Are the Affiliate Window affiliate sites zero rated?

[maverick]

Tweet

Hi,

As per my question at Formal Request to Affiliate Window which seems to have been mysteriously closed, not by me.

The affiliate sites that Affiliate Window link to at http://www.affiliatewindow.com/links.php are they rated at 0% commission or if not then who gets the commission?

In the general forum as believe this to be a general question to be brought to the attention of all.

Cheers,

mav

[maverick]

Sorry forgot to ask the other part that was outstanding, which was how can affiliates get added to this list?

Cheers,

mav

[Lee_Owen]

From looking at whois, they're affiliate window's affiliate sites. Domains and sites owned by affiliate window.

Lee

[Matthew Wood]

The thread was closed for a different reason - These affiliate window owned sites should be zero rated, but in reality I doubt they are?

[marky]

I am being a little slow this morning, so appologies for ignorance/morning sleepyness.... why should they be 0 commission rated and what is the issue ?

[Matthew Wood]

I guess you could argue that they 'could' be competing with affiliates within the SERPS, as its listed within their site-map and thus crawlable - they could just modify their robots.txt file to disallow spiders from crawling their affiliate sites - To be honest I'm not sure why they would even list those sites on their corportate website though. Odd.

edit - I missed an earlier reply re testing and attaining relevant SEO examples, I guess thats fair enough, as long as you are not an AW affiliate sitting under AW in the serps who could be used for that purpose!

[8601cam]

Thanks Matt for clarifying the 'thread closure' situation.

Yes these vertical ShopWindow url's are owned by Affiliate Window this has never been hidden and has been raised and addressed previously. Without reiterating the same information they will allow us to expand the development capabilities for ShopWindow using 'real world' results. These will filter down to all affiliates enabling them to benefit from tried and tested tools.

During this development these demo sites will naturally have to perform as normal affiliate sites and no, they will not be zero commission rated for any valid sale through a merchant. As explained previously any revenue will be channeled back into the ShopWindow project which we have invested in considerably. If any affiliate thinks this is an underhand ploy to develop our own affiliate sites then consider this:

Development of these sites is visible and no attempt has been made to hide them.

Why would we release the ShopWindow Toolset unless we want to create a level playing field for all affiliates?

The tools and performance of these sites is being shared and controlled by a steering committee of 10 affiliates. It is these individuals who will help shape the requirements and innovations which can be applied and tested.

Before anyone claims 'favouritism' these affiliates were invited based on their existing work with using the Toolset and invariably because they are vocal about problems and solutions to make the Toolset better.

Regarding the listings of ShopWindow sites within our corporate site (Affiliatewindow.com), these links are listed in order to allow for transparency between us as a network and our affiliate partners. It is not feasible for us as a network to allow for affiliate urls to be linked from this domain as SEO (and other traffic methods such as PPC) are the responsibility of the affiliate.

Opening up the possibility of allowing affiliates to have their sites listed on our corporate domain would render our domain more of a directory rather than corporate site, and this is not the aim or requirement of affiliatewindow.com

I hope this answers your questions.

Kind Regards

Mark Walters

[Matthew Wood]

Sounds very fair, thanks for the clarification and transparency Mark.

Matthew.

[KieronD]

The tools and performance of these sites is being shared and controlled by a steering committee of 10 affiliates. It is these individuals who will help shape the requirements and innovations which can be applied and tested.

Before anyone claims 'favouritism' these affiliates were invited based on their existing work with using the Toolset and invariably because they are vocal about problems and solutions to make the Toolset better.

If there are 10 affiliates involved in the steering committee then will there be some sort of public sharing of the learnings made from the development of these 22 affiliate sites? And, can you name the 10 affiliates involved in this project? As the objective for Affiliate Window is to be open and transparent then I can't see this being an issue.

Speaking as a user of the AW Toolset (I have 5 sites built using the Toolset so far) I have to be honest and say that I think creating 22 sites is overkill. I would understand if you had one major site i.e. shopwindow.com but I don't see the need for all the other sites.

If you want to monitor how sites built using the Toolset operate and are affected by search engines then why not use affiliates? As I said, I have 5 sites built so far and am happy to share learnings.

As Matt and others stated earlier all you are doing in effect is launching 22 sites in direct competition with your affiliates. I don't see that as healthy or in my best interest as an affiliate.

[8601cam]

Hi Kieron, the choice to not use affiliate sites was made for several reasons, mainly parity, control of timings, data analysis, etc. We also anticipated that it may be considered an unfair advantage to use true affiliate sites that will remain in the SEO space long term.

Currently we are talking about 22 url's, again it seemed pertinent to cover the core industry sectors and no provision has been made to use them all. For example the original 2 sites under development have been expanded to 4 to help us test the impact of releasing our API at different geographical locations across the globe. This in turn will allow us to enhance search speed times.

The request for these 10 affiliate participants was made via both the A4U and ShopWindow forums; it was their choice to help with ShopWindow development. They are not paid, they have not been coerced and I imagine they want, what you want, to share any knowledge gained. I cannot speak for them but will approach each to see if it’s OK to release the names of members of the steering committee.

I have had a discussion with Amarath who tells me you were in fact one of the affiliates we approached directly to be involved with the steering committee.

Itchy, the ShopWindow Toolset project has and still does take considerable investment. The decision to plough back any revenue was formally taken as an interim measure as the volumes would not be significant. These sites are being used as optimisation platforms and showcases, any revenue earned is minimised by the fact they are not being promoted via any other means (unlike affiliate ShopWindow sites). If they are successful on this basis alone this will be greater news for affiliates and these sites will have proved their purpose.

Regarding your comment about 'hoping the thread goes away', when have we given you that indication?

Kind Regards

Mark

[KieronD]

I have had a discussion with Amarath who tells me you were in fact one of the affiliates we approached directly to be involved with the steering committee.

Hi Mark, yes I was invited to a lunch in London to discuss the Toolset but I couldn't attend as being based in Sunderland and I don't get to London as much as I would like. However I never said that I didn't want to be part of the committee, quite the opposite I would like to be a part of it to help improve the functionality for all affiliates.

I still disagree that you had to register 22 URL's to cover the main industry sectors. OK you are only using 4 for now, but I can imagine you will use them all in time.

I have a big problem with affiliate networks operating affiliate sites, full stop. OMG do it which is why I don't use them as a network. And it would be a shame if AW went down this route too.

[8601cam]

Kieron, don't get me wrong my comment wasn't in anyway a dig. If you yourself received an invitation it merely adds validity to the number of affiliates approached for this project. I appreciate the location difficulties but will bring your comments to Amarath and David's attention. I'm sure your input would be valuable.

I take your issues on board and hopefully affiliates can now see what we are trying to achieve here. This project has been a long time in development and offers partners excellent product comparison tools but with more development and evaluation it could be so much more.

Kind Regards

Mark

[Itchy]

Regarding your comment about 'hoping the thread goes away', when have we given you that indication?

Kind Regards

Mark

Erm do a search in your forum and see the amount of threads with tumbleweed in em

pick n choose answers dont worry your network aint the only one

The decision to plough back any revenue was formally taken as an interim measure as the volumes would not be significant.
These sites are being used as optimisation platforms and showcases, any revenue earned is minimised by the fact they are not being promoted via any other means (unlike affiliate ShopWindow sites).

So if the volumes of sales do become significant then will you still pocket the profits?
proberly no doubt the considerable investment will be considerably more
Nice blag

[KevinEdwards]

Itchy,

Have to say some of your comments underline the thankless task that working at a network can sometimes be.

Question of 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'. Networks are frequently accused of not listening to affiliates, launching new technology without consultation. Amo has spent a great deal of time setting up a steering group of interested parties in order to avoid this.

We're genuinely trying to develop the ShopWindow technology in a consultative way - not washing our hands of it and getting affiliates to do the work for nothing as you suggest.

[maverick]

"Thankless task", lol it's interesting to hear that you work at AW as a volunteer and don't get paid.

As for AW trying to convince us that they should be permitted to pass the commission they make back into the Shop Window project this is some kind of joke. If the volumes of sales are so low, why bother doing this? If the volumes do not increase is there a risk that you won't be able to afford to continue the Shop Window project?

"Development of these sites is visible and no attempt has been made to hide them.", sorry I apologise on this one as I missed where this page is linked on the site or the email where you described the page.

If the sites are indeed designed to showcase the Shop Window platform why are so many not actually completed, rather just display "Coming Soon" messages?

I am also very interested in how Shop Window will help with credit card signups on the site http://www.latestcreditcards.co.uk, do your credit card merchants offer feeds?

In your aim to provide transparency and to showcase the features of Shop Window why not publish the results from these sites in terms of traffic and sales? Surely this would be the most useful thing to do for affiliates and would give a better indication of their success?

cheers,

mav