Declan Dunn's Report from Beyond the Banner

The Birth of the ActiveMarketplace: Affiliates Are The Keys to Success

The Beyond the Banner Conference, held in San Francisco from December 9-10, was one of the first meeting places of a new industry. The jockeying for position in this industry is incredible; competition heated in a field where no one really knows what is going to happen.

In rooms filled with experts, people with thousands of affiliates, one thing become amazingly clear;

No one really knew what to do with all this abundance.

That is, except for one person; a man who had to use affiliate programs to start his business. We'll get to him later (see Affiliate Acquisition, Retention, and Development).

Let's get back to the abundance. In the old days of business, it was all about scarcity. About finding the market where few people could do what you do, and to dominate that market.

That mentality still prevails over the entire industry of affiliate networks. It is a hard one to overcome. Many companies here literally expect to control their industry.

It became clear that no one will "control" this industry, except for the affiliates. No one represented the affiliates. No one spoke for them.

It became sort of a running joke; how many affiliates do you have? I have thousands and thousands. How much do they sell? I'm not really sure.

The challenge to the affiliate industry right now is the abundance. Instead of honing those affiliates into a tight sales network, measuring the results, we dance with thousands in our press releases, in our promotional materials, but we never quite explain what those thousands do.

It's like the early days of the Internet, when hits was what everyone bragged about...until it became apparent that hits were a giant exaggeration. We moved onto banner ads, and measured success in the number of times a picture appeared in front of someone's eyeballs.

Quantity has never been the driving force of the Internet; quality is the key. I would rather have two great affiliates than a thousand people sitting around, never doing anything.

Then again, if I did have only two out of a thousand doing anything, shouldn't I do my best to turn the rest into long term customers, to reward them for their interest?

It's not only the long term value of the customer, but the long term value of the affiliate that matters.

Logic is lacking in our industry; not unusual for something in its infancy. I realized it is all our jobs to move this industry from infancy to adolescence and adulthood...it's time to grow. The opportunity is wide, wide open.

Abundance is everywhere, and companies want to control it. I knew from this meeting that the time had come to empower the industry by focusing not on the merchants, but on the affiliates, on the people, the Web Sites, the non-profits, who could form this into a great sales channel.

Welcome to the ActiveMarketplace; competition is a thing of the past. You can never control the Internet. Your competitors are partners. Your partners are competitors.

Hope you enjoy this inside issue from the first Beyond the Banner conference created by IQPC and hosted by LinkShare. Everyone in attendance agreed on one thing.

We have only just begun.

Peace,
Declan