Pepperjam affiliate network, a live review!

I mentioned the Pepperjam Blog in my previous post. Why was I reading the Pepperjam blog? Because I decided to give PepperJam a try as it appears to be a new and fresh affiliate network. And at the same time I will be posting a live on-going review of my experience with PepperJam.

Applying

I filled up the application page in just a couple of minutes. It asks the typical information you would expect. Please note that when you enter your website url, you have to enter http://blah.blah, it does not like just blah.blah.

After you complete and submit the application, you see a confirmation page that says:

Thank-you for submitting your application to become a part of Pepperjam Network. We are excited to see that you have realized a need is here for a new type of network that connects affiliates to merchants with a level of transparency like no other. You will be receiving a confirmation email shortly, and your application will be reviewed within 24 to 48 hours. We are excited to present you with this opportunity.

Next step, check your email and look for a welcome email for Pepperjam. This email serves to confirm your email address. Instructions are in the email. After you follow the instructions you get this message in a new page:

Success: Thank you! Your E-mail has been verified.

Next we wait for Pepperjam to review our application and accept or reject our application.

After you are accepted

After you are accepted into the network, you can login and get started! One thing you need to do is specify the payment method, and you can see the reminder in the screenshot below. Following is a portion of the screen you see when you login to your PepperJam account:



Setting up your payment method is easy. The payment options are PayPal, Direct Deposit and Check, which is all you can ask from an affiliate network! Well done!

Now off to find some affiliate programs...

Choosing Affiliate Programs

Pepperjam offers both "revenue sharing" and "CPA" programs, and when you are searching, you can filter them out or search for both.

Programs have different methods of approving, some are manual, some use what PJam calls automatic and advanced methods.

The most well-known program we saw so far at PepperJam is eBay, which has a very generous program, and it is similar to what you can get when you use the eBay program independently. But the program that will get PepperJam the most "geek-cred" is having StarTrek.com! Affiliates, jump in on StarTrek.com now, because when the new JJ Abrams movie hits the movie theatres in May 2009, there may be a feeding frenzy on Star Trek gear, old and new!

They also have an affiliate program for referring people to Pepperjam, with a $5 lead for new signees and a 15-day cookie.

Creating Links

Creating links is so easy, especially when you compare the process to certain other large affiliate networks that make creating links an exercise in frustration.

Sadly the affiliate links are not directly pointing to the retailer's domain, but rather use an intermediate/tracking url, which means these are not "high quality links", so I am giving them the "nofollow" just to be safe. Don't want to get the Google Bots angry ;-) But the good news is that you have an option to generate either encrypted or unencrypted links. So there is some flexibility for thosr who prefer encrypted affiliate links.

You can create banner or text links, but also use Google AdSense-looking widgets they call "pepperjamADs". You simply select individual links from your existing approved affiliate programs and create your own AdSense-looking ads. If you also use AdSense, be sure to make sure the two sets of ads look different (different colors, etc) so they don't violate the AdSense TOS. Here is an example of what your Pepperjam ads may look like by default. Click on the picture to see a larger version:



Finding banner ads and filtering them by size is very easy. You can see the Star Trek ad at the top of the page as an example. The ad went live right away. There was no waiting period. This is nice because some affiliate programs don't activate new ads immediately.

Deep linking is allowed, but the option for deep linking depends on each particular affiliate program. You will see that on the banner page. You can also create your own sub-id for tracking individual links. And the sub-id (sid) can be as long as 100 characters long.

Another example is the Text Link Ads (TLA) affiliate ad at the top right corner of the blog. There was a typo in the ad code, the proper width is 180, not 468, which it was easy to correct. Infact all the TLA banner ads show a width of 468 in their code, which is a mistake that needs to be corrected. TLA offers text-link-ads but does so in a Google-friendly manner, the ads are not delivered in a way that interferes with Google's Search engine rankings, so you don't have to worry about getting penalized from Google. At least that's my understanding, and I'm not an expert :)

Managing your account

You can see all your relationships with affiliate programs, pending, accepted and rejected under the "Account", "Manage relationships" menu. This is a nicely done website as you can quickly and easy see the status quo. From this page you can also re-apply to the programs that you were rejected, and you can also "revoke" your membership in programs you don't want to continue using.

What about payment?

Well, I just joined, so I don't know yet, but this is what the Pepperjam FAQ page states:

Publishers are compensated on a flat, cost per action (CPA) or percentage-of-sale basis. Publisher payments are made every two weeks and are processed on or around the 1st and 15th of every month. Publishers should allow up to 7 business days for processing of payments. Only valid leads or sales will be compensated once approved by each advertiser.

Reports

The reports page is smooth and uncluttered, which confirms the impression you get by reading the Pepperjam blog and FAQ that this is indeed a fresh approach to affiliate marketing.

If you want to closely track and optimize your affiliate links be sure to take advantage of the "SID report" and develop a system of creating meaningful SID names when you create links (up to 100 characters long, so lots of flexibility). With an organized SID naming system you can check your SID report and quickly get a read on your impressions and clicks.

Personal Opinion

While Pepperjam is a relatively young network and does not have as many "big names" as the big three networks (CJ, LS, Px), its user interface is a breath of fresh air. The user interfaces of the big three feel like they were designed by a committee of committees, they are cumbersome, inefficient and ineffective. And who at Performics came up with the idea of adding a second scroll bar? You know, every browser has a scroll bar! I'm sure Google will fix that when that user interface gets "googlified".

The Pepperjam interface on the other hand feels like it was designed by people who actually use the interface on a daily basis to do actual affiliate work. I think this is a big plus for PJam.

Pepperjam has been adding "recognizable names" steadily, and certainly eBay is a great catch, especially now that eBay finally decided to tighten things up and restrict some of the more "iffy" sellers with new buyer-friendly policies. Pepperjam has some big names from the world of entertainment, (internet) pop culture, and blogging, such as movie studios, Star Trek, Busted Tees, etc.

One area however that needs to get beefed up in order to lure in the lucrative high-tech webmasters and bloggers is technology, with affiliats such as recognizable high tech retailers, manufacturers direct, perhaps shopping comparison engines, and things like that as Arnold would say

More coming up later!

eBay to launch own eBay Partner Network (affiliate program), to partially drop Commission Junction

eBay is going to launch its own partner network (affiliate program) and it will depart from Commission Junction. This is only for eBay sites, some of the other eBay properties will remain with CJ. Details on the press release directly from eBay. More details on the new eBay Affiliates page. Registration on the new program will begin on April 1st, 2008. No, it's not an early April Fool's day joke. This is for real!

eBay has created a very simplistic blog, named the ePN blog that will hopefully over time provide more details. After all, April 1st is just a week away!

And if you read through the previous notes you may have noticed that there is a 5% incentive for people to switch over to the new affiliate program right away! So if you do have eBay sales, and it's not a big pain to switch over (we don't know how painful it will be yet), you can make some extra $$$. eBay on CJ will remain active until May 1st, to give bloggers and webmasters enough time to switch their links. Oh the pain!

Since eBay uses the rover.ebay structure for links already created via the eBay site, we can hope that those links won't be affected or at least can be easily edited, instead of having to be replaced. But this is only speculation! We have to wait and see what eBay says!

eBay is a good way to monetize your site, but don't expect cash to fall out of the sky. This also depends obviously on your content, readers and traffic. But for specific niches or product categories, people may be interested in taking a look at eBay listings and bidding/buying stuff. Please keep in mind the affiliate program is a PPA (pay per action) program, so you only get paid if people buy stuff on eBay or sign up for eBay.

If you don't want to deal with all the details, there's also the option of using Shopping Ads, formerly known as Auction Ads. They are basically building a shell around the eBay affiliate program, and all you have to do is create the banner ads and specify which keywords you want to use. Because of that, it is compatible with Google Adsense, since it is keyword-based, not contextual, which is what Adsense is allergic to when it comes to the competition. Achoo! Not sure if or how they will be affected with the transition of eBay from CJ to the eBay Partner Network.


Reactions on the Net
The story got some traction at various sites as you can expect since it affects eBay. For example, it made it to Forbes.com. And a short discussion of this at the WebMaster World forums.

Blog Tip #24: Don't forget to factor in Cookie Duration in your Affiliate programs

One of the parameters of affiliate monetization that sometimes gets overlooked is the cookie duration. After a recent conversation with an affiliate program representative, I decided to look into cookie duration in some more depth. Here are my thoughts:

There doesn't seem to be a cookie cutter approach (pardon the intentional pun) to deciding which affiliate programs to use based on cookie duration. There are many dimensions to consider. One of the most important ones is obviously your content. Consider these two extreme case scenarios: Assume you have a blog on chocolate cates and you have an affiliate link to an elephant biology bookstore. What are the chances that your readers will revisit the elelphant biology bookstore again? Probably slim. So whether the elephant biology bookstore has a cookie duration of 2 days or 2 years, it probably won't help much.

On the other hand, assume you have a blog on HDTVs, and you have an affiliate link to a popular retailer that specializes in HDTVs. The chances of your readers re-visiting that site are much higher. So a longer cookie duration increases your chances of a commission!

But things are never that simple. Usually you have to trade-off the commission percentage with the cookie duration. What do you do? Do you use a retailer with a 4% commission but a 3-day cookie, or do you use a retailer with a 1% commission but a 60-day cookie? How do you trade them off?

If your links are something short-therm, eg a weekend sale, or a clearance sale, or a while supplies last offer, you may want to take your chances on the higher commission percentage than the longer duration. But if it's a general purpose link, you have to do some thinking and experimenting to see what works better for you.

Yet another dimension to this are your readers. Are they "buyers", "browsers", "surfers", "bargain hunters", "techaholics"? Also is your blog or site a destination or a hub? This can also affect your strategy.

Another thing to consider is that the more popular a site is, the more likely other sites and blogs might be using their affiliate program, and if your readers are visiting multiple websites, then the chances of your cookie being overridden are higher, so perhaps a shorter cookie duration is not as much of an issue.

From my experience, the longer cookie durations are better suited for specialty retailers that are known and referenced by your readers, but they are not the super popular mass market sites that people visit and bloggers use as affiliates all the time. This increases your chances that your readers will go back to that site to look or shop, and decreases the chances of other websites having links to them.

You can also scale down the above example if your blog is covering a very specific market segment, and your readers are avid followers of that segment. In that case, replace the "mass market site" mentioned above, with the leaders in the field that are frequently used by other sites and blogs as affiliates. Instead go for the second tier in popularity for the longer term cookie duration. By second tier, I don't mean second tier retailers, but second tier in mass-market popularity.

Tip #3: Amazon Associates affiliate program can boost your blog income

Since Amazon is such a big internet presence, the obvious question is asked by bloggers who want to monetize their blogs. How can the Amazon Affiliates program help me?

The program is free to join, and you have the freedom to create a number of different banners and text links. However, Amazon is an affiliate program, not a pay per click. So the only way you make money is if/when people make Amazon.com purchases through your links. And as with most affiliate programs, it is against the program rules to use your affiliate links to make your own purchases (with the exception perhaps of Buy.com which allows you to do that!).

The program gives you a flat 4% on consumer electronics, and 4% to 8% on everything else depending on volume. Yes, volume, not dollar value. Amazon apparently wants to encourage people to move products, which led to this decision.

Now how to make these work? The traditional banner ads are not particularly effective. The vast majority of internet users have become familiar with them and they have been programmed to ignore them, even if they don't want to :) What makes the Amazon program work more is to make the product links an organic part of your blog.

And by that I don't mean force it, but find ways to blend it organically. For example if you are talking about the movie "300", insert a link to Amazon's 300 DVD product page. If you are discussing product X, at the end of the discussion include a link to X, or make the reference to X an Amazon link.

Amazon recently introduced a new wave of widgets that make it easier to use their program. For example, their Quick Linker widget allows you to link a program without having to know its ASIN number. You just type its product name using a special tag. They also introduced product clouds, and other Web 2.0-like widgets.

But ultimately it depends on a number of factors, what type of content your blog or website has, what type of items are you promoting, how well you are promoting, how much trafic you are getting, what type of readers you have (buyers vs browsers), etc, etc.

Oh and one more thing, payment! You can get paid either by Amazon Gift Certificates or with cash. Cash can be delivered by check, but their preferred method is direct deposit to your bank account. If you don't want to use your regular bank account for internet purposes, a number of banks offer a secondary internet checking account that you can use for these type of purpose. Washington Mutual for example has an Internet checking account for this purpose, and the good thing is that it costs nothing to open, no fees, and no direct deposit requirements. Then you can just transfer your proceeds to your regular account and spend it or pay bill$.

Any questions? :-)