e-Commerce: Complete. Configured. Connected.
Affiliates
Who Is In Your Social Network?
Mar 22nd
We wrote recently about some of the changes in the payments world, particularly about a tightening of the rules and regulations around who can sell online, and how they interact with the credit card associations. For most online merchants, these are changes that continue to fuel a mainstreaming of our industry, even if they do cause some irritation in the short term. The underlying theme here, to a large degree, is the virtual version of school yard: who you hang around with determines how others perceive you.
There’s the jocks and the nerds, the Goths and the slackers, even – dare one say – the stoners. Who we choose to associate with has a real impact on how we are pre-judged by those who don’t yet know us; sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly. We can argue the justice of being judged ‘guilty by association’, but we certainly can’t deny that it happens, and likely always will.
This plays out in the online commerce world every day. There was a situation I learned about a couple of years ago where one online merchant was accused of playing fast and loose with the rules on adding post-purchase promotions: they successfully got a slew of consumers to unknowingly sign up for a subscription they didn’t realize they were committing to. Eventually their program was noticed, and all kinds of bad things happened, not the least of which was that that organization was sent packing by their payment processor. Perhaps toughest, though, was that dozens of other companies who offered similar programs – regardless of how transparent their processes were, or how high their customer satisfaction rates soared – were also advised that their business was no longer welcome. They had been tarred with the same brush, because no payment processor can take the risk of enabling behavior that can fundamentally damage their own reputation, and hinder their ability to serve their customers.
Plimus has just introduced a new process to the sign-up for our service, one in which new accounts run through a risk review before being enabled for credit card sales. To some, this may seem like just another cumbersome hurdle to clear in order to get into the marketplace – and there’s no doubt that it makes the path from creative genius to revenue-producing merchant a little longer. For current Plimus merchants, though, it ensures you don’t find yourself in the company of merchants with a more tenuous relationship with ethics and regulations – and protects us all from being viewed as part of a, shall we say, disreputable social network.
The Internet simply isn’t a border town any more, and the cowboys are becoming much less popular. To a lot of folks in the industry, this is – and is going to be – painful and frustrating. Customers, though, are evolving too and know when they are being bamboozled. They are learning to spot the signs of a scam, and aren’t afraid to chase down the perpetrator, get their money back, and make a loud fuss online. Fast-and-loose merchants can run, but it’s getting awfully hard to hide.
So our new review program may cause a few hiccups to genuine web entrepreneurs, but it will also help us to weed out the bad actors, and ensure that we properly curate the reputation of the broader Plimus community. Being part of the crowd known for doing the right thing is never going to harm any merchant’s standing with customers.
Plimus is exhibiting at Affiliate Summit West Jan. 9 – 10
Jan 9th
Happy New Year everyone!
2011 was a great year with a growing Plimus team, new customers and affiliate sellers, and the acquisition by Great Hill Partners. We look forward to what’s on the horizon this year and guarantee it will improve our customers’ bottom line.
There is no better way to kick-start the year than a trip to Las Vegas. Plimus is exhibiting at the Affiliate Summit West show taking place today continuing through Jan. 10 at Caesars Palace. Plimus is showcasing our industry leading e-Commerce processing platform for digital commerce, which services more than 7,000 sellers and 85,000 affiliates. Come see us at the booth!
As a reminder, the Affiliate Summit West is a three-day conference for affiliate merchants, vendors and networks to come together and discuss the latest trends and information from affiliate marketing experts. At the show, Plimus’ affiliate experts are on hand to demonstrate how to leverage the Plimus Marketplace e-Commerce platform for maximized conversions and optimized return on investment. We are looking forward to the many organic conversations that always arise during the networking session.
I’ve included additional details about the show below. If you’re interested in scheduling a meeting at the show, just stop by the booth. We hope to see you there!
Affiliate Summit West 2012
When: Jan. 8 – 10, 2012
Where: Caesars Palace Hotel
3570 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, Nevada
Booth No. 405 / 407
And once again, Happy New Year from the entire Plimus team!
Great Hill Partners Acquires Plimus for $115M USD .
Aug 8th
Today is a big day for the Plimus team! We proudly announce that Great Hill Partners has acquired Plimus for $115 million dollars. Great Hill purchased 100 percent of the company from a shareholder group including Susquehanna Growth Equity LLC, Plimus founders, key management members and employees.
Through continued growth in our seller base, Plimus has experienced equally strong growth in transactions, revenue and profit. Following the close of the deal, the current senior management team and employees led by CEO Hagai Tal will work with Great Hill Partners to continue carrying out Plimus’ long-term business plan.
As quoted in our press release, Hagai Tal says, “With our solid existing customer base and favorable market trends, we are fortunate to work with Great Hill Partners to expand our ability to capture the opportunities ahead. Our Plimus teams in the U.S. and Israel will continue to focus on our clients’ successful monetization in an increasingly global, complex and expanding online and mobile world. Our vision of e-Commerce 3.0 and frictionless e-Commerce will fuel these solutions.”
To learn more about this announcement, click here to review the entire release.
Jack Myers Media Business Report – Showing Continued Social Commerce Growth
Apr 20th
Last week, Jack Myers Media Business Report issued its annual report on the growth of the advertising and media industries 2010-2020, projecting social marketing commerce will top $50 billion by 2020. That’s significant growth considering that, in 2010, social marketing business was only $1.2 billion consisting mostly of online blog sites, conversational marketing campaigns and word-of-mouth advertising.
Jack Myers and Media Advisory Group conducted the report, which projects that the majority of the $50 billion in social marketing commerce will (at the bare minimum) replace traditional print coupons and retail trade promotions.
Once again, Facebook is the elephant in the room.
The social networking site is the primary beneficiary of this growth as 75 percent of retailers report that they plan to use Facebook to drive social commerce — if they do not already conduct business via the social networking site. A more compelling statistic may be that 50 percent of retailers plan to use a Facebook page to replace their tradition website. No longer will you find search for these businesses at traditional URL addresses – got to Facebook instead. We of course have to ask, what does this mean? Is Facebook the new Google? Will Facebook search replace surfing the Internet? Only time will tell.
This report is an interesting read for our affiliate marketers. Traditional approaches to selling are increasingly less effective and one day (in the not so near future) may become completely useless. Newspaper coupons no longer sufficiently reach targeted customers. With newspaper circulations on the decline and consumers relying more on mobile devices and applications, marketers must shift their offerings online and to mobile platforms. Social commerce is a growing industry and its new business model is continuing to develop. It’s important for marketers to recognize this growth and adapt their offerings and business models early.
Plimus has helped countless affiliates tackle this growing social commerce market and can help you too! For more information on our affiliate program, please click here.
I first caught this report in a great read from Jack Myers in the Huffington Post, “Social Commerce: $50 Billion in 2020.” I’m going to be sharing it with our affiliates and sellers, feel free to pass along to our friends and colleagues.
Plimus Affiliate Marketplace
Jan 19th
As a follow up to last week’s Affiliate Summit show in Las Vegas, I wanted to just summarize a few highlights of our successful Affiliate program. As you all read in my last post, Plimus met with hundreds of vendors and affiliates at our booth and hospitality suite and had some of our affiliate experts on hand to answer all questions including Mark Hassin, who is our VP of Strategic Accounts. Overall, we had a great time at the show and met some awesome new sellers and affiliates seeking a platform for maximized conversions and optimized ROI. While we work with many of you already, we look forward to being the perfect platform for the rest of you very soon.
In case you missed us, here’s a bit more about our program. The new Plimus Marketplace is the go-to place to find exclusive deals to the many innovative products available for promotion. This easy-to-use marketplace allows affiliates to find items to sell and to begin partnering with sellers all in one spot. The Plimus Marketplace hosts catalogues of products that affiliates and sellers can browse the more than 100,000 products by specific requirements, such as, average earning per sale, average commission, percentage of active affiliates, etc. We make it easy to find the product that works just for you.
As a member of the Plimus Marketplace, you’ll receive offers completely exclusive to Plimus; a plethora of top converting products to promote; as well as access to the more than 5,000 active sellers on the Plimus Marketplace to date. It’s time for you to join our community!
Additionally, I’ve outlined a few of the top headlines coming out of the show. With such an engaging, active affiliate community in attendance, it’s hard to just pick a few but here are some.
- This year’s show had the biggest attendance rate ever with over 4,600 attendees. As FeedFront reports, the steady climb over the years, especially during this economic hardship, is proof of the strength of the affiliate marketing industry. In fact – I think the trend goes beyond just affiliate marketing – but the maturity of online marketing as a science.
- It’s clear that while the social web and the broadcast effect of sites like Facebook create the buzz and global awareness, it is known and trusted connections that make sales. The actual selling process demands more e-commerce-like, demographically-tuned, personalized approaches. As the audiences segment into smaller and smaller communities, it is clear the strength of online marketing as demonstrated by affiliates will become a stronger force in the industry.
- Although it’s been around since 2005, this year’s hot buzz new trend seems to be “multi-channel e-commerce.” Even leading analyst firm, Forrester Research is predicting that this will be the largest growth area of 2011. What do you think?
Are there any others that I’m missing? If so, please share. As I mentioned above, Plimus is excited to start working with many new sellers and affiliates in the New Year. Visit our website to learn more about the Plimus Marketplace.
Charles Born,
VP and Head of Marketing
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carworld/3780566252/
Plimus at Affiliate Summit West
Jan 10th
Welcome to 2011! We’re kicking the year off perfectly with a trip to the Affiliate Summit West this week in Las Vegas. This is a key show for Plimus and its new Affiliate Marketplace. We’ve already been catching up with several of our existing sellers and affiliates as well as meeting lots of new faces. Come over to our booth (#112) and say hello!
The Plimus booth features the new Affiliate Marketplace where current and prospective affiliates can find exclusive deals to the many innovative products available for promotion. We also have plenty of the top-notch Plimus affiliate experts on hand in our booth to demonstrate how to leverage the new Plimus Marketplace and Plimus e-Commerce platform for maximized conversions and optimized ROI.
So if you’re here, come see us in booth #112. Our Plimus Affiliate program is very important to us and we strive to provide our more than 5,000 sellers with offers to increase their sales and also receive prompt payments.
For others who are not in Las Vegas this week, please visit the Plimus website to learn more about the Plimus Affiliate Program.
Have a great event!
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/affsum/5263439941/
Recalling 2010 and Looking Ahead at 2011
Dec 15th
As the holiday season rolls around, we’re starting to see feedback from the media and industry analysts discussing what was hot in 2010. Additionally, there is a lot of noise around 2011 forecasting projections and discussions about new companies, technologies and people that will be the next big thing.
2010 was, another successful year for Plimus. We saw tremendous customer uptake, launched our Buy Anyware API in June, partnered with PayPal on their new digital goods platform and participated in some leading tradeshows across the globe. In all of our industry conversations, we have continued to see some common technology trends and developments.
Here are some of the things we think were hot in 2010:
- Social gaming: Let’s all play together. Everything about social gaming was hot, hot, hot this year. According to the 2010 Digital Goods Report, roughly 64 percent of users make at least one social gaming purchase a month and nine percent buy virtual goods daily on social games.
- Location-based applications: I’m checked in at Plimus, Inc., where are you? According to Pew Research, four percent of online Americans use location-based services. While it doesn’t sound like much, consider that leading app provider, Foursquare, grew to five million users this month, only a year since its inception.
- Apps, apps and more apps: Are you on app overload? If you are, there’s an app for that. Need I say more?! Apple’s app store has over 300,000 apps available and continues to grow daily with Android closing in from behind.
- Tablets: Welcome to the world of the iPad. Apple’s new iPad was launched in April of this year and sold three million devices in just 90 days – making it the fastest growing consumer device to date.
The above contenders are only just getting started and will continue to infiltrate our lives in 2011. However, we have some new front-runners that will be blasting onto the scene shortly.
Here are some of the things we think will be hot in 2011:
- Affiliate marketing: The way in which consumers, sellers and affiliates work together will change in the New Year. We’ll chat more about this very soon and you’ll see just how cool it will be.
- Social networking in the workplace: The Millennial generation that has entered the workplace within the last five years is the perfect example of social networking users. In order to mesh older generations with the younger, connected workforce, we’ll have to bridge this division with a common ground, such as social networking.
- Subscription-based billing models: Virtual and digital goods providers will begin to adjust their business models to accommodate a subscription-based billing model. Companies will begin to offer a no to low-cost on boarding fee to engage customers and then any add-ons or premium services are a pay-as-you play model. We covered this a bit in our Nov. 8 post, but stay tuned for future blog posts on this topic.
- Cloud services for SMBs: In the wake of the economic recession, more than 25 percent of SMBs have already turned to cloud computing in order to save time and money. In 2011, SMBs will continue to cash in on the benefits and rewards enabled by the cloud and will also expand the types of cloud-based services they are currently using.
Now, this list is by no means all inclusive. So, what do you think was hot in 2010 or will be in 2011?
Charles Born,
VP and Head of Marketing
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heemaz/5222325470/
Plimus e-Commerce Platform Integrates with PayPal’s New Digital Goods Payments Solutions
Nov 2nd
Plimus just made life much easier for its more than 50,000 sellers and affiliates using the e-Business platform. Last week, we announced the integration of our platform with PayPal’s new digital goods payments solutions. So what does this mean, you ask?
Prior to this integration, customers were redirected to the PayPal website and required to login before the authorization of an online payment could go through. However, now users can make payments directly on the merchant’s site with just a few clicks. Kristina Knight of BizReport.com wrote about the news from a small business perspective and Ben Parr of Mashable covered the announcement from PayPal’s perspective. Take a look.
Plimus’ e-Commerce platform now enables a frictionless online experience for the consumers purchasing goods through PayPal’s new digital goods solution. Vendors that use Plimus will now be able to offer an easy payment process that not only streamlines the customer experience, whether in purchasing game credits, applications, or digital content, but also gives the merchant flexibility to adapt the customer experience throughout the purchase cycle.
The entire Plimus team is really excited about this integration and the value it adds for our customers. Our mission is to provide a seamless and painless experience for online buyers while still offering abundant revenue streams for sellers. We think the new integration with PayPal is key to succeeding in our mission.
To learn more about this news announcement, click here. What do you think of PayPal’s new offering?
Charles Born,
VP and Head of Marketing
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferneyes/439469733/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Where to Promote Your Affiliate Offers
Apr 28th
[First part, Five Tips To Get Started In Affiliate Sales, here.]
Now that you’ve selected several programs and offers to promote from the Plimus catalog, you’re probably wondering how to lure prospective buyers to take a bite. Here are a few methods which have succeeded for thousands of affiliates and should succeed for you.
1. Google, Google, and more Google. Search really does work! If you have a Spyware Utility blog, Google something like “spyware utility” and look at the results. Tighten your search results by inserting your main keywords into that search query and you may find products that are more relevant to your niche.
2. Look at the Competition. What products are others promoting? Quite often, checking out the sidebar of another successful blog in your niche to see what products and services they are promoting will reveal affiliate products and offers you should promote. There may be a big interest in these products and promoting them yourself will potentially bring you a good part of that audience.
3. Watch AdSense. This is similar to the previous point. Many of the AdSense ads appearing besides Google search results, on other blogs, and websites, are very likely to be affiliated products. Checking out what the ads promote will reveal all sorts of potential affiliate offers.
4. Generate Leads from your Opt-In Email List. You can always buy email lists, but are those people interested in the kinds of products you are selling? Probably not. Create an opt-in mailing list by allowing prospects who come to your website to choose to receive a free newsletter. This gives you the opportunity to include information in the newsletter about your products.
5. Create Your Own Affiliate Marketing Materials. Plimus provides Buy, Try, and Product Information links. Unique content is KEY when looking for top placement in search engines. Build your own landing pages or micro sites and watch your organic listings soar.
6. Use Blogs and Social Networks to Promote Your Offers. If you’re ready to go big, set up a blog. Blogs have become a very flexible and powerful tool to promote offers. A blog not only gives you a place to write about the products you are promoting, it also gives potential buyers a central place to go to. Think of it as your own mall of sorts.
Once you’ve created the right audience, you’d be crazy not to post your offers on your own Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and any other social media accounts you may have. Just be careful to not spam people, especially those who aren’t interested in your products.
These tips will help you successfully promote your affiliate offers. There are many other ways to promote offers, but these are just a handful of ways to get your programs get the necessary exposure needed to build momentum and eventually succeed.
Jason Kiwaluk
Affiliate Marketing Manager
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31216636@N00/3253842434/
Five Tips to Get You Started In Affiliate Sales
Apr 13th
What’s the best way to find quality products and services to resell as an affiliate on my blog or website? Many affiliates new to internet marketing find it hard to find the right product to promote, and which merchants or vendors to go with.
Here are 5 tips on selecting great affiliate products to promote on Plimus:
1) Compare and Contrast. Go to the Plimus product catalog and search by keyword, product name, brand, or company name. Focus on a niche. Compare price, shipping policy, return policy, and shopping cart checkout pages. It is very important that you visit each checkout page to evaluate its overall usability. Most completed online purchases are made via purchase convenience, speed and ease-of-use, not price.
2. Focus, Focus, Focus. Selecting products to promote is one of the most difficult things when you decide to become an affiliate marketer. Most rookies tend to go with a shotgun approach and stretch themselves too thin by casting too wide a net. Focus on only a few niches.
Also, focus on building your own reliable web site. Too many affiliates focus on the products before really establishing good content on their sites and landing pages that will help with SEO and ultimately improve their sales.
3. Use Existing Resources. Plimus provides you with 3 links you can promote with:
- BuyNow Link – pushes directly to a shopping cart check out page
- Trial Link – initiates a download
- Product Information Link – pushes to product page or landing page
Firstly, look at the Product Information link if one is provided. Use this link if you want to direct an end user to a page with more information on the product or service. This will be your conversion page. Think you can do it better? Build your own killer purchase funnel and place the BuyNow and Trial links on that landing page.
4. Look For Special Offers. Featured offers can be found just beneath the search on the homepage of the product catalog. Look here for top performing titles in software, games, and SaaS. Plimus sends out fresh offers twice a week via email newsletter, Twitter, the offers area in the Plimus community site, and via the Plimus Affiliate toolbar.
The toolbar is Plimus affiliate power users and can be downloaded here. It’s contains shortcuts to the login page of your control panel, access to weekly affiliates offers, system updates, and quick links to the community, and this informative blog .
5. Do the math! Depending on the type of promotion you’ll be doing, ensure the commission is $20 or higher. (For example: paid search). Speedy ROI is crucial and spinning your wheels and will not make you any money as an affiliate marketer.
If you continually educate yourself on marketing and marketing techniques, keep on top of trends and product releases, as well as keeping a close eye on what your competitors and contemporaries are doing, YOU WILL MAKE MONEY as an affiliate marketer.
Jason Kiwaluk
Affiliate Marketing Manager
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/timparkinson/930660427/
