Affiliate marketers invited to advertise on MySpace

I somehow landed on MySpace’s MyAds website and noticed something I haven’t anywhere else – at least not at a place that aims to become (or is) a major player in online advertising — An open invitation to affiliate marketers to advertise on MySpace…

…and that’s a good thing, IMO. Now wouldn’t the world be a wonderful place if only Adwords was also as welcoming to affiliates advertising on google.

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Amazon.com Announces Fourth Quarter Sales up 18% to $6.70 Billion; 2008 Free Cash Flow Grows 16% to $1.36 Billion

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Commission Junction goes green

Will cut larger checks, save paper.

Effective August 28, Affiliate network CJ will pay affiliates only once they have accumulated a minimum of $100 in commissions – in an effort towards eco-friendliness -  from the current minimum of $25, the new minimum direct deposit amount, however remains at $50. 

Smaller affiliates, especially in parts of the world where CJ doesn’t not provide a Direct deposit facility will have to wait longer to see their commission money.

The changes are as follows:

It’s good to see that CJ is showing concern towards the environment, but they should really think about providing direct deposit or paypal to countries besides the US, UK, canada and a few others. Affiliates in these parts of the world will still have to order checks.

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Bye Bye BFAST

Commission Junction’s BFAST affiliate platform is all set to close on the 15th this month according to a notice on CJ’s website.

BFAST, once part of Befree, a pioneering affiliate network, was sold to ValueClick in 2002 which later also purchased Commission Junction in 2003 and decided to integrate both the platforms under the CJ brand. One wonders what took VLCK so long to finally shut down the BFAST platform.

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CybaSumo: New social networking widget for indie artists and shops

Got a press release in the mail today about a new social shopping widget platform called CybaSumo. It’s a strange sounding name (somehow also the reason why I instantly wanted to check out the website), thankfully the release also had info on what it means.

The Name CybaSumo is ‘Formed by
combining the Latin words cyba for “merchant” and sumo for “to buy,” ‘

CybaSumo, essentially is a widget platform for shopping. What makes it unique is the fact that merchants and individuals can use it to sell both digital as well as physical goods for 2.5% per sale.

Tomorrow, they will officially turn this website into a social-shopping platform by letting people buy and sell – in a widget that can be embedded into social networks of your choice.

If you are looking to log-in to the website to buy stuff, don’t expect much, the site only has about ten sellers at the moment, however, it’s great to see such platforms come up every now and then. As I have mentioned in quite a few earlier posts and comments, I think it is ideas like these that take web 2.0 to the web 2.1. The “contribution economy”, where all user-generated content is monetizable – for the users, where a website (or widget, or social-network) is simply a platform for users to not only create content on, but also make money from it.

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Amazon launches new mp3 preview widget

Amazon.com recently introduced a cool way to promote it’s DRM free iTunes competitor, the MP3 clips widget. Bloggers who are amazon associates can now post 30 second previews of music they are talking about (or best sellers on the amazon mp3 store or all music from a genre or songs they recently purchased). This adds to amazon’s already extensive suite of widget type ads offered to associates.

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eyahoobay

Now that Microhoo is officially dead, could a YBay be on the cards somewhere? Thoughts?

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Google Product Search is a price comparison engine – Again!

Froogle – Google Product Search, which launched as Froogle many years ago as a price comparison shopping engine later changed it’s format to a simple product search engine that would display the stores that sell a product you are searching for, without grouping the stores that sell the searched product according to prices, but simply in random algorithmic order – each product listing displaying a merchant-specific description and other details.

This was probably because froogle would, at the time, crawl e-stores for price and product information and the index was anything but accurate. Since introducing google base, the product search engine has stopped crawling the web for product info, it instead relies on data-feeds submitted by merchants – in a manner much similar to Shopping.com, Shopzilla and other price comparison sites. Despite the added accuracy, few people actually use google’s product search feature independently of the top-three product listings that appear within universal search.

Now, again, google seems to be experimenting with the price comparison engine format, complete with one description, and product specs per product – which is great news shoppers – there is now a real price comparison engine that includes more buying options than any other out there. As for merchants, most of whom already have their datafeeds uploaded to google base, This would be one of the few price comparison sites that is completely free – merchants don’t pay for clicks or sales, and if your store offers competitive prices, all the better, expect additional traffic!

Not all searches are showing up as price comparison results, but more SERPs are changing their skin real quick. Probably not very long before the transition is completed.

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Text Amazon to buy it

In what is a giant leap in it’s mobile-commerce offerings, Amazon launched “Amazon TextBuyIt” yesterday – Something that will let customers find, and make purchases via something as simple as text messages.

“With today’s launch of TextBuyIt, any Amazon.com customer can now use any mobile device to shop and buy from Amazon.com, at anytime, anywhere they are”

How, Simply text a message to “AMAZON” (262966), with the name of the product (or UPC/ISBN, if you have those), search results – with product name, a single digit code, and prices – are immediately texted back to your phone. Reply to amazon’s reply with the single digit code amazon sent for the product that is to be purchased. That’s it! If it’s the first time you’re using the number to buy something you are asked your amazon.com account details from where amazon picks up your shipping and billing info, and calls you up to confirm the order)

There is a discussion going on here about the new service, the first few reviews seem positive. One of the comments made me think, we’re already into the ‘future’. “Imagine when you are wandering inside a BestBuy or circuitCity Store and really like some item and begin to wonder if you will find a better deal on Amazon… well, now you can just send an SMS and Voila!”

More on Text Buy It:
FAQs
Press Release

Update: Discussion also at Techcrunch

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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

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