Personal Finance and Investment

PepperJamNetwork

The buzz is all about Pepperjam - and they’re very specific about what they are:

“Next generation affiliate marketing”, “one of the true pioneers of affiliate marketing…” “the culmination of eight years of development and includes the input and consultation of hundreds of affiliates and merchants.”

Or the same old same old, repackaged slightly? Time, as it always does in this game, will tell.

What their consultation has apparently told them is that the affiliate broker market suffers from :-

(1) Poor, unreliable communication tools - they’re not wrong there, considering the clunky system that Commission Junction unveiled as an ‘API’ and the speed that particular site loads at, a nightmare if not accessed during the US night. Azoogle, on the other hand, is a more difficult act to follow.

(2) A lack of affiliate transparency - hopefully this will amount to more than efficient javascript to mask the redirect - though indeed, a certain lack of transparency may not be a bad thing, the average web user is more sophisticated than ever before, so there’s no harm in being up front with these.

One distinct problem - Pepperjamnetwork does seem to labor under the impression that a VAT number is required for self-employed people in the EU in the same way as a Tax ID is in the United States. Not so, and this is going to cause problems for, say, 80% of their potential EU affiliate signups…

Let us know about your Pepperjam experiences - particularly with their XML feeds, assuming this is the next generation of affiliate marketing….