eBay has announced it will be leaving Commission Junction to set up its own Partner Network. According to the announcement, the new system will have:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

You can find out more about the partner program at their blog (by the way, I think different blogs for different languages may be better than posting in different languages to the same blog!). Information on how to sign up will be available after April 1st.

This must surely be a huge blow to Commission Junction. No offence to the people that work there, but I've never enjoyed using that interface one iota. It's always been slow, clunky and click intensive. I get loads of emails about non-relevant program launches and the payment system has always seemed less than clear (although they did send me an email for the first time with full VAT invoice recently which was helpful).

Despite all that, I think many affiliates would have been compelled to sign up to access eBay, and probably Argos too. The loss of eBay takes away one major reason to use Commission Junction at all.

Labels: commission junction, ebay

My favourite banner size is 728 x 90, but I can't help feeling that this generous sized creative is often overlooked by some merchants, who instead prefer to pump out loads of 468 x 60 ads.

I used to have very low expectations of banners anyway, having read about the "banner blindness" effect, and mostly liked them just to make my pages look "pretty" and instead looked to links within the body of my text to really convert, but I have noticed recently some really strong performing banners, and in my case, they have been 728 x 90. I'm not suggesting they convert better than other sizes, but I try to use them where possible and have found them to exceed my low expectations.

When designing a page layout, the best advice is usually to go for a fluid design and I understand the arguments for it. But sometimes I do prefer to do a nice tight fixed width design, and as I would design for a minimum resolution of 800 x 600 still, chopping off for a bit for window borders and margins, 728 x 90 is the perfect size to occupy a prominent space running right across the page.

So, the point is, I'm a big fan of these sized banners and I do think that those merchants who don't offer any creative at all in this size are being a bit shortsighted.

I love this new Firefox plugin called Domain Lookup, which lets you quickly look for domain name availability on keywords which you simply highlight on your browser page.

So you see some combination of words in a webpage and wonder to yourself if they would be available to register as a domain name. All you do is highlight the text with your cursor, right click and do a domain lookup. A new tab opens up with the results of your domain name search. The plugin does the useful stuff you'd need it to, like remove spaces and illegal characters, and can be customised to use different registrars depending on your preference - there's a big list already and you just need to request other ones be added if you don't see your favourite there.

You can specify your top level domain of choice, such as .com, .co.uk, .net etc, but most registars tend to give most of the available options on the results page anyway.

I think it's especially useful if you're going through keywords on something like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (see below).



A very nifty plugin for anyone that buys a lot of domains: Domain Lookup Firefox Extension.

Labels: affiliate tools, firefox

I was pleased to see that Commodore Gaming has a new affiliate program on Affiliate Future.

Commodore just evokes such great memories for me, that I really hope this program is a success. My very first computer (of my own) was an Amiga A500. There was some brilliant games for it, and cool stuff like Deluxe Paint. I loved that thing and actually still have it in the loft.

Later on, I believed Commodore's vision of the future - combining a computer with a media centre (an early stab at convergance) - and got the CDTV system from a shop called Tandy, another brand which is long forgotten in the UK. It didn't take me long to realise that the CDTV wasn't much cop at all but I was at least a little bit in awe of my multimedia encyclopedia.

I should really have learned my lesson, but I was a real fan, so I couldn't wait to get the CD32 when that came out in 1993. Marketed as the world's first 32 bit games console, it looked slick and had some mysterious auxiliary port, with the hint of virtual reality devices to come. Oh well, that turned out to be a flop as well and as with the CDTV, it was mostly just ports of standard Amiga games which were available.

Commodore went bankrupt and what was left was bought by a German computer company called Escom. Coincidentally, Escom also bought some branches of Rumbelows, which was closing down, and Rumbelows was the shop I got my CD32 from. Escom itself went bankrupt not long after. Yikes, was there some kind of curse at play!?

As is often the case, all that was left was the brand and the intellectual properties. I don't think Commodore Gaming of today has any actual relationship to the Commodore of years ago, but they own the Commodore brand and it's something I will always be fond of so I hope it does well. I was also just reading on their website that they are starting to make C64 games available on the Wii virtual console. Woohoo. Their affordable gaming PCs they make look pretty funky, and they're offering 5% commission. It's an oft-stated cliche that there's no room for sentiment in business but I hope affiliates who grew up with Commodore will get behind them and help make it a success.