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Affiliate Marketing

See all posts tagged with 'affiliate marketing'.

Outting Myself

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If you were looking for juicy gossip, sorry to disappoint. I'm not ‘outting‘ myelf that way! I really do like guys. 🙂

Actually, I decided to come clean after reading Anik Singal's (Affiliate Classroom) newsletter titled “My “Slap-In-The-Face” Advice For 2007…” in which he detailed how a couple of mistakes cost him over $120,000 last year.

Well, yes, I TOO made a huge error that cost me in the neighbourhood of $20,000 over a period of 3 months near the end of the year. (What a BUMMER… that money could have bought 2 really nice vacations.) Anyway, what happened was… [Read more…]

Disclosure Policy for Affiliates

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Here is a question I received from Chris about the new FTC disclosure policy.

I have read the new FTC policy details, and it really seems that it could easily be applied to every single affiliate marketer. After all, we receive a commission (payment) for promoting a product.

Rosalind, do you intend to change or add to the disclosure policies on your websites? And, if so, do you have a good resource you could recommend for your readers? AutoWebLaw is a good product. But, it was created before this FTC policy.

Hope you have a fantastic New Year!

Chris

P.S. – I think your Blog Classroom Course is awesome!

Thanks for your question, Chris and to answer it…

Yes, I plan to add a disclosure policy to each of my affiliate sites in the near future and there are a couple of tools now available through WordPress and Disclosurepolicy.org

DisclosurePolicy.org was created and funded by PayPerPost and is a fill-in-the-blanks form that lets you build a disclosure policy that fits your specific circumstances.

The Disclosure Policy Plugin is a WordPress plugin into which the user supplies company names, keywords, and a statement about the nature of the relationship. If one of the keywords or a company name comes up in a post, the disclosure statement is shown at the end of the post.

As I find the second option obtrusive, I will use the statement generated by DisclosurePolicy.org and link to it from each page on the site.

Hope that helps!

Did you find this post informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question, or suggestion, please leave a comment below!

Cheers,
sig-ros

Are You Flushing Potential Commissions?

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So, the checks are coming in regularly and you're quite happy with what you are making on that particular offer… so it's on to the next project.

Not so fast!

You may be flushing commission potential down the proverbial drain and not even know it!

Did you know that some companies have multiple affiliate program offers with different payout rates, but that those offers aren't necessarily available all in one place?

For example, the CPA network eAdvertising.com, sent this announcement about an offer for Relationships.com…

A Christian Dating site that helps to ‘Bring Christian Singles Together.' Very modern and relevant for today's dating campaigns, and is not overtly religious. Pays $3.50 on EVERY profile signup.

Now, if you visit Relationships.com and click on the ‘Affiliates' link, you'll see that it is part of the Sparks network of affinity-focused personals sites.

Under Program Payout Scale you'll see:

You will earn 55% of the first-time sale for any of your visitors who sign up as a paying member.*

If you refer other webmasters to our affiliate program, you will earn 10% of the commissions they make.

However, nowhere on the affiliate signup page does it mention a CPA offer of $3.50 per profile signup.

Which offer is better?

Well, that depends on your traffic. If you have LOTS of traffic to send, I'd recommend the CPA offer. On the other hand, if you have a mailing list of loyal subscribers who might be interested in purchasing one of the services that MingleMatch offers, I'd recommend the percentage payout program.

The point is to look for different offers.

If you receive a notice from a CPA network about an interesting offer for a particular company, check the company's website and see what they offer through their in-house program.

Too, you should check to see whether they make different offers through the big networks, eg. CJ.com and Linkshare.

Do your homework to maximize your affiliate income.

For more affiliate marketing tips and strategies, get the “The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online” by Rosalind Gardner.

The Card up Your Sleeve

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The BIG day is now less than a week a way and most of your merchants' in-time for Christmas shipping dates will have passed.

Never mind. You still have the best card up your sleeve — the gift card.

If you're running a zillion affiliate promotions through as many merchants, finding those that have [gift certificates available may seem a daunting task. Here's a simple way to find them.

Login to CJ and do a Link search by category and relationship (as shown in the graphic below) for both ‘gift card' and ‘gift certificate'.

Otherwise, a straight Product search will return 1,000 entries through which you'll have to scroll to find your advertisers.

Get the links for the best of them and post them to your blog. Here's what I did at Sage-Hearts.com.

Then send out a quick note to your readers today which links back to your site.

It's a simple way to generate a nice spike in both traffic and sales during the last few days before Christmas.

HO! HO! HO!

PayPerPost Now Requires Disclosure

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As of today, PayPerPost.com bloggers will have to dislose that they are being paid for certain posts.

This comes hot on the heals of the Federal Trade Commission's December 11th statement about word-of-mouth marketing, that said that those who are paid to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships.

The disclosure statement does not have to appear within the blog post, but must be prominently displayed via a disclosure policy on the site.

The Best Thing about Affiliate Marketing is…

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The Birthday Card contest has ended and we had entries from all over the world. Special thanks to everyone who sent in their take on ‘The best thing about affiliate marketing'.

Congratulations to Paul Kaliher, winner of the Birthday Card contest. Paul will receive a prize package valued at $555.00 that includes a copy of Derek Gehl's “Warp Speed Wealth”, a softcover copy of the “Super Affiliate Handbook” and a one-hour consultation with yours truly.

Here is Paul's entry…

The best thing about affiliate marketing is the freedom it gives you to focus on MARKETING, the most important thing you can do to build your business.

You don't have to deal with product creation, collecting payment, fulfillment, customer service, and many other time and attention-grabbing tasks required by other business models.

Affiliate marketing lets you use your time and creativity to attract your target prospects, build a strong relationship with them, and pre-sell them on your chosen affiliate products so they will be ready to buy when they decide to visit the sales pages of your affiliate partners.

Well said, Paul! I agree wholeheartedly!

10 Ways to Get Your Affiliate Site Ready for Christmas

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Is your affiliate site ready for Christmas?

Jeremy Palmer and I held a Holiday Shopping Teleseminar on Black Friday (November 24th) to assist affiliatemarketers ready their sites for the busy holiday season ahead.

The good news is that if you haven't started your holiday promotions, you still have time to do so. Contrary to the popular claim that Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year, Comscore ranks it as the 12th busiest shopping day and most e-tailers report their peak days happening between December 5th and the 15th.

Better yet, the opportunity for new and seasoned affiliate marketers continues to expand. Disenchanted with holiday shopping crowds, limited selection and stock, a record 114 million people are forecast to buy online this year; and the average consmer will spend $728 – compared to $681 in 2006.

Here are 10 basic points to consider as you prepare both your site and your paid search campaigns.

  1. Know your merchants' shipping cut-off dates and inventory status. Merchants will communicate this information to affiliates either through email or their sites. Cease paid search campaigns for those merchants and or products that are out of stock or that cannot reach the consumer in time for Christmas delivery.
  2. Look for last minute opportunities. Promote gift cards and certificates for merchants that pay a referal fee, such as Amazon which is paying 6% on gift certificates until December 31st. Be aware of those merchants that offer express shipping and in-store pickup.
  3. Know what your audience wants. The most popular items to promote include clothing, books, toys, music, fragrances, consumer electronics and gift baskets.
  4. Seek out specialty merchants. Brookstone.com, Hammacher Schlemmer, and Sharper Image all specialize in higher-end, unique gift items.
  5. Limit the number of merchants that you promote to a manageable number. Seek out those that don't sell offline and/or offer expanded online selection. Refrain from promoting merchants that have stores in every town or that offer in-store only deals and pricing, ie. Circuit City, Best Buy and WalMart.
  6. Get in touch with your merchant partners. Ask them what their recommedations are regarding hot product and best deals.
  7. Address your visitors' concern for price. Promote those merchants that offer the best prices, deals and coupons.
  8. Focus on your paid search campaigns. Budget for higher volume and review ad costs and sales reports from merchants and ad campaigns daily. 58% of people shop at work on Mondays after a frustrating weekend shopping offline, so where possible (MSN Adcenter) target your ads to specific days of the week, or times of the day. Consider direct linking (arbitrage) where permitted by your merchant partners.
  9. Increase your broadcast message frequency. Your subscribers are actively looking for deals at this time of year – be the first to tell them about the best ones!
  10. Stay focused. While we all want to have the perfect site that promotes all the best merchants; limit your site changes, landing page creations and paid search campaigns to a number that you can handle.

Keep those points in mind and you're guaranteed to have a Happy Holiday! 🙂

Cheers,

Ros

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