Before adding more signup boxes or designing any special campaigns I had contacted their support asking for clarification on their terms not allowing affiliate marketing. If you read their Terms of Service, it includes Affiliate Marketing in a long list of topics that are quite distasteful as if Affiliate Marketing were some kind of scam even though many respected companies and independent artists use it.
Since I didn't get a reply in 24 hours from the first message, I sent a longer more detailed question last night explaining the site topics for my first lists English Language learning, Home and Online Business Experience, and Visual Art and that my posts usually will contain links to related products (like books at Amazon or affiliate links to the page that contains artwork).
I got the following reply this morning:
"I hope this message finds you well. In regards to your query, to clarify things for you, you are not permitted to include affiliate links in the newsletter content. Let us know if you have any further questions."
I wasn't actually planning on using "Newsletter Content" for including affiliate links, but instead using newsletters in bringing visitors back to the blogs (which of course DO contain links) therefore I replied again since this short reply didn't really clarify one point.
What about RSS to Mail?
I'm pretty sure I can change the RSS feed to summary or short (still need to check the name of the setting for Blogger), but what if I forget to do so or what if subscribers request full posts in their weekly email?
So I asked the following:
"ok, I can accept that, but what about the RSS to mail? Won't that pass on the links already in posts? Is there a way to filter that?
I'd like to be able to send my subscribers a weekly email with RSS updates. I have no problem with not including affiliate links in regular newsletter campaigns. I suppose I could change the feed to just show summaries instead of full posts, but I think most subscribers would prefer getting posts. What do you think?""
Perhaps that isn't the best wording, but I am a little busy on Thursday mornings. :-)
I'll update this post as soon as I get a reply.
Of course, if you have the money to pay from the start for a service that allows affiliate marketing links in newsletter content, check out Aweber. I've only seen good reviews of the service and it is used by many famous bloggers. They currently have a promotion for $1 for the first month. I just want to try this first since I'm new to sending newsletters and have doubts about its value to my small websites. Yes, if my list grows to 2000 subscribers I'd need to start paying Mailchimp (or switch to Aweber), but I'm still considering this an experiment.
Same day in the late afternoon ( sent the reply in the morning) I got the following reply:
We appreciate you reaching out to us and providing the information!
Its ok to include some affiliate links in the campaigns. Every campaign sent through us must reflect the domain that is collecting the data.
Feel free to email us back if you have specific questions or comments beyond this that we can assist you with.
I'm not sure what is meant by "must reflect the domain that is collecting the data". Do you? Perhaps I'm just stupid, but I wrote again with more information about my ideas asking if they count as reflecting the domain. I hope I'm not annoying them with my questions, but I really want this to be crystal clear and if I do later get suspended I want to have the email replies to forward to them as proof that I asked first! The funny thing is that I asked specifically about the RSS to Mail option since if they are not allowed I'd have to make sure every feed is set to a short summary to avoid accidental affiliate links being sent out and here I see that some are ok if they reflect the domain.... so mmm I'll see what reply I get tomorrow :-)
Today, (the next day) I got TWO replies. The first one finally answers my question about RSS to Mail.
"Thanks for following up with us. Yes, if you have affiliate links in an RSS-driven campaign, the easiest way to remove those would be to remove them from the feed. Also, depending on the length of the posts, you can use the *|RSS:POSTS|* merge tag to bring in just some of the post and automatically add a "read more" link."
and the other one was supposedly a clarification of the previous comment of "some affiliate links allowed"
"You can include affiliate/banner ads in a campaign being sent as long as the overall branding is clearly done as the branding of the organization the recipients that campaign is sent to opted in to receive emails from.
Feel free to email us back if you have specific questions or comments beyond this that we can assist you with."
I assume that last comment of "beyond this" was their way of saying to stop ask for clarification of the issue. :-(
If you dear reader understand what they exactly mean by this please let me know. It seems about as vague as before. An affiliate link is obviously for a different website than my own since if it were my own product from start to finish I wouldn't need an affiliate link would I? But the problem is for visual artists like myself who don't print and ship the final product and use a third party for that stuff and we earn a royalty for sales of our work. While an affiliate link isn't necessary, it is very important in case someone clicks through and buys something made by someone else since some websites will show related products by other artists and if the visitor searches on the other website they will most likely get results by other artists. I can't think of any Print on Demand art site that exclusively searches results by the artist whose product was in the link that brought the visitor to the site.
So I must ask how to I have the overall branding clearly done as the site the campaign is sent from????
In any case, it is clear to me that being an affiliate is not a problem nor is having a website about a specific issue. The concern seems to be the actual newsletter content and if an occasional affiliate link slips through it probably won't cause me to lose the account.
At least not until I have enough subscribers to make it worth switching to Aweber which doesn't seem to have a problem with affiliates.
I assume that last comment of "beyond this" was their way of saying to stop ask for clarification of the issue. :-(
If you dear reader understand what they exactly mean by this please let me know. It seems about as vague as before. An affiliate link is obviously for a different website than my own since if it were my own product from start to finish I wouldn't need an affiliate link would I? But the problem is for visual artists like myself who don't print and ship the final product and use a third party for that stuff and we earn a royalty for sales of our work. While an affiliate link isn't necessary, it is very important in case someone clicks through and buys something made by someone else since some websites will show related products by other artists and if the visitor searches on the other website they will most likely get results by other artists. I can't think of any Print on Demand art site that exclusively searches results by the artist whose product was in the link that brought the visitor to the site.
So I must ask how to I have the overall branding clearly done as the site the campaign is sent from????
In any case, it is clear to me that being an affiliate is not a problem nor is having a website about a specific issue. The concern seems to be the actual newsletter content and if an occasional affiliate link slips through it probably won't cause me to lose the account.
At least not until I have enough subscribers to make it worth switching to Aweber which doesn't seem to have a problem with affiliates.
No comments:
Post a Comment