State of the Affiliate Marketing Industry in 2009

[Linda Buquet]

Website Magazine just came out with a great article by Shawn Collins with lots of important industry stats from the 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report. The Affstat survey was distributed to more than 450 affiliates to help determine how affiliates work and what managers can do to help them be more successful.

Included in the article are stats and commentary regarding affiliate cookie durations, commission issues, how affiliates research and find new affiliate programs and more.

<strong><a href="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/state-of-the-affiliate-marketing-industry-2009.aspx">State of the Affiliate Marketing Industry - 2009</a></strong>

The numbers behind the numbers in the performance marketing space.

Many small details combine to make for a successful affiliate program. And they can all be summed up in one tenet for affiliate managers: Ask your affiliates what they want and give it to them.

What follows are some valuable insights to the industry for both affiliates and program managers. With the massive market encompassing affiliate marketing, getting on the same page as your business partners can go a long way. Use this information to help streamline your affiliate marketing efforts and offerings.

 

[cowy]

I still don't understand how we should disclose as affiliate marketer.

Is write something below the content like is OK?

mysite.com are affiliated with merchantsite.com, we do receive small percentage from the sales generated reffered from our site. Result of this product is not typical, some people receive the result showed in testimonials while the others don't. For more information read our Disclosure Page​

Or can we write something more informallike this?

mysite.com are affiliated with merchantsite.com. Some people get the result they desired as stated in testimonials but most people doesn't get the desired result because they are too lazy to follow guidelines to get the best result. We get small commission from sales generated through our site to pay our hosting bills and keep this site alive.​

I still have no clue what I have to disclose at my websites,,

Second question, I live far faaaaar away from US and I'm not an US citizen, but my country have diplomatic relation with US. Can I sued and fined if I don't follow the rules made by FTC?

 

[Sylonious]

I still don't understand how we should disclose as affiliate marketer.

Is write something below the content like is OK?

I still have no clue what I have to disclose at my websites,,

Second question, I live far faaaaar away from US and I'm not an US citizen, but my country have diplomatic relation with US. Can I sued and fined if I don't follow the rules made by FTC?

One thing that caught my eye was that they went out of their way to make a distinction between bloggers and review websites like CNET for example.

“We are distinguishing between who receives the compensation and who does the review,” said Cleland. “In the case where the newspaper receives the book and it allows the reviewer to review it, it’s still the property of the newspaper. Most of the newspapers have very strict rules about that and on what happens to those products.”

The FTC seems to think that a blog/flog (or other social media source) is a more trusted source than a traditional site and should be scrutinized more heavily.

So basically if you are one-hit-wonder affiliate marketer avoid using a blog/flog format if you don't want to put a disclaimer outlining your affiliate commission before you link out to the vendor.

Second, the key issue for affiliate marketers is the part about "typical results".

You can only talk about typical results, which usually means no results at all. So basically they are telling you to stop creating those testimonial flogs all together. There is no wiggle room. You can't say I earned $10,000 then have a disclaimer saying "results not typical".

The final point and probably the most important part is that they will go after the advertiser and not individual bloggers.

I must stress again that Cleland informed me that enforcement wouldn't make sense if individual bloggers were targeted. The FTC intends to direct its energies to advertisers.

So basically you have to worry about getting kicked out of an affiliate program (after repeated offenses and warnings) instead of getting fined. The advertiser themselves are the ones who pay the fines.

Just monitor your affiliate vendor's terms of service very closely and pay close attention to how they enforce those rules.

Note: Also make sure that those way back machines don't index and keep a record of your website and how it looked in the past.

Source:
Reviewer beware again: Claification on guidelines causes more concerns
Interview with the FTC’s Richard Cleland : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits

 

[Sylonious]

Notes on Cleland - At first this guy was saying that they would go after bloggers, but after reading all the different responses to that statement he realized that it would be nearly impossible to regulate the millions and millions of blogs out there. This just shows you that this guy has absolutely no idea of what he is talking about.

They talk about the "egregious" offenders (I assume he's talking about flogs). If they really wanted to go after flogs they would have gone after the advertising networks and force them to regulate who they allow to advertise.

Otherwise flogs will basically go on uninterrupted. When you make $50,000 a month doing anything you will move to whatever country will give you safe harbor. The FTC will find out quickly that they don't have the man power to deal with flogs on any level, advertiser or affiliate.

 

[cowy]

Hi Sylonious,
Thanks for the information, it's really useful and give me idea how I have to disclose

In my site, I copy testimonials from all over the web, mostly from advertiser page and sometimes from the other sites like Yahoo answers or even amazon. As affiliate who doesn't get the product, I don't know if the testimonials are true or just made up. However, I can prove that the testimonials exist and I tell the reader where the testimonials/review was taken. However, after reading all over the forum, I think I will take off those testimonials, it's better not to play with fire, right?

I also don't know with the typical result of those products. As affiliate, we don't know the typical result of the product. Some vendors also don't know the typical result from their customer too, so how we write the disclosure?