I want to talk one of them and maybe about the second one in a separate video post.

Jonathan (Trust) suggested pulling the Hydra Network ads on ReveNews.com, although Hydra Network responded and indicated that they don’t want to pull their advertisements, even though the post about them was not exactly talking in their favor.

Angel Djambasov pointed out the

“separation between editorial and advertising”

and cited the “Editors Code of Preferred Editorial Practices” (PDF version) by the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) stating:

“… Let the advertiser know that negative content will be written about them and allow them the opportunity to remove their ad.”

and

“This allows editorial and advertising elements to be balanced while eliminating reactionary mob mentality.”

Kelly Stevens also pointed out that

“it’s an ad not an endorsement. As marketers, we all should recognize that.”

and that

“normal economic principles need to dictate. …

… business decision of bringing targeted advertisers to the readers.”

If

“… here is no response to the ad. It becomes an unproductive campaign for them. …

… Advertisers who fit with the demographics of the ReveNews.com viewership have successful campaigns.”

She also said that in case of her own website, AffiliateFairPlay.com, companies approached her to advertise on it, who she exposed as being unethical and that those advertisers obviously didn’t do their homework well and checked in more detail, what Kelly’s website is all about. She rejected such advertisers because

“it would undermine what my business is. So that trumps the ethics considerations.”

I agree completely with Kelly and Angel. I spend some time thinking about this dilemma myself.

Since I consider the advertisement on my own site Cumbrowski.com editorial content, except for the ads where I do not have editorial control over, such as Google AdSense, I call them Sponsorship instead of Advertisement and associate my name/brand with the advertisers brand (and vice versa). I made this clear in the editorial note on my website, which can be accessed from virtually any page on my site.

But this is because the site uses my name, which is my brand. Cumbrowski.com is not business publication with a brand name that is not associated with a person and a publication that tries to be fair and balanced overall, even if the individual bloggers express their own personal views. For this reason ReveNews.com tries to get as much different types of bloggers as possible, to be able to represent the different views and opinions of people in the affiliate marketing industry.

ReveNews.com did the right thing in case of Hydra Network and provided the ability for Hydra Network to make an official statement, provide comments and/or publishes a separate post, even with comments off, if insisted, which wasn’t the case with Hydra Network, but in another case that involved a post of mine here at ReveNews.com.

I think that a publication like ReveNews.com should separate advertisement on its website from the editorial content and should put a border between them, that advertisement will not influence content and vice versa, because it would take away the means for an advertiser to respond to the allegations and do damage control, send a message that changes were made, if the allegations were just, clarify facts, fight misconceptions or correct false information that were stated like facts.

All this could be done via an ad campaign that is visible beyond the one post about them, because some people might hear about this, but did not read the posts themselves. They might develop an opinion that is less favorable for the advertiser and that is maybe something the affected advertiser would like to correct or change. If ReveNews.com would refuse Ads from that Advertiser, he wouldn’t be able to do that.

My video rambles in more detail about this. It is about 8 minutes long.

Here is the backup link to the video at YouTube.

You can also download the video in higher resolution and AVI format at MediaFire.com.

Back to the original question, when you should drop an advertiser? … if it makes business sense to do so. If an advertisement causes more damage for your business and/or brand than you gain from it, because of loss of readership and/or damage to the reputation of your brand, then it would be the right choice to pull an advertisement. I dare to speculate that most publications don’t get into the position very often where they have to consider this question seriously, because the advertiser himself tends to answer this question much quicker and clearly before it comes to that.

Cheers

Carsten Cumbrowski
Internet Marketer, Blogger and Entrepreneur

Cumbrowski.com is a resources portal for internet marketers. The content is free, no strings attached.

Hello, SVP of Marketing for Hydra here to throw in my 2 cents… or fuel for the fire. First off, we aren’t going to pull our ad just because the discussion puts us under a harsh spotlight. We really truly have nothing to hide. The fact that people use adware is not news. It is not illegal. Some advertisers even request it. And for the record it represents just a small fraction of our overall business.

Does allowing adware by some affiliates hurt all others? In theory, It could. Is it truly a widespread problem in reality? Frankly, we hadn’t thought of it before - as I said, it’s not a big part of our business. But now that our attention has been called to it, we’re looking into it.

If you recall, Hydra was the first to eliminate cash incentivizers due to shadiness. We have made heavy investments to provide rigorous compliance - in fact we are widely regarded as exceptionally aggressive in that area. We also spend legal and research dollars to vet claims by advertisers. And more.

I don’t bring these points up thinking they can counteract the this whole adware brouhaha. The point is this: Hydra does not wish to engage in shady black or grey hat practices - NOR do we feel it is in our economic interest to do so. Do you think we want to jeopardize the inroads we have made with major brand name advertisers in order to score a quick buck? (the answer is no) We have had great success playing by the rules… and we want to be even more successful.

So we welcome any efforts to set professional standards, monitor and police, and generally clean up the affiliate marketing space. The better advertisers understand how reputable affiliates and networks work, the safer they will feel, and the more ad dollars they’ll pump in. That would be good for affiliates. That would also be good for us. Our interests are totally aligned on that one!

Anyway it’s end of day Friday so I will stop for now. But i do look forward to continuing the discussion.

If you have your two cents about Hydra specifically, CPA networks in general, or the proliferation of adware, the comment section below is a good place to express those opinions.

Why on Earth would any merchant look at performance based marketing as an option when they read headlines like this? Linda Buquet already addressed the acual issues with a much better titled post on her blog “VistaPrint VPRT and Hydra Allow Adware“, here also is a direct link to Ben Edelman’s report which includes extensive video Edelman Report.

One of the goals of an association that is a lot easier than lobbying is a PR effort on the behalf of our industry that can educate lawmakers as well as journalists about the industry. If journalists have a person who is the duly appointed spokesperson for the industry (as the director of a trade association is regarded), then they can reach out for comments when they have a juicy article like this - and that same spokes person can make sure that they understand what is going on here.

The real headline is that a few adware affiliates earns commissions deceptively, not that affiliates in general are using adware to earn through deceptive tactics. The real issues are that this is going on with the full knowledge of pretty much everyone involved. Was one affiliate interviewed for the article? It appears not.

Every time I read a headline like this, or hear about a talk at a conference that disparages this industry that helps good honest people create a living for their families I just get really pissed off that we don’t have anything done yet. I can’t say if this latest attempt to start an association will work, but it is moving forward and perhaps the pace can be quickened. Let’s get something off the ground before the next article like this is written!

The videos for Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston are out, so I thought that an update from my part is kind of required hehe.

Affiliate Summit East 2008

August 10-12, 2008 at the Boston Seaport Hotel in Boston - Agenda

All slideshows, including the ones from previous events can be watched online here at SlideShare.net.

Access to all videos (free, only sign-up for Affiliate Summit Newsletter is required to receive the user name and password for access to the videos).

• Keynote speaker was Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, New Jersey - video - audio - transcript
• Sunday: Affiliate Marketing Basics for Merchants
• Sunday: Leveraging Social Media
• Sunday: NY Tax Laws - Issues and Solutions - video
• Sunday: Which PPC Engines Work And How?
• Sunday: Monetize your Site with Amazon Associates - video
• Sunday: ShareASale Network Education Clinic - video
• Sunday: pepperjamNETWORK Education Clinic - video
• Session 1a: The State of Ad Networks
• Session 1b: Content That Kills
• Session 1c: My 5 Favorite SEO Strategies Exposed
• Session 2a: Anatomy of a Great Affiliate Program
• Session 2b: Compliance. Its More Than a Buzz Word
• Session 2c: Performance Marketing Alliance Q&A
• Session 3a: Landing Page Testing to Attract Super Affiliates
• Session 3b: How is Social Media Changing Affiliate Marketing
• Session 3c: Legal 2.0: Hot Topics in Affiliate Marketing
• Session 4a: PPC Search: Disclosure vs. Free-for-All
• Session 4b: PPC Super Affiliate Strategies You MUST Know
• Session 4c: The Ten Hottest Strategies for Internet Marketing
• Session 5a: The Future of Performance Marketing
• Session 5b: Web 2.0 for Affiliates
• Session 5c: Lessons Learned in Using Video for Affiliates
• Session 6a: Lead Generation for EMarketers
• Session 6b: International Options for US Affiliates
• Session 6c: Copywriting Clinic
• Session 7a: Data Feed Problems and Missing Information
• Session 7b: Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing

Bonus

• Round Tables at Affiliate Summit East 2008 Samples - 35 min video
• Recap and Photos from Affiliate Summit Boston

Affiliate Summit West 2009

Date: January 11-13, 2008 at the Rio All-Suites hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada

Gary Vaynerchuk from WineLibrary.tv will be the keynote speaker for Affiliate Summit 2009 West.

Details and Registration.

Teresa Caldwell volunteered again to do the Mentor Program at Affiliate Summit West 2009.

I did participate in the program for the previous Affiliate Summit as a mentor and will offer my help for the next summit as well. The mentor program for Affiliate Summit 2008 East in Boston also triggered a blog post of mine with tips for first-time conference attendees.

Additional Affiliate Summit Content and Resources

• Additional video content from and about Affiliate Summit via the Affiliate Video channel provided by Magnify.net (alternative URL).
• Pictures from all past events via Flickr account AffSum
• YouTube Channel AffiliateSummit
• Twitter account AffiliateSummit
• Affiliate Summit Blog
• Facebook Group
• ABestWeb Forum
• Social Network via Ning.com
• Squidoo Page
• Audio Coverage by WebMasterRadio.fm
• First Timers G uide to Affiliate Summit
• Affiliate Bootcamp DVD, same content as the AffiliateManager.net videos

And last but not least a post of mine that I wrote at Affiliate Summit West in February that discusses the question that I hear from people who think about attending a conference, but never did, all the time: “What is the Value of Attending Real Life Conferences?“. I hope that my rather long post will clarify that a bit and will convince the one or the other to get beyond the “thinking about” step this time.

For additional events in the internet marketing space check out my Internet Marketing Events Calendar.

Cheers!

Carsten Cumbrowski

This doesn’t, of course, mean that affiliate marketers have to become part-time video producers. Consider that 10 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Chances are there’s some kind of content on the video sharing site that can be used to promote product. After all, seeing another every day person interact with a product is something that can really influence a user’s mindset. Not only does this give the user a chance to see the product in action, but it bolsters a site’s credibility because it provides a richer user-experience.

Simply search YouTube for a video that’s appropriate for you landing pages, and embed them below the product or in the sidebar (hint: you can fit a YouTube video into a side bar by editing the width and height parameters in the embed code). Even if you can’t find a video of that specific product, embedding video that is related can put the consumer in a purchasing mood. For example, if you can’t find a video about ringtones, specifically, then see what there is in the way of music videos for whatever ringtones are most popular at that moment.

In fact, many affiliates already use YouTube as a resource for landing page content. Take Mark from 45n5: he uses mashup scripts that pull relevant content from YouTube and displays it on his product pages. All he does is input a couple of keywords into the script, and it finds and embeds relevantly tagged video content.

Alternatively, you can also just get a handy cam and shoot a quick video of yourself using the product. That way, you not only get complete control over the video’s content, but you never have to worry about that video getting deleted. As John Kerr, Director - Southeast Asia for Edelman, once pointed out, “the shaky cam is now seem as the most trusted form of media.”

Overall, videos are great way to increase conversions. They (1) let the consumers see the products (or lifestyles) in action, and (2) create a richer user-experience on your product pages, which increases the perceived credibility of your site. So whether you get some professional grade videos made, use other people’s uploaded content, or simply make your own pro-amateur clips, sourcing video content for your landing pages is so easy that you shouldn’t overlook it as a way to increas conversions.

The second day’s keynote at Blog World Expo 2008 was pretty unique and I was pretty excited to get a great seat to see Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week, and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park. I was first introduced to Tim Ferriss by another ReveNews blogger, I believe Adam Viener sometime last year. Adam posted about Tim’s book and I decided to pick it up while traveling to a conference later that week. Tim writes about lifestyle design in his book and outlines ways in which he has changed his life to “live” more and “work” less, eliminating tasks that you could have others do for you while you concentrate on the tasks that you do best and make you the most money. I thought the book was pretty good, although I have been able to enact absolutely 0% of what his recommendations and tactics. It’s hard to hire an assistant overseas when you work for a larger company… I really wanted to see what he was like compared to the image you get from reading the book. I’m happy to say Tim in person was much different than the perception of him in the book. The book is direct and to the point, and at times, you feel a bit preached to and maybe a bit “I’ve made millions so can you”. But still, it was a great book with great ideas I still plan to enact today and I highly recommend it. Tim was thoughtful, intelligent and deliberate and gave the crowd some very good advice that I’d like to share and you were drawn into what he was saying.

My notes are a bit hard to read, but either the first question or one of the first points Tim made was “how much is not being an a$$hole important to your success”. While this got a big laugh from the crowd, Tim used it to establish that there is a difference between being direct and telling people what you like and dislike and being a complete a#$. “You meet the same people coming down as you did going up” so treat them with respect. It will eventually come back around. Nice is often confused with being passive, “nice is not passive” he said. Tim often stresses that the definition of success is changing. His book, and him in person, stress that you need to define your success, what is it, what does it look like? What is important to you and how do you get there? Tim’s parting advice was to “practice, in a small way today, asking for what you want and telling people what you don’t like”. And remember, let’s not be a@#holes. Great advice and funny and now I am going to subscribe to his blog and re-read his book.

Mike Shinoda is one of my personal favorite artists as Linkin Park is one of my favorite bands, and yes I have been known to sing Mike’s part of their songs on a random Karaoke night in North Idaho (actually I have to do both as I can’t ever seem to get anyone to go up there with me, oh well). Anyway, enough about that. Mike was great to listen to. You could tell that he really enjoyed being there, and having a successful blog himself, he was more than happy to share what he found important, not only in the blogosphere but in music and life. You could tell that he was doing what he loved to do and was really enjoying his life, and that was refreshing. It’s always important to get energized a few times a year, and watching these two guys did just that for me. Mike runs his own site and blog at MikeShinoda.com. Mike shared the story first how Linkin Park got their name, and if you are thinking this has nothing to do with internet marketing, you’re wrong. The spelling of their band is such because it was the only good “.com” available for that name. His advice for bands - find a name that has a good .com. Mike is one of those people that creates constantly, whether it is his blog, his art or his music and he shared a bit of all of that for us. He stressed that we need to write, and focus, on what what you are passionate about, and not what you think people want to hear. It will show through in your writing.

I really wanted to get a picture and autograph with Mike, but I hate being “that guy” so I resigned myself to the fact that at least I was able to see and listen to someone I’ve admired for a while as a musician. Now if only I can learn some of their tunes on my acoustic…

There were some other gems that were shared during this free-flowing keynote:

• You need to identify the 20% of your work that takes up most of your time, the 20% of your work that creates the most income and the 20% of your l work that creates the most stress. You want to get rid of that last 20% and trim the first 20% down as much as you can so you can focus more on the percentage of time that makes you the most money. Find other people to do the other work so you can focus on what is most important for you.
• Write as if you were talking to friends after two drinks. Tim shared this and Mike agreed. There is an honesty and bit of informality after two beers.
• Don’t stop doing what you love, even after you have been turned down. Tim was “violently rejected” more times than he can remember when he was pitching his book.
• Your brand exists in the space between you and your fan. Mike made what may have been the most important point of the keynote. Your brand doesn’t exist with you, but in that space between you and the fan. Allow them to interact with it and feel part of it.
• You don’t want to be the best in your category, you want to create a new category that only includes you.
• There are more currencies than money. Think about that for a second.
• You need the right audience, not the largest.
• Just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean it matters.
• If you love making music and don’t need the celebrity, you can make it big as an independent.

This session was one of my favorites by two of my favorite people. They shared so much with us that I am afraid I have failed to adequately share with you all their information. They both were gracious, informative, intelligent, funny and great presenters. I encourage you to read Tim’s book, read Mike’s blog and follow these two, they have some great insight into life and how to run a business.

One of the latest events was the re-blocking of Podcaster (re-linked to dev site). More detail on support for the developer here. When does enough become enough for a developer? When will the user-base care enough that these actions impact Apple’s sales? When will Apple notice, let alone listen to the negative press? Does Apple even care? The amount of negative press, bad mouthing, and questioning of Apple’s ethics is so intense, it’s almost a marketers nightmare. You might even believe that developers would run from Apple in droves with the poor treatment of the Podcaster developer.

Or not. Let’s look at the developer angle:

• 2 months * 20hrs/wk * 4.3wks/month = ~172 man hours of work
• 172 hr * $30/hr (min. dev. cost) * 1.2 (20% FTE load) = ~$6200 cost to develop an iPhone app like Podcaster.

Now a business would probably up the developer cost and FTE load, and determine that an arbitrary decision to block an application by Apple would nullify $6000 to $12000 in development costs BEFORE opportunity costs were factored in. That would be a bad decision, with an unknown return, and a high risk profile.

On the other hand, none of those costs matter to a hobbiest developer who just wants to develop for a shiny object and have a cool app. There’s street cred in building a cool app for the iPhone, then showing it to friends and other developers. For better or worse, most of Apple iPhone developers fall into the second category, and that’s where the real debate should continue.

To look at this potential developer backlash and see if one exists, social marketers would be tapping into the “groundswell”, as a prominent analyst firm would say, and digging through the sentiment to see what the net impact would be of such actions of blocking applications with no forewarning or clear guidelines. The current wisdom is to listen, become part of the conversation, and engage the groundswell. That approach and methodology does not appear to be one that Apple subscribes to at the moment or needs to monitor too closely. They have their own plans to combat vs. engage.

Apple was successful in combating some of the negative press when an article about a developer making $250K recently appeared in Wired. Over 250,000 iPhone SDKs have been downloaded, and the app store drove $100M in sales in 2 months. With numbers like that, does Apple need to care about the developers of Podcaster and Pull My Finger? I would, but then again, I don’t have the trendiest shiny object or massive marketing machine that Apple leverages so well.

I guess there’s always android, but if it’s not shiny enough. What then?

The folks, who are working and playing at the edge, sometimes do not realize how far out they actually are and that the mainstream sometimes is far beyond the “horizon”, having no idea about what you are doing and about the environment you are active in.

I used my personal (not very much marketing related) blog to write in detail about the issue that I ran into, because it involves me as a person and legal stuff,where I don’t want to get ReveNews.com as a separate entity into. You can find the details at my personal blog, but the underlying general issue is worth talking about here.

There is also a rather funny part to be added to the whole story, which is missing in my other post and that I would like to tell you here, in video format. I am trying to do a bit more with video. I am not an American, so you are forced to listen to a thick German accent. However, the video format has multiple advantages. One, it’s quicker to record a video and just talk (what I do a lot) than writing down everything that I want to say (what I also do a lot or did in the past). Second, the video format should be easier to digest for you. I also have the opportunity to show stuff, rather than just talk about it. I am open to comments, suggestions, complaints and praise. You can express your thoughts in the comments section below.

Backup link to video on YouTube.com
Download the Video in .AVI format and 640×480 resolution via MediaFire.com

p.s. I have to make a correction to what I said in the video. The physical laws are of course the same on Earth as they are on the Moon. The correct verbage would have been to say that the conditions on the Moon are very different to that on Earth.

General Take-Away

The general take-away from this post, video and the post I referred to is that you should sit down and check and re-evaluate your internal policies and rules regarding your copyright protected content, which you already have in place for traditional media and publications to determine if those policies and rules are still making sense in the social media realm or not. This is especially important, if you have employees who follow those rules and enforce those policies across all media channels on your behalf.

The regular clerk in Marketing or Legal will not question the rules and policies that were set in stone for him. It is up to the management and executives who established those rules to make the necessary changes for the changing media landscape and those new distribution channels that your content is taking, legally or not so legally. You cannot apply the same rules to a customer and fan of your products, which expands on your marketing message and (in his eyes) improves or clarifies it, as you apply to your distribution and traditional media publishing partners.

Cheers!

Carsten Cumbrowski

Cumbrowski.com, Internet Marketing Resources and information about/background of Carsten.

The first day of Blog World was truly outstanding. The attendees were diverse, intelligent and engaged and the speakers were honest, authentic and they shared very detailed information. It didn’t seem like they held anything back. And Dave Taylor was as forthcoming as the rest.

This session I was looking forward to since I registered for the conference. I was not all that familiar with Dave Taylor prior, but so many of my affiliate partners request information on this very topic that I was anxious to share the information beyond the blogging community.

If you don’t know Dave Taylor, www.askdavetaylor.com, I recommend you become acquainted with him. His presentation was both informative and entertaining, regardless if some of his jokes went without a communal guffaw, the humor was appreciated.

Dave basically went over four things:

1. Your Title Tags
2. Keyword Density
3. Smart Image File Names
4. and “Read More” is less

Most of the information was fairly basic if you have been playing in the SEO world, but he pointed out some very well known sites as examples that fail to follow simple guidelines.

Titles - Are they good enough to grab attention? Do they include the main topics and concepts? How will someone search for this content and can you slip a few of those terms in the title without it looking like garbage?

Keyword Density - No magic percentage here. In fact when asked what the correct percentage was, Dave answered “not too little, but not too much either”. What he did point out was that in our typical conversations, and most of our blogs are written that way, we refer to, for example, our iPod first as the Apple iPod. The second time we mention it we say iPod and after that we say “it”. His suggestion was to remove the word it and words like it and use the name of the item, person, topic, in place of those.

Another tip he pointed out related to overuse of CSS in your pages. CSS can make designing your site easy, but too much CSS removes hard coded HTML items that can help you tell the search engines what your page is about. He stressed the use of H1 tags and gave some examples of how to use html and CSS together.

Smart Image names - Are you uploading all your images with names like DVM0084.jpg? How about giving them a little more of a description.

Alt Tags - Dave’s advice - use them!

“Read More” is Less - When sites show an excerpt of an article with a link titled “Read More”, it isn’t helping them. Dave pointed out that internal linking across your pages is as important as external linking. Using Read More as link text only helps you if you are attempting to rank well for the term “read more”. Use more descriptive link text such as “Read more about the Sony HandyCam”. Get your topical keywords into those links.

Overall, Dave stressed that you need to do as much as you can to help the search engines help their users. Gaming the system doesn’t work, but using the tools and areas of your site correctly will help your site be found for the content it provides. Great content, shown correctly will lead to great results. Anyone else make this session have feedback?

I was planning on going to one of the other sessions after the keynote, but decided to attend this one when I saw that Darren Rowse of ProBlogger was on the panel of the Making Money Online with a Blog session. Since I have read ProBlogger for some time I really wanted to hear what he had to say. I originally overlooked this session as I have heard John Chow, Shoemoney and Zach Johnson speak before and I didn’t see how their niche would help out my partners, not many of which write content in the same area as they.

I’m glad I attended this session. Originally, Jeremy Shoemaker was not in attendance, but after moderator Jim Kukral asked every one to direct tweet “Shoemoney Sucks” to Jeremy, he ended up showing up. It was pretty entertaining when he walked in.

Overall, the information shared by each of the panelist was fantastic. No one seemed to hold back and each had substantial information to contribute. Right out of the gate, gems were shared. Jim started with a question: “What is the #1 thing you have done that made you the most money?” Chow responded that moving from network advertising to a direct sales approach made the biggest difference to him. Darren Rowse echoed these remarks. The change in income was substantial, each said. Zach Johnson said that consistently building your brand was the most important and Brian Clark stated that his biggest success was actually selling to the audience instead of advertising or marketing to them. Brian discussed the concept of understanding your audience and finding the things that they want to purchase. In his case it was starting a membership based site (www.teachingsells.com), and a site that sells Wordpress themes. There are other ways to make money online then your standard advertising model, and Brian made that clear.

There was so many other things shared, allow me to give you a list here (by no means is this list comprehensive):

• Email, Email, Email: email is a necessary way to market to your readers. Go beyond the feedshare “subscribe via email” and produce a weekly newsletter. Everyone discussed Aweber as a great tool for this.
• Launch phase of your blog is at least 2 years. Darren shared that he still considers his digital photography blog in its launch phase after 2 years. These things take time to build up, don’t become discouraged after a few months or even 18. Keep at it and build good content.
• Adsense is “webmaster welfare”.
• In order to market better to your readers, analyze your search traffic to see what they are searching for and write content, when appropriate, to those terms.
• Selling advertising directly means that you control the relevance of the ads to your content and to your readers and allows you to earn more.
• If you are looking to sell ads directly, use OIO Publisher for Wordpress.

One of the more important notes of the session came from John
Chow who said “write for people, not Google”. I’ll leave you with that.