Your website, whether you are a large ecommerce website or affiliate site, can really appear “timely” by simply adding some holiday elements to your website design. You can be more conservative by simply dressing up your logo with some snow or wreaths, or you can get more elaborate and redesign your entire homepage with a gorgeous holiday theme. Web visitors tend to feel more comfortable when your website is current and fresh. Even Google.com will dress up their logo on holidays and for events. Ecommerce retailers should definitely dress it up for the holiday shopping season. Right from Thanksgiving - Black Friday - Cyber Monday, graphics can be added or replaced that accentuate the holiday shopping season. Try not to get to “hokie” with it, too many cartoon Santas can be annoying, so I always recommend more general holiday symbols with the occasional Frosty or Santa for impact. Possibly even some animate gif graphics can liven it up for the holidays and make your site stand out from the pack. First impressions are everything and if you are able to impress the visitor enough they won’t feel like they have to look any further. Branding for the holidays is just one aspect of convincing the visitor they need to take an action on your site, but definitely important to seize the opportunity to get creative. Nothing is worse than a stagnant website! Now get out there and build the Internet!

The latest drama in the affiliate marketing world is Commission Junction calling up PepperJam’s affiliate management clients to basically tell them to drop Pepper Jam management due to the fact that Pepper Jam has launched a competing affiliate network called: The PepperJam Network. Here the issue…PepperJam manages affiliate programs for merchants in CJ, yet they launched their own network 2 months ago and are agressively promoting it as being so great and wonderful, garnering endoresments from some of the “biggest” names in affiliate marketing . (I have looked at it and and I wasn’t that impressed.) So, CJ according to PepperJams own CEO’s blog started “cold calling” (it’s hardly that) all the merchants that PepperJam is managing in CJ and have told them to fire PepperJam. I completely agree with CJ on this issue, of course they would want to protect their affiliate base and merchant based from being pilfered by the Pepper Jam staff and employees. This is a major conflict of interest in my opinion. Most of you know that I am a big fan of Commission Junction for a lot of reasons, not least of which is their incredible base of affiliates and brand-name merchants. If I were them I would want to protect this affiliate universe from being picked at by the likes of Pepper Jam. There is potentially a major issue for the merchants that PepperJam is managing in CJ, which is that from what I understand Pepper Jam Management has a 60 day out clause in their contract, which will hurt merchants that have to pay that 2 months of fees for services that won’t be rendered if they have to either handle it inhouse or move to another affiliate program management company. It’s also very bad for PepperJam in that they can potentially lose clients. Pepper Jam can tell them to relax while things will blow over, but I doubt they will. PepperJams clients that are leaving maybe interested in contacting Experience Advertising for our affiliate program management and recruiting services. We charge much less per month and over-deliver value in the form of affiliate program growth month over month. We are industry experts in SEO, PPC, HTML and all aspcets of Internet Marketing. You can contact Evan if you would like a free consultation and full evaluation. I look forward to hearing from you.

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Cost per acquisition refers to performance-based marketing whereby an affiliate or publisher is paid a CPA payout for generating a sale on the merchant’s website. This is either a percentage of the sale amount (ex. 5-30%) or a flat amount payout ($20) on the sale regardless of purchase amount. Both have their pros and cons, but either way you are marketing on a pay-for-performance basis. The acquisition term refers to customer acquisition, which should be the focus on an ecommerce companies marketing strategy. Driving in new customers is always at the forefront of a merchant’s online strategy. The key for the merchant is to have a desirable product, a good converting website, and a substantial commission structure for the affiliate or publisher. If they have these 3 key factors they have a very good chance at producing tremendous revenue on a cost per acquisition basis. When merchants have the duck in a row, the affiliate can expect to generate good revenue with that merchant. Affiliate have no control of these factors, they can only do a great job at pre-selling the visitor. That all for now! If you need affiliate program management or internet marketing consulting, contact: evan@experienceadvertising.com.