Off topic: Joan of Arc a legend was born

You know, that we Fench people like romantic stories and love prude heroins.
Joanof Arc is one o them or shall I say was, as historians are now doubting the veracity of the myth.
As demonstrated by Marcel Gay & Roger Senzig in “L’affaire Jeanne d’Arc” (The Joan of Arc case), Joan is a forgery, a legend built by the 15th century media industry and revived in the 19th century quest for French heros.
So the Brits may have not killed her afterall, and she even lived happy ever after, she did not marry a Prince but was of noble descent.
Well in a sense it can be applied to today’s world where media are so powerful that a large majority of the population believe their every word without questionning.

Does it mean French and Brits will fell in love again? Well I don’t think so but I thought it was funny enough to share. 

Is affiliation marketing a good idea?

Lot of affiliation posts lately, I must be really inspired or paid search is becoming so boring that I need something fresh

If you are asking yourself the question, then you are definitely heading in the right direction, affiliate marketing is probably the best idea you have ever had !

There is more than one good reason to invest in affiliate marketing, to cite a few:
- £2.16 billion revenue was generated through affiliation last year in the UK alone (source Econsultancy)
- Top networks are now focusing on a better and broader service offering, giving your affiliate program a strong chance to make the right impact on your company
- Affiliation is performance based but is also a great way to generate leads and attract B2B customer via per per call or hybrid models
- Affiliate is now a mature media and now a bible of best practices any good networks and/or affiliate managers will apply on your program. The pionners of the early 2000’s have done most of the hard work for you and tried and tested anything you can imagine
- And of course it drives revenue, reduces cost of acquisition, gives you a better understanding of customer fullfilment path and ultimately improves branding and on-line impression shares.

One last thing to bear in mind, Affiliate marketing is not ONLY about authorising paid search affiliates to do a great job for you. There are many good sites out there so you’ll need to consider the broader pictures as there aren’t so many so called search affiliates that a program can take. Think blogger, think content sites, think cash back and loyalty scheme…    

Another Cuill (pronounced Kool) project

Another day, another Google challenger, this one is called Cuill and is the idea of Tom Costello (CEO), Anna Patterson and Russell Power. Tom created Webfountain when he was at IBM and Anna and Russell were formerly employed by Google and worked on the TeraGoogle.

This is how they describe their web engine: Cuill Inc. (pronounced [kool]) is a startup company that is pioneering a new approach to Search. The company was founded by Anna, Russell, and Tom. Our offices are located on a quiet street in Menlo Park, CA. If you’d like to learn more about Cuill or the people behind it, please get in touch.
The site is still a work in progress but you can have a peak here .
They seem nice enough, they know from previous experience what search on the Net actually means and their project may be an interesting one to follow.
Cuill is inspired by techniques based on the semantic analysis of data and should go out some time in 2008.
Lets hope the Cuill project does not bite the dust before launch.

Affiliate marketing don’ts

Long ago I created a post on affiliate do’s, now I tried to put together a list of don’ts.

1) Do not think Affiliate is a cheap media: Merchants seem to think affiliate marketing is a miraculous media that does not need investment and will get you a great ROI in no time. Well, guess what you cannot expect something for nothing! AM is a great media and it does deliver fantastic results but you have to invest to get something back. I am not talking only money but TIME. Affiliate need to be motivated, informed, they need to be in a competitive position so all their efforts are worth the pain.

2) Do not overpower your network: Networks are great and in 99% of cases the people I worked with were top consultant who were taking really good care of my programs.  BUT I will say the brand is yours and you can sell it to your affiliate better than anyone else. No matter how good the network is, it cannot substitute for commitment and involvement from your company.

3) Affiliate are business partner: Not treating them as such is a mistake. Give them all the tool they need just like you’ll do with other partners.

4) Do not think short term: A good affiliate program reaches maturity in the first year. You have to give your program the time to grow and think about it as a long term investment. This will need you may have to fight internally as the media can potentially be ROI negative (if you add setup fees, amangement fees, network access fees, internal resources…) in the first 3-6 months. 

5) Do not throw the all catalogue to affiliates: You know your product better than your affiliates or your Network, if you have hundreds of products, how do you want affiliates to know which one to promote? The best is really to categorise your products and let affiliates know what are your best sellers, top deals and hot items. 

6) Do not let the program take care of his own: Affiliate program and management is not something you can implement and then let go expecting the program to take care of itself. COMMITMENT is the word when starting an affiliate program.

7) Do not let issues ruin your program: Be grateful for your affiliate to come back with issues or problems as if they report them, it also mean they care. Make sure all affiliate queries are top priority on your list. If you don’t it is going to be harder to get affiliates back and program on the right track.

Don’t let the cost be out of your control: Affiliation is not only about commission and incentives. True, if your program is good money, affiliates will be more than happy to join. BUT make sure you are not throwing the cash, affiliates would rather go for a good program in the long run rather than a program that pays LOADS but is not viable for the merchant.

9) Do not let the program fade away: by allowing stagnation. It is tempting but affiliates should always get something to talk about and fresh creative. If you do not make the choice to grow your program it will eventually die and affiliates will move on.

10) Don’t make your affiliates work too hard: The only thing affiliate should have to worry about is PERFORMANCE and nothing else. If you ask them to be copy writer, brand managers, content manager and web merchandiser you are asking them far too much. By providing the right tools to affiliates you will have them concentrate on what is best for you (ie Conversion). 

HAVE FUN and make sure you team up with a great network that delivers to expectations rather than selling you services you won’t need

PS: Sorry I messed up a bit with this article, I have now amended it to what it was supposed to be

Google PPA, the holy grail?

Well, this is not new Google launched a beta version of its Pay per Action model in March this year and extended it globally in June still as a beta, but in a recent speech Marissa Mayer called it the holy grail.

Why? Well anybody involves in emarketing knows that CPA (cost per action) or PPA is good for an awful lot of reasons: it reduces your cost of acquisition, helps you get a better grip on your budget and your spend, drives your ROI up, increases transparency…BUT in the case of Google, I would not call it the Holy Grail yet.

Looking at the model I would like to share my pros and cons with you so you can have an idea of what we are dealing with
Google PPA is only available as a beta for Adsense customers (so using the Google content network not the Google search network). To be able to participate you need to have Google tracking in place so Google can track the conversion themselves (to that extend it does not differ much with other PPA model providers).
Pros
- Pay per action model so you only pay for conversion
- You set your own conversion price so if you decide to pay $1 per conversion it is up to you (only thing will be that your ads will not be ranked as high)
- You can select the categories of sites you can work with
- Choice of format PPA works with text links, banners and ad copy format
- Reduces click fraud on Adsense (not that it does not exist anymore but since you only pay for conversion and not for click, you do not really worry how many clicks it will take to generate a sale)
- Acquisition costs are easier to control (as you set up your own conversion price)

Cons
- Available to Content Targeting only. PPA works only with Adsense (content network), not with Adwords, so volume is low and Adsense is known for low conversion level (traffic is not qualified so more difficult to convert into sales).
- Low click volume, so far Google is allowing less than 10% of its adsense traffic to go to PPA ads so it can take a while before seeing any conversion and even more difficult to optimise fully
- Purchase Fraud, Google is not building an affiliate platform so they do not have the tools to differentiate a valid order from a bogus one. Also no process is in place for order reconciliation. Meaning that whatever your conversion price is you will have to pay it even if the order is not genuine.
- Limited to a few players so far: to participate in the program, your site must be tagged for Google conversion tracking and you need to meet the requirement of high number of total conversions (500 conversions in the last 30 days).
- Some content sites are reluctant to switch to PPA.
- No de-duplication with your other marketing initiatives so you will end up over counting conversions on Google especially if you also have an affiliate campaign in place where affiliate use the content network as well as the search network.
- Google conversion tracking is not 100% accurate and depends on how the tracking is implemented on your site.

I guess by now, you know where I stand, Google PPA model is a nice gadget but is far from being what Google claims it is. And to those who predicted the end of affiliate networks because of Googliath, I would answer, see you in 10 years