InternetNews: Is Web Services on the Horizon for Affiliate Marketing?

This review of the state of affiliate marketing contains a couple interesting bits. First, the boast by Vaughan Smith at eBay that its affiliate program is "driving a lot more economic activity through our program than Amazon," is humorous due to the careful language used. eBay affiliates are shaving a few cents on the dollar through search engine ads, which requires them to spend dozens of thousands of dollars to make significant volume at something like seven cents a bid - which makes for lots of "economic activity," but little in earnings.

The second, less trivial point worth noting is that CommissionJunction (CJ) is awakening to the potential of web services, which goes against its early mantra that affiliate marketing stresses pay-for-performance. Instead of attracting people who use search engine to shave pennies on transactions and desperate publishers who can't get CPC deals, the web services angle strives to create real and intelligent relationships among sellers and affiliates.

What Amazon.com does with web services enables a closeknit integration with its associates, which, when those services work properly (it's not always the case), takes affiliate marketing to its true potential as a sales channel. Maybe there's hope at the end of the tunnel for CJ. To its credit, the CJ click and sales reporting works almost in real time, while Amazon often has had delayed reports, and to this day still has 24 hours of lag between traffic and sales and the availability of results.