Disqus - Latest Comments for Pat Grady

Re: Nominated for a Linkshare 2008 Gold Link Award

Pat Grady — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:05:40 -0000

Well deserved nomination! Congrats! And by the way, I was one of the many signers of that petition you got going so that our voice concerning LMI could be heard loudly. Thank you for all you've done as an advocate on our behalf.

Re: Third Party Cookie browser warning and it’s impact

Pat Grady — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:20:32 -0000

The two I interviewed that answered that way were, but my experiment was totally unscientific and certainly not representative of things. But, I want to mention again, that the vast majority of browsers will block these cookies today, so even if our loss is teeny tiny, it's in exchange for nothing. Not a good trade off for any marketer.

With AddThis, I could have chopped their code to drop their widget, but I assume that wouldn't fit their terms. To put things in perspective, this problem wasn't important enough to me to even review their terms for that possibility.

:-)

Re: Third Party Cookie browser warning and it’s impact

Pat Grady — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:21:39 -0000

"Eye of Sauron", hehehee, exactly! They could have made it clearer (spying ain't happening) and therefore less threatening.

I like your take on making sure your privacy policy reflects these things, good call there for sure.

As to the seo, I doubt with the prevalence of widgets, that it hurts seo directly... but what I worry about is that some seo algorithms use consumer stay time and activities as part of their scoring... so if consumers alter their behavior, some seo algo's may pick up the connection and incorporate third party cookies as part of their scoring. I'd guess any filter like that would be domain dependent, meaning if Adsense loads a landing page cookie, no repercussions, but the less mainstream the third party gets, the more likely it'd have an effect on both the consumer, the browser warning system and some seo algo's.

In any case, thanks for posting about this, enjoyed reading your thoughts on it.

Re: Third Party Cookie browser warning and it’s impact

Pat Grady — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:22:31 -0000

I'm an IE guy on my current office machines... what does firefox display (if anything) for these cases?

Re: Third Party Cookie browser warning and it’s impact

Pat Grady — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:48:30 -0000

"an industry that relies on third party cookies to track transactions"

I too appreciate the Lijit folks chiming in, and I certainly agree (as a consumer as well as a marketer) that cookies are good, and are relively benign, almost completely so.

But "third party" is being used here too loosely, cuz it's both a noun and a technical term. Third party can mean someone else besides the visitor and the site their on ("on" being the key word) -or- we can be referring to whether a browser considers a cookie to be a third party. Yes, these things are closely related, but there's some nuance in there... aff tracking sends the person through the network / tracking domain, so when that cookie is written / read, it's not really a third party cookie at that point (hence no eye of sauron). True, when it's read on the merchant's cart, it's a third party cookie requiring a script to run to complete the sale's tracking, but a little different than running that third party script on every page that contains a widget.

I'm not disagreeing that folks like Lijit provide useful and meaningful services, and that to do so means data collection is required, but I strongly suspect that the majority of visitors to this site today will block the Lijit cookies. So my question remains, what is the price that the website owner pays for this situation? I suspect, as others have posted here, that as long as your privacy policies are updated and followed, the impact is probably on the order of magnitude of a drop or two in a quart of milk.

As a seasoned webmaster, I view my efforts as the summation of the roughly 10,000 drops that it takes to make a quart, and I seek to avoid any that may be sour ones.

I suspect since cookies are innocuous, and because browsers can easily block them, that there's very little chance they can turn the quart sour... but I thought I'd bring it up with others.

Lastly, it's not so much that I fear cookies of any sort (I don't), it's the view of relationships to other sites is our interlinked Internet world... folks like siteadvisor (by McAfee) use these relationships to make judgements about the nature of sites...
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/jangro.com

So, if connected sites get in trouble, it will reflect on me. Mantra in all of this is... and it's SO very old school and brick and mortar'ish... and my Mom taught it to me way back... you are the company you keep.

Re: CashAddOn - What’s Wrong with Incentive Publisher Browser Plugins | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:07:14 -0000

Dan, other than afsrc=1, could you clarify for me how cashaddon's behavior is different than the behavior of UPromise or eBates or ShopAtHome/SAHS?

Re: Whoa, Jangro’s Gone Green (and Blue)

Pat Grady — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:36:16 -0000

i think i need to get one of those browser based spel chevkerz tooo. :-)

Re: Whoa, Jangro’s Gone Green (and Blue)

Pat Grady — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:35:09 -0000

Nice improvement! I like how you tuvked the action stream in there so I can get to the posts easier, but still glance at the action.

Those numbers in the bubbles, are those view counts? How about a rollover saying whether that's the views, replies, and some rating system or whatever. I just glanced at it, and missed what the represent, do tell.

Aestehic and function both look great!

Re: My Big Fat Affiliate Paycheck

Pat Grady — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:01:50 -0000

Just think of all the free stuff on the Internet that you can buy with that! Where do I sign up for the Janguru newsletter?

Re: Google Affiliate Network

Pat Grady — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:17:30 -0000

Silver stake driven through their AdWords PPA Beta with this news as well, after all, how many CPA mechanisms did they need. So I'd look for merchants in the Google Aff Network to be given the choice to push creative out through AdSense on a CPA basis soon. Will add a new wrinkle to managing an affiliate program.

http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/publ...
"Track conversions and member IDs for loyalty marketing"
Smells like cashbacks and subaffiliate IDs, so we'll get to see what G's version of transparency is soon enough. Will they be like CJ and LS regarding junkware or will they be like SAS and Avantlink... whichever the case, the news of their phoenix rising probably should gravely concern CJ and LS, and hardly bother SAS and AvantLink given the tactics, costs, appeal to merchant demographics, level of service and such. Time will tell.

One thing I do imagine coming to fruition is that when someone like Kellie Stevens post a video related to nasty tactics, the fact the G is involved, means the press will be very interested. This leverage could be the crevice that leads to opening wider change chasms regarding buttcrackware.

Re: Google Affiliate Network

Pat Grady — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:46:41 -0000

Concerning loyaltyware, G's going to be in a very interesting position - one I think will determine and drive how they view and pitch and coexist with loyaltyware. I do agree with you, they are very unlikely to take a stance against it (too many consumers love it), BUT I do believe they have a high-level vested interest in properly tracking it's REAL value. If left to the blind (via split tracking buckets), loyaltyware takes credit for a lot of PPC costs that the merchant pays - so there's the conundrum that I'm counting on, to make G look at how they track and report these two channels, now under a single roof for the first time. If they are to position PPC to have value, I doubt they would disregard that in favor of cookie popping loyaltyware. What I guess will happen is an analytics crack in the loyaltyware lie (overstated value), where G will be in the new, never-before-seen position of providing both PPC and Affiliate tracking to their merchants. While separate (until now), merchants have been largely unable to put together the pieces, though try as they may via Omniture, et al. But now Scott, and this is what is new, the value proposition of these two competing channels (one, the loyaltyware, that I assert poaches from the other) are now being sold by the same entity to merchants. How does G argue that cookie popping loyaltyware caused / incited the sale and completely disregard their PPC's contribution? They can't. Question is, how will they position each within their quiver of overlapping services offered?

Re: My Big Fat Affiliate Paycheck

Pat Grady — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:51:51 -0000

Darn it, I was hoping one would fit in my pocket.

Re: Commission Junction Adware Class Settlement

Pat Grady — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:29:17 -0000

I smell a MS buyout of VC coming, and VC clearing the decks of any roadblocks. Now that G has their aff network, MS and Y and maybe a few others will be considered to be missing a serious prong of online marketing today. So MS (or who ever), make sure you give this some deeper thought - clearing the pending legal issue is step one, figuring out how much income VC has derived from not policing this well (to put it nicely) should be step 2... they're worth buying, but bash them in the wallet a tad for their indirect admission here that a significant portion of their revenue was ill-gotten... and give walking papers to anyone there who has been involved in managing quality. Merchants and Affiliates depend in the network to do the right thing, and CJ has not - that eroded trust can be restored fairly quickly, we're not a grudge holding bunch, we just don't want our partners today gigging in the back with a shank to line their pockets.

Re: The Hat Calling the Kettle Black

Pat Grady — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:07:26 -0000

I'm always amazed at how "they" are willing to sell their "simple" techniques that make "filthy" money... ok, not really. :-)

Re: Return of the Chinpose

Pat Grady — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:56:30 -0000

I can't wait to see the baby propped into a chin pose picture! Little chubster looking all triple-chin-posey.

Re: Jangro’s Gone Green (For Real)

Pat Grady — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:15:10 -0000

Nissan looks good! And room for humans. Not like a Prius at all. :-)

I recently moved my office to drastically reduce my commuting miles. Not to save the planet really, but to save my time. That kind of change is often more meaningful in total reduction of fuel / footprint.

I also switched all of my hosting to a company employing carbon offsets (as well as adding them to other facets of my biz), so while I'm a serious GW skeptic, I have a stronger disdain for energy dependence and anything generally polluting (greenhouse gasses shouldn't be our only concern regarding emissions).

I now get a real kick out of my thinking for my hosting's green-ness... because I size my servers for the visitors I do get... and because I actually do 110% carbon offsetting, people who visit my sites, since they are driving my choices, are actually reducing global carbon footprinting, by visiting my sites... I like buyers that make me money, from me they get good deals and informed buying decisions in return. But now with my 110% offsetting, the visitors I enjoy, whether they buy or not, are getting a little satisfaction from me as well. Which does make me feel warm and toasty all over, like a good Florida tree hug.

Re: Yahoo! announces Affiliate Advisory Board

Pat Grady — Tue, 01 May 2007 15:03:59 -0000

Vinny, OUTSTANDING! They really need input from ppc affiliates that know what they're doing. This is really good news!

Re: Not the Same Old Status Quo at CSN Stores | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:47:40 -0000

Nice report, I love the examples you drew out for us.

As an affiliate who does both couponing and non-coupon marketing, I really like the solution they've created.

Once you grasp the angles tracked here, you'll see this also solves "leakage" problems that can be caused by adware and affiliates who bid on traffic returning via PPC on their domain name (though ShareASale already keeps out the adware scumbags and CSN polices its domain name PPC bidders anyhow).

Re: Talk about Misleading Users | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:17:55 -0000

scott, i have the flu, so am a lil slow on the uptake today. second screenshot about time and whenu is from your archives of yesteryear's deceptive shitake. And today's highlighted spam scam slam is that little line that says "Unread Message (1)" stuff... is that a google adwords ad built to look like it's something other than an ad? If I'm getting it right (sorry, don't use gmail yet), shame on reunion.com, but serious shame on G themselves.

Since when does "Unread Message (1)" qualify as a good ad title?

Hideously good find.

Re: Thanks for the Slap Google | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:16:47 -0000

They heard you love twitter and are punishing you for it.

Re: Can parasite affiliates massively affect other affiliates?

Pat Grady — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:55:54 -0000

If the "effective loss of revenue is negligible at worst", why did you suggest a "shorter persistent cookies for Toolbar distribution companies like Upromise"? How short would you suggest would be fair to all parties and, most importantly, why?

Re: Geek Birth 2008 and Social Media

Pat Grady — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:54:05 -0000

"you can learn a lot about a person's intent and character just based on their tweets"
Ouch, i lack character then. My grandma told me that was the case, but I think it was the morphine talking... that's what i tell myself anyhow.

Janguru, right now, you are among the richest people alive - baby Jang and your family with him in these pics makes Warren Buffet look like a pauper chump. And Bill Gates wishes that he had what you have in your heart and in your days. Though he's got several wives and a gaggle of heirlets, The Sultan of Brunei envies you. I told you those $0.00 checks would add up!

Re: SEO Lessons from Zappos.com | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:11:28 -0000

I see the potato shoved into Z's exhaust pipe...

Covering my ears, waiting, for a very loud backfire sound...

Re: What are Affiliate Network Responsibilities as a “Trusted Third Party”? | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:23:44 -0000

While I do like your idea of picking one role, or the other, there's a third working solution that one of the smaller affiliate networks, ShareASale, uses.

They transparently show which merchants are essentially escrowing (they call it auto-deposit) and let the affiliates make their own decisions regarding what value this extra information has in choosing their partner merchants.

Since it is true that expecting all merchants to conform with a network-wide pay-up-front method likely isn't palatable in recruiting all merchants, I think the "display the role we play" works better than expecting the network to choose one method, or the other, as their sole choice.

Then again, expecting transparency from some of the bigger networks is fairly naive, given their history in so many other areas.

Re: What are Affiliate Network Responsibilities as a “Trusted Third Party”? | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:24:03 -0000

Who said it's hopeless? I said it's naive to expect folks like CJ and LS to provide transparency in how and when their merchants deposit funds... do you expect them to do that soon?

Re: What are Affiliate Network Responsibilities as a “Trusted Third Party”? | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:25:43 -0000

"I don’t see why they wouldn’t also show this once they realized the impact it could have."

I share your hope! Reducing affiliate's risks by providing information is a sure fire way to get them to push harder to make more sales.

Every marketer makes choices every day about where to allocate their next slice of money and time - the more I know about each choice I have, the less risk I have in it and the more inclined I am to pursue that as a "channel" of mine, to then focus on growing and fattening it.

As far as giving affiliates things to help them, information is likely the easiest and cheapest thing for them to provide... networks would be wise to consider the "ROI" of providing more information!

Re: How to Kill Sales During the Top Week of the Season | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:46:07 -0000

Well, maybe they're so ingrained with the theme of being "scary" that they just could not help themselves. :-)

Re: So You Think You Have Kick-Ass Program Terms | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:07:33 -0000

Good article, and I concur exactly. When I see poorly constructed tiers, with too many inflection points, I'm demotivated to some extent. Seems weird that someone who wants volume would construct things this way.

Additionally, when I consider what their profit curve looks like, knowing that my marginal sales increases cost them no new fixed costs, marketing or management or otherwise, I'm equally baffled. To set goals for people that sell for you, make them consistent with your own goals - that will generally motivate your affs well because it'll reward what both partners want.

I'm also left wondering when I see structures like these, if the merchant understands that when I push harder, my margins generally decrease - if you want astounding volume, just talk to me about what it takes to push more volume. And that's always a margin discussion, not a bonus spike.

Graph was genius Scott, thanks.

Re: Coupon Affiliates Under Scrutiny | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:32:24 -0000

"I’d bet my house that a big empty coupon code field in a checkout process is a bigger leak than any 800 number and cross-promotional links to other merchant properties combined."

Excellent point and I completely agree. I only became a couponer after getting tired of sending truckloads of completely incremental traffic to merchants and seeing couponers win most every contest for "sales". So now that I'm an affiliate benefitting from the "leak", you'd think I'd feel differently about it, but I don't. As merchants become more adept at discerning value, couponing affiliates will suffer through channel separation, lower payout rates and ever rising competition. Since I'm a incremental guy who added couponing to my quiver, I'm chilling. If you're just a couponer, I'd say now is the time to diversify. Incremental selling is so much more rewarding and stable, as a long term business plan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"is a bigger leak than any 800 number"

hey, maybe you're on to something here... is there a way we affiliates can monetize phone traffic... "800" could be the new "coupon"... and we "800" affiliates can claim the prizes for all the phone calls we're sending to our merchants...

Re: The Real Spock Would Surely Disapprove | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:58:26 -0000

I like to think he'd fire a photon torpedo at them specially equiiped to erase their stolen data, chap their butts and disable their keywboards.

Thanks for exposing these punks.

Re: Big Payouts Big Lies? | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:06:35 -0000

You hit it on the head without sounding overly cynical or accusatory. I like that about your style! I look forward to many more years of the same from you, thanks.

Re: Zappos Affiliates: Look out Below! | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:52:01 -0000

Several months ago, Zappos also started allowing BHO affiliates in (like eBates, iGive and UPromise). These "partners" drain the returns Zappos seeks in their affiliate channel, hurting the channel overall. In addition, individual affiliates are affected by a leak / loss to these automated cookie machines taking credit for their referred visitor's return day sales.

What a mess, from darling to loser in very short order.

By the way, eBates has a 12% Zappos rebate posted on their site... so it's clear what affiliates need to do to deserve top commission rates from Zappos...

At least CJ's happy... [/sarcasm].

Re: Linkshare is Dead. Long Live Linkshare. | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:38:52 -0000

"important things front and center, my outstanding earnings balance"

Hallelujah!!!

Re: Random Sunday Bits. iTunes Movies, Email Nirvana | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:21:39 -0000

"iTunes movie rentals. Brilliant idea. Worst possible execution. ever."

Did you see the intelliflix movie rentals news last week, think your itunes may be second worst ever. :-)

Re: Worlds Collide: Mahalo and Affiliate Marketing | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:15:52 -0000

I looked up the definition of "Mahalo" and found...

Mahalo: Thank you. Seen on the lid of trash cans.

Irony seems to follow me around these days.

Re: Twitter Become Facebook? | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:01:49 -0000

from UrbanDictionary.com:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Twitterpated

1)to be completely enamored with someone/something.

2) the flighty exciting feeling you get when you think about/see the object of your affection.

3) romantically excited (i.e.: aroused)

4) the ever increasing acceleration of heartbeat and body temperature as a result of being engulfed amidst the exhilaration and joy of being/having a romantic entity in someone's life.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Think you've got a bad case of it brother.

Re: Twitter Become Facebook? | Jangro.com

Pat Grady — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:08:08 -0000

"but don’t all relationships start that way?"

Well, many do, but not all. But I seem to recall you started your relationship with Twitter more with disdain or at least with disregard or disinterest... there she was, in all her beauty, right in front of you, and you were nearly disgusted... at first... then you fell for her... hard. Classic story, love it.

Who knows, maybe your affection for her will make me take a second look at her, in a new way... Spring is in the air after all.

:-)

Re: Trying out Virtual Private Servers

Pat Grady — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:00:50 -0000

I use the Virtuozzo VPS on dedicated and semi-dedicated servers at ServInt.net. Each site I virtually install has its own cPanel (or I could have gone Plesk route) with full configurability. VPS gives me that upgradeability and portability that you've described and removes my hosting worries should a site take off well in seo or voilume from other sources. ServInt's got top notch support and a great forum community and has been earning great reviews for many years, but they do give you open access to so much of your server that it can be daunting for an inexperienced webmaster. Also, I'm crazy about backups, running my biz now more on risk measurements than absolute roi, and while I do all of my own off-site backups and more, ServInt also has solid backups and staff there who know what they're doing in case something does go wrong and I'd rather have them fix it than grabbing my own backup (like when i'm traveling).

Most Affiliates likely need to look at the VPS route as they grow their quiver of sites, the mechanical advantages aren't the only plus of being on a VPS, hosting many sites for a flat fee can mean you get very powerful hosting for a single fee that's less than your aggregated, traditional per- domain hosting.

Re: Deep Linking: It Shouldn’t Be This Difficult

Pat Grady — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:33:09 -0000

Great article! It really shouldn't have had to be written, cuz like you, I feel the networks should make this easy and front and center.

I've been using the encoder for years:
http://www.albionresearch.com/misc/urlencode.php

Any chance you might post the URL encoding tool's code for others to grab? Or sell it. We little aff trolls don't like using other people servers to do closeup work cuz we all know you built your tool to yank my best ideas and hyperlinks...

Re: Wordpress on iphone!

Pat Grady — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:37:15 -0000

To take a screenshot of my phone's display, i'll need to break out a digital camera with a 10x zoom and swallow my pride if I decided to post the images.

Jealousy setting in.

Re: Deep Linking: It Shouldn’t Be This Difficult

Pat Grady — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:48:44 -0000

Thanks!!!

I was imagining making a table lookup and char replacement routine, I'm dorking out today and when I asked for the code - the functions exist already, doh! :-)