Antonello is going to tell you about the world of Self-Serve product feeds.

We’ve recently changed the way that publisher enquiries are dealt with here at CJ. Any queries we receive are now split evenly across the Ad Dev team and we all take a bit of time each day to to go through and answer them. Over the past few weeks, one of the most common questions to cross my desk has been a variation on this:

‘Why has advertiser x rejected my application?’

This can be a tricky one to respond to. Each advertiser has their own set of criteria to determine who makes the cut, and this can vary considerably from programme to programme, but if you’ve recently applied unsuccessfully to one of our Advertisers, and you’re looking to find out why, here are some of the most common reasons for rejection and some tips to help you get accepted in the future:

Point 1: The Advertiser may have restrictions on certain types of publisher

Before you apply to an Advertiser, make sure you read the programme description. Advertisers will often use this space to flag any special requirements for publishers. For example, the Argos description specifically mentions that incentive sites will be declined.

Some Advertisers have Special Terms and Conditions that you will need to accept before joining a programme and it’s important to read these too as often they will provide more detail on restrictions.

Point 2: The information in your account may not be giving the best impression of what  you can offer

Network Earnings and EPC

Ever wondered what those little green bars in your account signify? It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the more green you have, the more likely you are to be earning plenty of the other ‘green’ through CJ. The geeks amongst you may be interested in the official explanation of how our system calculates this:

You are ranked in an apples to apples comparison with all publishers by taking each publisher’s total commissions (regardless of currency) and then converting that total (if necessary) to US dollars. After each publisher’s commission total amount has made this conversion to a common currency (USD), the ranking is established.

Network earnings ratings are based on a scale of zero to five bars. Publishers earning zero commission are excluded from the overall calculation and given a blank rating. The ranking is calculated relative to the entire network based on commissions earned by publishers during the previous month. The specific bar graph ranking is as follows:

Many advertisers who are pressed for time will use the bar ranking system to concentrate on publishers with proven earning record. Likewise they may look at your EPC (Earnings per Hundred Clicks) ration to assess your suitability.

Not all of the information in your account is generated automatically, however, and there are areas where you have the opportunity to edit your details:

Publisher name: if you are a new publisher on the network with no history, try using a name that gives advertisers a clue to your business model or area of expertise as this will make it really easy from them to approve you. In a long list of applications for a travel brand, John Smith Travel Solutions is much more likely to get the Advertiser’s attention than a publisher simply called John Smith.

To edit your name, log into your account and visit this tab:

Make sure your URLs are up to date: If you’re desperate to work with Sainsbury’s through your new site: groceryguru.com, but the only URL you have listed in your CJ account is the one you registered when you joined the network: iluvmonstertrucks.net, it’s easy to see why your application might be declined. Keep your URLs up-to-date and don’t be afraid to list them all.

To edit your URLs, visit this tab in your account:

Promotional Methods: There’s a box for this: use it! The more information you can give the advertiser on how you work and what methods you are using to promote them, the better:

Point 3: The content of your website may not be everyone’s cup-of-tea (AKA: They’re just not that into you..)

Advertisers can be extremely picky about where their brands are displayed and more often than not, a rejection will simply be based on the fact that when an Advertiser visited your website, they didn’t like what they saw. What constitutes a good website is highly subjective and what works for one person won’t necessarily tick all the boxes for another. Once someone has made their mind up it can be very difficult to persuade them otherwise, however…

If at first you don’t succeed…..

Try again. If you really want to promote an Advertiser, don’t be afraid to get in touch and let them know! Our biggest Advertisers get hundreds of applications every week so don’t be dispirited if you are rejected immediately. If you have a good case for working with that Advertiser- then make sure they know what it is.

The easiest way to contact an Advertiser is to use the Mail tab in your account:

When you hit the ‘Compose’ tab, you’ll find a list of all of the Advertisers that you have applied to in the ‘to’ section:

You can then write your message and hit send. This will send an email directly to the Advertiser’s account.

Useful things to include:

• Where you plan to promote the Advertiser
• How you plan to promote the Advertiser
• Any useful stats about your website that might sway the Advertiser (e.g. you are new to the CJ network and therefore have no earnings history but your site gets x amount of traffic every month)

I can’t guarantee you’ll get accepted but it’s worth a try.

I hope that goes some way to explaining some of the rejections you might have received in the past. If you have any questions on the post just email admin@cjblog.co.uk

September

“As many of you know, the words in H1 header tags are given weighting by search engine bots and contribute towards you ranking higher for those words.

If you think huge H1 fonts will make your web pages look ugly, you can use CSS to reduce their size. An example would be:
[STYLE TYPE="text/css"]
H1 {font-family: verdana,arial; font-size: 9pt; color:#ff4500}
[/STYLE] (replace [] with <>)”

Katie Harrod
Account Director

“If you need some graphic work done and don’t have a designer, you could launch a competition at 99designs or DesignContest.

Once you publish your design brief, you will get submissions from multiple designers. You only have to pay for your favourite design, so it can save you a substantial amount of money.
”

Linda O’Connell
Head of Client Services

“Publishers should put care and attention into describing and categorising their websites and advertisers should ensure their program descriptions are detailed and up-to-date in the CJ interface. These vital things are often neglected. Sloppily written descriptions will reflect negatively on you.”

Ross Carder
Account Executive

“If you belong to any kind of link or banner exchange, let your credits pile up until the most lucrative period for your industry, when you generate the highest revenue per visitor to your website; in many cases this is Quarter 4 of each year. Then turn off the ‘pause’, flood the exchange with your ads and let the pounds roll in!”
Tom Leadbetter
Key Account Manager

October

“If you carry out any form of email marketing, it is imperative you split test subject lines. Some ESPs allow you to do this in an automated way. They will, of instance, send four different subject lines to 5% of your database each, and whichever has the highest open rate will then automatically be sent to the remaining 80% of subscribers.”

Brezo Sanchez Ocaña
Account Executive

“Alexa and Ranking.com give you an insight into how well hundreds of thousands of websites are doing, showing their traffic rank and other valuable data. They are far from perfect, but among the best free tools out there.

Both Alexa and Ranking.com are currently ranking Google, Facebook, Yahoo and YouTube as the four most visited web properties.”

Cath Caporn
Account Manager

“It surprises me how much effort advertisers and publishers put into getting high organic and natural rankings in Google, yet they ignore a golden opportunity to get premium placements in the SERPs and Google Maps via Google Local Listings. It’s simple to do… and free!

Find out more at Google’s Local Business Centre.”

Dipa Shah
Account Director

“If you are building a website for which you wish to receive traffic from natural search, drill down to a niche or even specific product. It is highly unlikely you will rank well in the SERPs for “uk online bookshop” but you could do for “patricia cornwell books”. Register a domain name with the target keywords in it, such as patriciacornwellbooks.com, carry out extensive onpage and offpage SEO, and hey presto you could be ranked on page one in Google for the term!

Google’s famed Keyword Tool will help you find search terms to target.

Jason Baker

Head of Agency Account Management and Publisher Development

“When you register or renew a domain name, do it for as many years as possible. Whereas .uks are restricted to two years by the registry Nominet, .coms and other TLDs can be registered for ten years.

Aside from not having to renew the domain name on a regular basis, a longer registration period has other advantages. Search engines like Google and ISPs like Hotmail are or will start looking at how long a domain name has been registered for and factor it into determining if the owner is more likely to be dubious or not.

Spammers often only acquire a domain name for a year or two and then move onto using other domains, while ethical website owners are more likely to register a domain name for a longer period of time.”

Katie Harrod

Account Director

“Just because you are working in digital does not mean you should not utilise offline marketing techniques to drive visitors to your website. Use any and every means possible to spread the word. This includes prominent references to your URL and what you have to offer on stationary, leaflets, mousemats, mugs, bags, clothing, etc.

Attending a conference? Wear shirts or t-shirts with your domain name emblazoned on them and make sure the back of your business cards inform people about your services.”

Linda O’Connell

Head of Client Services

“Twitter is the talk of the town at the moment and there are tremendous opportunities to utilise the social networking site to earn commissions. The landscape is similar to how things were when search engine PPC advertising came into being several years back.

You can post links to CJ advertisers in relevant discussions either manually or using various tools out there – please don’t spam! You can also buy low cost CPC advertising through Twitter ad networks. The profits can be handsome: I’ve seen publishers buy ads for 4-6p a click and make 30-40p off the back of them.”

Ross Carder

Account Executive

“I’m always surprised at how few website owners study their site’s bounce rate. This is the percentage of people who return to a referring site, such as a search engine, from the home page. Obviously the lower you can make this, the better.

Solutions such as those from Valueclick’s Mediaplex and Google Analytics allow you to analyse this vital metric. You should carry out multivariate testing and A/B split testing to see which version of your home page works best, and not only has the lowest proportion of people leaving your site, but leads to the highest conversions.

Here are a useful list of split testing tools and services.
”

Tom Leadbetter

Key Account Manager

Matt Bailey at i-level is running a new initiative - the ‘i-level Affiliate Surgeries’. These are open to all affiliates – you don’t need to have worked with i-level to get a place.

The first session is about SEO and Content and will be held on May 26th from 5 – 7pm at i-level’s offices in Oxford Circus. It will be run by Matt Bailey and also joining him will be Judith Lewis, i-level’s Search Director.

All details can be found here. If you want to attend you need to email matt.bailey@i-level.com. Only 30 spots up for grabs so get in early. Happy learning

“Publishers should consider creating a PDF information pack and case studies demonstrating the results they have generated for advertisers. These can be provided to your CJ Account Manager and advertisers to enable them to learn more about how you operate and develop a closer working relationship.

You can see some case studies on the CJ website here.

Ross Carder

Account Executive

“Back-up, back-up, back-up… you’ve heard it before, but make sure you make regular back-ups of everything on your computer and mobile device. Imagine what would happen to your business if you were to lose critical emails, files and contact details.

Business and Ultimate versions of Windows Vista include Backup and Restore Center. There are also some fantastic third party tools which can make the process of copying and restoring files painless. And a few of them have an affiliate program on CJ, so you can make money while reminding others to back-up!”

Tom Leadbetter

Key Account Manager

“With the sun beginning to shine (kind of!) you may be thinking about attending more online marketing events. The best places to find out about forthcoming UK conferences and gatherings are Netimperative, eConsultancy and Affiliates4U.

CJ staff will be attending A4U Expo Europe taking place the week after next, of which we are the Bronze Sponsor.”

Brezo Sanchez Ocana

Account Executive

“I was reading an article the other day that Google image search now provides as much traffic to many websites as Yahoo’s main search engine in the UK. Therefore it’s imperative you optimise your images for SEO.

You should, for instance, give you images SEO-friendly names. Use keywords separated by hyphens that will help search engine bots determine what the image is about. So, instead of ‘alisonguise1.jpg’ use ‘alison-guise-commission-junction-mediaplex.jpg’.”

Cath Caporn

Account Manager

“If you are advertising your website(s) using paid search you should use a cashback credit card for your PPC spend. The best ones give you around 1% back on every transaction and the sum can add up if you are a heavy spender.

There is information about credit cards paying cashback on many websites such as here on Money Saving Expert.”

Dipa Shah

Account Director

 Lock your computer (this is the most important of all), keep your phone with you at all times, repeatedly check your back for notes, look under your desk for any food stuffs which may have been taped there (this sounds weird but I speak from experience – the offender not the offended). Oh I could go on forever. Above all trust noone. Not even your best friend. Not even your close colleagues.

Anyway – here are the CJ tips of the month for March.

“Using hotlinks to log straight into affiliate networks can save considerable time. The hotlink for Commission Junction is this one. USERNAME needs to be replaced with your login email address and PASSWORD with your… errr… password. It can be used by both publishers and advertisers.

Another example is this hotlink URL for Valueclick Media’s lead generation arm.

You can save the URLs to your browser favorites, although I would recommend you do not do this if your computer is accessible to others.”

James Lamb

Business Intelligence Engineer

“When doing PPC, advertise on specific long tail keywords or multi-phrase search queries. They are more effective than generic keywords because consumers entering specific search terms are almost at the end of their buying cycle and easier to convert.”

Katie Harrod

Account Director

“If you have a blog and are limited for time, why not ask your publisher friends to write guest articles for you? You can reciprocate by doing the same when you have a quieter moment.

This will save you time finding new ideas to write about, attract new readers and offer your subscribers a different viewpoint. Your guest bloggers will benefit by building their profiles with a new audience and you can give them links back to their website(s).”

Jason Baker

Head of Agency Account Management and Publisher Development

“Content publishers can build valuable email lists by offering customers free reports and exclusive advertiser offers in return for customer data. You can use this data to email customers and bring them back to your website.”

Linda O’Connell

Head of Client Services

“If you haven’t done so already, set up a blog to support your affiliate marketing efforts. Blogs can increase organic search listings, attract more customers and enhance brand awareness. The most user-friendly one is Wordpress – we use it for this blog.

Create a ‘blog schedule’ to keep your blog updated with regular news, trends and product information.”

Emmanuel Ogidan

“Publishers: if you don’t already provide a contact telephone number for your site visitors, consider doing so. Consumers are more inclined to buy via your site if they can speak to someone in person about any queries concerning their purchase or user experience on your website. A contact telephone number also makes your business appear more professional and safer to use.”

Florian Gramshammer

Senior Sales Manager

“Harness the power of social networking: research current trends and customer behaviour by joining Facebook or Twitter, and visiting groups industry peers are joined to. Shared interest groups have invaluable consumer information, feedback and opinion.

However, discipline yourself to not get sidetracked into unproductive activities on these addictive websites!”

Hildegunn Iversen

Key Account Manager

“Using hotlinks to log straight into affiliate networks can save considerable time. The hotlink for Commission Junction is this one. USERNAME needs to be replaced with your login email address and PASSWORD with your… errr… password. It can be used by both publishers and advertisers.

Another example is this hotlink URL for Valueclick Media’s lead generation arm.

You can save the URLs to your browser favorites, although I would recommend you do not do this if your computer is accessible to others.”

James Lamb

Business Intelligence Engineer

To start with it should be stated that not all merchants allow deep linking. Most do, but there are some exceptions which are normally due to limitations on the advertiser’s end or the way that they’ve chosen to integrate with CJ. For the majority of merchants who do allow deep linking this is how it works:

First of all you need to identify the links which are deep linking enabled. There are two types of deep links – one which has been set by the merchant to go to a specific page and another which is a generic link (usually to the homepage) which can be altered by affiliates to go to any page within the advertiser’s site  – I am going to focus on how to do the latter. (At the moment on the CJ system you have to check each link to identify which are deep linking enabled – sometimes advertisers will only have one link enabled so if you can’t find it you should give us a call on 020 8785 5870 to check. This is on our project plan to make easier for you.)

Using Thomson Holidays as an example, this screenshot shows how you can tell that a link has deep linking enabled. There will be a ‘destination url’ field.

Altering the link to go to a specific page is then easy.

Let’s say we want to link through to this landing page on Thomson: http://www.thomson.co.uk/late-deals/late-deals.html . We insert that URL into the Destination URL field and click ‘update link code’ and the link has been updated to go to that specific page.

The link structure in total will look like this (with a fictitious PID)     

You can see that the link contains a click tag and an image tag. If we strip away the image tag and the text so that we’re just looking at the link in its most basic form you get this:

Looking at it like this you can see that the CJ tracking link and the encoded destination URL is connected by this parameter: ?url= (If you are unsure of how to encode URLs you can use a URL encoder tool like this one.

Now that you know all of this you have the structure to create links without needing to log into your CJ account. Providing that you know the link has been enabled for the url redirection (deep linking) you can use http://dpbolvw.net/click-1111111-AID?url= in front of any encoded destination URL.

My final example to wrap things up:-)

Basic Link Structure:

Chosen Landing Page URL:

Encoded Landing Page URL

Deep Link

I hope that this has helped. Happy deep linking and if you have any questions just email admin@cjblog.co.uk and it will work its way to me

Brezo Sanchez-Ocana  – Account Executive

Search engines such as Google penalise websites with affiliate links in both their natural and paid listings. Some publishers cloak affiliate links. There are a range of methods for doing this, using Javascript, PHP and htaccess (the latter two are the best). You can read more about the various techniques here and here.

Dipa Shah – Account Director

Allow your visitors to search your website with a Google Custom Site Engine. Host the search box and results on your website and customise the colours to match your own branding and web pages.

You can also install a script or use a remotely hosted service. There is useful insight to the various options here.

Cath Caporn – Account Manager

If you are a content publisher you should update your websites with unique and relevant information. These are sites that are looked upon more favourably not only by their  visitors but also by search engine bots. Sign up to Google Alerts to stay informed of the latest sector, product and company news.

Hope that these are useful to you.