Amazon EC2

Amazon’s EC2 servers get more usable for smaller web developers with static ip addresses now available, Elastic IP Addresses -> Amazon

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

google adwords policy change

There’s a Change in google adwords policy “Starting in April, display URLs for new ads will be required to match their destination / landing page URLs, without exception.”

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Coming soon — Video on shareasale

This is very exciting news. Everyone’s favorite affiliate network, ShareASale is hard at work on developing what they call a “v-commerce” solution - a video player/widget built for the sole purpose of affiliate marketing.

Carolyn Tang of SAS announced this to members of the shareasale group in facebook and is currently inviting ideas and suggestions in an ongoing facebook discussion here.

“we’re gettin’ with the times and exploring v-commerce. Nothing like bringing the magic of television online! Our tech team is hard at work developing a player with embedded tracking for affiliates to use on their sites.” ~ Carolyn Tang

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Big News: Ebay Leaving CJ, to launch the ebay partner network

Wow, this is huge. Online super-auctioneer, e-Bay always had an affiliate program, and it was always through a “trusted third party” At first, they were on a microsoft-owned affiliate network (remember clicktrade?) and later migrated to CJ sometime in the early 2000s.

Anyway, Today is an important day in affiliate marketing history. CJ has lost one of it’s biggest affiliate programs. e-Bay is going in-house. They announced this in an email to affiliates today that all the worlds ebays (including ebay US - Not including some of ebay’s non-auction properties such as stubhub, prostores, etc.) will need to be promoted via ebay’s own system beginning the first of April 2008.

“The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform. “

More details at the announcement page on ebay

Update: See also: AffiliateTip.com - Apparently, this was probably in the works since september 2006. See link on the affiliatetip post to “project rover”.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Coupon affiliate retailmenot launches social network. TechCrunch has the details

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Social Shop on Facebook with Amazon’s latest apps

It’s the social-shopping week, it seems. I already wrote about two new social shopping apps on facebook that launched this week. Now, it’s e-retail giant Amazon’s turn to get facebook users to social-shop.

“By combining Amazon’s vast selection of products with Facebook’s millions of users, we are able to make activities like gift-giving more efficient and rewarding for Facebook users.”

In a news release earlier today, Amazon announced the launch of two new facebook applications - Giver and Grapevine. “Giver” lets users view their friends’ Amazon wishlists and share their own, “Grapewine” populates the user’s facebook feed with their activity on amazon.com (one gets choose what type of activity to share upon signing up).

“Use Amazon Giver to let your Facebook friends know and buy what you wish for, as well as gift suggestions, and Amazon Grapevine to show your friends what you’ve been up to on Amazon.com, such as writing Customer Reviews, adding items to your Wish List, and tagging products”

It would have been even more awesome if amazon had somehow added an affiliate marketing element to their facebook suite of apps. Say, if someone buys something on your wishlist by clicking on it - for someone else - you get the standard amazon associates revenue-share on the sale credited to your affiliate account. something like that would boost their apps’ usage and make social-shopping recommendations on facebook a lot more fun.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Europe Clears Google’s DoubleClick Bid

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Calacanis might actually try to monetize Mahalo with affiliate links (w/disclosure, of course) very soon. Cool, huh?

Jangro and Sam have the story.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

gimme - social shopping on facebook

Another social shopping app launches on facebook. It’s called Gimme - basically a shareable web-wide wishlist.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Social Shopping is Huge in China. “In China, 58% of all purchase decisions were influenced by user-generated content such as consumer reviews and rating sites, forums and discussion boards, blogs and other UGC. In the US, only 19% of purchase decisions were influenced by user-generated content.” (via emarketer)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!