Comments on: Advice on Direct to Merchant PPC

By: Kier

Kier — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:42:00 +0000

There are actually some networks that do use tracking methods that allow affiliate links to pass link juice but most don’t on the whole and for those that do it’s a value add aspect of their service. As Kieron says merchants join networks to get sales/leads primarily, there are useful seconday benefits of which this can be one for those networks that use it (although I’ve heard tracking reliability suffers as a result).

Very hard to say what they’re talking about, maybe a big Google update of some kind, shaking up the natural or paid results would be the main thing that would affect all networks. If this was a US focused talk then they may be referencing impending legislation/government action against a lot of the really scammy ‘CPA’ deals that are being pushed so hard over there and increasingly in the UK as well (“One rule to a flat stomach: OBEY!”). Without knowing more I’d say don’t worry about it.

By: Kieron

Kieron — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:34:18 +0000

Hi Rachel, thanks for your comment. I have no idea what the SEOMoz stuff is all about but as far as affiliate links containing “link juice” well they don’t and never have. They are almost always coded with the affiliate networks URL so there has never been any benefit to merchants from an SEO point of view. The reason why merchants join affiliate networks is for their technology (tracking, banner hosting, payment etc) and of course so they can have access to the thousands of affiliates signed up to the network. In short, merchants use affiliate networks to generate sales, not for SEO.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:52:38 +0000

Hi Rachel.

You’re welcome, pleased it’s helped you out. I’ll ask a couple of the docs to see if they have an answer to your question.

By: Rachel White

Rachel White — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:33:58 +0000

I would like to say a really really big thank you. It’s so much appreciated to hear all your thoughts and advice, not to mention a big support for people (like us) who are relatively new in the business.

We are trying different landing pages now, as well as doing direct to merchant and it seems to be about finding the right formula for the actual landing page/ site, plus obviously finding the right products.

I think we are getting there; but in terms of back-up, i do feel a lot better with some landing pages / websites behind us, rather than just doing direct to merchant ppc. Especially with your comment, Kieron, about merchants being able to slap you at any given point. (I had saved that particular thought only for Google but in fact have just had this happen to us with a direct to merchant campaign we were running that was doing extremely well for us: They suddenly pulled direct ppc and even though we now have a landing page it’s not working nearly as well).

I guess for us the main learning curve for us has been acting as fast as possible when we notice a niche… and getting a landing page up pronto!(if it’s not appropriate to do solely PPC)

It’s really really reassuring to read your advice and to hear that you haven’t said: ‘No you can’t do this’ for a living and that it’s not feasible. So thank you very very much.

On another note, someone mentioned that they had been to an affiliate lecture run by SEOMOZ and a guy who runs a big SEO agency said that something very ‘big’ was going to happen in the affiliate networks in the next six months. Does anyone have any clue what this might be? the only real thing that we could think of was that google might stop link juice in affiliate links and hence merchants might not want to be a part of the network anymore (because a) they wouldn’t have any benefits from the inbound links and thus they would have to concentrate on their own SEO etc? I don’t know if anyone else has heard anything similar???

Thanks so much again guys this site is excellent and I really enjoy reading it.

R
ps sorry for the long post!!!