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Affiliate management and program management outsourcing

2010-04-07T17:49:00.001+07:00

Successful affiliate programs require significant work and maintenance. Having a successful affiliate program is more difficult than when such programs were just emerging. With the exception of some vertical markets, it is rare for an affiliate program to generate considerable revenue with poor management or no management (i.e., "auto-drive").

Uncontrolled affiliate programs did—and continue to do so today—aid rogue affiliates, who use spamming,^[17] trademark infringement, false advertising, "cookie cutting"^{[citation needed]}, typosquatting,^[18] and other unethical methods that have given affiliate marketing a negative reputation.

The increased number of Internet businesses and the increased number of people that trust the current technology enough to shop and do business online allows further maturation of affiliate marketing. The opportunity to generate a considerable amount of profit combined with a crowded marketplace filled with competitors of equal quality and size makes it more difficult for merchants to be noticed. In this environment, however, being noticed can yield greater rewards.

Recently, the Internet marketing industry has become more advanced. In some areas online media has been rising to the sophistication of offline media, in which advertising has been largely professional and competitive. There are significantly more requirements that merchants must meet to be successful, and those requirements are becoming too burdensome for the merchant to manage successfully in-house. An increasing number of merchants are seeking alternative options found in relatively new outsourced (affiliate) program management (OPM) companies, which are often founded by veteran affiliate managers and network program managers.^[19] OPM companies perform affiliate program management for the merchants as a service, similar to advertising agencies promoting a brand or product as done in offline marketing.

Available aonline at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affliliate_marketing#Compensation_methods

Paid survey

2009-12-03T15:29:00.000+07:00

A paid or incentivized survey is a type of statistical survey where the participant is rewarded through an incentive program, generally entry into a sweepstakes program or a small cash reward, for completing one or more surveys.

A paid survey is used to collect quantitative information about the participants' personal and economic habits set against their particular demographic. Incentivized surveys are considered to be more likely to catch a wider and more representative range of respondents compared to unincentivised surveys. YouGov in the United Kingdom say

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Respondents receive a small incentive for completing YouGov surveys. The purpose is to ensure that samples are as representative as possible, and that responses are not tilted towards those passionately interested in the subject of the particular survey.^[1]

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Legitimate surveys are usually unpaid (as with Gallup poll) or incentivized (as with YouGov); surveys where the respondent must pay or purchase products to join a panel are generally scams, as are sites that disappear before paying the participants. Legitimate surveys do not need credit card information from respondents.

In the last few years most U.S. market research companies have developed online panels to recruit participants and gather information. With the power of the internet thousands of respondents can be contacted instantly rather than the weeks and months it used to take to conduct interviews through telecommunication and/or mail. By conducting research online, a research company can reach out to demographics they may not have had access to when using other methods.

When a research company needs respondents from a demographic they cannot reach they can easily reach out to a worldwide or specialty panel. By offering a cash incentive to respondents in return for feedback these companies are able to quickly fill quotas and collect the information being sought by the client.

Available online at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_surveys (December, 03 2009)

Paid to surf

2009-03-16T21:51:00.000+07:00

Pay to surf or Paid-to-click is a business model that became popular in the late 1990s, prior to the dot-com crash. Essentially, a company places advertising on members' screens and pays them from advertising earnings.

A pay-to-surf company would provide a small program, commonly called a "viewbar", to be installed on a member's computer. Advertisers' banner ads were then displayed while the member was browsing the web. Since the viewbar tracked websites that the user visited, the pay-to-surf company was able to deliver targeted ads for their advertisers. Advertisers paid the pay-to-surf company a small amount (typically US$0.50) for every hour of a member's surfing.

Members were usually limited on the amount of time per month for which they would be paid to surf (typically 20 hours). However, pay-to-surf companies also paid their members for each new user referred to the company (typically US$0.05 - US$0.10 per recruit). Thus, it was profitable for a member to garner as many referrals as possible, encouraging some users to recruit members using spam, though officially forbidden by the user's agreement.

The first and most well-known pay-to-surf company was AllAdvantage.[1] It launched in March 1999 and grew to 13 million members in little over a year with the multi-level marketing system of recruiting new members. The scheme capitalized on the notion that anyone could make money on the internet without much effort.

AllAdvantage’s success attracted many imitators. At its peak, there were several dozen pay-to-surf companies. AllAdvantage had US$175 million in venture capital; its imitators did not and thus their members were never more than a small fraction of AllAdvantage's.

After 18 months, even AllAdvantage ceased operations. At that point, AllAdvantage had paid out over US$160 million to its members. Many members of smaller pay-to-surf companies were never paid when the companies shut down.

By late 2001 with the dot-com bubble collapsed, very few pay-to-surf companies remained.[2] This is not surprising since 100% of the revenue came from internet advertising, which was the area hardest hit.

As with many Internet business models, pay-to-surf companies attracted people trying to defraud the company out of money. First, as noted above, the companies had to deal with spammers, often having to terminate member accounts. They were also required to get parental permission from members under the age of 18, many of whom flocked to these programs as an easy source of income. Finally, utilities started appearing which allowed users to simulate surfing activity. [3][4] Some users even created mechanical mouse-moving devices which ran around their desks.[5] These programs and devices allowed users to get paid simply for leaving their machines on. This began an arms race between the pay-to-surf companies who built fraud-prevention software and fraud program developers, with each releasing increasingly sophisticated versions of their software.

Available online at :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_to_read (March 16, 2009)

Pay per click

2009-02-25T18:54:00.001+07:00

Pay Per Click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content sites, such as blogs, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.

Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the three largest network operators, and all three operate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC), varies depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular keyword.

The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.[1]

Available online at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_click (February 25, 2009)

Affiliate Marketing

2009-02-19T18:26:00.001+07:00

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of Internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies, and in-house affiliate managers, specialized third party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers.[citation needed] While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.[1]

Available Online At : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing (February 19, 2009)

Advantages of Internet Marketing

2009-02-17T20:32:00.001+07:00

Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience. Companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets. The nature of the medium allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience. Therefore, businesses have the advantage of appealing to consumers in a medium that can bring results quickly. The strategy and overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns depend on business goals and cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis.

Internet marketers also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively. Nearly all aspects of an Internet marketing campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertisers can use a variety of methods: pay per impression, pay per click, pay per play, or pay per action. Therefore, marketers can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the audience. The results of campaigns can be measured and tracked immediately because online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on an advertisement, visit a website, and perform a targeted action. Such measurement cannot be achieved through billboard advertising, where an individual will at best be interested, then decide to obtain more information at a later time.

Internet marketing as of 2007 is growing faster than other types of media.[citation needed] Because exposure, response, and overall efficiency of Internet media are easier to track than traditional off-line media—through the use of web analytics for instance—Internet marketing can offer a greater sense of accountability for advertisers. Marketers and their clients are becoming aware of the need to measure the collaborative effects of marketing (i.e., how the Internet affects in-store sales) rather than siloing each advertising medium. The effects of multichannel marketing can be difficult to determine, but are an important part of ascertaining the value of media campaigns.

Available online at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_marketing (Februari 17, 2009)

Internet marketing

2009-02-15T20:23:00.000+07:00

The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it refers to digital media such as the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media; however, Internet marketing also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing does not simply entail building or promoting a website, nor does it mean placing a banner ad on another website. Effective Internet marketing requires a comprehensive strategy that synergizes a given company's business model and sales goals with its website function and appearance, focusing on its target market through proper choice of advertising type, media, and design.

Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008 The New York Times working with comScore published an initial estimate to quantify the user data collected by large Internet-based companies. Counting four types of interactions with company websites in addition to the hits from advertisements served from advertising networks, the authors found the potential for collecting data upward of 2,500 times on average per user per month.[1]

Available Online At : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_marketing (February 15, 2009)

Basic forms of ownership

2009-02-14T18:20:00.000+07:00

Although forms of business ownership vary by jurisdiction, there are several common forms:

Sole proprietorship: A sole proprietorship is a business owned by one person. The owner may operate on his or her own or may employ others. The owner of the business has total and unlimited personal liability of the debts incurred by the business.
Partnership: A partnership is a form of business in which two or more people operate for the common goal of making profit. Each partner has total and unlimited personal liability of the debts incurred by the partnership. There are three typical classifications of partnerships: general partnerships, limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships.
Corporation: A business corporation is a for-profit, limited liability entity that has a separate legal personality from its members. A corporation is owned by multiple shareholders and is overseen by a board of directors, which hires the business's managerial staff.
Cooperative: Often referred to as a "co-op business" or "co-op", a cooperative is a for-profit, limited liability entity that differs from a corporation in that it has members, as opposed to shareholders, who share decision-making authority. Cooperatives are typically classified as either consumer cooperatives or worker cooperatives. Cooperatives are fundamental to the ideology of economic democracy.

For a country-by-country listing of legally recognized business forms, see Types of business entity.

Available Online At : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business (Februari 14, 2009)

Business

2009-02-14T18:05:00.000+07:00

A business (also called a firm or an enterprise) is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit to increase the wealth of owners. The owners and operators of a business have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for work and acceptance of risk. Notable exceptions include cooperative businesses and state-owned enterprises. Socialist systems involve either government agencies, public, or worker ownership of most sizable businesses.

The etymology of "business" relates to the state of being busy either as an individual or society as a whole, doing commercially viable and profitable work. The term "business" has at least three usages, depending on the scope — the singular usage (above) to mean a particular company or corporation, the generalized usage to refer to a particular market sector, such as "the music business" and compound forms such as agribusiness, or the broadest meaning to include all activity by the community of suppliers of goods and services. However, the exact definition of business, like much else in the philosophy of business, is a matter of debate.

Business Studies, the study of the management of individuals to maintain collective productivity in order to accomplish particular creative and productive goals (usually to generate profit), is taught as an academic subject in many schools.

Available Online at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business (February 14, 2009)