eBags is one of the only pure-play etailers that survived the dot-com bloodbath in 2000. eBags teams up with SmarterChaos to Manage the Affiliate Channel.
SmarterChaos.com LLC – Castle Rock, CO — 08/09/16 — The Premier Digital Performance Marketing Agency is pleased to announce that eBags.com has chosen to team up with SmarterChaos to help manage the eBags Affiliate Program on the Impact Radius platform.
This is one of the biggest moments for me in our history as an Agency. I can’t even tell you how proud I am to have SmarterChaos represent eBags.com again and their Affiliate Program. This one is more personal than usual.
– Matt Frary, Chief of Chaos, SmarterChaos.com
Why is this one different? What makes eBags so different that it makes me stop and pause for a minute to reflect?
If you were doing marketing in the late 1990’s online or if you are doing it now, you know that eBags.com is an absolute leader in the eCommerce and online marketing space. They have endurance, unmatched retail skill, and basically invented the drop-shipping model in eCommerce. Their Founders are scrappy and determined to change the Internet forever, and they’ve done an amazing job. During the 90’s and 2000s, there was a dot-com bubble growing…..the likes of eToys, Pets.com and many other models like it were raising money at very fast rates only to peter out a year or two later. 16 dot-coms had Super Bowl commercials in January of 2000 and many are now defunct. Many had huge staff, huge employee benefits, huge budgets, huge launch parties, and flamed out in glorious fashion. Not eBags, they are alive and strong and still the largest retailer of bags and luggage online. Drive down the highway in the Tech Center in Denver and their building is just larger and bigger on the side of the road than it was in the old days.
eBags is a very special Client for me personally as the leader of SmarterChaos.com, because it punctuates what has been a very fun and exciting career in online marketing. This is really coming back full-circle to where I first started. In 1999 I graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in International Marketing and Russian language, and I was looking for anything in the advertising and marketing field. A small company named eBags.com came on campus to hire new graduates for their startup in Greenwood Village, CO and I was lucky enough to score an interview. I was told that there was this new method of marketing called Affiliate Marketing, and I’d be calling websites to try to get our banner placed for eBags. We would give a percentage of sale to those websites where a visitor clicked thru and made a purchase at eBags. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but the job included a laptop and a desk in the office with my own phone. That was so exciting. eBags was different than the rest of the companies in this space at that time. They cared about the customer, they cared about the product, and the Founders Peter, Jon, Andy, Eliot and Frank were passionate. eBag’s success is credited with their success in customer reviews, an outsourced call center, and the drop shipping model.
While at eBags I also had a chance to be on a new launch team for a charity portal called Kickstart.com. I was one of the first employees of that venture, and at a very young age was entrusted with building relationships with the largest merchants online including Amazon, eBay, Barnes and Noble, and many, many more. The charity portal had “start pages” alot like Facebook-style company pages where you could update the members on news and all of the shopping and searching you did via the start page went to the charity of your choice. I saw first hand how a company gets venture funded, grows very quickly, and scales almost faster than it could keep up. We buckled down for over a year and got to work. We had Lance Armstrong representing our company (pre-scandal days) and we were in the running with UPromise, Shop4Charity, SchoolPop and other affinity sites in the space. The difference is that we didn’t get our second round of funding as the market crashed around us. We wound that company down in 2000 and I moved onto other dot-coms like CarPoint.com, MSN, Mercedes, and Integer 2.0 with a variety of experiences and firsts in the space after that. I’ll never forget being the second to last person at that company as we closed the doors and left the eBags offices to head out to do other things. I left with a sense of pride knowing we achieved great things, and that eBags would live on and continue to drive to greatness. If you are an eBagger once, you are always an eBagger.
What is next in this Story?
For years (16+) I have met with Peter Cobb, Jon Nordmark, and Chris Seahorn to keep them updated where I’m at and what I’m doing. The Founders just recently bought the company back from the Venture Capital firm that was a major investor, and they have brought in an incredible CEO in Mike Edwards. I’ve always kept an eye on eBags as I grew a leading affiliate and CPA Network, a digital performance agency, a blogger network, and an influencer platform. There needed to be a good moment where I could bring value to eBags and to help in some way. The marketing team at eBags is already great and noted in retail journals, national publications, and is highly respected. SmarterChaos adds value by leveraging the deep relationships that we have formed within the affiliate industry, as well as the best practices in using the Impact Radius software to manage and grow performance marketing campaigns. Our team in conjunction with the eBags team is an exciting force in this space to grow an already huge affiliate presence for eBags.
How can you join in and make money?
It’s simple. Join one of the longest-running affiliate programs on the Internet today. Work with the best of the best in online retail, and help drive sales via your site to eBags. Work with our team at SmarterChaos and eBags to use best practices and know-how in marketing online. We take our relationships with Affiliates VERY seriously and do everything that we can to help you become successful. eBags is available on the best software platform online for partnering with large brands, Impact Radius. We look forward to growing with you, helping you with your relationship with eBags, and to help eBags build incremental sales via the Affiliate Channel.
I personally invite you to join us on this journey!
Matt Frary
Chief of Chaos, SmarterChaos.com
eBags Affiliate Program Details on Impact Radius:
Pay Rate: 3% of Net Sales Amount
Allowed: Bloggers, Display, Email, Feed, Networks, Re-targeting, Loyalty, Promo Codes
Accepted Countries: US/International
Conversion Tracked Upon: Credit Card Submission/Sale
Payment Scheduling: 15 days after the end of the month
Action Locking: 2 months after the end of the month
Click Referral Period: 14 Days
Recurring Actions: Payout applies to all recurrences of return customers
Sample Landing Page: http://www.ebags.com
Affiliate Program Sign Up: https://member.impactradius.com/agency-campaign-info/SmarterChaoscom.brand?c=3588
The post eBags Teams Up With SmarterChaos to Help Manage Affiliate Program appeared first on SmarterChaos.