LinkShare Blog

Could we finally be on the road to economic recovery?  The National Retail Federation has just issued a forecast predicting that families will spend about 10 percent more on back-to-school items this year than they did in 2009.  More importantly for online retailers, the NRF survey found that 31 percent of those polled said they expect to shop online for back-to-school in 2010.  That’s up from 22 percent last year.

Despite these positive signs, it’s clear that shoppers are still highly value-conscious.  The NRF found that more than 71 percent of consumers plan to shop at discount stores, and 44 percent plan to buy store labels or genetic brands this year, up from 42 percent in 2009.

Does this commitment to thrift translate from the offline world to online shopping habits?  According to a study recently commissioned by Offers.com, online consumers are lagging behind those who shop offline.  In its survey, conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, Offers.com found that despite the wider variety of money-saving offers, and the greater number of discounts available online, more than half (59 percent) of frequent shoppers are not regularly seeking out online coupons or deals.  In addition, the survey found that while offline coupon redemption has increased by more than 25 percent since 2008, nearly 75 percent of all consumers don’t look for online coupons or deals.

For online retailers, the message is clear – consumers are frugal, but they haven’t yet gotten the message that value can be found online just as much, if not more, than it does in the “brick and mortar” world.  With just one in seven online shoppers “always” seeking out online coupons, this consumer research proves that even the savviest online shoppers are leaving money on the table.

In order to entice consumers into taking advantage of online savings, Steve Schaffer, founder and CEO of Offers.com (and recent recipient of the LinkShare Golden Link Award for Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocate) recommends the following:

1. Aggregate the best online coupons, coupon codes, deals and offers into one site – saving consumers time searching various sites for available offers or having to keep track of offers from multiple stores.
2. Ensure the site easy to search, making it easy for consumers to find the best offer for their needs.
3. Make the site content–rich, with side-by-side comparisons, reviews and savings tips from shopping and money-saving experts.

If you have any additional advice on how to increase the popularity of online discounts, please feel free to add your thoughts below.

- Scott Allan, Senior Director of Marketing

Calling All Publishers!

For the past several years, Affiliate Benchmarks and NETexponent have delivered annual affiliate marketing benchmarks that are crucial to the development of any affiliate marketing program. By taking the survey you can help meet our goal of illuminating the affiliate marketing industry through the sharing of learning and benchmarks.

Your participation will also help ensure that the LinkShare Network is represented in this important industry survey.

PLEASE NOTE: The survey will close on July 16th at 5pm EST.

Take the survey today: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/linkshare

Thanks!
Scott Allan
Senior Director of Marketing

We’re excited to announce version 2.0 of our Mac Widget!   Publishers can now use the widget to do three things -

1. Search for product links
2. Create deep links
3. NEW! – pull the latests coupons and offers

When pulling coupons and deals you have the option to search by Advertiser, Advertiser Category, Promotion Type, and Network.   Please note you’ll have to be approved to access the Coupon Web Service to pull the latest coupons, you can apply here.  Here’s a screenshot of the new Coupons and Deals page -

Here’s a screenshot of the product search.  You can search across all of your Advertisers, or within a single Advertiser.

All you have to do is install the widget and input your token.

We’ve also updated the widget to ONLY display Advertisers whose programs you are approved into.   We hope this decreases clutter and improves usability!  We’ll be rolling out this enhancement to more of our Bento Box applications.

You can download the widget here.

Ian Rosenwach, Product Manager

Would you like to know how your website is like a restaurant? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay has a popular show on the BBC (and on American channels) called “Kitchen Nightmares.” I’m a big fan of the show. It’s one of the few shows that merits space on my DVR (I prefer the BBC version). Others have pointed out that Chef Ramsay offers great management lessons woven into the fabric of the shows. An SEO consultant mentioned that Chef Ramsay’s formula could be applied to website user experiences as well. That started me thinking. . .

For example, in one show he took on a restaurant that was 50 meters from seaside and didn’t serve the local, abundant fresh fish. Instead, they served opened (dead) mussels to customers—which is unforgivable. He had to convince the owner to visit the local fish market, build relationships with the vendors and create his menu around the local seafood  his guests were accustomed to. He took the owner/chef out on the street to give away free samples and meet locals where they were walking around. The table turns and cost per person were scrutinized and optimized to make the restaurant profitable.

I’ve boiled down the major concepts I’ve learned from Chef Ramsay’s show into these three axioms of good service. I’d love to hear what you think about it too:

1.  Create the perfect “menu”–offer fresh, high-quality dishes that the locals and visitors are looking for.

2.  Attract “guests” to enjoy it!–go out to the places where people are hanging out and let them sample your goods, see others liking your offerings,  and get comfortable with you.

3.  Mind the “numbers”–keep your eye on the daily visitors, time they’re spending at your site, how much they’re buying, how much it’s costing you, and how often they return.

You can follow these guidelines to make your website more successful, too.

Find out more about how to do this at our free webinar:

“SEO for Business Results—Wake Up From a Kitchen Nightmare”

Wednesday, July 14 at 12 noon EST

Borrowing a theme from Chef Gordon Ramsay’s TV show, Kitchen Nightmares, see how your website is a lot like a restaurant. In this free LinkShare webinar I’m hosting, you’ll take away quick pointers on how to turn your website into an attractive, profitable, and visitor-friendly place that guests want to return to frequently. You’ll also get the recipe for “SEO Secret Sauce for 2010”.

Plus, three LinkShare clients who attend the webinar will be selected to receive a complimentary SEO Assessment and a one-hour SEO consultation after the webinar.

Here’s the link to the webinar registration page.  Don’t forget to receive updates via LinkShare’s Facebook Page and Twitter Profile!

For more information on future webinars, please visit LinkShare University Online.

Hope to see you there!

If you want to see him in action, here’s a clip of Chef Ramsay,” The Screaming Chef”, with David Letterman:

Bon appétit!

–by Sally Anne Dishong,  SEO + Social Media Content Editor

With the Advertiser Search Web Service, you can retrieve a list of all your advertisers and their MIDs or simply a single advertiser’s MID in the blink of an eye — without logging into the Publisher Dashboard! This is especially useful if you utilize any of LinkShare’s Web Services in which MID is an important parameter.

• To get a list of all your advertisers and their MIDs, simply append your Web Services token to the token= parameter of this query:

http://feed.linksynergy.com/merchantsearch?token=[your Web Services token]

Your Web Services token can be found here.

• To retrieve the MID of a single advertiser, append the parameter merchantname= after your Web Services token. Here’s a sample query:

http://feed.linksynergy.com/merchantsearch?token=[your Web Services token]&merchantname=tigerdirect

Please note:  if the name of the advertiser you are searching for includes one or more words, include spaces between the words in your query.

The Advertiser Search API only returns advertisers whose programs you have been approved for. It is similar to the Consolidated Advertiser Report, available on the Publisher Dashboard, but since you don’t have to log into the dashboard to get a list of your advertisers or just a single advertiser, you can use it with other LinkShare Web Services.

For example, let’s say you want to see if one of your advertisers has links to mp3 players. Run an Advertiser Search query with the advertiser name to find the MID of the advertiser whose products you want to search. Then use the Merchandiser Query Tool to see if this advertiser has links for mp3 players.

For info on Merchandiser Query Tool, please see this article.