Are you a Cookie Stuffer?

Where do you stand on cookie stuffing?

Hello there and welcome to another weeks newsletter, this week I am heading over to “the darkside” to look at an un-ethical technique that was brought to my attention a couple of days ago.

The technique is known as “Cookie Stuffing” and is used by affiliates (and some adware applications) to plant affiliate cookies on a users PC without them actually clicking on an affiliate link.

The technique is outlawed by a lot of major affiliate companies such as Commission Junction and Linkshare, however there are still lot’s of very successful affiliates using the methods on the two networks.

Why do CJ and Linkshare allow this?

Simple, because it makes them more money! For every affiliate transaction that occurs the affiliate management company (CJ, Linkshare, etc.) take a percentage of the sale. Cookie stuffing means that more sales will be credited to affiliates, which equates to more money for the affiliate companies but less profit for the vendor.

For example, let’s say that I used cookie stuffing on this very page. I could stuff this page with an eBay or Amazon affiliate cookie. If I got 500 visitors to the page, that would mean 500 “clicks” on my Amazon/ebay affiliate link.

All of this would be done in the background without you knowing. So why is this so bad – let’s take a look.

The main complaint from affiliates that don’t use the cookie stuffing method if that there commissions are being stolen by these “stuffing” techniques. The cookie stuffers cookie would overwrite any genuine cookie that had been created by a legitimate click on an affiliate link. Meaning if the cookied user was to make a purchase, the cookie stuffer would get the commission instead of the legitimate click!

Earlier I also mentioned adware. You may have heard of “Zango” and “180 Solutions”, these applications will install on your PC, usually without your knowledge and will plant affiliate cookies on your PC when you visit a certain website or “hit” a particular subject.

These companies have been reported in the past for cookie stuffing but again it is still widely believed that the applications are stuffing cookies illegally on your PC! (Do a search for Zango/180 solutions cookie stuffing and see what you can find!) Whilst they are still making the affiliate companies’ money (CJ, Linksahre, CB, etc.) the trend looks set to continue.

I fear that this worrying and lets be honest – unethical to the extreme, method of making affiliate sales could result in a vendor backlash! If a vendor is offering 50% commission on a product to affiliates, how long will it take them to lower the commission percentage to make up for the amount of money they are losing from cookie stuffers?

Where do you all stand on the cookie stuffing debate? Should you use un-ethical methods if it brings you results or is it really not worth risking your affiliate account to make a quick buck?

Let me know your thoughts!

Thanks for reading,
Dan

Questions That Need Answers

Hello everyone, let me start by welcoming you to this weeks “Slightly Different” newsletter. The difference being that I need your help this time!

As you may (or may not) know, I do A LOT of work helping people with various web design problems. These things range from teaching people how to FTP, mastering Dreamweaver and so on.

I have a big project on the go that is aimed at helping out those people – you could even be one of them! That are struggling to come to grips with web design or would just like to gain more information on the subject.

Part of the project will be a massive Q&A session answering people’s web design problems. (Can you see where i’m heading with this ;-)) That’s where you come in – I need you to ask me questions!

I don’t care what type of question you ask, it can be anything:

– HTML
– Dreamweaver
– CPanel
– Outlook Express
– SEO
– CSS
– PSP
– MYSQL

Literally anything!

What I would request of you today is that you submit your question in the comments section of this post. Please could you include the following:

1. Your Name
2. Your location (UK, US, Australia etc..)
3. Your Question

Also if you have a website feel free to give it a quick plug 😉

Thanks for reading and I look forward to seeing your questions!

I will of course be keeping you updated on this project throughout the coming months.

Until next time,
Dan

Ebay Affiliate Link “Rover Migration”

Ebay Affiliate Link Changes

Greetings once again to another newsletter. Sometimes I struggle to come up with subjects for the newsletter but this week something jumped right out at me. A few weeks ago eBay announced they would be changing over to a brand new linking structure for their affiliates, judging by some of the questions I have been asked a lot of you are still very unsure about the implications, so in this weeks newsletter I am going to try and explain everything for you.

Let’s start from the most logical point…..the beginning!

An initial email was sent out by eBay around September 15th 2006, the email contained basic details about the switch over. The main focus of the email was to tell eBay affiliates that eBay was switching away from the CJ domain links and replacing them with new style “Rover” links. More information was then set to be released on the 25th September.

The 25th quickly caught up on us, as did the next eBay email containing the important details about the change over. Let me quickly copy/paste the email here just incase you missed it:

“Rover migration starting!

The eBay Affiliate Program is excited to launch the final phase of Project Rover. We have now completed the Pre-Migration and are ready to begin the Affiliate Link Migration. As mentioned in our previous communication, we ask that you migrate all of your links before November 15th, 2006. Please note that both the current tracking and new Rover systems will run in parallel during the migration. Thank you for all the questions and feedback that we have received on our discussion board

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/forum.jspa?forumID=118.

We are doing our best to answer all of you and we are looking into ways to help you migrate your links, so please keep posting! Rover details by tool All Rover URLs will use the same server name, rover.ebay.com, regardless of the target destination domain or eBay site. The general form for Rover links is as follows:

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/PlacementID/1?SID=KEYWORD&AID=XXXXXX&PID=XXXXXX&loc=TARGET

ENCODED URL – PlacementID and AID pair: The PlacementID and AID pair is a country and tool specific value that associates the click with the correct eBay Affiliate Campaign. – PID: Publisher Site ID available in the Commission Junction Interface. – SID: Shopper ID (SID) is an affiliate defined variable used to monitor the specific link that produced each transaction. The SID can be up to 64 characters and is URL-encoded (%20 for a space, %2E for a comma, etc). – loc: Target URL or landing page where user will be directed and must be URL-encoded (ex: http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2F).

*
Flexible Destination Tool and Keyword Linking Tool

The Flexible Destination Tool and Keyword Linking Tool now output updated Rover links. You can recreate your links using the tools (http://affiliates.ebay.com/tools). If you prefer to change your links manually, you can refer to the table below, which shows the PlacementID and AID pair for the flexible destination tool by country:

*
Banners, Buttons and Logos:

All active Banners, Buttons and Logos are available within the Commission Junction interface. Please note that expired creatives will not be available in the interface.

*
Editor Kit, Product Kit, RSS Feed Generator and the Rest API GetSearchResults call

No action is needed if you are using the Editor Kit, Product Kit, RSS Feed Generator or the Rest API GetSearchResults call – links will be automatically updated. Thank you for continuing to promote all of our eBay Affiliate Programs worldwide.

Sincerely,
The eBay Affiliate Team”

So there you have it, the brand new linking structure is now here, but unfortunately it has thrown up more questions than answers. Let me now try and answer some of your most asked questions:

Q: Will my old links still work?
A: NO! All old style links must be changed over by the 25th November, after November 25th the links will stop registering commissions.

Q: How can I change all of my old links?
A: The easiest way to change your links is by using a find/replace software application. You can find the new version of your eBay code by using one of the online tools – Flexible Destination is my favourite.

Q: What are the benefits behind the move?
A: The main benefit from an end user point of view is that the affiliates don’t need to go through as many “Re-Directs” with the new eBay links. All links now go through eBay’s domain name (http://rover.ebay.com) instead of the CJ URL’s that means the tracking cookies have less chance of being blocked.

Q: What if I have my old link encoded in a PDF e-Book that is already “Out there”?
A: Unfortunately you won’t be credited with any commissions after the 25th November. It would be a good idea to release an updated version of the e-Book to include the new link structure. If would also be a good idea to use PHP redirects in your PDF e-Books:

https://elpassoblog.com/affiliate-link-management-made-easy/

Q: Are the any resources to help me through the changeover?
A: Yes, luckily some kind-hearted people over at the eBay forums have put together some helpful resources for you to minimise the effect on your affiliate earnings:

http://www.tprweb.com/guides/ebay/aff_migration/

http://www.phxp.com/rover/index.htm

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/forum.jspa?forumID=118

Hopefully, this newsletter and the above resources will help you implement the changes before November 25th! Make sure that you change all of your eBay affiliate links before November 25th or you run the risk of losing your eBay commissions!

I hope that the changeover goes smoothly for you, if you have any comments or questions as always please leave me a comment 🙂

Thanks for reading,
Dan

To Helpdesk or not to Helpdesk

To Helpdesk or not to Helpdesk…That is the question!

Hello and welcome to this week’s newsletter. Although I suppose it’s not really a newsletter is it, the correct term would be “ezine” but I think that newsletter sounds better, plus it doesn’t throw up a typo in MS Word every time I type it 😉

That’s enough foreplay for now; let’s jump straight into the good stuff. This week I am going to be looking at the importance of a helpdesk system, and I after you have read through the article I would like you to tell me if I should go for a helpdesk system or stick with my email support!

I recently saw the thread below on a popular marketing forum:

http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=108339

Having read through the post I get the impression that sellers are in favour of a helpdesk system but buyers would prefer direct email communication.

As a seller I am currently using email support for all of my projects – no helpdesk! However email is now becoming more and more unreliable what with all of the Spam filters now in place, you can never be 100% certain that an email you sent out has reached the recipient.

Also, from a sellers perspective the amount of Spam received on a daily basis can actually make you miss out on genuine emails. At the time of writing I have been online for just under 3 hours today, but take a look at the screenshot below and look at how much Spam is already entered my inbox:

As you can see there are a few spoof ebay and paypal emails in there so it is getting increasingly more difficult to find the genuine ebay and paypal emails.

So, how would a helpdesk improve my customer service? Well for a start I wouldn’t have to worry about the problems above, the helpdesk would mean no more Spam for me and no more messages getting lost in the crap! The helpdesk would also keep a record of the conversation between the seller and the buyer in one centralized system. This is invaluable when you consider that some email clients don’t include the original email body in the “reply to” emails.

Can you imagine the conversation below, I’m sure it will ring a bell if you sell online:

Sent on Monday by buyer:
Hi, I have lost my password, please resend.

Sent on Tuesday by seller:
Hello, please can you give me your paypal email address

Sent on Friday by customer:
bob@aol.com

But the customer doesn’t include the original email with his message, so I receive an email saying bob@aol.com but why is he sending me the email address? It’s now been 3 days since our last correspondence and I have forgotten why he sent me his address.

I then have to reply and ask why he sent me his address, he then gets angry because he thinks I am “fobbing him off” and both parties are unsatisfied with the service.

A ticket system would keep track of all correspondences between both parties so it would defiantly help overcome that problem!

Going back to the original Warrior Forum debate, the main reason people are anti-helpdesk seems to be the quality of support received, not the actual helpdesk. But wouldn’t the support be as bad if they used email instead of tickets? At the end of the day it would be the same person/people replying to your email!

From my experience I have had both good and bad support from both email and ticket systems. I don’t think the ticket system automatically equates to rubbish support!

So, my question to you is this:

“As a customer do you prefer a helpdesk or email support?”

Looking at it from a sellers (me!) point of view I am currently leaning towards getting a helpdesk system in place but I would like to hear your (the customers) views.

Please leave your replies in the comments section; I look forward to reading them!

Thanks for reading,
Dan

Profit from Amazon “aStores”

Profit from Amazon “aStores”

Hello and welcome to this week’s newsletter. This week I am taking a change in direction, I will be looking at how you can both profit and save money by using an Amazon “aStore”. You don’t need a website with loads of traffic or some huge hosting package!

Let me give you some quick background information about Amazon’s new “aStore” tool for Amazon associates.

The Amazon astore allows associates of Amazon to run their very own web store with your own custom shopping cart without directing users over to the main Amazon site. This allows you to run your own independent online store without paying for stock or hosting fees. (Everything is hosted and managed by Amazon)

You get just over 5% commission from Amazon for all sales that you make from your astore. This rate will increase depending on how many items you manage to sell.

Setting up your own Amazon aStore couldn’t be easier; everything is managed via a web based control panel. You can fully customize your store with the items you want to display; this is very useful if you want to create a store that is targeted at a specific market. You can also define all the colours and layouts of your store.

This week I have created two of my own aStores, one for amazon.co.uk and one for amazon.com. At present you can only create one astore for one affiliate account but Amazon have a new feature planned that will allow you to create multiple aStores in the future from the one affiliate account.

Take a look at my two aStores, one is aimed at Children and the other is a computer games store:

El Passo Kids (I can see a new brand coming…)

http://www.elpassobooks.co.uk/kids.htm

El Passo Videogame Shop:

http://www.elpassobooks.co.uk/PSP2/shop.php

Both are made using the same method, but I have put the Videogame store in an iframe so that it opens within my website, rather than as a standalone page.

As I said before, you don’t need to have your own website or hosting package to open up your own Amazon aStore. You could open your own store and simply promote it in your email signature or via relevant Internet forums.

I know a lot of you sell e-Books, so why not offer hardback versions of related books to your e-Book customers. All it would take is a simple line in a winning bidder email saying something along the lines of:

“Thank you for purchasing an E-Book. You may also like these related products….”

And direct them to your Amazon astore.

Maybe you have a site on crafts and hobbies. Why not increase your revenue by creating an aStore full of craft and hobbies products?

The possibilities are endless; those were just a couple off the top of my head. If you would like to share your ideas feel free to leave a comment at the end of this post.

Setting up your own aStore is simple, just sign up as an Amazon associate (it’s free!) and click on the big aStores link in your affiliate control panel. Sign up links are below:

Amazon UK Associate Sign Up:

http://associates.amazon.co.uk/join/026-3607224-4812459?%5Fencoding=UTF8&tag=elpassobooks-21&linkCode=sb1

Amazon USA Associate Sign Up:

http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/join/104-3420533-7894354?%5Fencoding=UTF8&tag=elpassobooks-20&linkCode=sb1

Hopefully this week’s newsletter will help you bring in a new dimension to your online ventures! If you set up your own aStore feel free to leave your URL in the comments section – I don’t mind giving you a quick plug and a back link!

I hope you enjoyed the newsletter, as always feel free to leave me any comments!

Regards,
Dan

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