"Affiliate" Marketing Help

Some of you have asked: "...what is the easiest way and most cost-effective way to have your products listed across a wide variety of sites without having to manipulate your data feeds daily or weekly and set up accounts directly with certain sites you may want to work with...", i.e. you don't have the resources to manage your data feeds and return on adspend using a tool as MerchantAdvantage, you don't have $ to spend on some pay-per-click campaigns, and you just want to experiement and "wet your feet."

In other words, you are willing to work with/pay fees to a "broker/affiliate" who is able to take your data feed, ONCE it is configured correctly for that affiliate site, and then offer you the opportunity to have that product catalog feed sent to many places for a "structured fee".

I say "structured fee" as each "broker/affiliate" has a different business model, fee structure, contract obligation etc...which I would ensure you understand clearly before working with them.

I followed up with a client recently and had a nice conversation about just this option and with whom they could work. I reminded that merchant that even an affiliate site requires you to format a data feed and send it to them daily (set-up work is required), but if you are just sending your data feed to one affiliate or even two and not updating and manipulating your prices, product descriptions, and analyzing performance on a day-to-day basis then it should be no issue to work with them directly - if they accept you into their netowork and you are willing to pay associated fees.

So here were some of the affliate sites I suggested on my call this am. Please remember that all listed have a different cost structure, some lock you in to work with them for a year, and some may not be appropriate for your stage of development.

Overview of some Affiliates - some of our clients send their product data feeds to at least one of these, some work with many of these listed -

SPECIAL NOTE: Not every affiliate will work with you if they don't think you're big enough to support their affiliate network and they all purport to do the same thing which is broker your products to other sites. Some of these are small, some are very large, and others are niche.

(listed in alphabetical order - NOT in order of importance, ease of working with them, cost, or reach):

www.Avantlink.com
www.BettyMills.com
www.ClassifiedFlyerAds.com
www.ClickXchange.com
www.ClixGalore.com
www.CommissionJunction.com
www.DigitalGoodsDelivery.com
www.GoldenCan.com
www.Google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork
www.Half.com
www.iShop.co.uk (UK-London based)
www.Kolimbo.com
www.Lemonade.com
www.Linkconnector.com
www.LinkShare.com
www.PepperJamNetwork.com
www.PriceScan.com
www.SecretPrices.com
www.Shareasale.com

I am sure there are many more affiliate sites, but this is a start if you decide this type of marketing strategy is right for you.  I hope the above proves helpful as you continue to expand your online marketing efforts.

-- Chip Arndt

FitBase Provides Valuable Information For Ecommerce Merchants

Many of our ecommerce clients at MerchantAdvantage have asked for additonal information to our white papers and client-side Webinars to make better business and online marketing decisons.  We all know that there’s a lot of information out there – google search, MSN search, Yahoo! search, blogs, industry websites, white papers, even newsletters -- which MerchantAdvantage also sends out each month. 

Okay, all of this is good. After all, knowledge IS power.  But what about too much knowledge?  Having so much information that it is all white noise?  The real question is where do we find the "right" information easily that we can act on today.  Albeit, how do we make heads or tails of the abundance of data available to anyone with an internet connection?

Well, friends of eTaildTail at FitForCommerce have pondered those questions – and have come up with a great answer: FitBase.  

In addition to their core eCommerce consultancy business, they have launched an online knowledge base of all things eCommerce. Now before you become skeptical of "another" site claiming to be the "one-stop-shop" for ecommerce related informaton -- I hear what you’re probably saying now: "...just what we need Chip – MORE information!"  

Okay, point taken. 

However, FitBase provides information in an organized, structured and intuitive manner, with apples-to-apples comparisons, benchmarking data on 1,000s of eCommerce features, and easy to follow, categorized "Best Practices" advice and resources in one place.  This even includes surveys, statistics and provider and solution details for vendors in over 30 different categories.   And, it is all presented in an easy-to-use solution finder interface that finds information and resources that most likely to fit your business ecommerce needs.

There’s only one thing to say. Phew. 

And I am glad to point you in their direction. It has been a great help to me, so check it out here and I believe it will help you too.

Enjoy.

- Chip Arndt

Get Elastic and FitForCommerce Free Webinar Helps Online Merchants Choose Best Online Technologies to Grow Sales

eTaildTail friends over at Get Elastic and FitForCommerce are teaming up and hosting a free webinar to help online merchants choose the best online technologies that can build their online business cost-effectively and efficiently. 

Each week Get Elastic has excellent advice and webinars for all online merchants to grow their business in a myriad of areas, such as: SEO and SEM advice, online shopping ideas, general site search and navigation methods, adword buys, technologies, and much more.

This month's webinar is free and should be a good one; it is titled:

The Art & Science of Choosing Ecommerce Technology
Date: August 14
Time: 9:00 am PST and 12:00 noon EST
Panelists: Bernardine Wu, CEO, FitForCommerce and Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to sign up, it is free.

Here is the overview:

Making the right choice is both harder and more important than you think. Attend this webinar to get step-by-step help from FitForCommerce, described in plain English! You'll learn:

• How to figure out what your ecommerce strategy and needs really are
• How to research ecommerce best practices and ecommerce technologies
• How to define and document your requirements
• How to assess the responses from the ecommerce solution providers; compare apples to apples
• How to select from your 'short list' of options

Sign up now and you will receive all 30 of FitForCommerce's "ecommerce Best Practices." You can learn about best practices for eCommerce Platforms, Web Analytics and Search Engine Marketing, to name just a few.

After you attend, you will also receive all 30 of FitForCommerce's "ecommerce Key Questions" to assist you in assessing ecommerce solution providers.

FitForCommerce™ experts help ecommerce businesses analyze business and technical requirements, leverage best practices, gain visibility to market offerings and select 'best fit' technology solutions. FitForCommerce's unique ecommerce Diligence™ process and toolkit ensures rigorous evaluation and knowledge-based decision-making.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to sign up, it is free.

I hope you can join them.  I am.

-- Chip Arndt

Infopia Gives Merchants Access to More Buyers Through MerchantAdvantage

Hello eTaildTail:

I just returned from a few days in New York City, where I was meeting with clients and comparison shopping engines as Pronto, owned by Mr.Barry Dillar's IAC Interactive, and Underbid. While there I was witness to the extraordinary buy-out of Bear Stearns investment bank by a friend at JP Morgan who was working on the deal 24-7.  I also met with Wall Street analysts about the state of e-commerce and m-commerce for 2008...so excuse the delay in getting a post up here. 

[Just as a reminder, if I don't post for a few days, please check back daily for relevant news on the right hand side of this blog, as I do try to update that daily].

In NYC, I was pleasantly surprised to learn from these analysts that both e-commerce and m-commerce are expected to grow, despite the "poor economy", over the next few months, precisely because online and m-commerce buying can save people money.  Now that is not to say that people will be buying a lot more, as we are all hurt by high gas prices and are nervous about where the economy is heading and whether or not we will get bonuses at the end of this year, but rather that people will shop form their computer and wireless devices more because it is easy, it is becoming fun, and you can save money -- albeit better prices online and saving gas driving to the malls and stores.

In the meantime my company, MerchantAdvantage continues to help small to mid-sized online merchants grow their business with valuable feed management Web-based tools and it is wonderful to see so many clients successful and growing ROI.

To that end, I am proud to announce a partnership with Infopia, a shopping cart and business platform technology company, that helps online merchants works easily with eBay.  Now, with this partnership, Infopia clients can work with hundreds of other comparison shopping engines and marketing channels to increase sales and brand awareness.  It is an honor to work with Infopia and see that CNBC News  and Yahoo! Finance thought our partnership important to report on this week.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> for CNBC's story.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> for Yahoo!'s story

We have had a very productive 1st Q here at MerchantAdvantage and I look forward to bringing the e-commerce and m-commerce industry wonderful, new, products and services to help you grow your business into 2009....stay tuned! :-)

-- Chip

Here is the announcement from Infopia:

Infopia Merchants Get Expanded Merchandising Power To Over 100 Comparison Shopping Engines and Marketplaces by Using MerchantAdvantage

SALT LAKE CITY, March 17, 2008 -- Infopia, the leader in multi-channel, online selling, announced a new partnership today with MerchantAdvantage, which gives Infopia clients the ability to market their products to over 100 comparison shopping engines (CSEs) and marketplaces. The all-in-one, integrated solution from Infopia and MerchantAdvantage empowers merchants to send product data to marketing channels, update information in their data feeds within minutes, analyze sales, and respond to marketing campaign issues in real-time. This partnership is the newest effort by Infopia to ensure merchants get the highest ROI from their technology and can accept orders through a multitude of CSEs.

"Effective CSE strategies that focus on category, subcategory, and individual SKU performance can increase ROI up to five-fold," said Chip Arndt, co-founder of MerchantAdvantage.

"What MerchantAdvantage gives Infopia merchants," said Bjorn Espenes, CEO at Infopia, "are the tools to manage profit-margins on marketing campaigns at a product level -- essentially giving them the power to reach millions of new buyers through a user-friendly, Web-based tool."

Infopia and MerchantAdvantage enable merchants to do the following:

-- Send product information to over 100 online marketing channels such as Become.com, Ciao, JellyFish, MSN Live Search, myCoupons, PriceForSure.com, PriceGrabber, Pronto, Shopzilla, Shop.com, Smarter.com, SortPrice.com, theFind.com, Google Product Search, and Yahoo!

-- Discover which marketing channels, product categories, and individual products meet expected ROI and be able to adjust accordingly

-- Manage SKU-level bidding at supported CSE sites

-- Expand buyers reached under current budget.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> for  the full press release and story.

Everest Software and MerchantAdvantage Deliver Online Retailers Innovative Comparison Shopping Solution

It is wonderful to start 2008 off with a strategic partnership with a formidable software company.

I am proud to announce that MerchantAdvantage, of which I am a co-founder, has done just that to help online merchants better manage their product catalog, data feed management needs when working with comparison shopping engines and marketplaces.

Here is an overview from a press release that Everest Software sent out about the strategic partnership with MerchantAdvantage and how we will be helping their clients into the future.

Check out Everest as a complete business management solution, they have been around for over a decade and have a wonderful product and check out MerchantAdvantage, maybe we can help you too.

-- Chip

<<<CLICK HERE>>> for full press release.

Everest Software®, the leading provider of business operating systems for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), recently announced the availability of Everest® eLink integrated with MerchantAdvantage Channel Management products. Through a strategic partnership, Everest and MerchantAdvantage are redefining e-Commerce by providing the SMB online merchant more ways to feed their product information to Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) and marketplaces. The robust all-in-one solution from Everest and MerchantAdvantage lets users analyze sales and respond to marketing campaigns in real-time, ensuring the highest return on marketing investment.

"As the number of CSEs continues to grow, it is imperative for SMBs to efficiently automate and streamline the transfer of product information between multiple CSEs," said Ian Michiels, Senior Analyst, Aberdeen Research. "Our research shows that SMB's struggle with the growing cost of managing and configuring dozens of CSEs for marketing efforts; it's just not cost-effective."

Each CSE aggregates a list of products from many sellers into a single portal - delivering an efficient shopping experience for the Internet shopper. While the CSE is an essential marketing channel for the online merchant, working with CSEs can overload the SMB, as each CSE requires a different process for merchants to publish their product details.

"Now, Everest gives online merchants an easy way to manage their CSE feeds and simultaneously increase sales," said Edwin Miller, CEO of Everest Software. "Online merchants can leverage Everest eLink and MerchantAdvantage to schedule the frequency of product updates and increase their return on investment by automatically removing items when they fall short of sales targets."

Everest eLink together with MerchantAdvantage lets clients:

1. Push product information to over 100 online marketing channels including CSEs such as Ciao, JellyFish, PriceGrabber, Pronto, Shopzilla, Google Product Search and Yahoo! Shopping
2. Discover which marketing channels, product categories and individual products are meeting expected return on ad-spend and adjust accordingly
3. Manage SKU level bidding at supported shopping CSE sites
4. Expand market reach while maintaining current marketing budget

"Effective CSE strategies focusing on category, subcategory, and individual SKU performance increases ROI sometimes five fold," explains Michael Lambert and Chip Arndt, co-founders of MerchantAdvantage. "MerchantAdvantage products give Everest e-Tailers the tools to manage profit-margins on marketing campaigns at the product level and the power to reach millions of potential new customers through a user friendly Web-based tool. We are honored to be an integral part of the Everest team to help clients grow their online business efficiently, intelligently and cost-effectively,"

<<<CLICK HERE>>> for full press release.

eBay Stores: 75% credit on Final Value Fees When You Generate Leads on CSEs

It has been a wonderful past two weeks.  I was at Internet Retailer in San Jose and then at eBay Live! in Boston the following week – so much to learn and share with you all.  I just returned from New England and now am back in “muggy” but sunny Miami.  There is so much to cover and so please check back daily as I will be writing rigorously over the next few weeks to cover it all and provide good information to help etailers increase sales and brand exposure.

Let me start with some advice for ebay Stores sellers who can make some wonderful money back when they start to market their product catalog outside of eBay and generate leads coming to their eBay Store using shopping comparison sites and other marketing channels.  [For reference purposes shopping comparison sites or comparison shopping engines are referred to as CSEs and include over 100 that I know of, including the most popular ones as Yahoo! Shopping, Shopzilla, PriceRunner, Shopping.com, Become, Smarter, SortPrice.  For a more comprehensive list please see MerchantAdvantage at:

http://www.merchantadvantage.com/res_channels.cfm

How much money can you make back?

How about a 75% credit on your Final Value Fees when your marketing efforts generate sales of your eBay Store Inventory from these other marketing efforts. 

In essence, the credits that ebay will give you will probably end of paying for any money, time, and effort to set up marketing campaigns using the CSEs. 

So How Does This All Work?

1. eBay Stores typically get their consumers from the eBay community, not outside the eBay community, and that seems to bother the eBay community.

2. eBay wants to change this pattern and help eBay Stores generate sales leads from other marketing channels

3. eBay Stores typically have rapidly changing inventory, as compared to standard online retailers, often have limited supplies of products, and the products move quickly. Because of this, eBay Store owners overlook Shopping Comparison Sites/Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) as a viable marketing possibility as they understand that a catalog feed could easily become outdated too often.  But this is solved by…

4.  eBay allowing and encouraging their eBay Stores to append code to the product URL for links back to the eBay store from outside of the eBay community.

Why Should I Do This Now?

So, if you are an owner of an eBay Store and have the ability to quickly and easily send your most accurate inventory to CSEs, while automatically appending some code to the url, you would be a candidate for receiving a HUGE reward. Check out here to see how big of reward from eBay themselves:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/specialtysites/referral-credit-faq.html 

Suffice it to say that this is an awesome business proposal for any eBay Stores as it is BOTH FREE marketing and considered in my book as marketing for profit.

How Can I Do This Now Easily and Affordably?

To make things even more pleasant and easy, there are several companies that offer tool based products to help you set up these feeds easily.  These include FeedPerfect by Solid Cactus, SingleFeed by Brian Smith and MerchantAdvantage’s Channel Management with Chanalytics Professional and Lite, and Channel Advisor’s ShoppingAdvisor product. 

I recommend contacting all four companies and see where you get the best value, technical support, built in analytics, and also make sure you ask about transaction fees, revenue fees and set up fees when using their tools – you should not have to pay these fees – so don’t. 

There are also excellent service based companies as Channel Intelligence, Channel Advisor, and Mercent, but the small to mid-sized online merchant may not be able to afford their monthly fees, long term contract and revenue share.  They specialize on servicing the larger etailers and not eBay Stores.  MerchantAdvantage did announce a very affordable  “Lite” product specifically small retailers and for eBay Stores and ProStores Web Stores to feed their product catalog to over 100 online marketing channels, at eBay Live! so you might want to look into their product more closely, as they also have no transaction fees, no revenue share or no set up costs.

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. eBay encourages its eBay Stores merchants to market their product catalog outside of eBay to help bring more customers and brand awareness to your eBay Store. 

2. Click here to see how you can benefit for a 75% credit on your Final Value Fees http://pages.ebay.com/help/specialtysites/referral-credit-faq.html 

3. Any eBay Store can send their product catalog data to other shopping destination sites easily and affordably to take advantage of this offer.

4. The limited investment to create a multi channel marketing campaign, when using a feed management tool (see above), coupled with eBay's offer makes a very compelling case that all eBay Store merchants should at least try multi channel marketing for a few months.