One of the most interesting things about affiliate marketing is that the knowledge within the industry is widely spread out. It is always worth taking the time out to hear from some experts, how they got started, what they think the burning issues are and any tips that they might have. You will quite often find some controversial opinions which will differ depending on who you speak to – the more you know the more you can build up your own thoughts and opinoins on the industry.

So – time to hear from one of said experts in the industry. Jason Brockman, Director of Easy Content Units (ECU) has kindly taken the time out to be interviewed for the CJ UK blog. So with no further adieu, here is a photo of Jason for the purposes of visualisation and then we will leap straight into the interview!

Tell us a little bit about youself!

I live in Plymouth with my wife, Emma, and three children plus one due in March! There’s  four cats, two chickens and a horse on the scene too.

What made you get involved in affiliate marketing?

John Lamerton (lammo.net) asked me to join him to help run Net Free Stuff back in 2003 which was our major site with over 100,000 freebie hunters as members.

Tell us a little bit about ECU

Basically we take all the merchants’ datafeeds, clean them up and pop them into our database. Then affiliates can choose to show a content unit on their site with a random set of products, or (and more useful) a specific list of products which they choose by searching and adding them to their units. The units are fairly customisable – I do not think there is anything you cannot do with them, from layout to colour to background. If there is let us know and we’ll add!

ECUs are being used to display product ranges, price comparison, to show accessories or related items, for PPC landing pages, by domainers etc…In fact, the only limit to their use is your imagination. Our showcase page shows how some of our members use ECU.

What made you decide to set up ECU?

Easy Content Units came from an idea we had for one of our own sites. We asked our techies to create an easy way to feature some products from a merchant on our shopping directory. By the time we’d finished we realised that it would be useful for all affiliates, and so Easy Content Units was born.

How long did it take?

It took us nearly a year to develop it to final release. That said, it’s an ongoing project which has seen over 150 tweaks and new functions added since launch. As affiliates ask for new features and functions we work hard to make them happen.

Did the process go as smoothly as envisaged?

Mostly yes. We have had a few hiccups, mainly thanks to merchant datafeeds, but fortunately our system doesn’t need too much from them, so this is fairly minimal.

How many of you are there in your offices?

We chose a couple of years ago to leave our offices and return to everyone working from home. The offices were too restricting and didn’t really match our style. We went through the ‘let’s get corporate’ stage (we had two offices at one point and fifteen staff) but, costs aside, there were so many issues that work lost the fun appeal. So back to basics we went and we haven’t looked back since.

What are your plans for ECU in the future? Any plans to broaden your international reach?

We are constantly developing ECU – adding new functions and features which are mainly requested by our members – and I think that this is one of our strong points. We have, however, reached a point where we are happy with the functionality of the system and are now concentrating on internal systems and appearance.

We realise that we have kept adding things to the front end and not really addressed the layout for our members, especially those that have just joined. It must be really confusing! So that is our first priority, then early in the new year we shall indeed look to expand territories. I, for one, was surprised by the number of affiliates who operate internationally from the UK, so it is to those affiliates that we are first looking to for direction.

If there was anything that you would change about the affiliate marketing industry, what would it be?

I would like to see it return back into the domain of the affiliates a bit more. By that I mean less corporate, less high-brow events and more involvement in decision making by affiliates. I appreciate the purse strings for these things are held by the networks and agencies, but they really only have this money available because of the hard work that affiliates have put in. Even our own forum (A4U) has now been taken over, it seems, from the money machine, and as a result there’s less interaction from affiliates.

Do you have any tips for merchants?

Top tip is to provide a datafeed. We’re currently adding functionality for RRP and Delivery Cost, so if you add this information then great! We offer a service to merchants called ‘Managed Units’. These are great for top selling products, special offers or maybe even new stock. But as a minimum I would recommend the best sellers as affiliates love the ‘put up and forget’ creative, and having top-converting products is a bonus.

Do you have any tips for affiliates?

Use the managed units, make sure you’re signed up to the merchant, join all the networks to give you greater choice of products to feature, especially when creating a unit for price comparison. The most important tip is to ensure that you customise the units to fit your site – ECUs work at their best when they look part of the site rather than an Ad block that’s been posted in – take the time to really blend the units into your site structure and you’ll really reap the rewards.

Is there anything that the industry isn’t talking about that we should?

The importance of creating and maintaining datafeeds. Affiliates love them – whether using ECU or another whole site tool (such as Price Tapestry, Datafeedr or Affilistore). It is so important that they hold as much information as can be added and that they are updated regularly and maintained too so that fixes are quick. I know that we’re sending over 400,000 visitors each month through our datafeeds, so make sure that you get on board and stay there.

Another topic is helping new affiliates to find their way. I know from the support that we give that we have helped a large number of newbie affiliates start to earn money out of affiliate marketing. Whether it’s our role as a third party affiliate tool providers, just us helping out our fellow affiliates, or in fact anyone else’s role is something which should be discussed as newbies actually receive very little help and advice from anyone else at the moment.

What do you think the burning issues within affiliate marketing will be in 2010?

Well the last year was one of Voucher Codes and Voucher Codes. This year I hope that as an industry we can move on! I think that Price Comparison/Cashback/Voucher Codes will feature in our news this year, along with advances in tracking. I think that although the EU has decided not to impose the cookie restrictions, it’s only a matter of time before this (or something like this) is introduced. Related, the idea of sharing commissions between all involved on the customer’s journey is going to be discussed a lot in the coming year, though this is my view is futile – there should be another way.

Finally, if you could start again would you do anything differently?

I’m not so sure. Pricing is maybe one thing we would consider again, not because we need to charge more but it seems that some people have the impression taht the £20 a month price tag in some ways means that the service is poor – ‘if it was any good you would be charging £100 a month’ was a comment we’ve heard more than once this year! All of our members know this isn’t true, but talking to some people at the Expo and at the roadshows before this is the thing which has put them off trying ECU. Strange but true.

Well thank you very much Jason – that was really interesting. As promised, some controversial opinions in there!