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PPC + Cashback = how much of the affiliate landscape?
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Good question & good thread.
PPC is here to stay, purists (and that is not meant to be derogatory) may not like ppc, but it is significantly part & parcel (not the only part) of affiliate marketing. Web 2.0, well there is a thread dedicated to that.
Perhaps affiliates in different verticals should combine their sites to create a portal if they are potentially looking to be bought out making it more appealing to prospective buyers.
What I would like to do and have done for some time is develop a directory of good quality affiliate websites, all categorised, making life easier for merchants to find affiliates to work with which suit their requirements & forge relationships. Merchants have to have contact details to access info.
Even though is good to have choice, I just feel there are maybe too many programs & sometimes the new programs don't go through an incubation period to check & improve conversion rates leaving the affiliates to be the guinea pigs, if epc isn't good enough affiliates should look at alternatives or favour cpc models.
Is the conversion rate of a price comparison where they pay via cpc site much more than affiliate, i hear differing figures, one i heard was a standardish 1%
The suggestion of some networks drifting towards a all embracing media agency is interesting, but perhaps has been happening anyhow with closed bidding groups, buying or developing the bid management software maybe lends weight to this by hinting they maybe competing directly with affiliates. The shrewd affiliates have (teamed up already) developed their own so there is less dependency.
If you are wary & doing PPC direct to merchant redirect via you own site & chuck in a different & amusing refferer search term for fun. i.e. knickerbockerglory to anyone who remembers those.
The networks we should be advocating are those who are continually developing for affiliates & not simply developing tools with the true intention of looking to be bought out. You have to make your own judgement call on that. But those who are for the former lets get behind those and bring over the merchants from other sources as well as new ones.
One thing I would like to see more off is hybrid commission structures.