Lammo.net: Affiliate Marketing Blog

Quick Question: Does everyone who reads this blog understand what spam is? In a nutshell, it’s unsolicited email - junk emails that you haven’t asked for from people and websites you haven’t signed up to receive emails from. It’s the scourge of the Internet, and all spammers should be lined up against a wall and shot. Now, I thought pretty much everyone knew that these days, but it appears not.

I was amazed to watch a BBC Report on spam that was so scandalous it could have been written by a Daily Mail reporter - The video report can be found here and would have you believe that just by surfing the net and clicking on a link will result in your children receiving pornographic emails pushing drugs and penis extensions on them. Which of course is complete twaddle. But hey, don’t let the facts get in the way of a nice shocking story about how the Internet will kill your children. But the BBC don’t stop there - They delve into the source of all this “spam” to find out who’s behind it. And the “research” they did led them to believe that the chief peddler of viagra and xxx videos online is none other than Clarke Duncan via his website Free UK Stuff.

The evidence? Well, when the woman conducting the “experiment” searched Google for “free stuff”, Clarke site was one of the sites listed by Google. Convinced yet? No? how about this then - The woman clicked on the link to join Free UK Stuff, and was sent an email asking her to confirm she wanted to join and receive the weekly newsletter. She then clicked on the “confirm” link, and then.. guess what? She started receiving the weekly newsletter she had asked for. Or as she called it - spam.

She also did the same thing with UK Classified website Gumtree, and the report was summed up by the scandalous tone she uses to say “I clicked on ‘receive daily emails’ and they stared emailing me every single day!” Clearly, this woman does not understand what spam is - And it’s unbelievable that the BBC would parade this clueless woman in front of their cameras with the clear aim of shocking people into not joining websites such as Clarkes (even going so far as to name his site as a “spam-sender”).

It’s all part of an “experiment” from McAfee, no doubt to stir up scare stories such as these in order to sell their latest anti-spam product. Looking at one of the many blogs detailing their actions here (apologies it’s in Portuguese), it looks like they’ve also targeted my old site Net Free Stuff as a “potential spammer” because it also appears in the Google results for “free stuff” - yup, if Google ranks you, you’re obviously a spammer.

Now, anyone who knows Clarke will be aware that he takes spam as seriously as anyone, and that’s why he’s got such a strict double opt-in policy on Free UK Stuff. He’s certainly not a spammer, and the fact that the BBC can effectively label him as such without any recourse, which could of course kill a small business with such negative (if false) publicity is unbelievable. We’re all used to AOL users idiots who sign up for your newsletter and then report it as spam the minute you start sending them what they’ve asked for, but I believe this is the first time any of them have gone onto National Television and accused us of selling their details to porn merchants and drug dealers.

If you’re as shocked as I was about this scare-tactics excuse for journalism that could have put smaller affiliates than Clarke out of business without any justification, then you should complain to the BBC. And try and educate idiots like the woman who did this experiment as to what spam actually is.

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Back in January, I introduced the “Muppet of the Week” award. Rather surprisingly, given that I do like to have a good old moan on these blog pages, there’s only been four winners of said “weekly” award in the last five months - Stan James, Cleverat, Ladbrokes and iLevel. Well, I’m “pleased” to announce the fifth winner of the prestigious Lammo Muppet of the Week award is…

Well, it’s actually a repeat offender - you may recall that the second winners of the MOTW award were Cleverat who signed me up to two programs without asking me, and then pestered me on a daily basis asking why I wasn’t pushing them.. Well it all went quiet after my last blog post, until last Thursday afternoon, when I received the following vopicemail message: (I’ve tried to copy it word for word)

Hi John it’s xxxxxx from Cleverat.. Just giving you a call regarding you running a couple of our campaigns, namely [mumbled] and [mumbled]. I’m just ringing up to see what the hold up is, or why there was a hold up or whatever. Anyway, what I will do is in the meantime what I’ll do is fire you over an email with the [muffled sound] and also the contracts for you to sign and return to me right away, so that you can start getting some mailings out and making some sales and we can both make loads of money. If you want to.. erm… Please call me on xxxxx thanks

Once again Cleverat, can I make something very clear - WHEN I WANT TO WORK WITH A PROGRAM, I WILL APPLY TO IT - PLEASE DON’T SIGN ME UP AUTOMATICALLY AND THEN LEAVE ME PUSHY VOICEMAIL MESSAGES. It just makes me not want to work with you.

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The latest subject in our Day in the Life series is Jason Baker, Publisher Account Director at Commission Junction UK. I’m grateful to Jason for taking the time to share a typical day at CJ Towers with us. Remember, if you would like to take part in “A Day in the Life..”, then please get in touch with me. Without further ado, it’s over to Jason..

So I have been asked to write this blog – I have to admit it’s a little daunting as I have as only been at Commission Junction for six months!

Here’s a little about me. As I said I have only been here at Commission Junction for a relatively short while. I came to Commission Junction after eight years in traditional press and B2B publishing, dipping my toe in the digital waters over the years, as anyone would while working for a national newspaper group or magazine publisher. So here I am in the digital space. When I was looking to move into digital ‘proper’, my brief was I wanted to work in the most fast moving, comprehensive and diverse area of online marketing, and boy do I realise now that I got what I wanted - I love it!

So here it is, a typical day in the life…

7am -It’s Monday morning and like pretty much everyone I know the reality has kicked in that the weekend is over and it’s time to get into the groove and get off to work. The usual routine and extra five minutes in bed is obligatory! J My wife Helen is just as chirpy (not!) as she has to get up earlier than me so I get out of bed and EMBRACE it!

8.50am - I forgot to mention what I just arrived back from a week away on holiday, so need to catch up the Everest size, mountain of emails I’ve received, deal with what’s urgent and park the ones that can wait. We have a new starter joining the publisher team today, Zhanna as an Account Executive - It’s great that we have another to person join the six of us resource-wise of course, but also we can now pen the title – ‘the magnificent seven’.

10am – the usual trawl through my email this morning is not as bad as I had predicted as lots of stuff was picked up by the team while I was away (thank you, thank you); I just need to make a few calls to clarify some details with my publishers this afternoon. Zhanna (the new starter) has arrived – I’m going to give her a little time to settle in, then take her round to meet the rest of the Commission Junction team, and also pop upstairs to introduce her to Mediaplex, Search 123, PriceRunner & ValueClick Media. There are around 120 of us in the UK office now across every business, so lots of names and faces for her to remember!

11.30am - Eventually… the morning is over! I have managed to catch up with a few of our publishers for a chat to see how their businesses have been doing whilst I’ve been away, talk through any spikes or dips in activity, and see if we can fix the dips. One publisher in particular had a great week as we managed to negotiate an increase in CPA from one of his merchants for a week to drive additional sales. Negotiating from £25 to £41 in CPA on a credit card for a cashback site will always go down well…. The publisher gives the advertiser extra exposure in the email bulletins and on their site, and sales go through the roof, everyone is happy J – so it’s clearly time to get the Advertiser Manager to go back to the merchant for an extension.

It’s always the way, but so much happens when you are off. Our second version of the Commission Junction Order Inquiry Manager has launched (otherwise known as the ‘cashback’ tool!) for our UK incentive and loyalty affiliates. What does this mean? In a nutshell this enables us to manage the transaction process more effectively and track any transactions that may have been blocked by anti-virus programmes or users cookies being blocked for whatever reason. Really useful bit of kit to take to market and, admittedly, to clear the backlog we had. So far it’s been received really well but as always it would be good to hear of any improvements you think we could make.

12pm - We have our publisher and advertiser team meeting at 12pm every Monday so we run through the strategy as usual, catch up on anything I have missed and what needs to happen in the week ahead. There is quite a lot to go through this week because in the next few weeks we are reviewing our progress on Q1-2 strategy and starting to work on the planning for Q3-4. A key part of the strategy this time of year will be to ensure we have the most appropriate publishers in place for the retail push later in the year, and Jan/Feb 09 next year for travel. We also need to ensure the merchants have appropriate commissions in place. Lots to do and I get the coffee and biscuits in to keep everyone raring to go.

Last but not least we are organising a publisher night out – what shall we do this time? Casino, comedy, a day out of team building and outdoor pursuits (yeah right) or straight down to Soho for a night on the tiles J … we decide on a comedy night for early June (some of you may know that we often do Soho beers so it will be good to do something a little different).

Now it’s time for a couple of calls to our finance publishers who specialise in PPC and content about a few new programmes that are launching, and to set up a few catch up lunches for later this week and the next.

1.30pm - Quick lunch which today means a Chinese takeaway (it is healthy!), then back to my desk to get everything together for a 2pm meeting. I am joining Florian, our Senior Sales Manager who is meeting a major PC and Laptop merchant who has just signed to join the Commission Junction network. They are coming in to also discuss becoming a Commission Junction publisher and meet some more members of the team. They want to place links to merchants (ideally software and technology) products and services on their site to drive incremental revenue. A pretty simple process, with set up taking around five minutes then they will have access to our full range of merchants and even be able to search by product if they want links to something specific.

It was a great meeting as it turns out that we also will be able to load Commission Junction tracked merchant icons on the desktops of all of their PC and laptops as well.

3.30pm – I’ve got some time now before a late afternoon meeting to go back to my ‘parked’ emails and do final prep for trip up north tomorrow to see a few of my affiliates. This will be a good one as Alison Guise (our European General Manager) and Cheryl Ingram (UK Client Development Director) are going as well, which will give our publishers a chance to give face-to-face feedback on their turf.

5.15pm - OUT of the office!!

I’m just off to meet a few of the regulars for some networking and beers. They’re a really good bunch and it gives me a chance as the new boy to bounce my ideas around as most of these guys have been around the block a few times and are really experienced affiliates.

1.15am (I think?) We ended up finishing the evening with some decent food before parting company having talked through some good ideas but latterly, enough rubbish to pack a small landfill site! Taxi home!

So there you go, that about sums it up before it all starts again tomorrow. Hope it sheds a little light.

Signing off, Jason Baker!!

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