RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Bogus agents, WP2.5, simple upgrades and more…

By

The latest newsletter has just been sent…

Happy April Fool's… and nope, no pranks this year, although I see that there were a few ‘take-offs' around the blogosphere from the one I did in 2006. 🙂

The big news for affiliate bloggers this week was the release of WordPress 2.5, which I talked about in Chomping at the Bit for WordPress 2.5 and WordPress 2.5 Officially Released.

I also posted a short piece this morning about Upgrading WordPress with Fantastico in response to a comment from Evelyn who ended up with ‘weird characters' on her blog after one such attempt. (Evelyn, it's not nice to talk about your visitors that way!) 🙂

There is also some blog design instruction at How to Correct Bulleted List Errors with CSS and
Have You Updated Your ShareThis Plugin?.

I took issue with something I've seen too much of late and posted Agent is Typing… My Eye along with suggestions for a better way of doing business.

Yanik was broadcasting Live Feeds from the Underground® where you can see Marlon Sanders and a whole raft of attendees who attended the seminar. (LUCKY them.. I'm still choked that I had to miss it!) If you missed it too, oyou can pre-order a set of the Underground® 4 recordings (DVD & Audio and workbook) before it goes on sale to the general public — or until 11:59 PM on Friday April 4!

In affiliate program news I posted Chitika Announces a New Way to Monetize Parked Domains and Sell Products to Spanish Markets through Clickbank

Because I'll still be pretty much housebound for a while, I've reduced my consulting fees until May 1st. Wanna chat?

Speaking of housebound, there's also a little blurb about last Saturday's Earth hour in Lights Out on Google. We played rummy… what did you do?

Last but not least, I'd like to send a special thanks to Rita Ashin who informed me about a few spelling and grammatical errors on the Super Affiliate Handbook homepage. Just think how much nicer the web would be if everyone took the time to help out another webmaster… not to mention how it's good karma too! Thanks Rita! 🙂

Enjoy!
Ros

P.S. Stay current by getting the Feed or visit the Blog and share your thoughts, comments and suggestions in the Forum. Always love to hear from you!

A Busy Blogging Week

By

Hmm… there's nothing quite like being scheduled for surgery to remove a mass of unknown origin to propel one into action. In other words, I blogged a LOT this week. 🙂

After reviewing notes and listening Affiliate Summit recordings via the web, I blogged about how Jason Calacanis offended affiliates during his keynote speech. I personally thought his point was excellent – when you got past the arrogance.

I reported on Chitika's new Related Product Unit (RPU) and that Yahoo Search Marketing changed it's minimum bid policy on Sponsored Search keywords.

At that point, I noticed that Brian Gardner was having an contest for affiliates who promote his Revolution WordPress themes — which then got me thinking about working on RosalindGardner.com where I ended up installing a new Premium WordPress Themes (which I blogged about at NPT).

I stopped just long enough to read success stories about sites that sell fitness, tea & gas station equipment and then started blogging again.

I blogged about how much I enjoyed using my Flip Video Ultra Camcorder and embedded some new videos along with my 3-month old godson's first YouTube video taken at Sun Peaks Resort where we cross country skied last week.

I took a little poke at some U.S. based online merchants who really need to start thinking beyond their borders, and at the discourteous jerk in seat 12F. Of course, I won't have to worry about rude passengers as my March and April conference plans and appearances have been cancelled.

From now until I go under the knife, I'll be drafting a series of helpful posts to be regularly delivered during the first part of my recovery.

But I really hope that that there will be an Internet connection in the room so that I can just keep on bloggin'…

Chitika Releases Related Product Unit (RPU)

By

Get Chitika eMiniMallsChitika's wide selection of ad units got just a little bigger a few days ago, when Chitika announced that it has released its Related Product Unit (RPU) to all its publishers.

The RPU is designed to work exclusively with blogs and news article sites and is a text link format that integrates right in to your content.

According to Chitika, Beta testers of the unit ‘experienced overall revenue increases and enjoyed it’s complete customization features‘. They also state that their publishers ‘love this ad unit because it doesn’t “look” like an ad‘.

You decide. Check out the example at the bottom of this post. Shown is the standard related product unit. Title, text, background and font colors can be customized to match the look and feel of your site. You can also remove the bullets and add channel tracking or an alternate URL.

Chitika ad units include eMiniMalls (as well as one specifically for Facebook), ShopCloud$, Owna, ShopLinc-Linx and now the RPU code.

If you are not yet a Chitika publisher, you can sign up with Chitika to access their interactive CPC ad units.


[tags]chitika, blog, ad, unit, CPC[/tags]

One Thing I Learned at Affiliate Summit

By

Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom tagged 5 affiliate bloggers – Jeremy Palmer, Sam Harrelson, Shawn Collins, Heather Paulson and I – to blog about one thing that we learned at the last Affiliate Summit.

So here goes…

As often happens, my biggest takeaway from the Summit didn't come during a presentation but from talking about affiliate marketing with many different affiliates who were attending the conference.

Too, it wasn't a new lesson, but a lesson re-learned and further entrenched.

The lesson – in the form of a quote – “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” – Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)

The route affiliates take to become successful are as varied as the individuals themselves and doesn't really matter. Whether one chooses blog content publishing, becomes an affiliate arbitrager (delivering traffic directly to their merchants via PPC) or focuses primarily on social network marketing; success is always a result of intense desire, focus and perserverance.

Talk with any successful affiliate marketer (any successful entrepeneur for that matter) and you'll discover a person who loves doing what they do. They are passionate and their passion is infectious.

Speaking with them not only gives you ideas about things you can do to enhance your own business, but it stokes the internal fire into an inferno – which is what I love about attending industry conferences. Moreover, people who are passionate about their lives and what they do are just more fun to hang with. 🙂

So, as it goes with the meme game, I now tag the following nice folks:

Contextual Advertising: Alternatives to Google Adsense

By

Got the Google Adsense Pink Slip?

Have you received the proverbial ‘invalid click' pink slip and been dumped by Google Adsense?

Maybe you're not seeing an adequate return on your Adsense ads and want to see whether you can do BETTER with something other than Adsense?

In either case, here is a nice list of Google AdSense alternatives.

  1. adagency1

    Adagency1 offers 70% payout – net 60 days via Stormpay.

    To qualify:

    • site must be written in English
    • site must have 15,000 or more monthly impressions.
    • site must be professionally designed and include useful content
    • site must have top level domain (www.example.com)
    • site cannot contain any adult content
    • site can not infringe on any personal, intellectual property, or copy rights

  2. AdBrite

    Revenue split is 75/25 in your favor. There are two distinct things you can do with AdBrite — buy ad space and/or sell ad space.

    Advertisers can choose relevant sites on which to advertise on a PPC basis.

    Publishers can sell ad space, and approve or reject every ad that's purchased for your site. Place a “Your Ad Here” link on your site to sell the space.

  3. Advertising.com

    Select offers from a diverse range of advertiser partners and ad placement options including:

    • WebSelect: Select from cost-per-click, cost-per-acquisition and revenue-share offers. We provide you with real-time reporting and net 15 payouts.
    • RegSelect: Co-registration platform enables affiliates to supplement their registration path with advertiser offers. Advertising.com will host and serve creatives and landing pages to your site.

  4. Bidvertiser

    Pays monthly, by check or PayPal with a minimum of only $10.

    All ads are pre-approved by Bidvertiser's editorial team, but you can block unwanted ads as well. Only the highest bidders' ads are shown on your site.

    Detailed reports are available.

    Note: Yet another merchant/advertiser that doesn't recognize countries with states and provinces outside the U.S. 🙁 (Try putting Canada in the drop-down folks!)

  5. Burst! Media

    BURST! delivers more than 4 billion monthly advertising impressions, across 477 content channels, for its more than 2,000 specialty-content web sites.

    Eligibility:

    • Represent specialty content. Portals, search engines, and sites of links to other people's content generally do not meet the criteria.
    • Have at least 5,000 page views per month.
    • Site language must be English.
    • Have a publicly stated privacy policy.
    • Agree to post BURST!'s Demographic Survey somewhere on the site.
    • Reside on its own top-level domain.
    • NO content or links to adult or sexually explicit content.
    • No unmoderated content.

  6. Casale Media

    Your site must receive more than 10,000 unique visitors per month, attract an English-based audience, and be hosted under a root domain to qualify for Casale.

    Pays 70%, Net 30.

  7. Chitika eMiniMalls

    Although they serve up the most attractive contextual ads, the jury still seems to be out on the Chitika eMiniMalls network.

    With many affiliates reporting income audits with losses of 30 – 50% of their expected Chitika earnings, numerous publishers have pulled the plug on this fledgling contextual advertiser, still in beta.

    While Chitika publishes Net 30 payments, so far that hasn't been the case, and to make matters worse, rather than sending publishers notice of this contraventionof their terms of service, they merely posted in on their blog.

    Maybe they haven't heard about ‘blog to email' yet?

    Follow the boards on this one though and cross your fingers that they rise to meet their initial expectations.

  8. Claxon

    Claxon Media pays 85% of gross on the 15th and 30th of each month check, wire, or PayPal.

    Offers multiple ad formats, accurate stats, and the ability to preview ads, opt out of ads, and set up defaults.

    Hurray! They also guarantee “speedy replies to questions and the best customer service possible”.

  9. Clickcent

    Pays 65% – on 25th of the month for the previous month by check or PayPal

    Non-exclusive, no volume contracts required.

  10. Clicksor

    Pays up to 85% of the advertising revenues, net 15 terms on a bi-weekly schedule. Check (min. payout: $50), or PayPal (min. payout: $20).

    Media includes Text Banners, Graphic Banners, Pop-Under Advertisements, Search box and XML feed to host on websites or blogs.

  11. Amobee

    Payments via check in US Dollars on balances over $100 US.

    Who knows what percentage they actually pay?

  12. Fastclick

    Earn up 65-percent on all advertising revenue your website generates. Fastclick pays by the 25th of the month for the previous month by check or PayPal.

    No fees, exclusivity contracts, volume contracts or serving charges.

    Note: Pretty much a pain to try and sign up for. They turned me down the first time… apparently the person responsible for doing site reviews, DOESN'T do site reviews. A phone call is required if you're really interested.

  13. MIVA AdRevenue Xpress

    Add relevant content through predefined keyword searches, a co-branded search box or category and directory searches based on site content.

    MIVA pays within thirty (30) days of the end of the calendar month in which MIVA receives the revenue, on balances $25.00 and over.

    I was unable to locate a percentage value for the amount pays its publishers on contextual advertising.

  14. Quigo AdSonar

    Pays thirty (30) days of the end of the calendar month during which Quigo collects any Click Through Revenue, Quigo will pay to Publisher a percentage of Net Revenue set forth in the version of the Agreement that is presented to Publisher after Publisher receives a user name and password, minus any applicable withholdings.

    Note: Doesn't specify WHAT percentage of net revenue is paid.

  15. RealTechNetwork

    Net 60. Requirements:

    • At least 25,000 impressions per month (12,500 Unique).
    • Root level domain name (Http://www.mydomain.com ).
    • 80% US/UK/CAN audience, however, will pay for all international traffic.
    • No applications from free e-mail accounts (I.E. email @ Hotmail.com) will be proccessed.

    Referal network – Earn 5% of referred advertiser's expenditure and 5% of referred publisher's earnings for life of referral.

  16. RightMedia

    Right Media serves ads through Yield Manager, which is their auction-based transactional platform.

    Note: Not your standard ad agency site. TONS of good info, but I found it nearly impossible to find the signup form!

  17. SearchFeed

    Two ways to monetize with either the “Search Engine Generator” or as a “Category Chaser”.

    Search box and a specialized results page match the look of your site.

    Referal program offeres monthly commissions of up to 7% for advertisers and up to 5% for affiliates – based on actual click activity for each new advertiser and/or affiliate who joins one of Searchfeed.com's services.

    Board comments: “Will accept any type of site, but don't expect more than a penny per click”.

  18. Traffic Marketplace

    Pays 65% of the revenue your site's users generate. Reports that top publishers are earning over $10,000 per month.

    Net-30 terms.

  19. Tribal Fusion

    Tribal Fusionâ„¢ pays publishers 55% of all revenue secured by your site.

    Payment terms are net 45. Tribal Fusionâ„¢ will issue and mail you a check 45 days after the last day of the month during which your site generated more than $50 in net revenue.

  20. ValueClick

    Commission Junction's parent company, use the “IAB” methodology for measuring impressions, clicks, leads and acquisitions, and payments are based upon delivery in accordance with these measurements and tracking data calculated by ValueClick.

    On the first day of each month, ValueClick will total all accumulated data for the previous month. Payments made Net 30 to Publishers who have earned more than $30.00 .

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

Categories