Affiliate Marketing on Twitter, oh My!

Scott Jangro posted a few blog posts about affiliate marketing on Twitter that have created a bit of a discussion.  Here are the posts:

• Damn Marketers Affiliate Links in Twitter
• Affiliate Links in Twitter Part 2

The 2nd blog post talks about a test I have been trying on Twitter.  Since my comment / response to his blog post apparently was too for his comment system, I thought I would create a new blog post here in response.  Here it is:

When looking at the Tweets listed in Scott's blog post, I would say that one is probably crossing the line and the other one maybe not.  Since I did the tweets and have been playing around with this to see if it works, here is where I think the line could have been drawn.

Origional Message:

@DesignLady Dear Lisa, In that family of 3 how many boys and girls. I bet the girls are pretty like you.lol I am looking to buy a laptop.

My Reply:

Skeeter, What kind of laptop are you looking for? I got My wife got a PowerBook & She Loves it! http://cli.gs/macbookpro - @SkeeterHansen

Replying to this one where the origional tweet was was cleary @DesignLady might have corssed the line, but it was not an automated response, was thought out and provided a real possible solution to her "I am looking to buy a laptop" statement.

The other two that I responded to actually asked a general question looking for an answer to their followers and the twitter universe at large.  They asked a question, and honestly I think I gave them an honest answer that solved their question.  I think that is good marketing. Here are the other two examples:

Origional Message:

What company makes quality Aviator Sunglasses?  I am looking to purcahse a quality pair of Aviators.

My Reply:

Try Oakley http://cli.gs/oakley for those Quality SunGlasses you asked about! They are offering Free Shipping Too! @askinstructable

Origional Message:

I am looking to buy a Union Jack shirt. I found one for @20 and a lot os stickers. Oh and 5/17 tv on the radio @ house of blues. Sweet.

My Reply:

Magen, I am sure can find that Union Jack Shirt plus lots of other Union Jack Products at CafePress - http://cli.gs/cafepress - @magenprice

Good affiliates, in my opinion, test out the new technologies to see what works and what doesn't work.  I have made a test here, and here are some of the results so far:

Since Cli.gs gives you analytics, here are the links used an number of clicks today:

http://cli.gs/macbookpro - 15 Hits (10 Humans and 5 Bots)
http://cli.gs/cafepress - 13 Hits (10 Humans and 3 Bots)
http://cli.gs/oakley - 17 Hits (14 Humans and 3 Bots)

I am not sure about sales yet, but I tagged an sid of twitter on the links and will check that later.

Also on Twitter I have played around with @dealzam which is a twitter account that sends tweets out as new deals are posted to www.dealzam.com, and @dealtwit that is a combined feed of dealzam deals, some goldencan coupon feeds, CJ's deal feed, and deals from other affiliates's coupon sites that have RSS feeds.

Another program I have looked at recently is TwitterHawk, exactly the kind of bot that Scott talks about in this post, that will automate responses based on what people tweet about.  It limits responses to every 6 hours.  It's too early to tell if that will work or not.  It will take some tweaking to make sure the keywords are specific enough to generate good responses.

The final twitter stuff I have been playing with are two websites http://www.afftwitlist.com - a listing of affiliate marketers on Twitter and http://www.politicaltwits.com - a site where you can follow what the politicians and pundits are saying on twitter.

So there it is, those are the things I am currently playing around with on twitter.  Not sure if that qualifies me as the DB of the day, as Sam Harrelson tweeted.

Comments

[Evan]

Great post...thanks for posting it over here on your blog...I follow dealzam too...decent for a while but I had to drop them...

[Tom Lindstrom]

When will Twitter start kicking out people who are only there to market their products?

[Adam Viener]

Tom,

Good question. It might be a tough call from their point on who should stay and who should go. Ultimately users have the ability to decide whom to follow and whom to block, right?

Also, I am sure twitter has eyes on making some money some day, and they might turn to these very people for advertising support.

It's not an easy situation building such a big community and then trying to decide if and how to police it.

Adam