Fighting perceptions – The SmartMoney article

Recently there was an article in SmartMoney Magazine which a lot of you are familiar with… The article was very negative in its assessment of the industry, and there were quite a few discussions

The article is here http://www.smartmoney.com/toughcustomer/index.cfm?story=may2008-affiliate-marketing

With industry discussion on it

at Affiliate Tip from Shawn Collins

Mike Allen’s Revenews Blog

Sam Harrelson’s Cost Per News

and Missy Ward’s video response …

I wrote a response back in an email to the editors and was very happy to see that they included it in the most recent print edition of the magazine. Since the letter had to be trimmed down due to space limitations on the magazine – I thought it would be good to post here what my full letter was just in case any of my meaning was left out. They did a fine job of editing and I have no problem with it… even included a witty title which was funny. :) I would like to thank the editors of SmartMoney Magazine for listening to our voices and including our response in their magazine.

Well done to everyone who responded to this article because we obviously were heard and as a group this is the kind of thing we need to do to make sure that our industry is presented fairly. Unfortunately, the bad apples that are out there have given our industry a bad name in some circles.

The job of figting through this perception is ours collectively.

So – here was the full letter:

Greetings,

I am writing in response to the recent article “A Penny For Your Clicks” by Anne Kadet.

While my comments about the article are negative, I wish to present them respectfully – everyone is entitled to an opinion.

I felt the article was a misrepresentation of the Affiliate Marketing industry – of which I am a part.Specifically, the portion of the article where Ms. Kadet claims to have “tried” to earn money as an affiliate in a span of 3 weeks is an indication to me that she does not understand what it is that successful affiliates are doing. All that it told me was that she either does not have a lot of readers to her blog, or that she is very poor in choosing the types of advertisers to work with. Affiliate marketing is not an industry where success can be gained or measured within a few weeks of mild effort… It is not a “get rich quick” scheme, and it is most certainly not about “blogs filled with computer generated gibberish”, or “bogus business directories”. I know the types of sites that she is referring to – they annoy me just like everyone else – but they simply aren’t who affiliates are.

Affiliate marketing is a mainstream sales channel used by nearly all successful online retailers. Put simply, it is a more efficient way for advertisers to properly control their ad-spend based upon the performance levels of specific publishers or affiliates. To suggest that all of those affiliates must be engaged in “obnoxious” practices is just simply uninformed. We specifically work with thousands of affiliates who range from one-person businesses all the way to large public companies – and none of those engage in any of the practices the Ms. Kadet seems to indicate are the mainstays of affiliate marketing. I would be the first person in line to discuss the negatives of our industry, of which there certainly are quite a few that require attention. However, any balanced article written on the subject would have needed to include a much deeper look into an industry that has far greater positives than negatives.

Is it tough to earn “affiliate marketing cash” the honest way? Of course it is. Anything worthwhile doing is never going to be easy. Just as in any other advertising medium, Ms. Kadet would have needed interested eyeballs on her blog – paired with relevant advertisers – and most importantly a whole lot more effort.Thanks for your time – and again, my comments are presented as constructive criticsm and not a personal attack on Ms. Kadet,

Brian Littleton

President/CEO ShareASale.com, Inc.

312 321 0487 x 111 brian@shareasale.com