change of ownership to that work should only change when (and if) the work is paid for. If we’re talking spec work up-front then that’s fair no?

I’ve read a lot of examples of clients getting their design concepts, not picking a winner and paying no-one at all, while of course they’ve helped themselves to a buffet of free ideas. Not saying it happens all the time, but it does happen. If that was a traditional client / designer relationship there would be contracts and legality in place to prevent this situation arising.

I’ll admit I don’t know all of 99designs or other spec design services t’s and c’s so I’m not making assumtions, I’d just like to know more about what is inplace to protect the designers, as without them, there is no business.

Between 30-40% of the design community is US based. The rest is spread all across the globe.

Cheers,
Jason
99designs.com

Good to see 99designs picking up on posts like this, and yes thanks I understand that side of it, was just playing devils advocate to be honest.

Whilst on the topic, are the majority of the designers on the site based in the States?

Thanks,
Greg

Thanks for sharing your experience using 99designs to source custom graphic design work.

Hi Greg,

It is important to note that 99designs exposes designers to thousands of opportunities every month that they would not normally have been exposed to.

Rather than spending time searching for work, writing proposals and otherwise marketing themselves – using 99designs, designers are able focus on doing what they love – designing. And 99designs acts as a powerful sales funnel for designers – when they win a project it often leads to a variety of direct follow on work because they now have a qualified relationship with that client. You can read more about designer experiences with 99designs by looking at the profiles on our blog.

http://bit.ly/6TgH7l

Cheers,
Jason
99designs.com

I understand your points, but to compare it to affiliate marketing isn’t a fair comparison IMHO. With affiliate marketing the potential upside is much greater as there’s potential for that income stream to continue for some time, and not just be a one-off payment for work completed. But I see where you’re coming from!

I was just trying to illustrate some of the drawbacks from a designers point of view, I can see the upside for those commissioning the projects, and indeed for those who’ve always been used to entering contests as a choice for gaining work. Good to hear you have some UK designers and that you have rewarded runner-up prizes in contests.

It’s been an interesting area of discussion, and I’m sure it will continue to be!

Thanks,
Greg

I do understand designers point of view also, but I honestly think it’s like a pitch you might get, put in all the work and get nothing in return. You wouldn’t do this type of work but others will and that’s the point, it’s useful to some and no use to others.

If only there was a wordpress section itd probably be my homepage

Some of the website designs on there are phenomenal, the only downside is you then have to pay to get them sliced up afterwards (unless you have the know-how!).

MB

In response to;
“I can hear the over paid design “guru experts” crying slave labour as I type. Well guys, sorry to say but we do live in a global economy and sourcing work around the world is the reality now”

I don’t think it’s due to a fear of loss of work, but down to the speculative nature of the contests, ie. ‘design this for me and then I’ll pay the one I like the best’, arguably it devalues the industry. For example, you don’t get a builder into build your wall then say, build it and I’ll pay if I like the end result.

If you’re looking to pay out £245 for a logo design why not use a designer in the UK with a track record, a decent portfolio, and knowledge of the market your site is operating in? For that kind of price you could take your pick from a number of UK freelancers or agencies.

I know a lot of other freelancers who will offer a complete satisfaction guarantee with their work, like myself.

Thanks,
Greg

PS- See http://www.no-spec.com/ for more details!

I think every variation of Google is taken up to something like 60 zeros.

google.com
goooooogle.com
gooooooooooooogle.com

I don’t see any point personally. But then, I have a domain that isn’t really mistakable for anything I’d bother to buy. I do buy “type in friendly” urls for new projects if I think it’s going to be super competitive though

As a network we RT Jason’s ‘buy my DVD’ message with an added link to allow affiliates to join a relevant merchant programme ( http://twitter.com/AffWin/status/5454527579 ), but we’d fully support a celebrity promoting their own products via affiliate links. To quote Mat directly “imagine the potential of links built into editorial written by the celebrities themselves”.

If Jason would like to make his first steps into the affiliate marketplace we’d be happy to assist him, but whether it’s with us or another network it would be interesting to see if this is an idea that will take off.

Keep us posted!

Will def. be seeing him when he comes to Leeds

Can I ask, are you going to publish an indicator on Merchants pages to know if they have the necessary code in place for flash tracking etc, so Affiliates know who has it working as and when they are upgraded?

We read your post with great interest as we were completing some major changes to the tracking options available on Affiliate Window. Like POR tracking is at the core of what we do and we have continually invested in this over the years.

From a network perspective we feel there are two elements required to track sales, the first is the cookie/flash cookie/IP address/ETag and the second is the presence of the conversion tag on the confirmation of sale page. Both are essential and all networks should be looking to protect each element.

When updating and improving our tracking systems, our primary objective was to ensure our conversion tag displayed in every circumstance, without this there is absolutely no chance of a sale tracking no matter how many backup methods used on each click.

To achieve this we use a number of different methods. Firstly, extensive testing occurs for each merchant prior to launch and throughout the life of the programme to ensure the tracking tag is present for every route into the merchant site. We have automated monitoring solutions to detect changes in trends so if a merchant accidentally removes the tag in a site redesign or, using another example from this post, if the tag is present on 3 of the 4 servers on which the merchant site resides, we can quickly highlight this and act upon it.

Secondly, in addition to a standard image pixel, Affiliate Window uses two additional methods to track conversions. These act as backups to the image pixel so if the customer uses security software to block the pixel from displaying, we will still track the conversion using the alternative methods. We implemented this over three years ago and saw performance across the network increase by almost 8%.

Our secondary objective was to address the issue of cookies failing to drop and on this point I am happy to report we can now track using Flash Cookies and HTTP ETag. Please see our latest blog entry for more details – http://blog.affiliatewindow.com/?p=621.

This is currently standard on all new merchant launches and being rolled out across the entire network over the coming months.

This phased roll out combines our most advanced AWin Analytics solution which negates the need for an interstitial page thus avoiding interruptions to the customer’s journey.

In addition to this, we use a 1st party cookie set from the merchant’s domain with IP tracking running as a backup.

We will be monitoring the uplift, but as you’ve already demonstrated, enhanced network tracking ensures affiliates are genuinely rewarded more often.

Adam Ross
COO
Affiliate Window

We put more emphasis on the food this year but always hard pleasing and catering for 1,000 in such little space!

As for our Candles …..We’re still trying to track down the other 78 that have gone walkies… so, com’on own up or at least post a photo of you with one folks!

Also (as per usual) it seems many agency folk still don’t get it yet are consulting to major brands!

There is variance, for example adult toy shops and dating sites seem to have cookies deleted more often by users than gift stores, and in one of the examples we show beyond the traditional cookies called Customer Base very few merchants want to take part in this type of tracking but the ones that do show a strong percentage of additional sales, for example Customer Base works if you order from your home, the office or a friends house.

Many of the additional tracking methods work fine with DART tracking and other third party tracking as most of these are just another hop in the journey of the click, where they don’t work is when 3rd party system that are inferior try to take over working out where sales come from and distribute commission on that basis. Additionally Merchants using internal process such as batching commission tend to be a lot poorer at tracking as their main business is not the tracking of sales, it’s the actually selling of items. This is of course on a case by case basis also.

It’s hard to comment on all 3rd party tracking systems as each has a strengths and weaknesses and sadly people automatically believe that if someone is huge multi-national with millions of pounds backing them that they would have better tracking systems when in fact in a lot of the time it couldn’t be further from the truth, guess that’s why good parents taught their children never to judge a book by it’s cover.

From a client point of view I do think that it is great that there is more visibility and accuracy over tracking sales through the affiliate channel.

I would be interested to know what the variance is, do all clients / sectors see such a huge increase. Does it work with DART tracking or other third party tracking?

Helen

As this information has come to light, by one of the most unbiased & trusted people I know in the industry (albeit one of the quietest) it screams volumes. I know Clarke wouldn’t stick his neck out like this unless he was 110% sure with all the facts and figures to back him up.

It’s also interesting to see another network confirm his findings!

I’m switching networks where its possible so who knows if I will see a 10% increase. I guess its hard to tell with the run up to Christmas especially as I am a lazy affiliate who doesn’t do stats at the best of time

I know your last part was a bit joking with regards to Merchants not using the 3 Networks listed here because they track better. To me it holds a great benefit for Merchants to truly understand where thier online spend is being effective and to reinvest in these areas to build a stronger online presence and you can only do that knowing the full picture.

I am sure the R.O.EYE & Econsultancy report in 2008 stated that tracking was one of the more important aspects of an Affiliate program to Merchants and Agency’s so hopefully that is indeed correct

Shortly Affiliates of Paid On Results will be able to see which sales came from which tracking method, so they can see for themselves the difference it makes and not just the overall network view as shown on the Paid On Results post.

I can’t help people being sceptical, that’s their choice. As I am just about the only person in this industry that states my interests publicly and that’s about all I can do, having being an Affiliate in very good standing for such a long time and quoted by all my peers and indeed invited by the many Networks to their events in full knowledge that I have a 28% shareholding in Paid On Results says something, indeed in different blog posts on this site some of the Industry leaders have endorsed me as a trusted voice.

Unfortunately, it’s amazing how short sighted some affiliates are, especially those getting kickbacks from networks.

you do realise of course that your article is read by merchants “why you should avoid these 3 networks” :-p

Interesting post. Do you have any data to back up the claims that some networks track up to 10% more sales than others? Have any affiliates switched networks and noticed a considerable change in conversion rates?

Now I’m not pretending to understand the intricacies of tracking and am certainly not disputing what you say. However, I’m sure many people on here are aware of your association with POR and therefore may be slightly sceptical of your claims unless you are able to categorically prove this.

Matt

These type of posts are extremely helpful insights to us affiliates and especially useful where you are willing to identify other GOOD networks rather than just talking numbers.

Very much appreciated and will certainly be changing a few links in the coming weeks to the 3 networks that offer more advanced and reliable tracking.

1 company that will remain nameless some days will be doing 5 blog posts in to Twitter in less than a min, quality stuff. But hey the great thing about Twitter is people can use it as they like because put simply if I don’t like it I can just un-follow them

Personally I’ve used twitter now for a number of years and have found myself less reliant on Google Reader – mainly because most of the blogs I read *do* feed into twitter. It notifies me easier when there is a new post and as I use an iphone app for my twittering I can click on the link and read it quicker too. I also tend to find that it leads to more people finding out about the blog.

Anyhow – I do enjoy your twitter messages so keep it up Clarke!

I have also followed you on Twitter still have a way to go to catch up with you though, thats for sure.

Food was excellent as was the bar, who like many others enjoyed the cider. Thanks to Hannah, for letting me into the secret of Mount Gay.

All this was then rounded off with a disco, not the heavy banging variety we usually endure at these networking events, but one which we could (try) sing and dancing the night away, until 3am – oh and there were sandwiches laid on at a late hour for those with the munchies.

All bases covered, a fantastic night… Thanks Existem-AM

Off to post a link on my own little affiliate rant, I mean blog!

I am really pleased everyone enjoyed it, it was a lovely day, good food, loads of drink, good company, and come 12:00 excellent music…lol.

As Clarke has mentioned we have already booked for next year 20th August, which is a Friday night so make sure you make it for the weekend.

We did indeed raise good funds for the RNLI with a total of over £600 being raised.

Looking forward to next year already.