Revisited : Affiliate Association - Who should the membership consist off?

[jess1]

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The more I read, the more I feel that perhaps there should be one for networks, one for agencies, one for merchants, one for affiliates so that each can established their agreed stance with one umbrella over all (but not in charge off all). I haven't explained it as well as I would like to, but feel that could be more organised.

Keep those ideas flowing Paul. Regulation is the way to go and will go. Dilution of personal and business income will force it to be so, of this I have no doubts. 2008 may well be the year that we see “the coming together” of associated parties for the benefit of preserving, first and foremost “The business” and secondly “The industry”.
Nothing like an economic threat to get bums on seats talking and listening.

My worry is that, this industry will quickly become so fragmented. thus rendering the task impossible to regulate any more. The longer we sit and debate the more fragmented this industry becomes. Without sounding too much like a dooms day prophet, its already happening. I have taken a back seat for a while and will continue to do so, just so I can observe from the outside looking in. If you are in the thick of it, it’s really hard to see the wood for the trees. These last few months has been a real eye opener for me.

Most of the Affiliate Networks have so many fingers in so many pies that the conflict of interests involving affiliates maybe too great to over come. I’m not talking about dodgy stuff, but in their merchant account management services re ppc, seo, media buys and so on, as I have stated before, this I understand and if I were a network and can offer these services, then why wouldn’t I? To date, this has not been their primary business model. But this does throw up the question, are affiliates now being perceived as “Scavengers”? They get the left over’s and can they survive with the left over’s? This is how I see the future of affiliate marketing. The crème de la crème affiliates are already being siphoned off and given preferential treatment. Thus causing a divide between the “ I have” affiliates and the “I have not” affiliates. It is not in their interest to support other affiliates as they compete and won’t want to lose their status, their income today makes this so. (Lol.. just popped into my head, working class affiliates, upwardly mobile affiliates and upper class affiliates YouTube - The Frost Report - Class Sketch ) I digress.

Paul, I like that scenario, all sectors having their own association and Im sure in time this will happen. But…one step at a time and for me its about protecting the ones that have got the most to lose and the most vulnerable and for me it starts and stops with the affiliates.
Networks can take care of themselves, down sizing for example in a worse case scenario.

For the industry to grow and survive. There is a real shortage if new blood (affiliates) coming into this industry, the knock on affect of this is being felt. “We” Agencies, Aff networks and merchants are seeing fewer quality content affiliates year on year. This suggests that the majority of affiliates are not getting the whole longevity thing and other factors too many to mention. Focussing, on the here and now, PPC I’m guessing, making up the majority of aff networks income. More and more merchants are saying “No” ppc allowed. Where does that leave the aff networks now?

Education and Regulation is still, for me the only way we can protect and survive.
Without affiliates we have no idustry, is the bottom line!

[aldo]

It seems like 2007 has been the year where in an attempt to cut marketing budgets some merchants have chosen the affiliate channel as a soft target.

Therefore I think that although there are many reasons why it will be hard to get affiliates to stick together, I also know that strength in numbers is needed. Appeasement did not work when Europe hoped the Hitler problem would just go away and it will not work here.

Networks need to work with us on this too because if we stop earning, so do they and at the end of the day they are the ones in the best position to let a merchant know when they have gone a step too far.

As things become more competitive online merchants are going to be looking more and more closely at their marketing budgets and as the cheeky ones take liberties cutting commissions or bringing in totalitarian affiliate rules and passing any savings on to their sites product price even the good merchants are going to be forced to follow suit in order to remain competitive, (this just happened with the ghd merchants who have all started to cut commission rates in order to match each others site prices)

I feel some of the problems getting this off the ground will be..

• Getting Affiliates to work together (let's face it we are all competing against each other)
• Affiliates that do not want to damage relationships they have built up with merchants (if a merchant has giving an affiliate a private commission how can we expect the affiliate to boycott them because the merchant has cut the programs standard commission by half)
• Affiliates with comparison sites that cannot boycott a low priced merchant if they want their site to remain competitive.
• Scab Affiliates that would rub their hands together if a large group of affiliates stopped promoting a merchant.
• Affiliates who do not want the rest of the affiliate community to know what programs they are promoting. (I got this a lot when I was managing campaigns and wanted to post competition winners on the forum)
• I don't know an affiliate who has much spare time to spend on this.

What can we do?

I think the best thing we can do is hit merchants in their pockets and to have protest days which could go something like this..

• Merchant takes a liberty
• We post in a special section of a dedicated blog (affiliate action or drop link days section) what the issue is and ask the general affiliate community to comment on ways to fairly resolve the issue in a way that works for all parties.
  
• If the above fails, then as a combined unit take action on a particular day (repeated if needed) and shut down the traffic for a day.

We could then make it hard for the offending merchants to see any one affiliate as a ring leader which should make more people feel happy about jumping aboard and as it is only for a day affiliate losses should not be too high.

I understand that without merchants we would not have a anything to market and we all have great relationships with many good merchants but in a time of increasing traffic cost inflation we need to make some merchants think before they act or we could soon be seeing a year straight out of the very funny (at the moment) Loquax 2008 predictions http://www.affiliates4u.com/feeds/80...he_year_ahead/


AL

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Good post Aldo. I hope you enjoy your first family Christmas.

Currently I am leaning towards

The more I read, the more I feel that perhaps there should be one for networks, one for agencies, one for merchants, one for affiliates so that each can established their agreed stance with one umbrella over all (but not in charge off all).

Would affiliates generally be more agreeable amongst themselves on standard & proper practises, be more self administering & even policing of one another, together with being more unformed in recommending best practices to the industry, whereby networks & large brand merchants "generally" have to careful on what they say or comment on or action on behind any corporate guise in a public environment.

I just think affiliates would generally be more likely make & attempt to keep their house in order & acknowldge shortfalls.

Would networks seriously come forward on where they fail in certain areas to another network whether be tracking & where they fail affiliates or merchants?

I think there are a few people at several agencies & non blue chip merchants & even several network members who have an truly open & honest mind. Most of whom we do see floating around & contributing to the forum and would be benefical to any discussions.