WatchedItem.com founder Michelle Waldorf attended the recent Affiliate Summit East conference in New York city where over 3,500 affiliates, vendors and merchants gathered for educational and networking sessions. AuctionBytes sat down with Michelle to learn about the news and trends from the conference, including Google's announcement about a program that could help its affiliate program rival that of eBay.
Michelle has been a successful eBay seller, has built several eBay seller tools, and is an affiliate marketer. Her eBay shopping site WatchedItem.com shows the most watched items on eBay and drives over 1,000 shoppers to eBay each day; her new site is PopWatchers where you can "Shop eBay, Etsy, Amazon, Bonanzle, and Zappos in just one click." You can read more on Michelle's background on LinkedIn and can contact her through this page on WatchedItem.com.
AuctionBytes: Was this your first Affiliate Summit, and what were your impressions?
Michelle Waldorf: This was my second Summit. There are two summits each year, Affiliate Summit West is held in Las Vegas in January and Affiliate Summit East is held in August. It's an affordable conference. The early registration fee starts at just $99.
My first impression was the sense of positive energy. The affiliate marketing industry is growing and there is no sign of a recession.
Second, you have to make the effort to talk to people and be willing to ask dumb questions like, "What is a Google Slap. This is the place where you can create powerful relationships with other companies. I met great people from Google Affiliate Network, Coupons.com and Shopzilla.com, just to name a few.
AuctionBytes: It seems social networking and mobile commerce are usually the hot topics at conferences these days. What were people talking about at the Affiliate Summit?
Michelle Waldorf: Yes, social networking was part of nearly every discussion. Social networks are major competition for search engines when it comes to influence. People want recommendations from real people rather than search results from an algorithm.
There are two methods to drive people from social sites to your own affiliate site: creating a free fan page for your site or paid advertising. For paid ads, Google's AdWords self-service advertising platform has been copied by Facebook and smaller sites like PlentyOfFish.com. The advantage of advertising on a social site is that you can precisely target demographics such as age, gender, martial status and age of their children. Google doesn't know this much detail about their users.
There were instructional sessions to teach you precisely how to use Facebook ads to drive traffic to your site. They described how to test your ads' images, text and landing pages. If an ad is not approved the first time, keep trying.
Mobile commerce is pretty much owned by the big merchants and marketplaces. Affiliates are not allowed to earn money on mobile apps that drive traffic directly to a merchant site. Apps have to first drive traffic to your browser based affiliate site, then to the merchant site.
AuctionBytes: Google announced some news during the conference. First, can you explain what the Google Affiliate Network is?
Michelle Waldorf: Google acquired DoubleClick in 2008 and renamed it the Google Affiliate Network. An affiliate network is a middle man between merchants and affiliates and manages sale tracking and payout. Merchants like Target and Kohl's sign up as advertisers and affiliates like me sign up as publishers. When I send a person to Kohl's and they buy an item, Google Affiliate Network pays me a portion of the sale.
AuctionBytes: And what was the news from Google, and what will it mean for online merchants?
Michelle Waldorf: Google is releasing a product Application Programmers Interface (API) within the next 6-9 months. A product API or feed makes it easy for affiliates to access and show product descriptions on their sites. eBay currently has the best product API for affiliates. Now other networks like Google are enabling affiliates to promote their products as easily as they can promote eBay items.
AuctionBytes: As an eBay affiliate, are you satisfied with the program, and do you think it benefits sellers?
Michelle Waldorf: I'm happy with the eBay Partner Network. They made changes to improve the health of the eBay ecosystem and eBay items convert to sales very well. eBay's core focus over the past few years has been to create a great buying experience. eBay affiliates are now compensated for high quality traffic, i.e. serious buyers.
Sellers benefit by getting more bidders and higher sales when affiliates promote their items to shoppers who are ready to buy. For example, on my site, www.watcheditem.com/search, I promote the most watched items on eBay. Collectors can easily find the most interesting eBay listings on my site.
AuctionBytes: Your site WatchedItem.com shows some eBay listings with thousands of watchers. Have you figured out how online sellers can get their listings on shoppers' watch lists?
Michelle Waldorf: Multiple quantity fixed priced items are usually on the top of the most watched list now. These listings are Good Til Canceled so they pick up watchers over the years.
Sellers don't have to be on the eBay Pulse to benefit from having watchers. eBay does a great job of promoting items on buyers' watch lists. eBay sends reminder messages to the buyer with links to your items and they display the watch list to the buyer when they visit the eBay home page. It's free promotion! Take advantage of it.
My advice to sellers of fixed priced items is to continue the listing. Don't end a listing or you will lose your watchers. If you sell something like shoes, then create a multivariation listing that is Good Til Canceled.
For one-of-a-kind auction listings, ask people to watch the item right in your listing description. Many new buyers don't know how to watch an item. Explain that they need to click on the "Add to Watch List" link on the upper right side of the listing.
AuctionBytes: How does one become an affiliate?
Michelle Waldorf: The easiest way to become an affiliate is to start a simple Wordpress blog or a Squidoo lens. The work of an affiliate is similar to the work of a seller, except your job is done when the sale is made - no inventory, no shipping.
