Presto Bloggo

It will be interesting to see what becomes of Matt Mullenweg’s WordCamp in San Francisco. For the last week I’ve been trying to find out more specific details so I could possibly fly in from Seattle but specifics have been hard to come by.

Matt e-mailed me back this morning and here’s the information I have:

For those who don’t know, WordCamp is a one day WordPress conference devoted to figuring out the next generation of publishing on the web.

• WordCamp hours: 9 AM to 6 PM (with a party afterwards)
• Date: Aug 5, 2006
• Location: Swedish American Hall in San Francisco
• BarCamp style

So, who knows!? It could be fun, will probably be somewhat chaotic. I’m still thinking of going since PrestoGifto is releasing our new WordPress plugin around the same time.

If you come from a print or software background, you’re probably used to the idea of “finishing” something before putting it out there for the world to see.

Online e-commerce is different.

If you think of your domain as an investment in the Google stock market, then you know to get it out there immediately, as soon as you can. Savvy webmasters let the internet be their sandboxes to play and grow creative ideas and content. Google loves change, so a work-in-progress is seen as a good thing.

And, like SEO, understanding your customers also takes a sandbox. If you want to take advantage of this coming holiday season (and believe me, you should), you need to know what types of products your customers are finding appealing, where on your site the shops convert the best and what your voice, look and feel should be. You learn this through trial and error.
So…get a shop on your site…now. You can fix it later.
After you paste the code on your site, start watching your traffic stats. You can install free php stats scripts on your server (I use phpmyvisites) that will tell you who is coming to visit, how they were referred to your site and what pages they looked at. Just by looking at your PrestoGifto “Manage shops” control panel, you can tell how many clicks your products are getting and how many page views. Then, adjust your products and your shop locations. Put 2, 3, 5 or 10 shops in different places and see what your conversion numbers are. You can always deactivate the shop if it’s not working for you and you don’t want it to be seen anymore.

Take some time and talk to your customers. Ask them what they think of your site and the products you are showcasing. Incorporate their feedback into your changes.

Test out your assumptions, be nimble, address feedback and your shop will be in shape by October.

PrestoGifto aside, being an affiliate myself, I know the small fish in a big pond feeling. What goes along with being a small fish is the sense that we’re not being heard and that there are bigger and more important fish to listen to. So I was surprised to keep hearing at the Affiliate Summit that, hey, merchants want to hear from *all* the fish.

For instance, at the Affiliate Summit, I was having lunch with Jen from J. Goode Designs. Jen is an extremely prolific merchant that has thousands of popular products aimed at a young audience. (Just to give you an idea of breadth, she owns Lil Goodies, Goode Girls, Lil Babies, Lil Animals, and, good grief, they go on and on…) I was telling her how a customer of PrestoGifto was complaining that he couldn’t find items with a rather obscure theme and she looked at me and said, “Jessie, if there is EVER a request like that, just tell me!”

The problem to solve is how to open the dialog and get a mutually benefitial line of communication open between the affiliate and the merchant. If I’m a CJ affiliate, who do I speak with? How do I communicate with the merchants at CafePress?

One option is to go directly to the merchant. If they are part of a large network, like CJ, I have had really good luck just e-mailing the affiliate manager (that contact info is often on the merchant website or on the newsletters they send). Even though the CafePress merchants are usually eager to hear feedback, often, at CafePress, there is no way to get a merchant’s contact information on their sites (although PrestoGifto is hoping that will change). In the case of CafePress, send us an e-mail or put a comment into this blog and we’ll do our best to help open those lines of communication.

We were at the recent Affiliate Summit in Orlando, and had a great time putting faces with names and getting to know a bunch of people we hadn’t met yet. One theme that emerged in many of my converstions was that in any network, there were a lot of affiliates that were not very technical. These folks are often frustrated, because current tools aren’t really for them, so they can’t create the user experience that they’d like to. Solutions are typically manual, like having a consultant configure a component and email it to them. But these affiliates don’t like paying extra for that type of help, and advertisers can’t afford to provide it free of charge.

This is pretty encouraging. We think a lot about how to help affiliates succeed and give them great control over the look and feel of their store, without making them tinker with HTML or scripts. Great to know that other folks think that’s pretty important, too.

Lucas (aka “Benny the Breakdown Truck”) got a fabulous new Rotem Gear original from his very own DiggerPerson shop and loves it!

An affiliate (or “associate”) program is a way for you to sell another company’s products in exchange for a commission. You promote the product on your web site and receive a commission if a user makes a purchase. The company, in this case CafePress is responsible for all of the deliverables, the customer service, and the payment processing.

Commissions vary from company to company. For instance, Amazon pays around 4% and CafePress pays 20%. To join an affiliate company, you give the merchant a bit of information about you and your website and they give you a referral ID. Some programs, like Amazon and CafePress make it relatively simple to create links that have your ID attached. Others require more sophisticated link-building measures.

Since almost anyone can put a banner ad on their site these days, and the public has become somewhat jaded, it’s important to add value to the products you choose to promote. Successful affiliates integrate their products into their websites or blogs, add content and promote the products in newsletters and e-mail.