Over the last week or so, in the wake of the Google abolishment of the rules on trademark bidding, I am certain you have been inundated with emails from merchants reminding and revising their ppc policies, possibly to the point where you are screaming “no more” and getting itchy with the delete button finger.

Of all the emails that landed in my inbox the one that is etched in my mind is from gadget merchant Firebox simply for this paragraph:

No Competitor Brand Bidding - Please do not bid on the trademarked brand names of our competitors when promoting Firebox.

It makes us look bad and feel icky.

(Plus we get nasty phonecalls from our competitors, which nobody likes.)

That one line (It makes us look bad and feel icky) should be enough to put off anyone from even considering allowing competitor brand bidding on their affiliate program, although it would be a bit naive to think that it would put off everyone, as unfortunately there are plenty of people of low moral fibre.

I will let you dear reader undertake your own research as to who is allowing the dubious practice of brand bidding on competitor terms.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Are Banks Targeting Good Payers In Credit Squeeze?

In my experience the answer is yes, well they certainly are not bothering with those that can’t pay or won’t pay, no point really it would just be a waste of effort.

I have a credit card that I have always used for my affiliate marketing activity, ppc being the biggest expense, in November they increased my credit limit by £900 and I thought thats cool if I decide to run any vigorous campaigns over the festive period the credit is there, as it turned out I never used this extra credit as I had made a conscious decision to reduce ppc activity so when they reduced me back to the previous limit in January I thought nothing of it.

However every month since my limit has been reduced on this card by a few hundred pounds, I’ve never had any defaults on it and quite often paid off a couple of grand a month, now because of this constant chipping away of my credit limit I am reluctant to over pay in case it drops by more, consequently there is very little spending power on that card now, luckily my seo activity far exceeds my ppc at the moment, if it had happened twelve months ago it would have been a disaster.

I’m sure that many other card users with a good payment record are also being squeezed.

And Is It Starting To Affect Online Shopping?

Hopefully not, April was a pretty good month for me ppc was at an all time low and money earned was pretty reasonable, other affiliates have reported similar results, however if the banks continue to squeeze, disposable funds are going to be reduced making it harder for consumers to make online purchases.

Have any merchants been affected by the credit squeeze?

Has anyone else seen their credit card limit systematically reduced month on month?

Any affiliates noticed a marked downturn in sales?

Anyone got anything else to say about this situation?

Just comment in the box below.

Popularity: 9% [?]

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The Bond family quest for global internet domination moved up a notch last night when my daughter Natasha launched her first website, not technically child labour as every penny the site earns will be for her and HMR&C to divi up.

Natasha’s site is Alternative Fashion, don’t be put off by the lack of posts the blog is only 1 day old, this is a girl that has managed to post over 10,000 times on Gaia in four years, that rate of production channeled into affiliate marketing should quickly produce results.

Anyone with a clothing / fashion / lifestyle site or blog who wants to exchange links with Alternative Fashion just contact me and I’ll sort it out.

Which brings us on to Chocolate, anyone who has been on the a4uforum recently will have noticed that Chris Clarkson and the Sunshine team have been very active recruiting affiliates with a series of incentives and missions the ultimate prize being a place on the Affiliate Future Barbados 2008 event, the prizes for the missions themselves have been pretty good too winning affiliates have been whisked off to the sun .

Mission #8 was simply to Deeplink from a hotel, resort or country themed page to the relevant page on sunshine.co.uk, I’m pleased to say that has won me a ticket in the prize draw for one of the Barbados places.

Apparently there are now 13 people in with a chance of winning one of the 2 tickets to Barbados, pretty good odds so maybe I should keep quiet about Mission #9.

OK you have twisted my arm Mission #9 is to add one of the excellent dynamic Sunshine offer banners to your travel site.

The winner of this mission will win a one year subscription to the Hotel Chocolat Tasting Club and an entry in the Barbados prize draw! (bet you were wondering where chocolate came in).

My new travel site was set up partly as a vehicle to get involved with these missions, although I left it late and only went live a couple of days ago, the site is Algarve Hotels which was inspired by an excellent week I spent at Paul and Jules villa in Portugal.

Popularity: 14% [?]

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Registration is now open for a4uexpo 2008 the Affiliate Marketing Conference at ExCeL London on 14th - 15th October 2008.

Get in early and save £100 on the delegate rate by registering before 31st May.

Here is a snippet from last years event.

Buy, beg or borrow a ticket but make sure you get to the a4uexpo, it promises to be bigger and better than ever.

Click here to learn more and to register.

Popularity: 19% [?]

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One enigma in affiliate marketing is what exactly does the merchant pay the affiliate.

The thing is all things are not equal some merchants pay commission on the full price of the goods the customer buys including vat, others deduct the vat before paying commission, to add another variable other merchants also pay commission on shipping charges. Any combination of these can and will be paid by different merchants, except maybe paying on vat and shipping but not goods, unless you know better.

So how much is 10%?

Lets take a theoretical order of £100* where the commission is 10%, shipping is £5. (*the £100 includes vat at 17.5%)

Not enough room to post every scenario so I’ll whiz through the most common.

Merchant 1 pays commission on the full value of the order including the vat - £100 @ 10% = £10

Merchant 2 pays commission on the full value of the order including the vat and shipping - £100 + £5 @ 10% = £10.50

Merchant 3 deducts vat at 17.5% before paying commission - £100 - £17.5 = £82.5 @ 10% = £8.25

So you see 3 scenarios and three very different commission payments in the worst case 10% of £100 is £8.25.

It would be nice if the information regarding what the merchant pays was available on the network merchant page, only place I’ve seen it is in the additional information on Paid On Results and then not for every merchant.

Popularity: 35% [?]

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