It’s been a busy couple months, and I am excited to announce some big changes that are taking place with siteMighty. We’ve been working rolling out several new features that are now included in siteMighty. You’ll continue to see new features over the next two weeks as we prepare for … wait for it … the version 1.0 full release of siteMighty.

That’s right, we’re coming out of beta! We are thrilled about getting siteMighty to a released version with NCS & Icommissions integrated affiliate offers in the credit card vertical.

You’ll already see in your siteMighty accounts:

• Upgraded FAQ’s and a Knowledge Base for easier online support.
• Integrated live chat support and a new support phone number for paid users - (504) 717-4717
• New dedicated support team lead by Dilyara who many of you have already heard from answering your support tickets.
• Embedded training videos throughout siteMighty
• Premium templates for paid users (currently 2, with 7 more coming next week)
• New offers sorting in brands & issuers
• Default offer sorting by the affiliate networks so the best performing offers are at the top of your pages

Coming with our v1.0 release Sept 3rd:

• New siteMighty homepage showing newest siteMighty sites and Top 10 siteMighty sites - this will drive traffic to the our newest users and our top users
• New premium templates and new homepage design option for your siteMighty site
• Additional SEO features
• What do you want to see?
  

We want to know what else you want to see in siteMighty for our v1.0 release? We have allocated next week’s development to user requested features!

Please complete this survey here to tell us how you are using siteMighty, and what you want to see in siteMighty so you can continue to grow your own business.

Thanks to all of our users! We look forward to hearing from you.

Mashable posted a list of 50 Web design tools yesterday, and we’re thrilled that siteMighty landed near the top (#8). They said:

“[T]here are now scores of tools that turn ordinary folks into designers.”

We couldn’t agree more. Like we always say, we built siteMighty to enable anyone to build an affiliate marketing web site. And not just any site, but one that’s beautiful, powerful and that can be built in about 5 minutes.

We pushed at a major update to siteMighty today. Today’s update included several changes, but the primary improvements are to our siteMighty Analyze services.

Based on feedback we’re getting from users, we’ve substantially improved our built-in analytics. There’s more to come, but here’s where we are as of today.

• Improved conversion tracking - our new report aggregates conversion data over various time periods. We’ve added filtering mechanisms to remove faulty data that represented the search engine spiders and automated robots visiting your site.
• Removed server bandwidth graph - we previously had a report showing the server bandwidth to your site was using. This data was more confusing than valuable, and because we are not regulating accounts based on server usage we eliminated it.
• Added hits versus conversions graph - hits versus conversions is an important metric to tracking usage on your site. Hits to your site represent a daily count of total page views on your site. Conversions represent the number of people who clicked the apply button on a credit card offer.
• Added link to affiliate network stats - we want to be very clear with your user that your official stats that you are paid based on a maintained by your affiliate network. The stats and siteMighty are to assist you in marketing your site, but don’t have a bearing on how you earn. It is important to track your earnings through your affiliate network’s reports.

We’re going to continue to improve our analytics capabilities over the next weeks and months. This is one of the most difficult things for us to develop, because it takes real traffic data to test analytics are performing. We are watching the performance closely, but we ask you to please in mind that these capabilities are still in beta, and we will continue to work on them until we are providing you with the best data possible.

What is conversion tracking?

One of the questions we’ve been getting over the course of the last few weeks, is what is a conversion? A conversion on a siteMighty site is counted when a visitor to your site clicks the apply button on a credit card offer and visits the “conversion page”. The conversion page is the last page on siteMighty the visitor sees before being redirected to the credit card application, which is hosted securely by the credit card issuer.

Think of a breakdown of visitors to your site as a funnel, commonly called a conversion funnel. At the top of the funnel are all visitors to your site, the next level our visitors who siteMighty counts as a conversion, meaning they click the apply button for a credit card. The next level are visitors to actually make it to the application page for credit card company (if they click the back button or close the browser they don’t end up getting there). Once they get to the credit card application page, the next level happens if they fill out the form and actually apply for the credit card. The final level of the funnel is an approval. If a visitor gets approved for the credit card they apply for, you get paid.

We hope this helps you to succeed with your siteMighty site. If you have a questions please contact us. We’ll be continuing to roll out new features. Thanks for being a user.

During the launch of siteMighty, we have found ourselves talking about the affiliate marketing industry as much as we are talking about what siteMighty does. Affiliate marketing has a stigma to it in need of debunking. So without further ado, it’s time to change the perception of affiliate marketing:

• MYTH #1 - Affiliate marketing is a zero-sum game. Just like every other web phenomenon there is a tremendous long-tail of opportunity with affiliate marketing. By definition there are only 10 sites on the first page of Google when you search for “credit cards”. And most of them are the behemoths of affiliate marketing. But there are people searching for credit cards using so many other search terms, and there are niche sites that appear for these niche terms. Affiliate marketing is fundamentally about monetizing traffic, and new ways of generating traffic are being created every day. Search marketing has been the big thing to this point, but many successful affiliate marketers are leveraging social media, blogging, online video, and more. There are literally tens of thousands of credit card affiliate sites out there. The sites on the top tier have a lot of traffic and make a lot of money, but there is definitely plenty of opportunity out there. New affiliate marketing sites are expanding the pie, not slicing it up.

• MYTH #2 - Affiliate marketing is spam. This is one of the biggest stigmas of affiliate marketing. People think that it is just someone trying to insert themselves into the clickstream of someone who is looking for something. This may be true in some cases, and there are people who play the PPC arbitrage game, but in my experience, the most successful affiliate marketers add value. SiteMighty-powered credit card sites add value by aggregating credit card offers, providing a platform for editor’s reviews and user reviews, show data about popular cards. We encourage people to blog and write articles as this is the best way to help your users make informed decisions. Here’s a great example of someone who is not using a siteMighty site, but has a credit card blog with great content and really helping inform people. This is our vision of how people will use siteMighty.

• MYTH #3 - Affiliate marketing is the second class citizen of advertising. Advertisers love affiliate marketing because it is so efficient. It’s a very simple equation for advertisers, you pay for performance. An advertiser only pays if the action they are hoping for transpires. It is a pure and efficient proposition for advertisers. That’s why Google is starting to experiment with it through their pay per action Adwords. So, for publishers looking to monetize their sites, there are a lot of advertisers willing to advertise on their site, but they won’t pay CPC or CPM, they will only pay when the publisher drives traffic and a desired action takes place. It’s win-win for both sides when it works.

We’re building siteMighty as a platform to launch great affiliate marketing sites based on the success that we’ve had as affiliate marketers. Basically in the eco-system of commerce on the internet affiliate marketing sites are nice small businesses run by individuals. Affiliate marketing provides a revenue model for small and medium size sites where people can make a living doing something they are interested in. That in essence is what siteMighty is. It’s a publishing platform with a built in revenue model.

This is part one in a two part series examining the requirements of disclosure and compliance management on the world of affiliate marketing.

I’ve been following the talk in the blogosphere lately regarding the recent FTC ruling that people engaging in “word of mouth marketing” practices must disclose the the relationships that they are compensated to promote.

One of the first reactions to this announcement was the controversial PayPerPost who announced that they now officially require disclosure by bloggers who write posts promoting their clients that they are being compensated to do so. This definitely moves PayPerPost closer to legitimacy in the eyes of many of their critics.

But how does the FTC’s announcement about the affiliate marketing world.

Scott Karp writes that if something is not crystal clear its an ad, then it is deceptive marketing. This cuts to the point of the FTC’s announcement. The difference between an advertisement and word of mouth marketing or paid promotion is in essence whether the consumer knows that they are being marketed to. I think the gist of Scott’s argument, and the FTC announcement is that if you are marketing something you need to let the consumer know you are marketing to them, and without that disclosure it is deceptive.

So, clearly, this does have ramifications in the world of affiliate marketing. The business model for affiliate marketers is to drive traffic to advertisers and to be paid for that traffic and often that consideration is based on the consumer making an purchase. But how does affiliate marketing differ from other forms of advertising?

• When watching television at night, you don’t see a disclaimer prior to each commercial break, stating “what is about to appear on your television is intended to make you buy stuff.” The reason you don’t see that disclaimer is that consumers are savvy enough to realize they are being marketed to in that circumstance.
• When a consumer visits an affiliate marketing website, do they know that there is a financial relationship between the website and the products or services that are promoted or reviewed on that website? If you think the consumer does not, then a disclaimer is necessary.

So, assuming you agree that some sort of disclosure is necessary, what kind of disclosure should be provided? Should we include:

• Disclosure in the Terms of Service of the website
• Disclosure on every page of the website in the footer
• Disclosure next to every link that is an affiliate marketing link

The answer to this remains to be seen. Ultimately it depends on the sophistication level of consumers to understand that they are being marketed to. There are some great interpretations of the new ruling as it applies to affiliate marketing here, here, and here.

I believe that the disclosure requirement (however it eventually is applied) is a good thing for affiliate marketing. It enables affiliate marketers to engage their website visitors on the level, and it encourages affiliate marketers to add value to the conversation, which is what we advocate through siteMighty. The affiliate marketing business model works best when you add value to your users by enabling them to make the best purchase decisions. This is done in many ways, through presenting products in categories, editors reviews, user reviews, and aggregating information that may otherwise be difficult to collect on the web.

I believe most successful affiliate marketers are already doing this and the FTC disclosure requirement will be a non-issue for them as they are succeeding by providing value to their users, not deceiving them.

Part two of this series examining threats to affiliate marketing and affiliate compliance will be presented next week.