Comments on: Jeremiah Owyang Dictates Rules for Affiliates on Twitter

By: Shawn Collins

Shawn Collins — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:44:28 +0000

Thanks for lending your ear, Jeremiah.

As far as the prevalence of affiliate programs with retailers, see http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/majority-of… – I tallied the retailers in the Internet Retailer Hot 100 Retail Web Sites this year and 75% had affiliate programs.

By: Jeremiah Owyang

Jeremiah Owyang — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:38:36 +0000

Shawn thanks for taking the time to chat with me this afternoon. Learned a bit more how social and affiliate marketing lines are coming together, exciting opportunity.

I'm going to explore more at your request how we at Forrester can start to watch how this space evolves. Often, our demand for coverage is based upon what brands tell us they're using. A great deal of o them are focusing on social now, so it's likely affiliate marketing will see a lift as these streams cross.

Thanks for keeping me educated.

By: Jeremiah Owyang

Jeremiah Owyang — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:49:51 +0000

Shawn, I agree, everyone is selling something at some point.

By: Shawn Collins

Shawn Collins — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:40:05 +0000

I agree 100% – the currency may vary, but everybody is selling something.

By: Sam Harrelson

Sam Harrelson — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:31:46 +0000

All links are affiliate links. Some end up generating immediate monetary compensation for the referrer and some end up generating long term compensation via attention, gained reputation or other trust.

By: TriciaMeyer

TriciaMeyer — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:16:31 +0000

I don't tend to include the affiliate links in my tweets because it works better to send the people to my landing pages (in most cases), but I don't see any problem with the links being included. Affiliate marketing is so integrated into websites, blogs, Facebook, etc. that it only makes sense to integrate it into Twitter as well. And I agree with Missy–if you are doing nothing but throwing affiliate links out there without any value, no one is going to follow you anymore.

By: Missyward

Missyward — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:15:25 +0000

I'm on the same page as Shawn. Twitter isn’t about conveying complex theory. It’s simply a conversation enabler. There’s nothing wrong with including an affiliate link to a product or service in a tweet about something that you’re already talking about. But spewing random affiliate links is simply just another unneeded interruption that doesn’t provide any value and will likely cause a barrage of unfollows.

By: Sam Harrelson

Sam Harrelson — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:58:33 +0000

The Great Molander was right… affiliate marketing doesn't "scale."

By: BillMasson

BillMasson — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:05:11 +0000

What's the big deal about using affiliate links, if you use them to often then you won't have a lot of followers. I don't see any problem as long as you don't over do it.

Twitter has various limits after 2000 followers so perhaps they will start coming down on the spammers more often. it's all about choice.

By: Shawn Collins

Shawn Collins — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:45:33 +0000

I think you're wasting valuable space in your bio with that "disclosure".

Personally, I am not a proponent of a hashtag or other method to indicate an affiliate link.

Rather, I think affiliate links are fine if they serve a purpose, such as answering the question from somebody you follow about a product or service.

But simply broadcasting one after the other doesn't add anything to the food chain IMHO,

I don't get why anybody would follow those Tweets.