bobangus.com » Commission Junction

Angus now grazing in Mountain View, CA

Bob Angus — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:11:40 +0000

It has been too long since I have posted. I have an excuse though. My family and I have moved from the beaches of So Cal up to the green hills of Silicon Valley. Yes, I bid a fond farewell to my friends at Commission Junction (you guys rock!). I have joined a great team, including some old friends, to do product marketing in the SSL division at VeriSign.

Well, my excuse for not blogging here is not really that good. We moved to Mountain View… um… 5 months ago. I also broke my promise that I would start making some serious cash from affiliate marketing, since I was no longer under the rules of Valueclick. Nada.

What can I say? I have been working my tail off at VeriSign. I am responsible for marketing 3 of our SSL brands and the partner channel. Plus, there is sooooo much for me and my family to do here in No Cal. We even got to see my old team, the Modesto Nuts, play the San Jose Giants.

Blogging and making money online have had to take a back seat. Actually, that is not exactly true either. I just launched a new blog at VeriSignâ€¦ Bob Angus: The Ecommerce Evangelist Blog. It is not your standard corporate sales pitch thinly veiled as a blog. The blog focuses 100% on the world of e-commerce news, trends, and best practices. Please check it out, subscribe to the feed, and join the discussion.

Since you are here, please subscribe to BobAngus.com and/or follow me on Twitter.

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Post tags: angus, Commission Junction, Twitter, VeriSign

FREE – Jeremy Palmerâ€™s High Performance Affiliate Marketing ebook

Bob Angus — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:31:29 +0000

When I started at Commission Junction, I wanted to learn how affiliates really made money. I did not want high-level affiliate marketing strategies or reminders of how much a Super Affiliate makes or 10 step formulas to making money online. I wanted to know the everyday tools and technical details on how to build keyword lists, place effective search engine ads, and convert the sale.

What did I read on my first day at CJ? (...)
Read the rest of FREE – Jeremy Palmerâ€™s High Performance Affiliate Marketing ebook

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate marketing, Commission Junction

Win a copy of Build A Niche Store at AffiliateConfession.com

Bob Angus — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:48:43 +0000

Alan at Affiliate Confession has just launched a new contest that puts you in the running to win a copy of Build A Niche Store (aka BANS). If you are interesting making money online with the eBay affiliate program, I highly recommend throwing your hat in the ring.

Build A Niche Store is incredibly easy to use and is perfect for anyone who wants dynamically show relevant eBay auctions on their site. You make money when your visitors click through and either create a new eBay account or make a winning bid. Note: You will need to sign up for a publisher account at Commission Junction to start generating affiliate revenues. For an excellent review, see what Alan has done using BANS.

Of course, I am not eligible to win or use Build A Niche Store to make money. That would be a direct violation of Valueclick policy (see my disclosure post for more info).

Good luck! And don’t forget to subscribe to the Affiliate Confession RSS feed while you are there. Alan is a hard working affiliate and shares incredibly valuable insights into the daily life of making money online.

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Post tags: affiliate marketing, Commission Junction, eBay

Tell CJ what you want and how to do it

Bob Angus — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:04:18 +0000

Commission Junction is recruiting both publishers and advertisers who are power users of their affiliate marketing platform. It is called the CJ Product User Group. If you qualify (yes, there is an application process), you get to have direct input to the CJ product management team. Some of the things that you would get to do are get sneak peaks into potential new features, hands on usability testing, and participate in product specific surveys.

How do you benefit? Your feedback helps define the technology you use every day to make money online. Think of it. How often do you get a true voice in building a better product based on your preferences and affiliate marketing experience? Or better yet, you can impact what Commission Junction works on next or in the future. Just let CJ know. Not many technology companies offer that type of influence.

How can you qualify to become a member of the CJ Product User Group?

You must be a power user and know the ins and outs of the Commission Junction affiliate platform, services and tools. Preferably, you are logging in, using the system, and making money every day.
You have to be open to giving feedback and actively participate. You are going to be contacted directly by Product Managers (including me) and you are required to participate in regularly scheduled surveys.
You must sign a non-disclosure agreement and agree to some standard terms and conditions.

Once you submit your application, CJ reviews your information and then contacts you if you are selected to become a member.

This level of interaction is certainly unprecedented. So, sign up and help Commission Junction take affiliate marketing to the next level.

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Post tags: affiliate marketing, Commission Junction

CJU 2007 one week away

Bob Angus — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:13:18 +0000

Commission Junction’s annual mega event, CJU 2007, is kicking off in Santa Barbara in less than a week. This year should be another blowout – the best networking, informative sessions, and top-shelf parties. I get to speak with publishers and advertisers all year round, but at CJU the face-to-face discussions are always uniquely insightful and actionable (once I am back sitting at my desk).

This year I am planning to skip the late, late night shenanigans. I am running the Web Services Lab and my appointments start at 8am each day. Thank goodness I requested couches for the lab area. The 30 Web Services Lab appointments slots filled up within 10 hours of opening registration. That’s a great indicator that publishers are really building out their affiliate campaigns using Commission Junction’s APIs.

I am going to post session info and insider CJ scoop once the event kicks off on Sunday. Check back often.

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Post tags: affiliate marketing, Commission Junction

Web Services Review – eBay’s New Shopping APIs

Bob Angus — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:32:56 +0000

eBay launched their developer program many, many years ago with APIs that allow developers to create applications for the two key parties of their auction platform â€“ buyers and sellers. Frankly, most of the emphasis has been on the seller side because sellers were the businesses and buzz around â€œhow to make money on eBay.â€ Until recently, the buyer side applications were primarily in the shadow of seller applications â€“ with the exception of sniping tools (which violates the developer terms and conditions).

At eBay Devcon 2007, there was a separate affiliate and buyer tools track. Several of the sessions focused on eBayâ€™s newly released Shopping APIs. These are different from the more extensive Trading APIs that provided access to the entire auction lifecycle. The new Shopping APIs focus only on querying and presenting data relevant to potential buyers â€“ find an auction item they want, provide information about that auction, and provide information about the seller.

The benefits of these web services are that they are lightweight, have faster response times (up to 4x faster than the Trading APIs), and allow for token-less authentication (no private data is being shared). The Shopping APIs support SOAP, JSON, Name Value pairs, and HTTP/GET via Javascript and ActionScript toolkits.

The idea is to create and propagate applications that promote specific eBay auctions where the buyers are â€“ namely browsing websites. The best part is that developers and/or users of these applications can make money when someone uses these applications. As a developer, you simply apply tracking code through eBayâ€™s affiliate program, which is a part of the Commission Junction network.

Here is a really cool, visually compelling example widget. In the first example, the widget displays a current auction based on my desired keywords â€“ Don Drysdale.

In a second example, a skyscraper widget displays several auctions based on Sandy Koufax as my keywords. Notice that they present a BidNow button which really entices a potential buyer to check out the auction.

You can also configure the widget to display auctions based on a specific seller ID or an individual auction ID â€“ HINT HINT â€“ your auctions. Configure your own version of the widget and get the code by visiting the Javascript example site.

Here is a link to the eBay Devcon presentation on their Shopping APIs and all of the presentations from this yearâ€™s developer conference. For more information, on the Shopping APIs, check out the eBay Shopping Web Services developer site.

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Post tags: affiliate marketing, API, Commission Junction, eBay, reviews, web 2.0, web services

Web Services Reviews – Week 1 Introduction

Bob Angus — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:36:18 +0000

I am currently working on Commission Junctionâ€™s Web Services. CJ has delivered APIs and resources for both publishers and advertisers to tap directly into the affiliate platform and wealth of data. Working on the various web services projects has been amazing as it puts me in contact of the true innovators in internet marketing and gives me experience with leading edge technology for the affiliate marketing space. Please check out the Commission Junction Web Services developer site for more information.

Another fantastic part of working with web services is that I get to check out and benchmark the technologies, applications, developer resources, and business policies that other internet platforms and marketers have delivered. For the next several weeks, I am going to be reviewing some of the web services leaders and innovators. I will also show off some of the cool applications that are being designed using these APIs.

I am not going to start off with the Commission Junction APIs. That would cut too close to home right now. Besides, there are plenty of other blogs currently covering our web services. So to kick the series off, I will discuss the eBay Developer Program in my upcoming posts. I went to eBay Devcon 2007 about a month ago and learned a ton about the how, what and why eBay uses web services to propel their ecommerce platform. Here we go!

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Post tags: affiliate marketing, API, Commission Junction, eBay, web services