Wiseaff

Wiseaff Community Features

We have updated Wiseaff.com a bit to add some community features from MyBloglog and Bumpzee.  Any others we should consider?

E-Commerce Still Growing, but a Bit Slower

comScore reports that Year over Year increases in e-commerce spending is still growing but the high growth rates of from last year have slowed a bit.  Here is the data:

Month             Y/Y Percent Change
Apr-07                 18%
May-07                 25%
Jun-07                 25%
Jul-07                 22%
Aug-07                 28%
Sep-07                 19%
Oct-07                 19%
Nov-07                 20%
Dec-07                 18%
Jan-08                 12%
Feb-08                 14%
Mar-08                  9%
Apr-08                 15%

April's e-commerce growth rate was only off 3% from the prior year, and I think this indicates that online spending will be where people go to look for deals as the economy falters.

Growing Pains - Collaborating with Remote Workers

Our affiliate business, imwave, continues to grow, and the days of being a one man shop are long over.  Now I find myself looking at solutions to help manage a growing team.

Having read many great reviews of Basecamp, I have started testing the tool as a way to help keep track of what people are working on and to make sure important pieces of projects don't fall through the cracks.

There are a lot of project management tools out there, but this one seems to be getting a lot of traction.  It allows you to easily manage the communications and tasks involved in just about any kind of project.  You can have multiple teams of people both internal and external with access to the projects they are working on.

Pretty cool.

Has anyone out there used Basecamp?  I would love to hear your thoughts?  Are there other tools you like better?

Home Business Technical Support

Affiliate marketing businesses are great because you have lots of flexibility and if you work hard you can make quite a bit of money, but running your business out of our home can be challenging, especially when you have computer problems.

Now, I am fairly technical and can fix most software issues that arise, but lately I have been having some hardware issues with several computers at home.

I have had two laptops with broken powerjack issues (no way to charge them up), and another where the USB ports have decided to quit on me.

So I went to the number 1 organic listing in Google for "Laptop Powerjack Repair in Reston Virginia" (onCall258.com), gave them a call, and they came out to my home, picked up the laptops and fixed them up for me (actually the USB problem ended up being larger than I wanted to fix, so I kept that one with the broken USBs).

Score one, for local search engine marketing and search engine optimization efforts for onCall258!

Now I have my own local tech support team, cool!

If you can't find a local computer repair shop in Google, check out Angie's List, they have been life savers for me as well.  Found someone to help me out with my Squirrel issue there.

Will Overstock have to Close or Move their Affiliate Program?

According to Overstock.com's Press Release yesterday, the company has terminated more than 3,400 affiliates residing in New York:

Overstock.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: OSTK) announced today that it has notified its more than 3,400 New York-based affiliate advertisers that as of June 1, 2008 they can no longer provide advertising for Overstock.com until either New York changes its controversial new internet consumer tax law or the courts say the law is unenforceable. On June 1, the controversial new law will require internet retailers to turn off their New York-based ad partners or collect an up to 9.5% sales tax from all New York internet customers.

But wait, Overstock's entire affiliate program is with Linkshare, a New York based company, and Linkshare earns a percentage of EVERY OVERSTOCK AFFILIATE TRANSACTION!!!

So based on this, it would appear that Overstock would still be liable for the 9.5% sales tax from, as would every Linkshare merchant.

Perhaps pissing off your 3,400 new york based affiliates in a knee jerk reaction wasn't that best idea since it doesn't really solve the problem?

It's all about the O...  In this case, O crap...

Ask.com's Click Fraud Settlement Coupon Code

So ASK as finally settled their click fraud case, and we got a whopping $12.13 back as a coupon code, the only catch is you have to apply the coupon as a credit against the purchase of at least 2 times that amount in advertising.

"Your advertising coupon may be applied to up to 50% of the cost of online advertising purchased from Ask."

With no plans to advertise on ASK again in the near future, I have a $12.13 coupon code up for grabs.  Anyone still advertising on ASK????

Leave a comment below requesting the coupon code and it's yours.

PPC, SEO, and Affiliate Marketing top the list!

Here is a blurb from Netexponent's excellent email newsletter:

In a recent study released by Shop.org, paid search, organic search, and affiliate marketing top the list of customer acquisition tactics for online retailers. According to the study, PPC search accounts for 35% of new customers on average, 18% through organic search and affiliate marketing ties with email marketing at 17%.

The study also states that 79% of retailers will make PPC search a priority through 2008. This trend reinforces the importance of integrating online marketing into budgets that include traditional media outlets like TV, radio, and print. This combination creates a perfect ROI storm.

UK Insurance Companies Withdraw Affiliate Program

Insurance Daily reports that Virgin Money has closed their affiliate program, or affiliate scheme as they call it in the UK.  The article also reports insurance companies have scalled back or closed their programs, such as First Alternative, Click4Group and Lloyds TSB.

"The withdrawal comes on the heels of a shift at the end of last year, which saw a large number of providers in the financial services sector move their affiliate marketing campaign from Tradedoubler to rival providers, especially to OMG and Buy.at."

What's going on in the UK?  I know the UK Mortgage Rates and Housing market have taken a beating recently. But if you are going to scale back your marketing efforts, why cut back on programs that you only pay for on a performance basis?  It doesn't seem to make much sense.

Insurance is a profitable niche for many affiliates, unless the entire industry is going to abandon the affiliate channel, then closing your program just pushes your best affiliates to your competitors.

Odd, it will be interesting to watch...