21st Century Affiliate Marketing

On their blog, Aweber announced Exciting Changes to the AWeber Affiliate Program. You can visit the blog to learn all the details and read comments from other affiliates.

Here are the basic details:

Based on your feedback, we are happy to announce the following changes to the AWeber affiliate program:

1. All commissions will be raised to 30%. This includes existing 1st tier commissions of 20%.

2. Second tier commissions are being phased out to meet Paypal’s terms of service and enable paying of affiliates via Paypal.

3. Your affiliate cookie will be a 1 year, first visit cookie.

4. You will soon have the option of being paid via PayPal or postal check.

5. All affiliates will be paid once a month, on the first of every month.

6. The minimum check payout will be $30.00 for US affiliates and $50.00 for affiliates not based in the US (This applies to both PayPal Payments and postal payments)

All of these changes will be effective on April 8th, 2009. The only exception will be the PayPal payment option, which will be available in the near future.

I have mixed feelings about these changes.

Let’s start with the only real negative I see.

I don’t like that they’re using a first visit cookie. Most of the affiliate programs that pay me the most use a last visit cookie.

What’s the difference?

With a first visit cookie, a purchase will be credited to the first affiliate to introduce you to a business or product. The great majority of people do not purchase on the first visit.

With a last visit cookie, a purchase is credited to the affiliate who convinced the person to buy. Since that affiliate, the last one visited, probably is the one who actually persuaded the prospect to purchase, I believe that is the affiliate who deserves credit, and a commission, for the sales conversion.

Let’s look at an example…

Let’s say that Bob is vaguely interested in autoresponders, email marketing, newsletters, and making it easy for his readers to subscribe to his blog posts via email. He really doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do or which service is best for his needs.

Bob comes across Nancy’s website and she explains some of the benefits of using Aweber’s service, as opposed to other services that are available.

If Bob clicks Nancy’s affiliate link to visit the Aweber site, he will have a one-year cookie set in his browser that identifies Nancy as the affiliate who introduced him to the service.

If he purchases on that visit, or shortly thereafter, Nancy deserves credit for the sale and an ongoing commission.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

However, Bob probably won’t purchase immediately, or even soon. He’ll probably forget about it, get distracted, or something else will stop him from purchasing.

Later, maybe months later, he comes across Steve’s website and is reminded about Aweber.

Not only is he reminded, Steve makes a compelling argument for purchasing the services that Aweber provides. Bob’s mind is made up and he goes and subscribes to the service.

In this case, with a first visit cookie, Nancy will still get the credit and commission for the sale, even though Bob purchased as a result of Steve’s marketing, not Nancy’s.

However, with a last visit cookie, Steve would get the credit and commission for the sale.

I believe that would be appropriate since it was his efforts that finally persuaded Bob to purchase.

I don’t like first visit cookies for affiliate sales.

Regarding the other changes…

I’m always happy to hear that someone is willing to pay me more for my sales efforts. I have no argument with that.

The change from a 10-year cookie to a 1-year cookie is largely irrelevant, because most cookies would not persist for ten years, anyway.

I like the option of being paid by PayPal.

Although I like two-tier affiliate programs, I don’t have any real opinion about Aweber changing to a one-tier program, especially if it makes it easier for some affiliates to be paid via PayPal.

All in all, I like the changes Aweber has made to their affiliate program, but I would really encourage them to change to a last visit cookie for determining who gets the credit for a sale.

In my opinion, Aweber offers the best services related to email marketing and I’m a happy customer and affiliate. I intend to use their services for a long, long time.

Are you an Aweber affiliate?

What do you think about these changes?

Act on your dream!

JD

Why can’t active sign-up forms for AWeber mailing lists be added to Squidoo lenses?

Is there a solution?

Today, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this subject, because the ability to add AWeber subscription forms to my Squidoo lenses is very important to my plans for next year.

I don’t believe there are any unsolvable technical problems stopping these two companies from working together.

It is very easy to add active AWeber subscription forms on other sites. They provide two easy-to-use methods: Javascript and HTML forms. You can see an example of the HTML version of a subscription form on every page of this site, right below my photo in the right column. You can see an example of the javascript version of a sign-up form on the Subscribe page on this site.

In both cases, I accomplished what I wanted in just a few minutes.

Unfortunately, I’ve been looking for a way to do this simple task on my Squidoo lenses for months. I thought I found a solution last week, and it worked very well, but it is being killed by Squidoo.

I just created a new lens with an open letter to Tom Kulzer, CEO and founder of AWeber.com, and Seth Godin, Founder of Squidoo.com, asking if they can find a way to work together to make it possible for us to do something that I believe will have a relatively easy solution. I also emailed each of them and invited them to view the lens.

You are invited to come read the lens and express your opinions:

Can AWeber and Squidoo Work Together?

Perhaps this isn’t a technical problem. Maybe it’s just a lack of motivation on the part of both companies to develop a solution. I don’t know.

Tom and Seth, I hope you’ll find a way to make this happen.

While it may not be important to the vast majority of Squidoo lensmasters, it is important to some of us - possibly many of us. I believe it may be important to many AWeber customers.

I’ve added a couple of polls to the lens and I invite everyone who reads this to come and voice your opinions and help spread the word to others who may want to combine the power of the services AWeber and Squidoo provide.

Act on your dream!

JD

In a previous post on another of my blogs, I wrote about adding subscribe forms on our Squidoo lenses:

Squidoo module request - Sign-up forms for Aweber mailing lists

Last week, Lewis Smile added a comment to the post and told me my dream was answered. Today, I finally found enough time to see what he was talking about.

Update: Before you get too excited about this, I’ve learned that the folks at Squidoo are working to defeat this “trick,” as it is being called. This means that any AWeber sign up forms on our lenses will stop working at any moment.

Please see the comments on this post for more information.

I purchased his report for only $7.00 and downloaded it immediately.

Well, that’s not exactly how I started. I read Lewis’ blog post, AT LAST! Aweber Opt In Forms On Your Lenses!, and read in the comments that he had an active form on his Squidoo Traffic Tricks lens.

There it was. Cool!

Being the frugal person that I am, I looked at the source code and saw that the form was actually a javascript widget that was powered by Clearspring.com.

Immediately, I grasped the concept. Lewis was using a widget as an intermediary between the Aweber javascript, which won’t work on a Squidoo lens, and the lens itself.

I joined Clearspring, but after a few minutes of looking around, I decided it would take longer to work out the details for myself than it would to purchase the report, download it, read it, and put what I learned to work.

If the report had been $47, or $27, or some other higher amount, I’d have learned how to do it myself. But, for a report that costs only $7.00, it was a no-brainer to just buy it.

You can find the report at SquidooTricks.com.

As someone who earns his living from affiliate marketing, it pains me to send you to such a valuable site without using an affiliate link, but the information here is too useful not to tell you how to get it for yourself - even if I’m not earning anything from it.

Sigh.

In just a few minutes, I bought the report, downloaded it, and read it.

My initial thoughts were correct. I probably could have worked it out for myself in an hour or two, but Lewis has done an excellent job of telling you just how to make this work for you.

I went to Aweber.com and added a new sign-up form for my 21st Century Affiliate Marketing blog. I use Aweber to manage email subscriptions for what I post to this blog, as well as a growing number of mailing lists I manage for myself and for my clients. I wanted to create a new form that I would use only on Squidoo lenses so I’d be able to track the source of new subscriptions.

That took maybe 10 minutes to do.

Following the instructions in Lewis’ report, I copied the code I’d need and proceeded to the next step - create the new widget on Clearspring.com.

Even though I’d not done anything but look around Clearspring for a few minutes, I found his instructions extremely clear and easy to follow.

It took maybe 20 minutes or so to create the new widget and another couple of minutes to add it to my 21st Century Affiliate Marketing lens on Squidoo.

(If I had broadband, it would have gone much quicker, but slow dial-up is still all that’s available here where I live.)

I didn’t follow all of Lewis’ instructions on creating the widget.

He advised us to hide the “get and share” links at the bottom of the widget. While I can see reasons for doing this, I don’t like to ever use code on a site that hides the text by making it the same color as the background.

Plus, I don’t mind if someone gets that widget and puts it on another site. I’m not sure why anyone would want to do it, but I’ll take all the subscribers I can get.

It took a total of maybe 45 minutes from the time I bought the report until I had an active Aweber sign-up form on my lens, and that includes downloading and reading everything.

Lewis has done a remarkable service for us by providing such clear instructions.

Now, all I have to do is add this Clearspring.com widget to the other lenses where I syndicate this blog.

Then, over the next few weeks, I’ll be doing the same thing for other mailing lists I manage through Aweber.com.

This has come at a particularly fortuitous time, because I am in the planning stages of setting up quite a few new mailing lists and Squidoo lenses. Lewis’ method of adding a subscribe form to a lens will make what I plan to do much easier and probably more effective.

Thanks Lewis. My dream really was answered.

Act on your dream!

JD

This month, Aweber celebrates the 10th anniversary of providing quality autoresponder services to their clients, one of whom is me.

Happy Anniversary, Aweber!

If you don’t already know, Aweber is the industry leader in providing mailing list maintenance and delivery services.

They started out offering autoresponder services, and now they offer that and much more, including helping you manage your newsletters and email syndication of your blog posts.

I use Aweber to handle several mailing lists, with more coming soon, and the subscription form in the top-right column of this page allows you to subscribe to the posts I publish on this blog so you’ll receive them right in your email inbox.

Aweber provides unlimited autoresponders with unlimited messages and you can broadcast to the lists, too, should you want.

Aweber works closely with the largest ISPs to insure that your double-opt-in email messages are delivered and enjoys the highest delivery rates in the industry.

If you want to follow-up with your prospects and customers, I recommend Aweber to you. It’s the service I use.

Here’s to your continued success, Aweber.

Act on your dream!

JD