AffiliateBrand.com by Gene Kavner

Amazon Associates Report is Significantly Delayed Today

Today, for an unexplained reason, Amazon Associates have significantly delayed posting of their daily report which allows their affiliates to see information about how their campaigns performed during the previous day. 

Announcement of the delay came at about 11:30am Pacific time, almost 3 hours after the reports are typically due and almost 9 hours later than the reports have been typically posted over the last few weeks.  The message on the Amazon Associates announcement board simply read:

"At the current time, we do not have an estimated time for when they will be published. When we know more, we will post an update.

We're sorry for the inconvenience and are working to resolve this problem as quickly as possible."

Because so many affiliates of Amazon are dependent on analysis and review of their earnings, this delay has caused discussions on various Internet bulletin boards.  I do not have any additional information on what has caused this delay, which rivals some of the longest report delays during the busy Q4 shopping season.  As soon as I have any information I will post an update.

In the meantime, I recently released a tool which will instantly notify you the moment Amazon posts its Associates report.  Since it is likely that you are already checking email, this alert will allow you to carry on with your routine without needing to keep checking Amazon Associate Central every few minutes for an update.

To sign up for this notification, simply create an account on my Affiliate and Amazon Associates Tools Site and opt-in to the notification.  If you sign up right now, you will get the alert once the report that was due this morning is posted.

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

Off to Affiliate Summit

Well, it's that time to get ready for Affiliate Summit.  I'm on a 6am flight to Las Vegas tomorrow and am looking forward to meeting many of you at the conference over the next few days.

If you are planning on being there and would like to connect, please drop me a line at:  Gene [at] AffiliateBrand.com.

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

I am addicted to Google Alerts. Are you?

I have been using Google Alerts for quite a while now but only recently have realized that I am truly addicted to them. 

For those of you who do not know, Google Alerts allow you to specify any term and will send you an email notification as soon as any web site publishes new content with that term.   You can set up to receive these notifications weekly, daily, or as soon as they happen.

As an Internet marketer, I must stay on top of what is happening on the Internet and especially any discussion about me, my site, or topics I cover. 

With Google alerts, I do not have to sit and press the refresh button on my browser 50 times a day to see if any new content I care about has appeared on the Internet.  I get notified, fairly quickly, about this content via email by Google. 

This is the "Push" technology from the 1990's done right.  If any of you link to this story, mention my name or my site, I will be notified.  I will visit your site and read your post.  I am quite likely to  leave you a "thank you" comment.  You will also be on my radar screen and I may subscribe to your feed. 

As many of you know, I launched a new service recently by which I will notify any of you who are customers of Amazon Associates affiliate program the moment Amazon posts a new earnings report for the day.  Because of the unpredictable timing of when these reports would be made available, you have previously had to go to Amazon Associates Central  and keep hitting the refresh key while waiting for the reports to post ... every day.  With my new service, you no longer need to.

Connection between my new service and Google Alerts became obvious to me in the last couple of days.  Both are simple notification services of information you care about and these notifications alleviate you from the need to poll for that information.  So the next question that I started to think about is... what else can be automated the same way?

I check Alexa data frequently to see the latest traffic volume to my site.  I know Alexa's data is not live because I frequently visit Alexa to see no changes.  Wouldn't it be nice to get an automated notification when Alexa data does change?  What about receiving the Technorati blog rank rating changes with the information as to what new blogs are linking to my site?  What about getting an alert any time my Google PageRank changes so that I don't need to go back and check it frequently?  What about getting notification if my site's relative Google search result position changes for a particular search term?  What about my blog's subscription counts from Feedburner?  A friend of mine mentioned that he would love to get a notification when he receives a new bid on his eBay auction,  a service not currently available.

Suddenly, there seem to be dozens of new and interesting notifications that could be developed.  What do you think may be a valuable notification service to you? 

What is an Affiliate Cookie Life and is Amazon's Too Short? (Part 2 of 2)

In Part 1 of this post I described what an Affiliate Cookie is and what its lifetime means for affiliate sales.  Clearly, as affiliates, we all want to have the longest possible affiliate cookie lifetime.  That's because the longer an affiliate cookie lives, the more sales we are likely to make, especially from those customers who aren't very quick on the purchase trigger.

Cookie lifetime, however, is not the only metric that should matter to affiliates.      Continue reading on AffiliateBrand.com

What is an Affiliate Cookie Life and is Amazon's Too Short? (Part 1 of 2)

Most of us know what an Internet cookie is.  It is a small parcel of text that a web server would command your browser to save off until the next time the same browser visits the same web domain.  At that time the browser is to send the exact same piece of text back to the server.  This cookie is typically placed on your computer by web sites you visit and is done quietly, most of the time without you even being aware of this event.  Cookies pose no harm to your computer or to your privacy other than to indicate to the web server when the same browser returns back to the site.

These cookies also have a lifetime associated with them.  Some are immediate session cookies.  These cookies are only in existence until the user closes the browser window.  Other cookies may have expiration on them.  They will be saved on your computer's hard drive and sent back to the web server by the browser until a certain date specified by the server when the cookie was originally provided to the browser.

So what is an Affiliate Cookie and what is meant by an Affiliate Cookie Life?     Continue reading on AffiliateBrand.com

My Interview with Shawn Collins

I have had the pleasure to recently talk with Shawn Collins about trends in Affiliate Marketing on the Internet.  Shawn Collins publishes a popular AffiliateTip.com site and organizes Internet's premier affiliate conference called Affiliate Summit with his partner Missy Ward.  Its a great conference for anyone interested in affiliate marketing.  I will be heading off to the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas on Sunday.

Shawn interviewed me for his show on BlogTalkRadio where you can listen to the interview (click on Show #6).

Shawn asked me 7 questions:

1. How would you define affiliate marketing and how is it different than traditional advertising?
2. What do you consider to be some essential elements of an affiliate program?
3. What do you think is the biggest challenge for an affiliate manager?
4. I saw that you stated that widgets are the future of affiliate marketing. Can you share some examples of widgets that affiliates could leverage?
5. Amazon has done quite a bit of innovation with their affiliate program. What would you consider to be some of the best tools they've Amazon provides to affiliates?
6. As a blogger, should you have to disclose when you are compensated?
7. Do you think video and mobile phones will play prominent roles in affiliate marketing in 2007?

It was a pleasure to speak to Shawn and I look forward to seeing him in person in a few days in Las Vegas.

You can listen to the interview or view the PDF transcript.  Enjoy!

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

New Service: Get Instant Notification When Amazon Posts Associates Reports

Amazon Associates reports reflect each individual affiliate's earnings. These reports are posted daily for any affiliate referrals and earnings through the previous day. Because the reports are posted daily, they are not live. You cannot obtain any data for the current day until the following day when Amazon posts its daily report. Amazon Associates reports for a particular day are typically due by 9am on the following day. Frequently, these reports are posted even earlier. Sometimes, these reports come in very late, especially on days of heavy traffic to Amazon.com. The reason why reports are posted at unpredictable times is that Amazon must run a batch process that parses its web logs for any session that is tagged with an affiliate transaction. This process is dependent on computer load, traffic volume, and sometimes glitches in parsing code. Because Amazon Associates is the oldest, the largest, and the most successful affiliate program on the Internet, over 1 Million affiliates are dependent on Amazon for their earnings. Waiting for reports may not be the best use of time for any affiliate, and many of you have expressed frustration on Amazon bulletin boards and in your blogs. To alleviate the need for frequent visits to Amazon Associates Central, AffiliateBrand has introduced an email notification service that will notify you by email the moment Amazon Associates report is posted.
	Subscribe to Amazon Associates Report Notifications
Amazon Associates Report Posting Times Over Last 30 Days Activity Date Report Posted Timing     January 12, 2007        January 13, 2007 - 3:25 AM        On Time        January 11, 2007        January 12, 2007 - 3:30 AM        On Time        January 10, 2007        January 11, 2007 - 3:25 AM        On Time        January 9, 2007        January 10, 2007 - 4:35 AM        On Time        January 8, 2007        January 9, 2007 - 4:23 AM        On Time        January 7, 2007        January 8, 2007 - 3:30 AM        On Time        January 6, 2007        January 7, 2007 - 3:25 AM        On Time        January 5, 2007        January 6, 2007 - 3:45 AM        On Time        January 4, 2007        January 5, 2007 - 3:43 AM        On Time        January 3, 2007        January 4, 2007 - 3:23 AM        On Time        January 2, 2007        January 3, 2007 - 6:32 AM        On Time        January 1, 2007        January 2, 2007 - 2:38 AM        On Time        December 31, 2006        January 1, 2007 - 5:58 AM        On Time        December 30, 2006        December 31, 2006 - 4:42 AM        On Time        December 29, 2006        December 30, 2006 - 4:32 AM        On Time        December 28, 2006        December 29, 2006 - 4:52 AM        On Time        December 27, 2006        December 28, 2006 - 5:36 AM        On Time        December 26, 2006        December 27, 2006 - 5:12 AM        On Time        December 25, 2006        December 26, 2006 - 4:00 AM        On Time        December 24, 2006        December 25, 2006 - 3:58 AM        On Time        December 23, 2006        December 24, 2006 - 4:45 PM        Late        December 22, 2006        December 23, 2006 - 3:50 AM        On Time        December 21, 2006        December 22, 2006 - 5:18 AM        On Time        December 20, 2006        December 21, 2006 - 6:50 AM        On Time        December 19, 2006        December 20, 2006 - 6:03 AM        On Time        December 18, 2006        December 19, 2006 - 2:07 PM        Late        December 16, 2006        December 17, 2006 - 12:06 PM        Late        December 15, 2006        December 17, 2006 - 1:17 AM        Late        December 14, 2006        December 16, 2006 - 11:28 AM        Late        December 13, 2006        December 14, 2006 - 11:46 AM        Late
* All times Pacific Time

Do Amazon Associates New Monthly Tiers Make it Tougher for Associates to Make Money?

Effective today, Amazon Associates program is shedding its archaic quarterly payment system and opting in for the new, more competitive monthly payment system.  One big concern that many associates have is exemplified by a recent post LiewCF made on his Blog titled Amazon Associates Pays Monthly.  In his post LiewCF writes:

However, as part of this change, referral fee tiers will be adjusted to reflect monthly item quantities. Meaning, you need to make more sales in a month to earn higher referral rate. .... I would rather wait for late but bigger check. How about you?

Actually, Amazon did address this concern.  In its effort to shift to a monthly payment schedule, Amazon has lowered its payment tiers as well.  Compare the old quarterly payment tiers with the new monthly payment tiers:

Quarterly Payment Tiers

Monthly Payment Tiers

As you can see, Amazon has cut quantity of items you need to make it into the next tier by roughly a third in order to align with its accelerated payment frequency.  For example, while you had to sell 21 items per quarter in the past in order to jump from 4% to 6% in commissions, you now need to sell 7 items per month in order to make the same jump. 

So you should definitely not be losing commissions in the new Amazon monthly payment model. 

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!