DISQUS

Me dizzy.

Cool, I'll show this to my kids in the morning. Do you happen to know what that idiot Glenn Beck was referring to? I get all sorts of science feeds and can't seem to find a reference to dark matter collapsing.

If you're like me, you handle most tasks via email requests, and those tasks are a combination of quick 5-10 minute tasks, longer 1-2 hour tasks, and major projects. My tips;

1. ALWAYS handle the 5-10 minute tasks immediately, as they come in. If you don't want to be disturbed in order to finish something else, close your email and don't check it until you are done. Otherwise knock out the small tasks and they won't pile up and get you further behind on other things.

2. Schedule 50% of your day to work on major projects. If you can't do that, you're probably handling too much. I always make it the last part of the day. If you don't have major projects, then just move on to the next step.

3. Always schedule 1-2 hour projects for the next day, and plan to do 2 of them (more if you have no major projects). If you've already got 2 planned, schedule them for the day after that, and so on, with never more than 2 a day. And here's the important part -- whoever is waiting for this task to be completed should be told it will be done EOB the day AFTER you plan to do it. That gives you an extra work day (and work night if necessary), and most of the time you will have it done earlier than they expected.

The golden rule of completing tasks for other people is: they will forgive you if you can't get something done right away, they will love you if you get it done early, and they will hate you if you miss a promised deadline. Thus the EOB day after rule.

Final tip: if you need to take care of something and don't want to be bothered, then go to extreme measures to make sure you aren't bothered. Close your email, close your IM, turn off the ringer on your phone, put up a DND sign on your office door or cubicle, and put on headphones, even if nothing is coming through them. People will get used to it and know they need to wait to talk to you.

I think those numbers will grow as what "personalization" means becomes more interesting, providers offer discounts in exchange for click/purchase tracking, and the current teen set become the main user base. I'll go so far to say that in 10-15 years people who try to avoid this kind of tracking may even be seen as Luddites.

Jeff M -- Fair enough. I do stand by my assertion that you tend to look for argument more than you look for debate, though I'll admit you have toned that down over the years -- I seem to remember a certain someone once proudly claiming something like "affiliate managers are junior-level marketers" on an affiliate manager-only forum :).

I didn't go into my reasoning behind the necessary non-scalability of traditional affiliate marketing because it's a much longer discussion. My main point was that CPA Networks don't threaten affiliate networks because their client bases almost never cross over, and when they do, it has little affect on the affiliate network's bottom line. CPA networks scale the part of affiliate marketing that can be scaled -- email and search marketers driving a ton of traffic to landing page lead forms.

The rest of affiliate marketing doesn't scale because the model is much closer to the idea of an "extended sales force" than any other kind of online marketing -- nothing else is even close. You essentially have a team of hundreds or thousands of online marketers who all have their own niches and their own ways of driving traffic, some of which invariably complement or conflict with the advertiser's own efforts. All other methods of online marketing (except some emerging models involving consumer generated content) allow the advertiser to completely control message and method of delivery, while affiliate marketing works because you don't control it. The LMI initiative was a perfect example of this disconnect -- when CJ tried to scale by letting the network or the advertiser control the ad content, affiliates revolted because it eliminated the one thing that makes them different from any other publisher with cpm inventory to sell.

CPA networks have found the one segment of affiliate marketing that doesn't obey this rule -- most CPA network super affiliates treat their inventory as if it were CPM and have little interest in crafting their own message, and they only choose offers that convert easily -- they aren't interested in pushing traffic to a retailer where the conversion can be sloppy because of price comparison, cart issues, etc. They get paid when someone fills out a form with their contact information, and that all but eliminates the complications of conversion that put the risk on the affiliate -- again, blurring the lines between traditional CPM buys and CPA marketing in the one segment where that is possible.

OK, that's all I have time for, but we can discuss this further any time you want. As I told Sam privately, I always respect your opinion, which is why it makes me so crazy when I think you're really wrong and not acknowledging facts that seem fairly obvious to me (and others here). Sorry if it seemed like I was overreacting to your comments, I never intended any disrespect. I feel at this point that we've known each other long enough that I can be more forthcoming when I think you're really wrong, that's all. And I certainly didn't mean any disrespect to Sam by saying the question wasn't worthy of debate. I think he asked it because it had the potential for the response he's gotten, but if you look at the answers above there was no one (except a rep from a CPA Network who doesn't, with all due respect, examine the question with much depth) who thought as you did on this issue, and these are all people who have been in the industry since the beginning.

Molander -- I'll admit that I didn't make my point very well, but it stands regardless.

Let me make this clear one more time since it's not getting through apparently: for the most part, CPA networks and traditional affiliate networks support completely different client bases. The only crossover is in the area of specific kinds of lead gen that are a fairly insignificant part of any affiliate network's revenue, and are certainly not their core business. Since the question we are asking here is whether or not CPA Networks are a "threat" to traditional affiliate networks, then the answer is clearly no. No, no, no, no, no. No. Even if they were a threat a couple years ago (they weren't), they no longer are because the mergers leave most affiliate networks with a CPA Network partner. So even if CJ was spending more than 2 seconds worrying about CPA Networks eating their lunch when it came to ringtone offers (they weren't), now they have a sister company that can push those offers.

This entire argument has only become so confrontational because you refuse to admit when you're clearly wrong. I'm sure it's not hard to find affiliate managers who are tired of their job and would rather pull traffic from a CPA Network, but until you can show me a CPA Network that is going to steal away any significant revshare/retailer from any affiliate network (which will never happen), then this entire argument is ridiculous.

And I'm not "threatened" by your stance -- my company makes money whether the client goes with KB or with Primary Ads, it makes no difference to me. I am not arguing for the sake of argument (a charge I could more easily level at you); I believe there are significant differences between the two business models that prevent CPA networks from ever being a "threat." Just because CPA Networks scale and traditional networks do not does not mean they are suddenly going to take over. There are very good reasons that traditional affiliate marketing cannot scale easily, and those reasons make it a profitable channel nonetheless and its the reason CPA Networks don't start accepting revshare/retailer offers.

Why am I even bothering to post on this topic if it's not worthy of debate? Because you have a track record for doing this sort of thing and all it does is make you enemies, and I like you :). If you want to further the conversation, then present your interview with Ms X (someone who clearly sees things from one point of view only) followed by an interview with someone who can point out the fallacies in her argument.

I didn't acknowledge that CPA advertisers are more profitable than retail advertisers because it wasn't part of the conversation (I know they are, I've seen the numbers myself). Ms X wasn't debating the relative profitability of different advertiser models for ad networks, she was saying, essentially, that if you are an advertiser of any kind you are better served going to a CPA network than to a traditional affiliate network. I disagree with that assertion as well as her general attitude toward traditional affiliate marketing.

LOL, lollipops indeed.

No, this is actually one of those cases where I disagree with her quite strongly. In case you've forgotten, our parent company owns an awesome CPA network called Primary Ads. I know how they do business and how much traffic they can drive and it's impressive to say the least. But they don't have the same clients we do, its just a different biz. You can scale lead gen, I just think that the more you try to scale rev share the less you achieve with it, its the nature of it.

Whether or not Mr. Nobody is a coward is debatable but he's right. CPA networks are absolutely the wrong place to run your offer for 95% of advertisers. If you are an advertiser gathering leads to sell to a list manager or to upsell yourself then CPA networks are fantastic. CPA networks don't do percentage of sale, they don't do retail, they don't do anything except landing page lead forms. If there are any CPA networks that are doing anything but that I guarantee they aren't getting the best affiliates.

What bothers me more than that is the general disdain Ms. X seems to show for anyone who wants to have personal relationships with their affiliates. I'll accept that it is "all about money" -- but if anything, a common financial interest is what makes affiliate marketing work. That common interest is strengthened when personal relationships are developed, and not just because they establish loyalty (which doesn't exist in a CPA Network), but because it allows the affiliate to push traffic more effectively by completely understanding the business model of the merchant -- seasonal changes, promotional offers, media campaigns, etc. And keeping a clean affiliate channel -- one that doesn't have spyware or spammers or cookie stuffers or link stealing -- is a purely financial goal, and has nothing to do with being "irrational" or "pleasing the ABW crowd". Or is it better to blindly pay a percentage of sale to anyone who can manage to cookie users who were coming to your site anyway, to totally ignore brand concerns and allow your brand to be displayed in spam or spyware?

As far as bitching about the amount of time it takes to approve new affiliates, give me a break. There are technological fixes that can speed the process up significantly (most of the networks are simply too retarded to offer them), and a $10/hour intern can be trained to handle this job, it's not rocket science. And as far as the 5000 affiliates vs. 1 affiliate driving 5000 sales, that is not a choice anyone needs to make, all programs have both. If you aren't interested in reaching niche or new markets then cut anyone who isn't driving significant revenue and forget about it. You don't have to be in a CPA network to do that. If I'm a retailer and I can keep a decent relationship with 5000 niche marketers, especially at a time when niches are becoming more and more central to online marketing, I'm keeping those affiliates unless they are a significant drag on my time. Most of their questions can be answered, again, by an intern.

I love your podcasts Jeff, but offering such a one sided view of a complicated industry doesn't serve anyone's interests. CPA Networks are excellent at driving amazing levels of traffic to certain offers, but they are not a threat to affiliate networks because they don't serve the same clients or even the same function.

Amen, brother. And I'd argue that its not just "widget" marketing that's perfect for affiliate marketing, but just about every form of consumer generated content and niche social networking and more -- all of it is about being able to get highly specialized content to users. And once the user picks their provider(s) for this content, that platform becomes not only a trusted source of information (referral marketing!), but becomes the starting point for every browser session. How powerful is that?