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Internet Retailer has published some figures from my AffStat 2006 Report…

Affiliate marketing—using one site to drive traffic to another site—is becoming more complex, to judge by consultant Ronald Bell’ annual survey of marketers who use affiliates.

His latest report—AffStat 2006—shows an increase in the number of affiliates in the mid range—23% of this year’s respondents report 5,001-10,000 affiliates vs. 13% a year ago, yet 18% report they have too many affiliates to manage effectively.

A year ago, 26% of respondents had 5,000 or more affiliates; this year, it’s 29%. A year ago, 16% of respondents had 2,001 to 5,000 affiliates; today it’s 23%.

Another interesting bit of information from the survey: nearly two-thirds of in-house affiliate managers earn $40,000 to $80,000 a year.

Berkeley Heights, NJ - January 30, 2006 — The Affiliate Summit Convention will be held July 9-11, 2006 in Orlando, Florida. The Affiliate Summit is presented by Ronald Bell and Missy Ward and provides the unique opportunity for affiliate marketing professionals to gather and learn from one another in a cooperative environment.

The goal of the Affiliate Summit is to create a learning environment and networking opportunity that facilitates the exchange of information about affiliate marketing issues.

Educational sessions at the Affiliate Summit will be in the following formats: debates, panel discussions, solo presentations, and roundtable discussions.

Affiliate Summit will have two tracks, one targeted to affiliates and the other to merchants, and is looking for presentations that will educate and inform attendees about online marketing issues directly relevant to affiliate marketers, especially presentations on the following topics:

• Blogs & RSS

• Datafeeds
• Recruiting, Activating and Retaining Affiliates
• Lead Generation
• Badware
• Affiliate Communication and Relationship Strategies
• Segmentation of Affiliates
• Search Engine Marketing
• Legal Issues (fraud, CAN-SPAM, etc.)
• Podcasting
• Applying Adult and Gaming Strategies to Mainstream Affiliate Programs
• Why Affiliates Pick Certain Programs
• How to Get VIP Commissions from Merchants
• Emerging Technology
• Tools for Affiliates/Affiliate Managers
• B2B Affiliate Marketing
• Landing Pages
• Site Usability
• Search and Affiliate: Love/Hate Relationship
• World of Mouth
• Becoming a Super Affiliate

If you are interested in presenting on one of these topics or another topic relevant to affiliate marketers, Affiliate Summit welcomes your submission. Some attributes that will increase the chances of your proposal being accepted are: case studies with new, interesting data; nuts and bolts on how you do what you do; and advanced level content.

To submit a proposal, please visit http://www.affiliatesummit.com/speaker-details.shtml and complete the online application. Proposals will be accepted until February 28, 2006 - no proposals after that date will be considered.

It is important to note that all previous Affiliate Summit conferences have sold-out in advance. Presenting at Affiliate Summit is a worthwhile experience, providing you the opportunity to share your knowledge and experiences with others and giving you and your company industry recognition. A complimentary full-conference registration is available to speakers as well. Travel and hotel are not included.

For more information about the Affiliate Summit Conference, please visit www.AffiliateSummit.com. For up-to-date information about the affiliate marketing industry, subscribe to the Real Deal Newsletter – the Official Newsletter of Affiliate Summit at www.RealDealNewsletter.com

About Affiliate Summit, Inc.
Affiliate Summit, Inc. was founded by affiliate marketing industry veterans Ronald Bell and Missy Ward and serves the affiliate marketing professional community. For additional information about the conference, please visit www.affilatesummit.com or contact Missy Ward and Ronald Bell at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/contact.shtml

# # #

MarketingSherpa is carrying the AffStat 2006 Report, the fourth edition of this definitive study on the affiliate marketing industry. One hundred eighty-nine affiliate managers from a cross-section of merchants were surveyed on their overall statistics, as well as practical aspects of their affiliate marketing channels.

Areas covered in the 2006 report include: affiliate networks, staffing, affiliate recruiting, and management. The Affstat 2006 report includes a section where affiliate managers sound off in their own words on a variety of industry issues, a guide to affiliate recruiting, and resources for affiliate managers with 32 hotlinks to affliate marketing message boards, blogs, and newsletters.

More details at http://www.sherpastore.com/affstat-2006.html

One of my merchants, which I sold over $6,000 of products, ignores my e-mails about paying my commissions. They owe me about over $1,400 of commissions. What recourse do I have toward this situation? Any bright idea or experience you may have yourself encounter which could help me?

One thing you should do, if you haven’t done so already, is to review the affiliate agreement for this affiliate program. Check whether the manner in which you promoted the affiliate program is forbidden in their agreement.

For instance, many affiliate programs forbid affiliates bidding on their company name in pay per click search engines. If you violated one of the aspects of the agreement, then you are going to have a tough time getting those commissions, as the agreement may well state that such activity results in forfeited commissions.

Assuming you abided by all of their rules, try the following.

If the affiliate program in question is part of an affiliate network, my first suggestion would be to contact the network and share your story with them. Check whether they have some sort of arbitration procedure in place for cases like yours.

In the event the affiliate program is an independent program, do some research and find out the name and contact information for the CEO. Don’t just settle for e-mail - trying reaching them via snail mail and or phone with your story.

If this does not provide any resolution, consider bringing the issue to a local attorney. Ask them what their rates would be to take action against the company. It may be effective for them to send a letter on their letterhead to the merchant.

However, given the total outstanding balance is $1,400, you may find that a good portion of the outstanding commission is vaporized in legal fees. Bear in mind, there is no guarantee that they lawyer will get a positive result for you, but they can better determine this, since I don’t have all of the facts and IANAL (I am not a lawyer).

I’ve come across an “affiliate collection agency,” but I wouldn’t personally recommend this avenue. They ask for a 50/50 split of outstanding commission payments, and claim 100% success, but there is nothing to back up that claim.

Further, I contacted them to get more information, and requested an NDA before handing over my personal, sensitive information. They didn’t have an NDA, which is a big, red flag. Stay away from this sort of service.

Looking to the future, I’d encourage you to perform due diligence on any affiliate programs you promote. It may sound like a hassle to do five minutes of research on any affiliate program you want to join, but it’s a lot better than driving yourself crazy trying to collect commissions from them later on.

LinkShare recently sent out an update regarding the ATHENA registration system. ATHENA, which launched in March 2005, is about to institute some improvements to the system based on feedback from affiliate marketers.

Below are the improvements being made to ATHENA per the announcement from LinkShare:

Legal Name based on Entity Type
We have changed the way we collect the Legal Name. It is now based on the chosen entity type. So if you choose an entity type of Individual or Sole Proprietorship then the Legal Name will now be collected in two fields - First Name and Last Name. If however, you choose an entity type such as an LLC, Corporation, LLP, Partnership, Non-Profit, Other, or Foreign then the Legal Name will continue to be a Single Field for the Legal Name. We request that all affiliates check their profile to ensure their Legal Name is recorded correctly. If your Legal Name is not correct, please update your profile with the appropriate information.

Tax Forms
The various tax forms have been updated to ensure that your information is appropriately captured and the tax forms we create for you are accurate.

• W-9
  Based on the needs of Affiliates that are American Citizens residing outside the United States of America, we have updated the W-9 forms to be accessible to affiliates that have a Legal Entity Country other than the United States of America.

• W-8 BEN, W-8 ECI, W-8 EXP, and W-8 IMY
  We have updated these forms and the information these forms require. If you are an Affiliate that does not reside in the United States and have used one of these forms, please check and ensure that all the required fields are populated. Please note that the failure to do so could result in actions by IRS, require us to withhold further payment of commissions and/or lead to termination of your continued participations in the network.

Channel Type Management
With the ATHENA registration system we established a new concept called the “Channel”, and we required you to select the channel types that you wanted to use. We have now enhanced this feature to allow you to manage your channel types. With the new functionality you can Add/Delete channel types as needed.

In other LinkShare news, they recently held their LinkShare Partnership Summit 2006 in San Francisco. Check out the Revenue Magazine blog for coverage on the event.

I came across a problem I didn’t know existed on the CPAEmpire blog today.

Scott Richter, Chief Executive Officer of CPAEmpire, posted a message titled “An Open Letter to CPAEmpire Affiliates Regarding Stance on Affiliate Non-Compete Agreements,” where he stated…

It has come to our attention that some Affiliate Networks have recently began asking their Affiliates to consent to Non-Compete Agreements. These Agreements are an attempt to prevent their Affiliates from marketing similar offers on competitive Affiliate Networks. For the record, CPAEmpire.com does not support the use of Non-Compete Agreements to preclude Affiliates from marketing any offer they so desire.

I’m not sure which CPA networks are trying to push these non-compete agreements, but I would imagine affiliates are either laughing or demanding big raises. Anybody who would simply acquiesce to such a demand is making a mistake.

Don’t get me wrong - exclusivity clauses aren’t a totally bad thing. I think it’s reasonable for an affiliate program to demand exclusivity on certain pages, in the event the affiliate program is paying above their regular fees for such a premium right.

Also, if an affiliate program is providing some quality content to select affiliates, I think it’s fair to stipulate that competing affiliate programs should not be on those pages.

But if an affiliate program or network is demanding exclusivity just for the glorious right of promoting them, I’d urge affiliates to emancipate themselves from such network slavery.

It’s an open market - may the best performing offer win.

Joel “Dr. AdSense” Comm is at it again with another product for the AdSense hungry public. He’s going to run an AdSense telecourse series, “The AdSense Code”.

Retailing for $497, this 8-part series will feature live interviews with seven of the Internet’s leading marketers and experts, including:

• Brad Fallon

• Alex Mandossian
• Tim Carter
• Craig Perrine
• Mark Widawer
• Christopher Knight
• Yours Truly

This offer will close on February 2nd - more details at http://www.theadsensecode.com/