Talk:Affiliate marketing/Archive 3

Disclosure

I believe something should be included regarding affiliate marketing and disclosure, but whilst I have studied the subject, I am also involved in many of the discussions, have a point of view but not an agenda, and also provide free solutions.

I can provide references that I have written, that link through to other sources

http://andybeard.eu/2007/02/clickbank-require-disclosure-a-list-bloggers-totally-missed-the-point-in-december.html http://andybeard.eu/2006/12/ftc-word-of-mouth-and-affiliates.html --AndrzejBroda 22:02, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey Andrzej. Go ahead and add it to the article. I suggest to add it to the list of problems and create a new paragraph for it. It is still an issue, the abuse I mean, otherwise would there no need to talk about it, wouldn't there? :) I will do what I can with making it clean and wikified. See the other parts of the article regarding references and citations. If you make a claim about a number, tendency, event etc., you must cite the source that readers can verify its accuracy. Cheers! --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 05:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Rating

I changed the rating to B because this article would not pass Good article candidacy. There are not enough citations and the structure is not clear enough.--Grace E. Dougle 14:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with this assessment and nominated the article for "Good Article" consideration. Please elaborate "enough" citations and which part of the structure you see a problem with. Thank you. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 17:15, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I would not even consider this a "B" article. It is full of opinion, conclusions, POV, colloquial language, bizarre structure, a huge opening quote from a biased source (the book quote), is a regular target for insertion of spam links (which often do not get reverted quickly), and as Grace notes above, is not very well sourced and cited. Frankly, I think it should be taken down to a stub and started over. Please see my comments above on 22 September 2006. There has been some cleanup since then, but it's still not nearly a GA. --MCB 19:58, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Failed "good article" nomination

This article failed good article nomination. This is how the article, as of March 4, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: The article is, in general, poorly written. The structure is somewhat random and disorganized. The language is full of colloquial and informal writing, with a substantial amount of opinion and conclusions.

2. Factually accurate?: Fair to reasonable, but hampered by lack of thorough sourcing and and citations.

3. Broad in coverage?: Acceptable.

4. Neutral point of view?: Fair to poor. Full of opinions, POV, unsourced critique and/or approval of aspects of the subject.

5. Article stability? Not stable. Subject to a number of major edits, and a constant target for addition of spam links and references containing conflicts of interest.

6. Images?: Not applicable.

When these issues are addressed, the article can be resubmitted for consideration. Thanks for your work so far.

(Note: while I have been a Talk page participant, I have made only 7 edits to the article, of which 5 were reversion of spam, and 2 were with respect to cleanup templates. I don't believe I've actually authored any of the article itself, but please feel free to check the history.) --MCB 20:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

thanks for the time for the evaluation MCB.

1. Well written?: The article is, in general, poorly written. The structure is somewhat random and disorganized. The language is full of colloquial and informal writing, with a substantial amount of opinion and conclusions.

Could you provide some examples and suggestions on how to improve on them? I agree that the introduction should be broken down into more structured sections.

2. Factually accurate?: Fair to reasonable, but hampered by lack of thorough sourcing and and citations.

A great deal of time was spent to find all the sources for claims that were made in the article. please provide some specific examples where you see sources missing.

4. Neutral point of view?: Fair to poor. Full of opinions, POV, unsourced critique and/or approval of aspects of the subject.

There are a lot of problems in affiliate marketing that are often avoided to discuss openly. There are only rare occasions where those things are being spelled out by A-list members of the industry. You will be able to determine this if you do a bit background research. please point me to any "unsourced critique and/or approval of aspects of the subject". Maybe it just needs some rewording to prevent that different people will understand and interpret it differently.

5. Article stability? Not stable. Subject to a number of major edits, and a constant target for addition of spam links and references containing conflicts of interest.

The nature of the article will not make the spam and vandalism make go away. It was reduced significantly when the article was semi-protected over the holidays. I believe you refer to me when you say WP:COI. I am a Sr. Web Developer in California. My company is the sponsor of my H1B work visa. Affiliate marketing and Internet marketing is a passion of mine, but not a profession, because legal restrictions conflict that. I don't see a conflict of interest here. If you have have doubts about my intends and motivations, feel free to learn more about me and what I do and my contributions to Wikipedia. If you still have doubts, feel free to articulate them publicly and I will answer them and hopefully clarify and disburse any doubt you might have left. Btw. I am currently asking for an Editor review to learn what other wikipedians think about my contributions to Wikipedia and any tips and criticism that will help me to improve. Thanks. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 09:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. First, I want to make sure to mention that I think your contributions have in general been positive, and what I mentioned about WP:COI is not directed toward you, but to editors who constantly insert links to programs they are affiliated with, or give their programs as so-called "examples" of various affiliate marketing features. Ideally the article would not be edited by anyone with a financial interest in affilate marketing but that might be too much to ask.

Hi MCB, thanks for the kind words. The financial interest thing is a problem, especially because of the high visibility of Wikipedia in the search engine results. If you have a look, you will see, that I was/am a strong supported of the nofollow attribute for all external links. This helps to reduce the spam of not so well watched articles (and areas) or Wikipedia.

It will not help very much with the highly visible and often accessed articles though, since the direct referrer traffic is probably enough of a goal here. Fortunately are those highly visible articles also much better watched my numerous editors and also by the RC-Patrollers of the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam and don't last very long. Some links are also not really spam and well intended, but just not appropriate. In those cases are the talk pages the place to debate about the usefulness of an external source and to weigh the pro's and con's. That you end up linking to "commercial sites" in a broader sense can not be avoided for all topics.

The nature of some topics simply require to link to those sites, because it is the nature of the beast. But if you look a bit closer, you will find out that those authority sites that are monetizing traffic give also a lot back to the community without getting paid for it. Keep in mind that time is money and good resources take time to create. The monetary reward is not always high and well below minimum wage pay, but the intention of the resources provider is not always profit and money. Commercial or not, people are behind such things and people are not exclusively interested in instant and quick riches. Living and working in a positive environment is a desire for most people too. To maintain such an environment requires maintenance work without monetary rewards. A lot of people take that for granted and do not contribute, but there will always be the ones that do care and don't stop doing it, because others are too lazy or selfish to do their part.

This is how I see it. I am a strong believer in the thesis that what you do and not do will come back one day and either hurt you (the didn't do) or help you in often unexpected and surprising ways (did do). I don't keep a balance sheet where I calculate how much I did for somebody or something and how much I got out of it in the short term. If it feels right, I will do it, with or without immediate incentive. Doing something good, feels good, so I get a very powerful incentive right away. I also believe that that my positive doing will result in positive things that come back to me. Personal experience showed me, that this that comes back, often comes back with "interest". Thus it works like a bank (piggy bank :) ). You think you put X.xx into the bank to find out that it is actually more when you break it (thanks to your parents that sneak in some bonuses without your knowledge hehe).

Cheers! --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:40, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

To take the GA issues in order:

1. Quality of writing. Compared to GAs and FAs, the writing seems poorly organized, and is not encylopedic in tone. The ordering of sections seems random. The tone seems to be more that of a "expert" giving personal explanations and hints, in a narrative, about various features in the field, rather than a comprehensive, neutral examination. Just compare the prose, grammar, structure, style, etc., to a number of GAs and FAs (or other encyclopedias or published books) and I'm sure you will see the difference.

I see. I am a blogger so I tend to write in a narrative tone. I am trying to avoid that at Wikipedia, but fail to do it properly at times. Working on that. This is also the part where I need the most help with for the mentioned reasons.--roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I moved thing around a bit and added additional headlines and additional levels in the paragraph hierarchy. One step at a time :) --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 13:04, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

2. Factual accuracy. This is hard to assess, because of the extreme lack of sourcing. Most sections are totally unreferenced, and the existing references are to sources that would not be considered reliable -- that is, they are either self-interested, or lack sufficient editorial control to be accepted as reliable. Just to take the sections in order:

I actually disagree on this one. You consider MarketingSherpa "borderline source", which is funny, because it is really one of the best sources to the subject out there. The proof for that can be found in a lot of places. Starting with the number of contributing entities to the benchmark guides, ending with the number of subscribers to the MarketingSherpa Newsletters, which is used for surveys and readers choice awards. It clearly shows the relevance and acceptance by the industry as accurate and reliable source.

Also cited more than once is ReveNews, which was winning the MarketingSherpa Readers Choice awards for Best Blog to affiliate marketing. [1]. Take that, plus look at the contributor to ReveNews and their position and reputation in the industry and you have yourself a pretty good source. It is impossible to provide a much more general source as reference to all information provided by the article. Once you get specific, you need sources that are authorities to the subject and not mainstream media. Mainstream media does not report details about a subject and that is fine, because it is not the purpose of mainstream media to do so. The same is true for the big statistical data collectors like compScore, Nielson etc. Numbers from these sources are used and published by the more specific sources. The detailed break down and complimentary data are then gathered by the more specialized statistical information gatherer. In the case of Affiliate marketing are those more specific collectors: MarketingSherpa/MarketingExperiments.com for the U.S. and e-Consultancy for the UK. I have no problem if you challenge each individual source one by one. We can go and establish the authority of each source one at a time and even provide a ranking on a sliding scale (from "not reliable" to "very reliable"). --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Something came up a few days ago that provides further evidence that ReveNews.com a quality source for references is. ReveNews.com and its team of industry professionals and bloggers was recognized as a site that demonstrated a standard of excellence, outside its own industry. ReveNews received a Webby Award [2] as an Official Honoree in the "Blog Business" category this year. I think that this is relevant to backup the references in this article --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 15:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Top: No refs in first few paragraphs; two legitimate refs to Internet stats; one ref to a borderline source (MarketingSherpa). It starts with a brief definition what Affiliate marketing is. Since this is an encyclopedia, is the only possible reference here another encyclopedia (which would question the authority of Wikipedia as reference). The Other Sources are e-Consultancy and MarketingSherpa. The sources are not free accessible, because there are companies that live from collecting and providing those information for money. I own the full content of each of the cited sources (and was also the one that added the references to the article. the statements were added by somebody else). The e-Consultancy sources, especially the Internet Statistics Compendium 2007 is a large collection of internet marketing related statistics, surveys, studies and benchmarks from numerous sources, which include: eMarketer.com, Nielson/NetRatings, Forrester Research, compScore, Jupiter Research, MarketingSherpa, American Technology Research; Piper Jaffray & Co.; Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown; Veronis Suhler Stevenson; J.P. Morgan; Merrill Lynch; SG Cowen; Smith Barney; Myers Report; The Kelsey Group; GartnerG2; PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC); TNS Media Intelligence and Universal McCann. It also contains numbers collected by e-Consultancy. It always references in detail to the source of the data. You can consider it a reference of references for internet statistics (the $269.00 annual subscription provides access to the report and all other e-Consultancy publications. It's a bargain compared to MarketingSherpa (who offers now a Membership that provides access to over 1,900 emarkting stats and over 700 case studies)). --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Multi Tier Programs: Unreferenced.

Same as with first paragraph, what reference do you want to add? The paragraph explains and also uses specific examples as illustration. The examples are referencing to articles at Wikipedia that are explaining specifics and have references to facts where needed. There might be room for improvement, but that should be true for a considerable number of articles (it's a personal guess, since nobody did a study about that yet). --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Types of affiliate sites: Unreferenced.

I can provide references that list some of the types, but there is no "source" for this exact list. The types of affiliate sites is not a "fix" definition, but a classification that changes frequently as new business models are being developed by creative affiliates. The classification might be done different by different entities. Affiliate Netwoks might classify different than individual Advertisers/Merchants. This includes the combination of multiple typpes listed in the article as one type. The List must be considered a "guideline" to get an idea about the type of affilates out there. You might want to help to make that clear. Is there a template or similar that can be used to indicate this? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Affiliate Marketing and Web 2.0: Unreferenced.

I am not sure what type of reference you have in mind, but I added a reference to articles at SOA Web Services Journal by Dion Hinchcliffe that elaborate the impact of Web 2.0 and social media on communication within web communities.--roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

A Brief History of Affiliate Marketing: Inappropriately long quote, from a self-interested (non-neutral) source.

self-interested? I remember that there used to be a free written (not cited) version from other editors that said the same thing and that I replaced it with the current citation. What is my interest in somebody elses book? I think you got something wrong in this case.

About the content of the citation. The problem is that nobody has absolute proof for the story. I can try to dig up some old press releases that mention the launches of the associate program by amazon 1996 and cdnow's buyweb program 1994, if that is what you prefer. The mentioned source "Brad Waller" and the author of the cited source in the article "Shawn Collins" are well respected veterans in the industry. If you want to question their authority, be my guest and I can dig you up tons of references to those guys, that make clear that they can be compared to Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman for the open source and linux community.

The Book itself (Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants) is over 6!!! years old [3] (it was written at the end of 2000 [4]) and is to this day considered "must read" material for new Affiliate Managers. There are actually not much quality publications to that subject to that day. The new book "A practical guide to affiliate marketing" by Evgenii "Geno" Prussakov [5] is pretty decent and the collaborative work "Affiliate Manager 1st Edition" [6] (which I do not own personally, but I trust the reviews of several of my collegues who do own it). Geno says the same thing about the origin of Affiliate marketing, but I am sure that he took that part from Shawn's book. It's a guide and no scientific book, so he does not cite sources and writes in a narative way and his own personal experiences.

possible alternative. Simple mention that Amazon.com started their Associate Program 1996 and CDNow their BuyWeb program in 1994. Then try to find sources that mention the launch with date. This is important, because a lot of people believe that Amazon.com were the first, which is not true. Yeah, theirs is one of the very first when affiliate marketing as a word did not even exist, they have undoubtly also one of the biggest to this date. Their CDNow counterpart was unfortunately discontinued in 2002 [7]. Do you prefer that? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Compensation Models: Factually accurate, but the source would not pass WP:RS as editorially reliable, plus it's an editor's own personal site.

Find a better one and replace the reference to my resources site with it. I would have no problem with that, but don't pick one of the sites that have my free to distribute and reprint article up, because that would not be the original source. I wrote it down and made it available to the public for a reason; I could not find a source that was spelling it out in a short and compact form. My site is not a commercial project btw. [8]. Again, if you question my intend and integrity, please do so in a factual and unbiased form. I will comment on any allegations. Have a commitee or admin/mediator decide if the suspicions are on valid grounds or not. I did and do not hide my identity here at Wikipedia nor my personal and professional involvements and backgrounds in internet marketing, text art, demo scene, u.s. imigration and other subjects I contributed to --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Finding Affiliate Programs: Unreferenced.

what type of reference do you have in mind? I can add references to affiliate marketing resources sites that say the same thing, but I believe that this is not necessary. I would say a "vote" by the editing public is sufficient. The content remained in the article for quite some time and nobody seems to think that the information is inaccurate. Writing that using a map to find a location could probably also remain unreferenced in an article, because it is comon sense. What are your suggestions? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Affiliate Management and Program Management Outsourcing: Well cited but possibly questionable sources.

As mentioned before, if you question ReveNews.com, Revenue Magazine and The Daily SearchCast by Danny Sullivan at WebmasterRadio.fm as source to this subject, then we could establish the credibility for each, one at a time, here or anywhere else. This might sound funny for anybody involved in Affiliate Marketing, but I see your point that it might be a good idea to spend some energy on establishing authority sources within the affiliate marketing industry, which are verifyable as such for people that are not involved in the industry. Let me know how we can do that in a good and acceptable way. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Email Spam: Unreferenced.

I added an article at Wired Magazine as reference. Is that enough? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Search Engine Spam / Spamdexing: Unreferenced.

The referenced article "Spamdexing" here at Wikipedia is IMO enough, don't you think? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Adware: Unreferenced.

I would simply refer to Kellie Steven's AffiliateFairPlay.com Site [9] and Blog [10] as well as BenEdelman.org [11]. Those two are the formost authorities to the subject AdWare and specifically AdWare in Affiliate Marketing. Also the ParasiteWare Forum at ABestWeb is full of all sorts of information, alerts, tests and discussions to that subject [12]. Since the paragraph is generell and not picking on a specific example (which are plenty available), generell references might be appropriate. What do you think? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Trademark Bidding: Unreferenced.

Generell again. The Affstat reports show the tendency of Advertisers to adjust their terms of service that restrict or prohibit affiliate bidding on trademark terms. Also Google's and Yahoo!'s changes to how trademarks are handled in their PPC service interfaces are well known. Do you want me to add those kind of references? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Lack of Self Regulation: Two cites in very long section, both to sources that would not pass WP:RS.

See my comments to "Compensation Models" regarding "WP:RS" --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

CPA Networks "Threat": 3 illustrative cites, but not for the assertions in the section.

The references show the debate about the impact on the growth of CPA Networks on traditional networks. "Threat" is not a fact to backup by something "absolute". Threat or Fear is a feeling which is in this case expressed by numerous authorities in the industry. This fear is not shared by everybody, which makes it a controversy. The subject is a topic which is illustrated by references to public debates, which are rare enough. That kind of stuff is more discussed behind closed doors. IMO are the references proofing the statements made about the existance of the debate sufficient and just. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

The Name Affiliate Marketing: Non-RS cites to blog(s).

Those kind of things are discussed in forums, blogs and in live discussions (where I can't refer/link to) and make the references IMO good enough for this pargraph. It's a non-vital information and more an FYI (that the reader will not be surprised if he comes across affiliate marketers that say that they prefer to refer to what they do as something else than "Affiliate marketing", e.g. Performance Marketer or other terms). --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Important Abbreviations: Cited to non-RS.

See my comments to "Compensation Models" regarding "WP:RS" --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

4. Lack of NPOV. The article is filled with unsourced opinion about developments and conditions in the field. Some examples:

"Merchants like affiliate marketing because it is a "pay for performance model","

like is a bad word, I agree. Better wording might be: Advertisers acknowledge the advantages of the "pay per performance model" of affiliate marketing, which is less prone to fraud as Pay per click or Pay per Impression, than paying publishers only for actual and wanted results, such as a purchase or subscription. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"However, unlike display advertising, affiliate marketing is not easily scalable."

I don't know what your problem with this statement is. Are you familar with how display advertising works and how affiliate relationships are established? A little comparison. If you are the owner of a nation wide liquer store chain who sells and advertises various different types of beer, including regional and domestic big brands, display advertising would be working with distributors and affiliate marketing would be like working with each brewery individually :). --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"This is not considered affiliate marketing."

The claim is made that it is, but for this reason do terms such as MLM, Pyramid Schemes and Ponzi Schemes exist, to distinguish between the different types of multi-tier/level marketing/sales. The sentences before that statement say the same thing, but for the quick reader who only scans the article was this made clear in a short sentence (trust me, the thought of MLM pops into peoples mind when you start to explain to them 2-tier affiliate marketing. This is based on practical experience by numerous people, including myself. It is IMO important to highlight this fact, but suggestions to improve on how to bring that message 100% clear across are welcome. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Even though Quixtar compensation plan is network marketing & wouldn't be considered 'affiliate marketing',..."

see comments to "This is not considered affiliate marketing.". People like to use Amway (and Tupperware) as examples to explain to normal people what affiliate marketing is. This is something more people know about. It's okay to use those as initial reference to communicate the fundamental idea, but at the same time is it important to make clear, that the similarity ends at the 2nd tier (tupperware, seller 1, seller 2 = affiliate marketing, after seller 2 (seller 3 etc.) <> affiliate marketing) --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"The new media allowed merchants to get closer to their affiliates and improved communication between each other."

New media, meaning social media. It improved communication and also helped merchants and affiliates to work closer and coordinated (in conjunction) with each other (e.g. unified marketing message). That is what it means. How would you phrase that? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"New developments have made it harder for unscrupulous affiliates to make money."

This is out of context. It refers to the openess and faster communication channels that blogs, rss and other new media technologies provided. "Bad news" (and good) travels a lot faster nowadays on the internet, in case you did not notice. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Successful affiliate programs require a lot of maintenance and work. "

this is a fact and is meant to make absolute clear to the reader, that an affiliate program is not something to "set it and forget it". This might have been the case years ago, but the matured industry and increased competition made this misconception a thing of the past. Whoever tries to sell a merchant something else should be looked at once more and up close, because that person is most likely on a hidden agenda, which is good for him, but bad for the merchant that considers affiliate marketing as an additional marketing channel. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Having an affiliate program that is successful is not as easy anymore."

see "a lot of maintenance and work". Being a good football coach today requires more than just knowing the game pretty well. This would be an appropriate analogy IMO. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Internet advertising industry became much more professional"

see tradeshows, who is doing affiliate marketing (big brands), who are your typical (successful) affiliates. Companies and not the old moms and pops that were originally in mind when affiliate marketing was "invented". --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"The requirements to be successful are much higher than they were in the past. "

see [13]. That discussion there illustrates what the meaning of that statement is. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"In its early days many internet users held negative opinions of affiliate marketing"

actually that is still true today, but it gets better. There is still a lot todo by everybody. A unified voice would be something good for starters (affiliate marketing organization), which does not exist to this day, unfortunately. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Sites made up mostly of affiliate links are usually badly regarded as they do not offer quality content."

Google's internal guide for paid site reviewers from 2003 "GENERAL GUIDELINES ON RANDOM-QUERY EVALUATION", Version 3.1, Last update: December 31, 2003 [14]. Also see: [15] --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Affiliate links work best in the context of the information contained within the website."

hundreds (if not thousands) successful affiliates that can attest to that. "Just do it and you will see for yourself" --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Merchants usually had no clue what adware was,"

I referred already to the Parasiteware forums at ABestWeb. There are plenty of examples of affiliates describing their experiences when contacting merchants about Adware back in 2002, 2003. I believe the number of merchants today that do know what Adware is, is much higher, but there does not exist a study to proof that (as far as I know). --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Affiliate Marketing is driven by entrepreneurs who are working at the forefront of internet marketing."

Yep, pick any successful affiliate and check what they did to become successful and what they do to remain successful and then look at the affiliate as person and it's characteristics. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"This is also the reason why most affiliates fail and give up before they "make it" and become "super affiliates""

out of context, but I changed it to "one of the reasons", which is more accurate. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

"Affiliate marketers usually avoid this topic as much as possible,"

This is an information, which you can only verify if you are deeply involved in the industry. If it is inappropriate for Wikipedia, then it should be removed or at least rephrased to something that brings across, that this topic is not front page news, because it brings up other issues into the debate, which are even less talked about in public (e.g. washing dirty laundry in public, not the prefered way of cleaning by most folks) --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

All the above (which are just a sample from the article) are unsupported assertions as to causes/effect/motivations/etc., and as such are opinion, original research, and not NPOV.

Hopefully these examples will provide a good basis for improving the text and sourcing of the article, and the overall lack of encyclopedic tone. Best, --MCB 23:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

wow, thank you MCB. It will take me a bit time to go through all of it. So please hang in there. I will go over all of it and provide a response as soon as possible. I will let you know. Thanks for your help. Its great and I really appreciate it. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 04:38, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi MCB. I made extensive comments above. Sorry that it took so long, but as you can see, did I spend some time on your comments before I responded to each of them. I also was out of the country until now for some personal [16] reasons. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Odd section on CPA

I was bemused by the material on CPA (which, at the time I read the article, was not defined, or even linked, where it appears in the article).

CPA, as far as I see it, is modern affiliate marketing. The old-fashioned "cost per click" models are flawed in the way they create a market for clicks, when a supplier wants a market for products and solid leads. However, more appropriate terms are Cost Per Sale and Cost Per Subscription, which differentiates between these two different results for the supplier of the product or service. Elroch 20:45, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

It's shocking how little people here seem to understand about affiliat marketing. I would suggest this article have a complete rewrite by someone who knows something about affiliate marketing. I wish I could but time is so limited. Joekucker 21:15, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Joekucker, please elaborate your suggestion and what you beieve is essential to affiliate marketing and missing in the article. I am one of the active editors on the article and can only speak for myself. I am involved with affiliate marketing since early 2001 as affiliate and was also once an affiliate manager for a merchant. I was sitting on both sides of the "fence" and believe of myself that I have a decent understanding of affiliate marketing (among other internet marketing subjects). Your comment is very generic without any specifics, which does not provide much to go on and respond to. I am looking forward to your comments. Thanks for your time. It's appreciated --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 08:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Elroch, CPA was (and is) mentioned multiple times. It's even briefly explained in the article itself. The link to the (by now) more detailed article about CPA is an oversight by everybody, but especially the editors of the CPA article who did not update existing articles (older articles) that mentioned CPA. That is corrected now, at least for the Affiliate marketing article, which is also linked to from the CPA article now. I also took the liberty to extend the CPA article regarding the alternative meaning of CPA, which was used prior to "Cost Per Action" and is still in use today, "Cost per Acquisition".

Cost Per Click used to be popular before the dot.com crash 7 years ago. It was almost fading away to nothing over the years because of fraud issues. The "new" click fraud challenges search engines face today are old and known stories for affiliate marketers, its like a deja vu with the difference that in the past individual advertisers or small affiliate networks were challenged compared to the search engine behemoths today who have much more resources available to combat click fraud.

CPS and CPA are the way to go, but if you tell that an affiliate marketer then you are preaching to the choir and you should not be surprised to get also as response "see, I told you so, x years ago". --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 08:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Review

Good news - the journalistic style has been improved so that it looks more like and encyclopedia entry. Also grammar problems are not apparent.

I am still a bit confused by the CPC CPM eg

• "CPC used to be more common" fails to explain what CPC is. Is it CPM or different?
• And CPM is linked to cost per mille - which is not expanded on this page althoug CPM is used. (To add to confusion apparently CPT is the same as CPM T=Thousand, M=Mille).
• CPA and CPS should be in brackets after Cost per action and Cost per Sale.
• In the headings, please remove "affiliate marketing" this is not necessary and is not wikipedia style
• SEO needs to be spelt out in full before its first use.

Graeme Bartlett 05:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

1. Regarding the explaination what CPC, CPM, CPA, CPS etc. See the article to compensation methods. There is a reason why the whole section in this article refers to that other article, because it is confusing and more than one term is used for the same thing. It's like with pay-per-click (PPC) versus cost-per-click (CPC). The compensation methods article is a start, but this whole subject is still an open item that needs to be tackled one day, within the internet marketing category as part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Business_and_Economics here at wikipedia. It's a tough one and will require a lot of work by a bunch of editors. See also Talk:Compensation_methods where I outlined the problems and terms. It's a start.
2. I did make changes to the first paragraphs that mention CPM, CPC, CPA, CPS etc. and used the different terms and abbreviation in a way that should make it clear which ones are inter-changeable and talking about the same thing. I hope that helps.
3. I updated the headings and got rid of the phrase "affiliate marketing", except for one, where it is needed. Thanks for the suggestion. Your are right, it looked odd too.
4. SEO was used the first time in the article as "SEOing". That works only with an appreviation and it is also hard to rephrase the whole block to get the same meaning across if SEO is spelled out. I added quotation marks around "SEOing" to indicate that it is not a real word (officially) and added in aparentesis "(see search engine optimization)" after it. I hope that this will do.

Thanks for reviewing the article. Cheers! --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 14:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

You have addressed my problems. — In the threat paragraph you could make the paragraph stand alone and not require that you just read the heading. Another way to make improvements is to have more in-line citations for the different sections that have none at present. You could try it out for GA again and get some more opinions! Graeme Bartlett 21:29, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help Graeme. I will nominate the article again and hope to get more feedback and also active editor helping to refine the article along the way. Cheers! --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 18:45, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey Graeme, I added inline linking to several sections as you suggested. I also renamed the section "CPA networks "threat"" to ""Threat" to traditional affiliate networks" as you suggested as well. In addition to that did I update a bit content here and there and added a few more good references, which I came across during the past weeks. It's awefully quiet overall though. At least a few people helped to improve on the article, but nobody had any comments. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing. I asked some other marketers what they think of the quality and they think its good, so I guess the missing comments are a good sign. What needs to happen to move forward with the nomination process? It's obviously not time driven :) Cheers! --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 11:56, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

p.s. the eventual goal is to get the article up to the status of wikipedia:featured article. There were so much improvements done since the summer that I am wondering if it would make sense to skip the "good article" step and go for "A" status. What do you think? Am I aiming too high here? --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:02, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I would say still go for GA. The A class rating is seldom used, and is actually a less formal process that could easily changed back to B. A GA once achieved needs some kind of review to remove it! If the article cannot get a GA then it probably should not get an A either. Graeme Bartlett 00:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I did not know that. Thanks for the info. Well then lets go for the GA and then get to work slowly on the FA readyness. :) --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 23:28, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

GA

This article does not meet the Good Article criteria, and will not be listed. The full review can be viewed here. Dr. Cash 07:03, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Data Security?

I just made an artical about the software these programs use, made by a company called Too Much Media that got hacked as a result of poor security practices. The hack was widely reported -- Washington Post, USA Today, LA Daily News, etc. Is data security a section that could go on the concerns past and present section? --Markzatech (talk) 15:41, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

what are you referring to when you say "software these programs use"? I believe you are mistaken here. affiliate marketing is not about payment processing. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 09:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Affiliates vs Ads

By reading this, i can see no difference between Affilates and Ads. Is Affiliates network is limited to posting some html code on others' web pages and getting fees or they can act on prices and sell direct without redirection to the suppliers site? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.57.9.55 (talk) 14:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The difference is primarily when it comes to the question about Who is controlling what ads are shown where. The compensation model is also relevant and directly related to the question about who the control has. Revenue share (classic affiliate marketing) shifts the risk as much to the publisher as it could be shifted, which also means that publishers usually also have the highest possible control over the What, When and How regarding the Ads on their site. The more the control is taken away from the publisher, the more also changes the risk for the publisher as well, because of the corresponding change in compensation model to CPA, over CPC to CPM. The area in the middle is where things are blurry and hard to impossible to specify if it is "display advertising" or "affiliate marketing". You don't have to come up with some weird examples, the best and well known one is Google AdSense. There is to this date no consensus whether or not AdSense is affiliate marketing or display advertising.

Thanks for the comment though. It shows that we need to do a better job with getting this information across. Wikipedia is not the place for original content so somebody has to find a reliable source for verification of what I just said. I am not considered a reliable source, I am just somebody who does work in that industry for over half the time it exists. I hope though that I was able to make it clear to you. ;) --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 09:08, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Spam

I was asked in my talk page why I put the spam banner on this article's page. Their is a discussion going on in the forum linked at the end of this sentence about too much spam in this article, so I took it upon myself to try to help out. [17] Maybe calling these references spam is just one persons opinion. Maybe not? That is for the wikipedia community to decide. --JAYMEDINC (talk) 23:20, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The articvle is a magnet for spam, so please remove spammy links if you see them. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I also left a comment there since I am a member of that forum since 2001 or so. I also provided some tips and how-to's and gave Wikipedia a little plug. I am trying to get more of the good marketers on Wikipedia to contribute to its cause, help with the clean up of the polution of the spam that was povided by "our" black sheep brothers that give the industry a bad name and reputatuion, basically show that there are also other types of marketers, with ethics and the urge to help the community rather than destoying it. Now I gave a plug for my industry, great, sorry, I am what I am :) --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 08:58, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Inclusion of company logo image

Again, in relation to the image that is included on this page showing company logos, this borders on spam, IMO, in that including an Amazon logo in the image, but not, say, eBay's logo, or one of thousands of other company logos might give Amazon's affiliate program an unintended advantage. Once you go down this slope, where do you stop?

It might be that the original inclusion of this image did not have an intent to spam, but it brings up several questions, such as, should OPM logos be included? Why not? Why? They offer value to merchants, but should we include only the bigger ones? What about smaller networks, or other independant sites, such as Allposters ( a huge program ) ...

It is not in Wikipedia's interest to get drawn into a "why is my site not included in the image when my competitor's is?" discussion.

JMO, but I think this image should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Affiliatemarketer1 (talk • contribs) 13:48, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I see your point and removed that image (which I created and added btw.). The image used to be the only image for the article, but another editor did a good job, creating a new image, which is shown at the top of the article. There is actually no need anymore for my old one. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. Cheers! --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 09:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Advertising models block removed

Here is the paragraph that was recently added to the article, which I removed.

Advertising models of Affiliate Marketing

The Advertising component of Affiliate Marketing can be broken down into 3 major cost models:

CPC / PPC - (stands for Cost Per Click / Pay Per Click) -The Advertiser pays for every click sent to the advertiser's site. -The website that the ad is placed on is paid every time a user clicks on the ad.

CPM - (stands for 1000 impressions) -The Advertiser pays for every 1000 impressions of the advertiser's banner. -The website that the ad is placed on is paid for every 1000 impressions of the advertiser's banner.

CPA / CPL / CPS - (stands for Cost per Action / Cost per Lead / Cost per Sale) -The Advertiser pays for every lead, sale, or desired action that occurs. -The website that the ad is placed on is paid a bounty ranging anywhere from $1.00 for an email address, up to $100.00 for a sale, depending on the advertiser, the campaign, and if its for a lead or a sale.

The models are already mentioned and in part explained in the paragraphs before and refer to the articles that explain every type in more detail. Also, the way the methods were listed without weighing them or providing any indicator of importance implies that the top listed one is the most important. Actually 1+2 together make up only 1% of all programs that use those models. CPA and Revenue share are the most prominent (99%) where Revenue share is the predominant of the two. However, revenue share is not even explained clearly in the paragraph that I removed. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 12:37, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Fake High commision earnning

please mention that some advertisers offer fake commssion earning to publishers

specialy in hosting and domain bussiness which the commission ($100) is higher than their product price ($80) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.254.75.34 (talk) 15:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)