Operation Super Affiliate

Google Beats Q3 Wall Street Estimations
The overall economy is lousy; just how lousy depends on who you ask. But it’s not lousy for Google, according to Jonathan Volk. Writing on his blog, Jonathan says, “So against all odds, Google’s quarter three exceeded that of Wall Street’s estimations. VERY impressive considering all the things that happened this last quarter.” It’s rather surprising considering that Google has banned advertisers who were “spending 7 figures a year getting banned because they were pushing rebill / free trial products”.

FTC Ruling on Reviews and Testimonials
There’s a post on the Affiliate Classroom blog that you really don’t want to miss. The writer has been carefully following the developments of the FTC’s new ruling on endorsements (review sites) and testimonials. A quote from the FTC website says, “The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.” Yep, that likely means if you are promoting a product as an affiliate marketer, you’ll need to disclose that information to your readers.

Local Lead Generation to the Next Level
On the CDF Networks blog, Chad continues to discuss lead generation. He says, “I’ve been talking about local lead generation for a while now and the topic always generates a lot of interest. One of the best decisions I ever made for my company was moving away from CPA network based offers and creating my own direct offers with businesses. I was doing pretty well on various networks, but local lead generation took it to the next level.” Check out this interesting post.

NEWS: Bing Strikes Twitter Deal
Bas van den Beld, writing on the Search Cowboy’s blog, reports that a deal has been made between Bing and Twitter. Beld says, “We knew already that both Bing and Google were in talks with Twitter about a deal which would allow them to index the Twitter database. At the Web 2.0 Summit today in San Francisco Bing announced it has struck that deal with Twitter. Bing now has access to the entire public Twitter feed and has a beta.”

Social Media Affiliate Marketing Guide 101 — With Amazon
A lot of buzz was generated by a story in July reporting that Amazon had (supposedly) refused to pay an affiliate his commission on affiliate links posted on Twitter. There was speculation that using URL shorteners with Amazon could be a problem as well.

Joshua, writing on the Search Engine Journal, says that Dave Cotter, who is head of Amazon’s affiliate program, has clarified Amazon’s position. Dave says, “We pay referral fees for qualifying sales generated from social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook.” Find the details on the guide published on the Search Engine Journal website.