Not to get overly comfortable with this, but we've done it again.  For the fourth consecutive year, we've placed on the Inc. 5000 list (2 of the 4 were within the top 500).  This year, we've come in at #2,594.  Our placement reflects our continuous, strong growth, driven by our expanded advertiser and affiliate relationships, our savvy marketing investments, our industry-leading technology platform, and last but not least, our rock star employees who make it ...

We recently conducted a survey of our affiliates (aka merchandising or channel partners) to find out what drives their satisfaction, and how we rate against their criteria.  If you were one of the respondents, I want to thank you for participating.  Your inputs, both formal and informal, help us to ensure that we are offering the best affiliate program possible, and to identify ways we can serve our partners even better.  With that in mind, ...

I just read that Marc Andreesen spends $4K per month on his home internet connection!  He's either got out-of-this-world speed (turns out it's a commercial grade connection at 100Mbps), or he didn't shop around, or both.  I wonder how much money he would save if he bought his connection from BridgevineBusiness?

I write this as one of our top service providers is visiting our Florida office for a QBR and a celebration – to acknowledge the fact that we were their first affiliate to beat a very aggressive order activation target, which we did after several months of sequential gains.  What do I mean by “order activation”, you say?  Well, to answer that, let’s take a brief step backward.  On the spectrum of performance-marketing, you have ...

PCI DSS is the payment card industry’s security standard for enterprises that process, store or transmit cardholder data, and today we achieved PCI DDS certification as a PCI Level I Service Provider.  The Level I standard, granted by the PCI Security Standards Council, assures our consumers, advertisers, affiliates, and business partners that we cut no corners when it comes to the protection of credit card data that passes over our platform or through our ...

I’m certainly not the first person to blog about the coming of 3DTV to consumers’ homes, but having experienced the technology first-hand at CES last month, I will go out on a limb and make the prediction that 3DTV will be just as important to our industry as has been HDTV.

HDTV, itself, has been a boon to TV manufacturers, the etailers and retailers who sell them, and to the subscription services that distribute 3D ...

We recently announced that Bridgevine was first-to-market with AT&T's latest technology platform for serviceability, product presentment, order submission, and order management.  Well, we’ve done it again for a telco partner … this time with Qwest Communications.

Bridgevine has been integrated with Qwest’s latest platform for over a year now, but we’re proud to have been selected to launch their new content API ahead of schedule.  The content API will automate the display of certain product ...

A “network effect” is a positive outcome that occurs when the value to a program’s participants is directly proportional to the number of participants.  Traditional phone service is a good example.  Alexander Graham Bell’s original discovery was revolutionary, but with only 2 phones in existence, of not much use!  How about the apps store in iTunes?  Apple launched it after iTunes itself had reached critical mass, providing app developers with a large market ready to use ...

Amazon runs Amazon.com, and Staples runs Staples.com, but what does Bridgevine run?  What you may not realize is that Bridgevine runs literally hundreds of Web sites to generate order volume for its service providers.  Depending on the partner, these may include dedicated SEM landing pages and micro-sites, sites optimized for SEO, vertically targeted sites, sites to appeal to specific market segments and niches, or any combination of these.  You can get a glimpse of some ...

I’d like to personally thank our dealer account team at AT&T for their support over the last several weeks and months, as we’ve labored together to articulate the requirements for an entirely new API to support the channel, to establish an implementation team that clearly represents some of the best and brightest from both companies, to build and launch the modules that have already made a dramatic impact on the business that we are able ...

Remember Sequoia Capital’s “RIP Good Times” presentation?  Like just about everybody else, we faced a tough environment this year, and ended up taking a sound beating in the first half.  Fortunately, we heeded Sequoia’s sage advice (which was echoed by our own investors), and were ready to weather the storm as it descended upon us.  Not only did we do what was necessary to adjust our cost base, but also made some targeted ...

Earlier this year, as part of our strategic planning process, we set out to reestablish our Mission, and in doing so, to clarify our higher purpose.  We want to earn a profit, sure.  We want to treat our employees well, of course.  But our Mission rises even higher than those goals, and addresses that significant contribution we want to make as a company, and serves as an important underpinning to our value system.  If done ...

Back in 1996, Adam Brandenburger, a Stern School of Business professor, along with Barry Nalebuff, published an important book on business strategy, called Co-opetition.  The authors take on an increasingly relevant topic in our now hyper-connected world: how should you think about whether and how to enter into business partnerships with companies who are also your competitors?  Example - two electronics manufacturers entering into a strategic sourcing deal to get better terms from the common ...

‘To affiliate or not to affiliate?’ … that is the question that so many acquisition marketing execs and advertisers face as they consider whether to open the affiliate channel to their brands.  The skeptical camp accuses the affiliate channel of generating orders that they would have collected anyway, and of lessening the advertiser’s ability to control brand messaging.  The supportive camp insists that an order is an order – as long as the average cost ...

There’s something I don’t get.  Many of us in this field operate performance-based models, so you’d think that there would be a high premium on partnership support to help drive success.  If we don’t partner together effectively -- for example, to share ideas, plan for successful roll-outs, consult on opportunities for improvement, and so on – then the results are likely to reflect that passivity and apathy (the proverbial, ‘it’s not worth the paper it’s ...

Being out in the sales trenches day after day, I hear it more often than I want to admit: “So and so offered me $10 more, so if you can match it, I’ll go with you”. Does that imply that if I don’t match it, the deal is off? What a shame, because it doesn’t take much to see that this particular negotiation, and likely the partnership itself, will be built on fairly short-sighted thinking, ...

When’s the last time you heard someone complain that they were having a hard time finding suppliers for major service brands like Comcast, AT&T, Rhapsody, Netflix, or others? Maybe never, because they’re practically ubiquitous -- as the now legendary Coca-Cola strategy used to go, “… within an arm’s reach of desire”. But don’t be fooled, because unlike a Coke vending machine, not every source for service brands is the same, and one of the key ...

There’s an upside and downside to selling major consumer and B2B brands.  While the necessity to educate the market and/or build brand awareness is minimal, it’s often a crowded field of affiliates who are authorized (and in some cases, not authorized) to offer the brand.  So how can an affiliate position itself to stand out from the pack and take a “fair” (read, “outsized”) share of that market demand?  In short, add value to the ...

Ok, you’ve chosen your services aggregator and merchandising platform partner and closed a great deal … you’ve carefully determined what products and services you want your store or call center agents to sell … you’ve worked with your new partner to set up the sales and order fulfillment process and all the supporting technology … so now all you need to do is flip the switch, and watch the sales start streaming in, right?  Wrong.  ...

Whether the holidays are your make-or-break selling season, or just another Quarter, who isn’t interested in boosting revenue, differentiating themselves from competitors, and better serving customers?  Bridgevine’s extensive services catalog and turnkey merchandising platform can help with these objectives.  Let’s say you’re an electronics manufacturer or reseller, and are expecting robust volume from your inventory of HDTV’s, PCs, Blue Ray disc players, and digital cameras.  By pairing each of these items with a complementary service ...