AffilInfo

Linkshare Deep Linking Bookmarklet Demo Video

2011-12-01T09:24:00.000-08:00

Check out the post prior to this one for links to the Linkshare site to read about this. I thought the video would also be helpful.

LinkShare Tip of the Week: LinkGenerator Bookmarklet – create deep links without logging into the Publisher Dashboard! | LinkShare Blog

2011-12-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

This tip of the week from Linkshare recently caught my eye. I love it when you can link to your advertisers right from your browser, it makes or job so much easier.

LinkShare Tip of the Week: LinkGenerator Bookmarklet – create deep links without logging into the Publisher Dashboard! | LinkShare Blog

Interesting Affiliate Marketing Video by Roslind Gardner

2011-11-28T10:12:00.000-08:00

I recently came accross the below video by Rosalind Gardner. She gives some very good advice about how long it takes to start making money via Affiliate Marketing.

You may want to check out her YouTube channel for other interesting videos. She is also on Twitter and Facebook. Check her out.

Check out her book below;

Books: Why She Buys

2011-11-26T13:40:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews from Amazon.com

From Publishers Weekly

The founder of Female Factor Strategic Consulting is a convincing cheerleader for marketing more effectively to women. She points out that women purchase or are the key influencers in about 80% of all consumer product sales in the U.S. alone—but 90% of marketing execs trying to reach them are men. In her crusade to teach marketers to become female-literate, Brennan offers very practical advice, urging readers to think twice before using overtly masculine competitive messages, to avoid violent images and language, and to realize that women, focused on practicality rather than cool bells and whistles, require fairly sophisticated marketing: pink is not a strategy, she reminds us tartly. The five important global demographic changes affecting female consumerism—more women in the work force; delayed marriages and therefore more spending on self; lower birthrates resulting in fewer kids (but more stuff); a divorce economy, which translates into needing two of everything; and the growing rate of active older women—mean that the female market must be well catered to. BrennanÖs style is smart and straightforward, and her pragmatic advice is spot-on; marketers should take note. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Bridget Brennan’s book provides a highly readable road map to help marketers and salespeople understand women’s beliefs, values, and sensitivities. Given that women account for a high percentage of purchases, while many products are developed and sold by men, a reading of Bridget’s book will go a long way to closing this gap and improving the satisfaction of both genders.” —Philip Kotler, S. C. Johnson & Son Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

“Bridget Brennan’s highly informative and entertaining book provides keen–and unusual–insights into both the psychological makeup of women consumers and the demographic facts that everyone in business needs to know in order to execute marketing strategies in this challenging economic environment. Long live the Female Economy!” —Joseph V. Tripodi, chief marketing and commercial officer, The Coca-Cola Company

"Ms. Brennan is all about the commerce she observes. 'If the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female. If the business world had a sex, it would be male. And therein lies the pickle.' [She] explores the marketing opportunities offered by trends…all of which leave women making even more buying decisions." –Wall Street Journal

"Is the customer always right? Yes, She is: An entertaining and …rich account of…untapped opportunities. Fun and anecdotal." --Financial Times

"Lively, insightful and relentlessly engaging…should be required reading for anyone burdened with a Y chromosome." –Fortune Small Business

"Brennan details the major trends behind female spending and provides strategies for companies to crack the code." –Forbes Woman

“[Brennan] explains why the existing misunderstanding of gender cultures isn't just a gender gap but a gender "canyon," and provides case studies of female-focused initiatives from marketers such as Callaway, Ryland Homes, Lululemon, Lexus and MasterCard" – Advertising Age

“Word of mouth can make or break a brand, and this book confirms the fact that women talk to other women more about products than men do” --Journal of Consumer Marketing

"Why She Buys [guides] retailers and consumer goods manufacturers on how [women] are increasingly powerful consumers and how they think and shop."–LA Times

“Nab the Women’s Market” – Investors Business Daily

“Since we (women) are driving the economy and the economy could use a boost, it’s all good news” – ABC NEWS NOW

“[Women] are the most important constituency because they make all the decisions….a much needed perspective” – Fox Business Morning

“Witty and insightful” – Marie Claire India

From the Hardcover edition.

Book Details

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Crown Business (September 13, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307450392
ISBN-13: 978-0307450395
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches

Books: Internet Marketing from the Real Experts

2010-02-02T01:00:00.000-08:00

Internet Marketing From The Real Experts

Book Description - What do Tim Carter, Brian Clark, Joel Comm, Jim Kukral, Ted Murphy, Jeremy Schoemaker, and Mari Smith have in common? They all walk the walk when it comes to their Internet marketing expertise. And they also have joined a couple dozen innovators and thought shapers to share their ideas, advice, and insight.

"Internet Marketing from the Real Experts" is a collection of affiliate, email, blogging, podcasting, video, search engine, and social network rock stars that break down the how and why of Internet marketing in a clear, easy to understand way.
These are the people that do this stuff every day. Find out how they do what they do to achieve success with their online businesses.

Their voices, their ideas, their action items, and their lessons learned from mistakes--all for you to grow your business the day you start reading "Internet Marketing from the Real Experts".

Product Details

* Paperback: 346 pages
* Publisher: Morgan James Publishing; 1st edition (January 31, 2010)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 1600377440
* ISBN-13: 978-1600377440
* Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches

The Part Time Affiliate Marketer Series

2010-02-01T06:26:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading an interesting series of blog post over at the Affiliate Classroom blog by Kathy Jackson.

The Part Time Affiliate Marketer’s Steps to Success, Part 1

The Part Time Affiliate Marketer’s Steps to Success, Part 2

The Part Time Affiliate Marketer’s Steps to Success, Part 3

The Part Time Affiliate Marketer’s Steps to Success, Part 4

The series is in five parts, and I look forward to reading the next part. For the most part this is basic knowledge that is presented in a very understandable format. It is broken down in a way that the beginning Affiliate Marketer can learn some key concepts.

Blogger and Amazon Integrate

2009-12-23T08:04:00.000-08:00

Amazon announced "Amazon Associates for Blogger", a direct integration between Amazon Associates and Blogger.

This new collaboration enables Bloggers to monetize their content by adding relevant Amazon products to their blog posts without interrupting the blog editing process. Amazon Associates for Blogger is available now at http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/blogger. Amazon Associates who don’t have a Google Blogger account can set up a free Blogger account with their Associates ID and start earning right away.

The Complete Guide to Affiliate Marketing on the Web: How to Use and Profit from Affiliate Marketing Programs

Google-certified ad networks in AdSense

2009-09-08T21:06:00.000-07:00

AdSense publishers in North America and Europe can now allow ads from Google-certified ad networks to appear on their pages. These ads will compete with AdWords ads, and will help publishers earn the most from every ad impression by increasing competition. At the same time, publishers will have full control over which ads and ad networks can appear on their pages.

Tip's For Music Bloggers and Tweeters

2009-06-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

I've recently been using twitter. You can follow me FitzgeraldKC @Twitter.com. I enjoy it because there are so many new and nice people there. People on Twitter call each other Tweeple, or just tweeps for short. There are musicians, bloggers, fans, and many people who work in the music industry on twitter. They are interacting and communicating in a way that is amazing when you get down to it.

I have been studying how some people use Twitter, so that I can better understand how to use it to help promote music in general. And thought I would do a post and pass on my observations.

Here are a few tips I'd like to give to musicians, and music bloggers who have joined Twitter, but who may not know how to use it. This information can be useful to anyone who uses affiliate marketing also.

1. Read books. Read some books on Twitter and Affiliate Marketing to learn how to promote yourself and your music on Twitter.

Twitter seems simple, but it is quite complicated and new research is being done on it all the time. To stay up on what is going on I recommend reading the latest books on the topic.

Please consider this list of books from Amazon.com;

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time by Joel Comm, Anthony Robbins, and Ken Burge (Hardcover - Feb 17, 2009)

Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets by Paul McFedries and Pete Cashmore (Paperback - May 11, 2009)

Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online by Warren Whitlock and Deborah Micek (Paperback - Nov 11, 2008)

The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein (Paperback - May 26, 2009)

Twitter For Dummies by Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen, and Leslie Poston (Paperback - Jul 14, 2009)

2. Follow people to get followers. You have to follow people for them to follow you back. Unless you are very famous and have a large following in the real world, the only way that you can get and keep followers is to follow people. So find your fans and follow them. Find those who have common interest as you and follow them. Use the search feature, search for the type of music you play and follow those who tweet about that type of music. You may gain a new fan.

I can't tell you the number of regionally known musicians who only follow a handful of people, when they could make more connections and fans by following more people.

I'm not saying to just go out and blindly follow people either, make sure you have a common interest, like the same kind of music, and other common interest. As you get more followers you will gain a sense of what works for you. But initially, to get followers you have to follow others.

3. Interact with your fans on twitter. If you have an email list of your fans (if you don't then start one) use that list to find your fans and follow and interact with them. Search them out by name, or by region, or by any other way that you can think of, but do it. Don't expect them to find you, go out and find them.

I also see some musicians and bloggers who do not interact at all with their fans and readers. As a music fan I can tell you that when a musician interacts with me, it makes my bond with them stronger. Several nationally known musicians have interacted with me on Twitter, MC Hammer being an example of a musician who interacts with his fans. The jazz musician Melody Gardot also is good at interacting with her fans.

4. Promote Your Work via Twitter. Promote your music, your blog, your mp3s, your total body of work via Twitter. Link to anything that you want your fans to know about. Link to your web site, link to your music on sites that sell your cds, mp3s and albums. It is a win, win type of of situation. You get more sales of your music and/or more exposure for your affiliate links and the fans get more access to your work.

Don't go overboard with this, but do promote your own work. And share information with your fans.

5. Use Hashtags and search. Use hashtags (a word proceeded by the hash mark or #) to locate topics, and use them to identify what you are twitting about. For example I use the following tags all the time #blues, #harmonica, #rock, #folk #reggae, #soul, #jazz, and many others. You get the idea.

Also use Hashtags to identify what you are tweeting. If you are linking to some video of your band, then use the Hashtag #video, like wise if your blog post is about #hiphop then use that tag. I am often surprised by the number of musicians who are not identifying their tweets to make it easier for their fans to find them when they search.

6. Don't only Tweet about yourself. To get a little, you have to give a little. Tweet about the kind of music you like, tweet about other's bands and musicians that you like. This will cause those other bands to possible tweet about you. That is how twitter works best, the power of it is in others blowing your horn, as opposed to you blowing your own horn. You have to pay it forward, create value for your followers and the other members of your network.

Build your network by supporting and tweeting about the other memebers of your group.

Twitter is great for networking, for getting the word out about your body of work and what you are doing now, gigs, tours shows, etc. It is a great way to generate buzz. It is cheap and it is effective. I have measured the results of my twitter links vs my other affiliate links and blog post. There really is no comparison, Twitter out performs other blogging platforms, by all measures.

If you have read this blog in the past you probably know that I blog about music. I have three music blogs, blues music is covered in SqueezeMyLemon (SML), Reggae is covered in My Inna Fever and pop and other music is covered in KK&R Music Blog. In these blogs I promote music, musicians and provide music resources as well as use the blogs as a platform for my affiliate sponsors.

Getting Started with Google Ad Planer Overview

2009-05-07T03:14:00.000-07:00

Google recently launched the new Google Ad Planner Publisher Center. This is a new feature of the Google Ad Planner that is designed to improve the quality and accuracy of site data.

The Publisher Center is available in English only at this time, but all publishers can use the tool. The Google Ad Planner Publisher Center lets publishers contribute directly to the site data found in Google Ad Planner. Web masters can specify their site descriptions, content categories, supported ad formats and sizes, and share their Google Analytics traffic data in Google Ad Planner, which will allow for better targeted ads tailored to the site specifics.

click for a lager image

According to Google;

The Publisher Center enables publishers to contribute directly to the site data provided in Google Ad Planner. Website owners can specify their site descriptions, content categories, supported ad formats and sizes, and share their Google Analytics traffic data in Google Ad Planner. With shared Google Analytics data, we can supplement our traffic estimates with actual, site-measured data from the publishers themselves. In turn, you'll have access to more robust and accurate information in Google Ad Planner to make better-informed decisions about which sites to include in your media plans.

Google Ad Planner @Twitter

Inside AdWords: Improvements to Google Ad Planner data

Affiliate Blog How To: A Travel Related Blog

2009-04-07T10:44:00.001-07:00

My online friend, fellow blogger and contributor to several of my other blogs Ron Moorby has a blog about a trip that he went on. Canada Summer 2007, is a collection of photos, and observations by Ron about what he did on this trip.

I thought it might be interesting to turn this blog into a travel blog and see if we could generate some passive income for Ron.

When I say passive income, I mean that Ron can take this blog that he created for fun, and place affiliate links on it. By placing affilate links on the blog he can sell books, photo equipment and other travel related goods and services. And over time it will generate for him some income that he does not have to do too much work to maintain. It will be there for as long as there is an internet possibly. And by using some of the features of search people will be able to find it for years to come.

Lets start our plan, by doing a pros and cons survey.

Here are a few of the pros;
- Ron is well traveled
- Ron has many photos of trips that he has made around the world
- There are many affiliates that offer goods and services that Ron could promote on his blog.
- Ron is a prolific blogger, he knows how to create post and put them into his blog.
-

Here are a few of the cons;
- There is a steep learning curve that Ron will have to climb.
- Ron will have to join affiliate programs
- Ron will have to learn how to post affiliate links
- Ron will have to market his blog
- It will be a huge investment in time
-

OK, now that we have a few of the pros and cons of doing this laid out. It helps to understand where we might need to start if we want to do this.

step one - Join affiliate programs - Here I want to keep it simple in the beginning, so we will have Ron join the Amazon.com affiliate program first.

And net start a google AdSense account.

I think these two affiliate programs are a good way for a beginning affiliate to get exposed to some of the ideas involved with affiliate marketing.

After Ron has taken this step, we will move on to the next step as well as get more into the total overview of our plan.

A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing

2008-12-17T14:45:00.000-08:00

A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing:
Quick Reference for Affiliate Managers & Merchants

click image for info @Amazon.com

Review - A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing is a must read for anyone running an affiliate program! The tips and advice Geno provides will help affiliate managers run more effective programs and avoid costly mistakes. If you're contemplating launching an affiliate program this book will save you time, money, and frustration. If your existing affiliate program isn t getting the results you had hoped for, you'll find tons of ideas that will help you get the most out of your program. Even if you're a seasoned affiliate manager, you're bound to pick up several priceless nuggets. --Michael Coley, Amazing-Bargains.com

A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing presents concrete and functional information for retailers and marketers to ensure optimal results from their affiliate campaigns. The information is easy to grasp and comprehensive. I can confidently recommend this book to any companies embarking on or refining their affiliate programs. --James Long, Director for PriceRunner.com US

Finally a definitive guide for affiliate managers and those considering starting an affiliate program. Geno has not only done his homework and research in putting this guide together, but his wisdom and hands on experience is evident in every chapter. As an outsourced program manager, I find the guide to be a great reference tool and always keep it handy. I often find myself grabbing Geno's book to see if there is something relevant there. Even with my many years of experience I can honestly say I found new, helpful information and ideas in the book I had not considered before. --Ron Bechdolt, 7 Days A Week Marketing

How to Advertise On YouTube

2008-11-21T17:53:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder who to get add content placed on YouTube. I had been wondering about this for some time. But after reading YouTube is Fighting Hulu With Both Hands Tied Behind Their Back @Mashable.com.

Which led to this interesting link, How to advertise on YouTube.

Amazon.com's Associate Central Redesign

2008-10-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com recently redesigned their Associate Central web site and rolled out some cool features. You can read about it here at the Amazon Associate Blog.

All though I often think that redesigns are done just for the sake of redesign. And many of the redesigns done on affiliate marketing sites do not offer much benefit beyond the cost of time that has to be invested in learning how to use the new features.

I am happy to report that I really like the new design and think that features like the "site stripe" are very useful.

The "Site Stripe feature" allows you to create links to products and pages on the Amazon.com site so you can update your website more frequently and with fewer clicks. And this is a feature that I wish many other affiliate marketing programs would use this approach.

If you are logged into your Amazon Associates account, the Site Stripe will automatically show up on the Amazon.com website just below the navigation bar (see example above), According to an email that I received from Amazon.com:

There are four buttons available to you on the Site Stripe:

'Link to this Page': By clicking on this link, you will be taken directly to Associates Central and receive the HTML code needed to add that particular Amazon.com page to your website or blog. After visiting Associates Central, you’ll see a link to take you back to the same page on Amazon.com that you were on prior to clicking on the Site Stripe. This allows you to create links to any page on Amazon directly from Associates Central while browsing the Amazon.com site.

'Add to aStore': Adding links to your aStore is just as easy as creating text links. By clicking on this link, you will be taken to the Associates Central aStore configuration page where you can quickly add this product/link to your aStore. After visiting Associates Central, you’ll see a link to take you back to Amazon to continue shopping.

'Your Earnings Report': Keep track of your earnings with this shortcut to your earnings report directly from any page of the Amazon.com retail site. Find out where you are earning referral fees while navigating the Amazon.com site to add more links on your website or blog to products and pages that appeal to your readers, based on your earnings performance.

'Settings': The Settings tab allows you to configure your Site Stripe tabs as you like and also gives you the ability to turn off the Site Stripe if you would prefer not to see it while you are on the Amazon.com website. Please note that if you do turn off the Site Stripe, you will need to visit your Account Settings within Associates Central to turn it back on. All of your Site Stripe settings can be accessed there. You can always hide the Site Stripe at any time without turning it off. Just click on the “hide” button on the toolbar. To see it again, click on the “tab” at the top left.

If you are an Amazon.com affiliate you will want to check this new feature out, and if not then this new feature will make it easy to start.

Discussing the Content Vs Buzz Question

2008-08-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

There was a very interesting discussion going on over at the BlogCatalog.com titled Is Good Content Overrated.

I was surprised that some people really believe that you should focus more on buzz then you do content. I offered the following;

In my humble opinion, content is more important than buzz.

But there are many factors that go into deciding which is more important to you as a blogger. One major consideration is what are your goals?

Because different bloggers have different goals, they focus on different parts of blogging.

As stated some (1) blog for the joy of creating good content, (2) some blog for money, (3) some blog for recognition (comments), (4) some blog for the sense of community, and this list could go on and on.

So I think it is difficult to definitively say which is more important without taking the goals of the blogger into context.

What I enjoy the most is creating good content (and sometimes I think I actually pull it off), but I also know that I have to create a certain level of buzz if anyone is to read or enjoy the content that I create. I have to be part of a larger community that passes my blogs around and considers what I write.

All in all it is just good to get the opinions of so many different bloggers and to see what is important to them.

Changes in eBay's Business May Effect Some Affiliates

2008-08-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to get my mind around the changes that are going on at eBay. I've posted about it over on my blog Online Seller Tips. As an affiliate of both eBay and Amazon.com I look at their business models and try to understand how they compare and how their actions effect my affiliate marketing efforts. And I recommend that other affiliates do the same.

The changes that eBay is proposing will definitely effect sellers and buyers. But it is still unclear just how. And because we can not really tell how affiliates will be effected. But I plan on keeping my eyes open as the changes happen in late October.

One question I have is how the holidays will be effected. Most eBay sellers and affiliates have their best months during this time of year.

Flip this Blog: Can an Affiliate Website or Blog be Flipped?

2008-08-17T11:59:00.000-07:00

This article titled Find an Undervalued Asset. Fix It Up. Flip It. (Now It’s Web Sites, Not Houses) from NY Times.com got me to thinking.

Is there an opportunity here for affiliate marketers? We build websites and blogs all the time. Could an enterprising affiliate marketer build a website or blog specifically for the purpose of flipping it?

Could this be a new business model for affiliates and other publishers?

Have you ever considered what it would take to make your website or blog attractive enough to flip it?

Read the article, and talk about it with me in the comments. I'll keep my eyes open on this trend and blog more on it later.

A Different Perspective on Facebook Advertising

2008-08-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

While doing research on Facebook advertising I came across a very interesting post about the ads themselves. The post titled Facebook advertising is from the blog of the Community Feministing.com.

The post itself is very interesting, but the comments are even more interesting. They explain what the women who read this blog don't like about many of the ads on Facebook. This kind of info is valuable to affiliate marketers and those who want to create ads for Facebook and other social networks.

Another interesting fact brought out in the comments is what some Internet users are doing to block ads. I had never consider this, and I don't know what the impact of it is. But it gave me pause.

One feature that I read about that I wish all online ads had was the ability for web surfers to rate the ads or even complain about them. This would give both affiliate marketers and affiliate managers better insight into what really works.

A Couple of Helpful Facebook Advertising Links

2008-08-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

I've been considering getting into FaceBook Advertising and MySpce Ads.

Up until now I have just been doing the preliminary research on these two new (to me) ways of affiliate marketing. I've had a MySpace account for some time now, but FaceBook is a new deal.

Both are growing like gangbusters and will be valuable tools in the affiliate marketing tool box, once mastered. I say that because I realize that I have a lot to learn about both sites.

I just wanted to share a couple of interesting links about Facebook.

Get $100 of free Facebook advertising Where layer and blogger Andrew Flusche explains who to get $100 in free Facebook ads.

Profiting With Facebook Ads. A nice article by blogger and affiliate marketer, Alan LeStourgeon on how to use the free Facebook link above to make money using Facebook Ads

Amazon.com Affiliates Can Now Promote Green.

2008-08-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

Green is the new black, or is it just another popular thing that people are into as of late.

Well I tend to lean toward it being something that we need, and I think that it will be with us for a long time to come.

Which means that it is an excellent key word to promote if you are an affiliate marketer. Amazon.com has a whole new section devoted just to Green items, click here to see Amazon's Green Section.

They list all kinds of products that customers have selected as the most environmentally-friendly. The list includes cleaning supplies as well as computers and personal solar chargers.

What Are The Opportunities For Beginning Affiliate Marketers?

2008-07-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

A comment on a blog that I read, went something like this, "there really are not any new opportunities for new affiliate marketers to make money."

I've also noticed an AdSense ad about how "Affiliate Marketing programs are overcrowded and too complicated." If you look at the AdSense on this page you may see it.

Even though I agree somewhat with the sentiment expressed in the ad, it got me to thinking about the opportunities for new affiliate marketers.

Well let's see, there are millions of products that can be promoted. New ones are introduced every day. Probably hundreds of thousands of niches that have thousands of related products and services. So that is one opportunity.

Online sales is at an all time high. And is projected to continue growing into the foreseeable future, even in the down economy. Some marketing professionals believe that because of the down economy growth in the online sales area will grow due to high transportation cost and other increases in the cost of shopping in brick and mortar stores. So that is another opportunity.

Affiliate marketing like all things related to computers is in a constant state of flux. Continuous change is the order of the day, and while this may seem like a difficulty, it is also an opportunity in that it levels the playing field a bit. Even well established affiliates have to learn new methods.

There are challenges for sure;

- There will always be competition, that proves that this is worth doing.

- The tax situation, and other unknown factors.

- The constant state of flux.

I will address these challenges in another post, but I believe that for the most part, the opportunities out weigh the challenges.

What do you think?

Say It Ain't So: Faking AdSense Earnings

2008-07-29T19:09:00.000-07:00

So I'm doing one of my dailies, surfing the web looking for something interesting regarding Affiliate Marketing, and I come across something that I have been thinking about for a long time now.

How do you know that the screenshots showing earnings on the blogs and websites of various Gurus are valid?

I think this post How People Fake Their AdSense, over at TopBusinessReviews.com goes a long way into shading some light on this question.

I guess the answer, which I knew all along, is that you can't really ever know. You can't know if the values are being faked, you can't know how much money went into makeing those earnings if they are real.

Just something to think about the next time you are reading some blog and some guru starts talking about their earnings.

Back To School Post

2008-07-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

Just a friendly reminder to all you affiliates out there. Now is a great time to focus on back to school. Go through your list of advertisers, make a quick list of those who sell items that you believe can be promoted for back to school.

Start putting up your links as soon as possible. Consider the following list of items which most middle to college age students might need.

If need be, break your "back to school" post up into several versions. One for elementary school students and one for middle school and higher students.

Some items you might want to consider;

1. Backpacks, book bags
2. Lap Top computers
3. Desk Top computers
4. Media players
5. Cell phones
6. All in one fax/printer machines
7. USB Portable Hard Drives
8. Flat Screen Computer Monitors
9. George Formen Grill
10. USB Thumb Drives

Affiliate programs to join to sell these items;

Amazon.com
eBay
LinkShare.com
Buy.com
AllPosters.com

A Week Left to do a Christmas in July Campaign

2008-07-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

One of my affiliate partners (see links below) reminded me that it is just about the end of July. If you have merchants that sell Christmas items, then now is a great time to do a Christmas in July sell.

As an affiliate you must use the calandar as your guide to when to post certain links. Each holiday should be a time to target products and merchants to post affiliate links for.

Collectibles Today Annual Sale - up to 40% on Christmas Decor!

Collectibles Today Annual Sale - up to 40% Discount!

Affiliate Marketing Sales Tax Valnerability

2008-07-25T12:09:00.001-07:00

If you are a beginning affiliate marketer you may not have given much thought to how state taxes effect our business. But one of the problems / challenges coming down the pipe is how states are looking at affiliate marketing and how they tax sellers.

From Wikipedia;

Sales Tax Vulnerability
In April, 2008, the State of New York inserted a item in the state budget asserting sales tax jurisdiction over Amazon.com sales to residents of New York, based on the existence of affiliate links from New York-based web sites to Amazon.com.[1]New York asserts that even one such affiliate constitutes Amazon.com having a business presence in the State of New York, and is sufficient to allow New York to tax all Amazon.com sales to state residents. It is expected that Amazon.com will challenge this in court.

[1] Linda Rosencrance,15.April, 2008), N.Y. to tax goods bought on Amazon, Computerworld,

from the article;

Amazon itself doesn't have a brick-and-mortar store in the state and therefore is not required to collect state taxes under a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. However the state contends it does have a physical presence because it operates through a number of local affiliates, Bergin said.

For info on Overstock.com's response;
Overstock.com Drops NY Affiliates.

So That is Why I've Been Getting Those Warnings

2008-07-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

I just read a very interesting forum thread over at ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum. Interesting because it shows the thought process of some Affiliate Managers.

The Warning about inactivity thread made clear a few things that I did not understand about Affiliate Marketing. Even though I have been doing it for years.

1. Affiliate Managers will threaten you if they feel you are being inactive, what ever that means.

2. Some times Affiliate Managers will give you a carrot (increased commissions) too incentivize you to post more links for their program.

3. Some Affiliate Managers do this to increase their EPC (Earnings Per Click or Earnings Per hundred Clicks).

This all brings me to a couple of thoughts that I will write about more in the future that are important for the beginning affiliate.

1. How to choose your merchants with care.

2. How to handle merchants that threaten you.

Can Knol be a New Tool For Affiliate Marketing?

2008-07-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

Google offers a new publishing website Knol. Which may become a tool for publishers and other affiliate marketers.

According to Wikipedia

Knol is a Google project which includes single author articles on topics ranging from "scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions," according to Google. It was announced on December 13, 2007, and was opened in beta to the public on July 23, 2008. Knol pages are "meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read", according to Udi Manber, a Vice President of Engineering at Google. The term knol, named after a "unit of knowledge", refers to both the project and an article in the project. Several experts see Knol as Google's attempt to pwn Wikipedia.

See Knol @ Wikipedia for the full article.

Official Google Blog: Encougaging people to contribute knowledge

I think the last pragraph in the blogger buzz blog article on the introduction of Knol might give affiliate marketers some ideas how to use this new tool;

All in all, we think Knol will be a great new way for you to share what you know, inform people about an issue that is important to you, raise your profile as an expert in your field, and maybe even make some money from ads. Create your Knol right now for free.

eBay Partner Network To Go Widgets

2008-07-22T23:42:00.000-07:00

I've been experimenting with eBay's new Partner Network To Go Widget. I like it, and can imagine quite a few cool uses for it. I did not realize what the size of the widgets would be and thought I would have a problem with them. But they seem to work fine.

The above example is the search widget.

Click these other examples for ideas on how to use them;

Multiple item widget Although I only have one item in it.

Single item widget

A Question I Have Been Wondering About.

2008-07-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

I had been wondering about the deadline for generating referrals for Adsense now that it has been retired. Well the good people over at the Inside Adsense blog answered that and many other questions in a post titled; Answers to your referrals retirement questions

What's the deadline for generating referral conversions once the program has been retired?

In order for you to be credited for a conversion, the referred user must complete the required action by the last week of September 2008. However, please keep in mind that your referral units will no longer display after the last week of August.

Amazon.com Anounces 15% on Endless.com Referrals

2008-07-14T23:26:00.000-07:00

The Amazon.com Associates program just announced in the Officail Amazon Associate blog that Associates can now earn 15% in referral fees on Endless.com shoe and handbag purchases. With free overnight & free return shipping, 110% price guarantee, and 365-day returns window on over 500 brands, Endless.com is THE destination for shoe and accessory shoppers.

Join Amazon.com's affiliate program

Video of Interview with Larry Joseloff of Shop.org

2008-07-05T18:23:00.000-07:00

I thought this interview with Larry Joseloff of Shop.org about how the affiliate marketing space is changing in 2008 was kind of interesting. What do you think?

This and other interesting videos can be found at The State of Affiliate Marketing in Online Retail

A Reminder: Focus on Content.

2008-07-03T19:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I spend more time looking at stats, things like the number of visitors to each of my blogs. The number of impressions, clicks and purchases. But when you really get down to it, what I really need to be doing is this;

Focus on the quality of the content, and everything else will take care of itself.

Google is Retiring the AdSense Referrals Program

2008-07-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

Google is retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August and are relaunching a new Google affiliate network.

The new Google affiliate network will actually be a new version of DoubleClick’s Performics Affiliate Network which they acquired in March.

I'm not that disappointed by this news because try as I might I could never get the AdSense Referral program fine tuned enough to work properly.

So one of this months goals will be to remove all AdSense Referrals from my various blogs by the last week of August. Then I'll have to decide what to replace them with.

I'm not sure on how the new Google Affiliate Network will work. I do have some questions about it. I am wondering if they will allow small publishers and little blogs like mine to participate in the program. But like many of the changes that occur in Affiliate Marketing there will be a learning curve to overcome. But I consider that part of the fun of Affiliate Marketing.

One feature that does not seem to be covered will be the "Google Products" links. This blog has used those in the past, but it appears that they will no longer be available. I hope that they come later because I liked trying to make money by referring people to AdSense, AdWords advertisers and other Google Products.

High Quality Affiliate Content

2008-06-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

The most powerful part of the whole internet to me is the ability to find high quality content in the blink of an eye.

This is something that affiliate marketers have to put to good use.

I get a lot of emails from both the affiliate networks and the advertisers that I am an affiliate for. Some of this stuff has some great info in it. And is what I would call high quality content or information.

So lets see, people search the web for high quality content, and my affiliate networks send me high quality content. I wonder if there is a way that I can use that content to my advantage.

Well the answer is of course there is. If your affiliate networks are sending you emails with links and with info on the deals from advertisers then use that info. Put it out to your readers, let them decide if they want or need the info.

Of course you have to do this in a thoughtful way. Your web site or blog probably serves some niche market. You have to sort through the info that you get and apply it in the correct niche market. For example, if your advertiser sends you info on a music promotion that they are having, it want do you much good to post that in your blog about pet food.

If you do this correctly you will probably serve your customers and your advertisers by doing this.

For example;

Motorola MOTORIZR Z8 Black (Unlocked)

FOR $254.98 + Free Shipping Regular Price $274.98

Buy a LG 225 phone at TracFone and get $30 off, plus double minutes, an accessory kit and free shipping!

Whats Shakin at Buy.com!

Knowing your Advertisers so you can know their content;

As an affiliate marketer you really have to know your advertisers. If you are just starting out in affiliate marketing you may just be glad that your were accepted by the affiliate network and that you have gotten all the administrative BS out of the way.

But hold on there sparky!

One thing that you really need to understand is what the various advertisers bring to the table. And how that fits in with your website or blog.

Here are a few questions that you may want to ask.

1. Does the advertiser have links that promote their affiliate program or do they have recruitment banners? This may not seem important, but if the advertiser also promotes their affiliate program then you may be able to post these links and have it be another revenue stream.

Use Recruitment banners to endorse our program so you can earn more money! When a webmaster visits your Website and joins the program through your link, they will automatically become one of your recruited Websites. You can earn bonuses and commission on all recruited websites.

For example;

Webmasters Make $$$

2. What kind of rules does the advertiser have about paid advertising? This can be a biggie, you want to have a clear idea of how your promotional campaigns could conflict with your paid advertising.

3. Does your advertiser send out a news letter? Do you read it? Is there any valuable info of high quality that you might be able to pass on to your readers? Are there in new coupon codes?

For example OverStock.com offers monthly special coupons;

All of which come from their email news letter.

What I have tried to convey in this post is that one place that you can get high quality affiliate content is from your advertisers. By knowing what kinds of content they offer and the rules for using it you can offer your readers content from your advertisers and it should be a win, win, win situation.

Amazon.com Affiliates might want to watch the Kindle

2008-06-28T20:54:00.000-07:00

I've been keeping my ear to the ground trying to understand how hard I should promote Amazon.com's Kindle. I think the device is really cool and want to get one soon. But aside from wanting one for myself, I wondered as an affiliate just how hard should I promote it.

Well if any of these articles are to be belived it is a device that is poised to make a really big splash. Some are talking iPod type splash.

So it seems that the Kindle is gaining traction, and my bet is that when it takes off at full speed affiliates who take the time to promote are going to be rewarded.

So where do you start? Well first you would have to join the Amazon.com Affiliate program, if you are not a memeber already then pleas click here.

Associates earn 10% in referral fees on the Kindle portable wireless reading device and Kindle Edition books. With Kindle priced at $359 you can earn $35.90 on each Kindle purchase you refer.

The Kindle can also be promoted on eBay's affiliate program too. For example consider this eBay affiliate link;

Kindle @ eBay

Smaller Publishers May Get a New Tool

2008-04-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

Smaller publishers don't have many CPM ad options. The AOL owned Advertising.com wants to change that, they are launching PubAccess an online advertising program for smaller publishers. PubAcces will give small publishers access to the Advertising.com ad network.

Publishers will have better control over their ad inventory, which I will have to say I welcome. I have had a difficult time making sure that the right kinds of ads show up on the various sites that I publish.

According to PubAccess.com

You retain complete control over your inventory. You will be paid a guaranteed CPM on your most valuable impressions, and will be able to choose how best to monetize all of your remaining impressions - either earn a rev-share on all remaining impressions, or default out and have them redirected to a destination of your choice. Should you choose revenue-share, our optimization technology will determine the optimal campaign for your inventory. Should you choose to redirect, you will be able to manage the redirect destination for all of your placements. Regardless of which option you choose, you will always be able to control the type of campaigns that run across your inventory.

There is a minimum requirement of 500,000 impressions per month for the CPM program and no minimum for the affiliate program.

Check out PubAccess.

AbeBooks is moving Affiliate Networks!

2008-04-07T17:21:00.000-07:00

According to an email that I recently received from AbeBooks;

As of May 28th, 2008, the AbeBooks Affiliate Program will no longer be run through the Commission Junction platform.

The email goes on to say that, "Our DoubleClick Performics program will be open for registration as of May 1st, 2008."

The Commission Junction program will be fully shut down, and no longer paying commission, as of May 28th, 2008. And they are encouraging all publishers to migrate to the DoubleClick Performics network by May 1st.

A Discussion About Monetizing Comedy Blogs

2008-04-03T01:03:00.000-07:00

One of the Discussion groups that I belong to over at BlogCatalog is the humor blogs group. We have a discussion going on about how to monetize humor web sites.

I thought it would be interesting to post some of the discussion here.

------------------------------------
3dom ask;

Any ideas - what sponsors should people use on funny picture/videos sites?

How much do funny sites earns anyway? (in my case it is average 1 thousand unique visitors daily - thanks to your stumbles! - 75-80% of traffic coming from US, CA, AU, EU)

-----------------------------------
pointlessbanter said;

Honestly that is a hard thing to do. Google and other contextual advertising isn't going to work. The only thing you can do is try and get direct advertising or get onto a network that will sell ads for you and for that you need to usually be at 100K page views a month to even talk about it.

I have tried a mix of everything and I am still not happy.

-----------------------------------
Fitzgerald said;

You have a lot of content and you have many more visitors than I do. The gurus of affiliate marketing say, "content is king."

Decide what it is you want to sell. Movies, music, books, etc. Then choose a distributor that you want to associate yourself with, i.e. Amazon(dot)com, eBay, there are too many to list.

And depending on what you sell and the cost, you could make a lot of money. Consider (cost x 1000 sells per month). You have 30,000 visitors a month if you sold 10% of them something that cost 1 dollar that would be $3,000.00/month.

That is possible, but it will take a lot of work to figure out what to sell.

Then check out affiliate marketing networks, i.e. LinkShare, Commission Junction, etc. Decide which merchants fit your site.

I did not see any Google links on your site, where do you put your ads?

----------------------------------
3dom said;

Bad thing about my traffic is it all coming from social bookmarking sites. These people don't click anything (on my other site I've got about $7/month from AdSense from 160k unique visitors from Digg/Reddit/SU) - they are always in rush to return to the site from which they came from.

Plus I don't own the content (photos) - so I think site may be banned from AdSense - no point to use AdSense at all. So atm I'm thinking about pop-unders and CPM ads like Adversal (site is getting more than 100k views monthly).

CJ is a good idea. Maybe they have something interesting even for crappy SB traffic =)
-------------------------------------
Fitzgerald said;

I am not sure that you need to be so concerned about where your content comes from. You have a disclaimer and you state that you will remove any material that is copyrighted. I have received some of the pictures from your site in my email. And much of it may be in the public domain. You need to take the most popular pages in your blog and place an ad that is relevant to the picture.

You have a good site, I spent over 30 minutes surfing it yesterday. And I laughed many times. So as I said before you have good content.

Do you know the number one ranking page on your site?
Do you know where your traffic is coming from?
Do you know which search engine sends you the most traffic?
Do you know what search terms people are using to get to your site?

The answers to these questions will help you determine what to try to sell or what affiliate net work to use.

Just off the top of my head, I noticed that you have many funny pictures of girls / ladies. OK, so when a visitor comes they are looking for (1) something funny, and (2) a female. At that point you have their attention. Now you need to try to sell them something.

Female clothing, gag jokes, comedy movies, DVDs of your favorite female comic??? This is what pops into my mind.

There are many things that you could sell to a visitor who comes to your blogs via search.

It is a nice problem to have the traffic and not know how to sell to them, a much harder problem is to have no traffic at all. I do agree that much of the traffic that comes to your site from social networks is of low quality and not really people wanting to buy things. But you also have to consider that everyone that comes to your site buys stuff all the time, so why not have them buy from you.

And again consider that if you sold a $1.00 item to 10% of your traffic it would make you money.

Here is a quick three step approach that I would take if I were you.

1. Identify my most popular content (web pages). Maybe the top ten.

2. Place ads on those pages that are relevant to the content. i.e. if the page is about pets, a pet ad. If the page is about cars, a car ad. I think ads for comedy books, movies, DVDs, mp3s and other entertainment type stuff will work well for you.

3. Try to make more connections to other comedy blogs that will send you good high quality traffic. Go to blogs that you like and think are funny and post relevant comments. Ask the webmaster for link exchanges, that way a part of your traffic will come for other comedy blogs.

And one other thing Google also has referral ads too. So you can use more that AdSense for content type ads from Google.

Flash Multimedia and Affiliate Marketing Security

2008-03-28T18:47:00.000-07:00

Affiliate Marketers have to watch out for malicious online Flash multimedia created with all but the most recent authoring tools

Just when I think I understand some of the security problems associated with affiliate marketing, I read this article, "Web developers, fix thy Flash" by Robert Lemos of SecurityFocus.com.

According to the article;

Flash is a danger because of its ubiquity on the Internet. Adobe estimates that 98 percent of Web users have the Adobe Flash Player installed. Flash is widely used to create the advertisements hosted on most Web sites. Because the advertisements are generally provided by third-party services, using the affiliate networks to send out malicious Flash advertisements has become a serious vector of attack. A group of researchers found that malicious Flash advertisements could spread malicious code to more than 100,000 users for a fee of $100.

When this problem gets fixed it may require affiliates to redo all their flash multimedia links.

Havard Business School - Reducing Risk with Online Advertising

2008-03-25T15:28:00.001-07:00

According to Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman there is fraud in affiliate marketing. You can read his Q&A here.

Fraud is fairly easy in the world of online advertising, particularly for determined adversaries. In this Q&A, HBS professor Ben Edelman, who designs electronic markets, explains how contract terms can be managed to both reduce advertisers' risks of being defrauded and reward good suppliers. "The idea here is to make everyone better off, except of course the fraudsters," Edelman says.

He goes on to outline some methods that cheaters use to defraud both advertisers and affiliates. I found this quote to be interesting;

For example, an affiliate program manager might be paid a modest salary plus 10 percent of year- over- year growth in the size of the affiliate program. But consider the incentives of someone paid in that way. If there is fraud in the affiliate program and the staff person recognizes it and ejects it, that means the program is smaller and her bonus gets smaller. In fact, her bonus might be disproportionately smaller because it's based on growth, so if you took out the 10 percent of fraud in the program, there goes this year's growth and the Christmas bonus. So in many companies the incentive to get to the bottom of this quickly and successfully is tempered by the incentive of staff to do what is in their personal interest.

LinkShare Announces Executive Management Team Changes

2008-03-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

According to a press release from LinkShare there will be changes to their executive management team.

LinkShare, a leading pay-per-action marketing network, announced the resignation of Stephen R. Denton as President of the company and two promotions in its executive management team.

Kelli Beougher, Vice President of Lead Generation Services, was promoted to Senior Vice President and will add responsibilities for LinkShare’s push into new businesses, as well as day to day management of its extensive publisher network. Beougher joined LinkShare in 2001, and has held senior roles in client and network development services. Prior to joining LinkShare, she held positions at both Priceline Webhouse and LexiQuest. She began her career at GE Capital Management, and is a Six Sigma Black Belt and holds a B.B.A. in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin.

You can read the whole press release here;
LinkShare Announces Executive Management Team Changes.

From an email form the new Senior Vice President;

These are exciting times at LinkShare. Throughout 2008, you can expect to see our pace of innovation continue. In recent months, we introduced the industry's first performance-based tracking solutions for video, widgets and other forms of media (Flex Links), mobile commerce tracking (Mobile Links), and the first Web Services-based tracking option among the major US affiliate networks. Last month, we unveiled the industry's most user friendly publisher dashboard. We look forward to continuing our leadership in the areas that will drive your business: technology tools, a high quality network and expert services.

eBay Announces Changes to Affiliate Program

2008-03-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

According to an email that I received yesterday eBay plans to change its Affiliate Program.

From the email;

We are excited to announce eBay’s new global affiliate platform: the eBay Partner Network.

The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform.

While CJ and ValueClick have been valuable partners to eBay throughout the years, we’ve decided to give our affiliate community a customized experience for eBay affiliates.

All the great tools and benefits of working with the eBay program will remain the same – access to the Editor Kit and affiliate API, the flexible destination tool, the great payout structure. In addition, the eBay partner network will provide several new features:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

The eBay Partner Network and Commission Junction will run in parallel for one month through this process, so please plan to complete your migration by May 1st, 2008.

ITworld.com has the following article; EBay to take over affiliate program's management

"ValueClick's Commission Junction does a fairly good job, but the product over the years has grown a bit stagnant and hasn't been keeping up with the demands affiliates have had," said Ron Stewart, GetItNext's CEO.

For example, GetItNext routinely has to manually "dig out" data it feels is essential about its referrals, sales and commissions from the ValueClick reports, Stewart said.

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 6

2008-03-17T14:04:00.001-07:00

OK in today's post I just want to give you a look at the example music blogs that I built for my "How to build a music blog" series. I will explain the affiliate links that I used in a later post. And also give you some insight into why I did certain things in certain ways. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

SqueezeMyLemon Blog

BackBeat Blog

Note the affiliate links that I am using. Also notice the mp3s that I link to as well as some of the images.

And if you still are not convinced that using blogs is a very popular thing, read this; One blog created 'every second' this from the BBC who based it on the number of blogs being tracked by Technorati.

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 5

2008-03-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

OK, today I want to continue talking about mp3 music blogs as a vehicle for affiliate marketing. I know that some of you may be thinking what is this guy talking about. Well one of the things that I have advocated since I started this blog is that you should try to link various communities.

Well that is one of the things that I am trying to do in this series of post. I want to link the affiliate marketers and the audiobloggers. In my mind they are a natural match and it seems logical to me that every audioblogger should also be an affiliate marketer. And visa versa many affiliate marketers could benefit from having an audioblog or two.

A lot of information that you will read on affiliate marketing is not very concrete. No one is telling you exactly how to do it. No one is giving you good accurate information. Also technology is moving so fast that it is difficult to understand the best practices. This is true of both audioblogging and of affiliate marketing. That is why I thought it would be a great idea to provide some examples of how to do this.

Mp3 blogers, audiobloggers, what ever you want to call them, have an excellent format for affiliate marketing. So that is why I am continuing with the series. You could of course scroll down to see the post in this series, but if you are reading this for the first time here are the post in the order that I wrote them.

Please click links below to read parts 1 & 2.

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 1

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 2

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 3

Some Lite Reading RE MP3 Blogs

So here in part 5, I want to give another interesting article that I think speaks to the point that I have been trying to make that audioblogging is blowing up. Listen. And learn. form the BostonGlobe.com.

And a small blurb from the article;

Bay Area music journalist and scholar Oliver Wang, 32, whose site Soul Sides many bloggers look to as a model for its clear presentation and Wang's thoughtful essays, spent 10 years as a college radio DJ. He began posting sound files in February 2004, making him a granddaddy of the genre.

This quote led me to Soul Sides So You Want To Start an Audioblog page. Which is the take of one of the people who started the whole audioblogging phenomena. Mr. Wang's take on it, I think complements what I have tried to say in this series and it is good to read the ideas of a sucessfull audioblogger and learn form his experience.

And Tofu Hut (another popular audioblog) also has a guide to audioblogging from back in 2004. Check out his, HOW TO MUSICBLOG: pt. 1.

Finally I would like to say, that I know there is a different mind set of some audibloggers, they are not interested in commerce. And some of them may even feel that they are selling out by doing affiliate marketing. But when you consider that many audioblogs get hundreds and even thousands of hits a day.

Some Lite Reading RE MP3 Blogs

2008-03-15T20:52:00.000-07:00

I will continue with my series "How to Build an Affiliate Music Blog" here shortly, but I found a coulple of articles that I think will help make some of the points I have been trying to make about how popular music blogs are.

Which makes them a perfect vehical for affiliate marketing.

The Music Blog Boom from RollingStone.com.

A musical blog party from the Los Angeles Times Calander Live.com.

Busy re-doing all my affiliate links.

2008-03-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

I want to continue the series I am doing right now about how to create an affiliate music blog.

But right now I am trying to fix all my affiliate links. So bear with me and look forward to seeing the rest of this series as I get all my blogs updated.

I am also working hard to get all my blogs online with the new social networks that are popping up. If you want to check me out on the social networks visit me on the following links.

My Blogcatalog profile

My MyBlogLog profile

My MySpace Page

My StumbleUpon Profile

My Technorati Profile

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 3

2008-03-11T00:25:00.000-07:00

Please click links below to read parts 1 & 2.

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 1

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 2

In this third part of my continuing series "How to Build an Affiliate Music Blog" I want to cover and concentrate on the tools that can be used by a begining affiliate to create a low (to no cost affiliate blog). I say low cost because I will be concentrating on tools that are for the most part free to use.

I am assuming that if you are reading this you probably have not created an affiliate blog before. That is why I won't to keep the cost of putting it together low. That is why I will also be recommending the use of free tools.

There are those who will tell you that you get what you pay for. Most of these people are trying to sell you something. I on the other hand am trying to show you how to make money. So for every tool that I list here there is a corrosponding version that can and will cost you large sums of money. Feel free to spend what your budget will allow or you can use the tools I mention here and when you understand how to use them better you can upgrade to the pay versions.

One of the truly revolutionary things that has happened in the online world is the proliferation of free online space. It is mind boggling to think of all the free space that a small business can find and use online. Basically the only limitations are your imagination. Google, Yahoo, MSN and several other online companies are battling for the hearts and minds of consumers and one of the ways that they are trying to intice us is by providing free online space.

2. Selection of tools

a. Blogging platforms - One of the coolest things about the environment that bloggers find themselves in today is the many free blogging platforms are out there. It really is mind boggling. I've noticed that some bloggers have the attitude that you really need to use a pay blogging platform to be effective. But I can tell you that some of the most successfull music blogs out there use the free blogging platforms.

And if like me you are parsimonious then you may want to wait until your blog starts making money before you spend money on a blogging platform. Also there is steep learning curve and unless you already know many of the ends and outs of useing a blog then you may be wasting your money. But hey it's your money, and as a business man I always urge people to spend money, who knows some of it may trickle my way.

OK enough of the soap box, here are a few of the blogging platforms that are out there for you to use.

-Blogger
-Live Journal
-Journal Space
-Wordpress

I have chosen Blogger for my example blog because it is the simplist and most elegent solution to the problem. You can build a blog in a matter of mineutes and within an hour you can have one up and running and be publishing stuff on the internet. I know this to be a fact, because I just did it a couple of days ago and we are going to do it again.

It is beyound the scope of my little "How to series" here to go into all the ins and outs of blogging platforms. But you can read a very interesting article by Susannah Gardner that I think covers most of the considerations that a begining blogger should think about. Her "Time to check: Are you using the right blogging tool?" is a great read and will help you decide what blogging platform you may ultimately decide on using.

One last point about my choice of blogging platform. The various blogging platforms are actually communities of people. We will use this fact to attract members of the various communities to our new blog.

b. Affiliate Networks to use. Because this is a music blog and becasue I already have many relationships with merchants who sell music online, I will be using those merchants and the affiliates networks associated with them. I am using these merchants as an example.

You can and should use affiliate networks that you have examined and decided that they fit your goals and the way you want to run your program.

You can read this post to better understand Affiliate Networks and merchants. And get some of the things that you may want to consider when you decide which affiliates you want to use.

How well do you know your Affiliate merchants

Just to clarify the affiliate merchants that we will be using while making this example blog are;

Examples of affiliate merchants include;

iTunes Essentials

Visit the Sony Music Store today!

Music123

Musicmatch Jukebox Plus

Amazon Associate Program

Musicmatch Jukebox Plus

Rhapsody - which has a free down load promotion going now

Also there are affiliate Networks that will administer many of these merchants for you, for example; LinkShare is an e-commerce business solution for over 3.5 million online relationships. Become an affiliate of the LinkShare Network for FREE and earn revenue by linking to over 500 premier online merchants.

And then there is also All Posters.com. Because they have many posters of musicians they make a perfect affiliate for this kind of blog.

I will close this post by letting you know what is left to cover.

Using Referes
Linking Strategy
RSS Feeds
Photos and Blogs

I will cover these topics in future post. And I hope this information is helpful and would love to hear from anyone who is trying this.

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 2

2008-03-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

In my last post I introduced the idea of starting a music blog for affiliate purposes. In today's post I want to cover the planing phase.

I can hear you saying, "If I wanted to do planing I would have kept my day job in Corporate America." Well if, like me, you have several different blogs that you maintain you have to plan. As a matter of a fact, I can't do anything with out having a plan.

Now when I say plan, I do not mean a 100 page power point presentation, with color glossy photographs that have a paragraph on the back explaining what each picture is about.

No, what I have in mind is something that will guide you through a complex process. For some people that can be something as easy as just making a list of steps that you are going to follow. A check list of sorts. You may not even write it down. Me I have to make notes. I have reached that age where I have to write things down to remember them. You know what they say, "Memory is the second thing to go".

And besides what would I have to write about if I did not write about planing. One of the things that happens to many bloggers is that after a while they run out of steam. It is difficult to day in and day out come up with post that others will want to read. This is one of the problems that having a plan will help you avoid. I have to refer back to the plans that I initially wrote for some of my blogs to regain my focus and to make sure that I am creating new ideas that fit in with the stated purpose of the blog.

So let's get started. The first thing you need to plan is the Name of your blog.

Name Your Blog - It is important to give your blog a unique name that allows readers to get a glimpse into what the blog is all about.

One reason to give your blog name some thought is to ensure that you have a unique name. If you choose a name that is being used by some other site, or one that can be confused with something else you run the risk that your blog will not be found. And you may put in a lot of hard work building your blog only to find that you have to change the name at some later time. So put in a little work up front and choose a unique name.

Choose a name that is meaningful. I have seen many blogs that have names that do not give any idea of what they are about. And you can name your blog this way too. But you will have to build name recognition, and this task is easier when the name is relevant to the subject matter of the blog. The point is to think about it, and give your blog a name that helps your reader understand what your blog is all about. A meaningful blog name may even help you to stay focused as you post to your blog.

I suggest that after you have decided on a name that you enter it into a search engine and see what comes up. This step will help you see what other sites are using the words that you pick for your blog's name.

In my case I named my music blog "Squeeze My Lemon" because the blog that I am going to create is a blues music blog. Squeeze my lemon is a reference to an old Blues music lyric. If you have heard the Led Zeppelin tune "The Lemon Song" then you are no doubt familiar with this lyric. If not, don't worry it is just an example, but I am hoping that blues music fans will relate to that name.

Ideas for naming your blog;

Name it after a band that plays the type of music you will blog about.

Name it from a music lyric.

Name it for a musical instrument.

Name it for a performer, songwriter, or individual related to music.

This list could go on and on, but I just wanted to give you some ideas of things you could use to create a unique name that is relevant to the kind of music blog that you will create.

Purpose of Blog - Next I like to write a purpose of the blog. You may feel that you know what the purpose of your blog is. But I can tell you from experience that after you have been writing a blog for a while, it can become difficult to stay focused. And having a written purpose will help you to focus.

Having a written out purpose will also help you later when we start promoting the blog. You will have an answer when you are asked to describe your blog.

You could write something like the following;

The purpose of the Squeeze My Lemon blog is to be a blues music resource. It will be a collection of links to other blues music resources, including books, blogs, articles and other media. The main focus of the blog will be a place for blues music fans to download legal mp3 files.

Squeeze My Lemon is a blog that will review other blues mp3 blogs as well as provides links to free and legal online mp3s. Discussions of digital music and the hardware needed to play digital music will also be covered. Tips, and "how to" information will be provided to help the modern music enthusiast make informed choices.

It will also be a platform for affiliate links. Links to digital music providers as well as hardware and other music equipment will linked to.

List of possible purposes for your music blog (besides being a platform for affiliate links).

1. To keep others informed about the music industry. News, concert dates, venues, trends.

2. Hardware, mp3 players, car audio, home stereo equipment, portable digital players.

3. To interface with other fans of a certain band, group or performer. ie a bolg about Led Zeppelin.

4. Provide links, references to music.

5. To give the history of a band, musical form or style of music.

6. Again there could be many purposes for your blog, this list is just provided to get you thinking.

Sources of content - Now that you have chosen a name for your blog and you have a good idea of the purpose of the blog it is time to think about the source of content. This is the biggie. The other steps in planning were the lead up to this step.

The sources of content depend on the purpose of the blog. And the purpose is reflected in the name you chose. For example if your purpose is to inform, then your sources may be news web sites, books, magazines and other resources that give you news.

If your purpose is to entertain then you may have to create content or find legal sources of entertainment out on the web.

If your purpose is just to collect a group of resources for your own edification (which is an excellent reason to keep a blog / journal) then again, you will have to do some searching to find sources.

In my case because I have chosen to blog about blues music. I will use the following sources (they are being presented here as examples).

1. Amazon.com down loadable music.

2. Other music blogs.

3. The local edition of my news paper.

4. Local Bands.

5. Various RSS Feeds.

6. flickr.com.

7. Google images.

8. Yahoo images.

So in today's post I have tried to give a brief plan for the creation of a music blog that I will use for affiliate links. I am doing this to help new affiliates get an idea of how they can create an affiliate program step by step. In future post I will go over the tools we will need to implement the blog plan that I have developed in this post.

Feel free to add your comments or ideas to make this plan better.

Have a website? Learn how to make money with LinkShare.

How to build an affiliate blog. Pt One.

2008-03-06T23:57:00.001-08:00

In today's post I want to start a series that just popped into my mind while looking in the mirror this morning and wondering if I needed to shave. Because I work at home I decided, no problem and just as I made the decision not to shave the idea for this post popped into my head. Sometime ideas come out of no where. In an earlier post I mentioned that a great project for an aspiring affiliate marketer would be to start a music blog.

I have a music blog (BackBeat) that I have linked to in the past in this blog. So I know that it can be done. As a matter of a fact I have been planing to create several new music blogs. The idea is that if I blogged about the process of creating a new blog, for the purpose of providing an example of how to create a blog for affiliate marketing, new affiliates would find it instructive.

There is some great information on the internet about affiliate marketing, but there does not seem to be a lot of detailed information on the hows of doing it. My intentions here are to provide detailed information for the starting affiliate and show how you can get started on a shoe string budget.

What I will try to cover in this series of post is;

The Planning of a new affiliate blog. (oh my God not planning)
Selection of tools used on the blog. (This is where my inner Geek will shine)
Linking Strategies. (It is kind of like chess, with web pages)

I hope you enjoy this series and look forward to getting feed back from readers that have better ideas of ways to do things. And don't mind sharing them. Or just to hear your thoughts about what I am writing.

Reading to get ideas and an interesting article.

2008-03-05T18:52:00.001-08:00

Wow, I already failed in my attempt to blog everyday for 30 days in a row. Well actually I have written in most of my other blogs everyday for some time now, but I really want to write in this blog everyday also.

I believe that content is more important than anything. And if that is true then I need to create some everyday. But even though I think about affiliate marketing everyday, I don't always write those ideas down.

One of the things that helps me to write about affiliate marketing or create content for any of my blogs is reading about the subject matter. I kind of have to keep my ear to the ground for ideas, by reading on the subject. But sometimes I even fall behind in doing that.

I recently however read a very interesting article Monetization Options for your Web Content by Carsten Cumbrowski at Revenews.com.

In the article Mr. Cumbrowski looks at the different ways to monetize content on the Internet. The common methods to monetize content on the Internet that he covers are; access/subscription fee, display advertising, sponsorships, contextual ads, and affiliate links. Then he list a few advantages and disadvantages of each and looks at various problems related to each method.

He then reaches some conclusions and discusses other problems with affiliate marketing. I think this article makes for good reading and may lead to interesting discussions in the affiliate marketing community.

I'm Taking the Challenge.

2008-03-03T00:53:00.000-08:00

Over at Affiliate Confession.com the blogger Alan LeStourgeon has issued a 30 day challenge to all bloggers.

Go to his blog and read about it, and maybe let me know if you plan to take him up on it.

Tip to get more traffic to your blog.

2008-03-02T10:32:00.001-08:00

On thing that I have noticed that gets more traffic to your blog is the use of images. I know this might sound like a oversimplification but follow me with this one.

One of the biggest searches online is for images. Don't believe me, monitor your traffic and see how many Google and Yahoo searches your blog gets for images.

Including an image with your post provides another way for the post to be found. But here is the catch, you need to make sure that the browser knows that an image is being displayed. So that the search engines can find it.

The things that must be done to ensure that the search engines find your images is to give your images a meaningful name. And to use the HTML alt attribute when posting your images.

For examples on how to use HTML and the alt attribute please see HTML Images @W3Schools.com.

The alt attribute is used to define an "alternate text" for an image. The value of the alt attribute is an author-defined text:

[img src="boat.gif" alt="Big Boat"]

The "alt" attribute tells the reader what he or she is missing on a page if the browser can't load images. The browser will then display the alternate text instead of the image. It is a good practice to include the "alt" attribute for each image on a page, to improve the display and usefulness of your document for people who have text-only browsers.

Note that in the above example I am using the [ and ] symbols to replace < and >, so that the text can be displayed.

Also in the example above the image named boat.gif has a name that will help it to be found by the search engines, and also the alt attribute gives more info that will help any one searching for "big boat" find this post.

I hope you find this tip helpful, as you build your blogs and drive more traffic to your blogs so that your affiliate marketing campaigns work more efficiently.

Recap;

1. Use images when you post in your blog.
2. Give the images a meaningful name that helps them to be found by search engines.
3. Use the "alt attribute" to further help the search engines find your images.

It has been a long time.

2008-02-28T20:32:00.000-08:00

It has been along time since I updated this blog. Actually it has been a long time since I updated many of my blogs.

I kind of got burned out on the whole thing. It seemed to me that I was basically spinning my wheels for a while there.

So I decided to step back and catch my breath and now I am ready to give it another try.

I plan on updating the look of most of my blogs.

I want to start using many of the new social networking tools that are out there.

I am going to reduce the ads that are on all of my blogs. I'm not making a lot of money from them anyway, so I am going to try to devote more of my time with coming up with good content.

We will see how long that can last.

Amazon Affiliates and Images.

2006-03-29T12:13:00.000-08:00

As an Amazon.com affiliate I have looked for ways to be creative with the links that Amazon allows you to build. I stumbled across a link that will let you use Amazon images in what ever creative ways that you can think of.

Neat Uses for Amazon Images.

Also take a look at the web site whre this page is hosted, it is a great example of what you can do with Affiliate programs.

file under;
Affiliate Marketing, Amazon, Tips, Tricks, Tools,

Informative Articles on Affiliate Programs

2006-03-23T17:25:00.000-08:00

I was all primed to present a new idea that I had about using a product as the bases for an affiliate marketing program. Nothing ground shaking but I thought it might be a nice thing to write about. And as I was surfing I came across these three great articles from www.ecomerce-guide.com.

Affiliate Week Update - eBay Affiliates

Affiliate Week Update - Google AdSense

Affiliate Week Update - Amazon Associates

These articles are great reads and anyone who uses any of these affiliate programs will benefit by reading these articles. I even got some ideas of changes that I need to make in some of my affiliate programs, based on info in these articles.

file under;

eBay, Affiliates, Google, AdSense, Amazon

Creating Connections

2006-03-03T16:41:00.000-08:00

One idea that I would like to introduce you to is that you can build a market to present the products and services of your affiliate merchants by creating connections between different online communities.

By different communities I am referring to forums, electronic bulletin boards, discussion groups and other online areas that you are a part of. Different blogging platfors are hosted by different companies and each company has built a community that has different characteristics.

There are numerous forums and discussion groups, some of which I have listed over on the right. Each group, each forum, each discussion board has a different group of people that frequent them. These people act collectively to create an overall personality of the site or forum. These two facts can be used to the advantage of those of us who do affiliate marketing. By combining different communities you can create an over all audience for you marketing efforts.

As an example, I maintain a blog on JournalSpace. This blog is titled Fitzgerald's Journal, it is where I write about the collectibles that I buy and sell. Many of the people who use JournalSpace are artist. They are primarily writers and poets or people who are interested in those two subjects. Because I am an affiliate for Amazon.com, BOOKSAMILLION.COM, www.ebay.com and several other book sellers it is easier to present the wares of my affiliate merchants to this group of people who are all ready interested in this subject. I recently presented some poetry to the group and also listed several of the books by the poet carried by my affiliate merchants.

Another example, I am a frequent visitor and contributor to the Yahoo Groups, MSN Groups and Google Groups. All these major web sites host groups for online sellers and most of the people who visit these groups are me small business people trying to learn to run their businesses better. This group has certain subjects that they discuss often and they are interested in certain services. Such as web hosting, web design, inventory systems, anyone who is an affiliate for these kinds of items could offer this group information about merchants who sell these services.

The key is knowing the personality of the online group or community that you want to market to. By knowing what it is that each group wants and there personalities, you can better tailor your affiliate program towards each group.

file under;
affiliate marketing, groups, marketing, connections

Key words and tricky phrases

2006-02-21T16:40:00.000-08:00

Or if you are going to walk the walk you need to talk the talk.

OK the first thing I have learned is that there is a lot of jargon out there. I mean a lot. What's a regular guy to do? So I am putting together a dictionary of sorts. You can do the same for yourself if you would like.

Just go to Google type in the word Affiliate + definitions. You will get pages and pages of definitions. Some of them geared towards the sites that have them up but for the most part these are the commonly accepted meanings of terms used in the "affiliate education space." What ever that is?

People who do affiliate marketing make it difficult for a regular guy to understand. I have not heard this much mumbo jumbo since I was in B school.

I just want to give a couple of links to a pages that I thought had some good definitions on them. This is not me indorsing these sites or their products. I hope to post my complete list and will share it with you all.

Affiliate Marketing Definitions @www.marketingterms.com

Affiliate Program Terms and Definitions @ www.iboost.com

file under;
affiliate marketing, affiliate programs, definitions, marketing

An Insight From QiSoft Blog

2006-01-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

An interesting insight from a fellow blogger about Affiliate Programs.

Regina Thomas in her QiSoftware Blog ponders the strategies that Affiliate Programs use to accept Affiliates. Read her musing in her post Affiliate Sign Up Merry Go Round

file under;
affiliate programs, marketing

Books on Affiliate Marketing

2006-01-06T12:35:00.000-08:00

In todays post I wanted to present a few books that cover the subject of Affiliate Marketing.

Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants
by Shawn Collins, Frank Fiore (Paperback)

Strategic Affiliate Marketing
by Simon Goldschmidt, et al (Paperback)

Rod Cook's How To Start Your Network Marketing Or Internet Multi-Affiliate Company
by Rod Cook (Spiral-bound - January 2004)

Revenue Magazine [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION]
5 issues/12 months

Affiliate Cash Flow Marketing
by David L Hancock (Paperback)

Common Sense With Chrome Trim: How A Bankrupt Truck Driver Used Free Publicity, No-Cost Email Advertising and Affiliate Programs To Build A Six-Figure Internet Marketing Income
by George McKenzie (Audio Cassette - July 2003)

file under;
books, Affiliate, marketing,

RSS Feeds the basics

2005-12-30T19:18:00.000-08:00

As an affiliate marketer you want your blogs and web sites to have as much exposure as possible. One great way to increase traffic is to submit your blogs and web sites to use RSS Feeds that give searchers another channel on the web to find your content.

RSS feeds are becoming a popular way of transmiting and recieving information via the internet.

Because as more people create content for the internet and as more blogs, web sites, news services and other online publishers continue to grow in number and variety it becomes more important to maintain high visibility for your content.

In the past the web had mostly web sites which were built using HTML-based pages, and the search engines and other directories were the main ways that people found content.

"Well the times they are a changing."

With the increases in the number of content providers and publishers comes the migration to a new distribution channel, RSS. The savy consumer of information can use RSS newsreaders and aggregarots to keep themselves informed quickly and efficiantly while reviewing the increased number of sources.

So it does an affiliate well to understand what RSS Feed is and how to use it to increase the visibility of their blogs and web sites. The following links are provided as an introduction the the topic.

Answers.com: RSS Feed

WebReference.com's Introduction to RSS

Website Promotion with RSS Feeds - four tips by Thomas Korte

eBay's Affiliate Program Defined

2005-12-19T15:05:00.000-08:00

Andy Geldman over at Auction Bytes answers the question, "Auction Software FAQ: What Is the eBay Affiliate Program?"

Great read and he gives a simple easy to understand definition of the eBay's Affiliate program.

file under;
eBay
auctions
affiliate programs

Commission Junction Takes Steps To Sop Fraud.

2005-10-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

Commission Junction Hires Web Detectives by Brian Livingston at ITManagement.com.

In the above linked article Brian Livingston out lines steps taken by Commission Junction to stop affiliates who use fraudulent methods. It is a good read and all affiliates will find something interesting.

file under;
afilliate
marketing
Commission Junction

Comment Spam or How not to get Links to your Blog / Web Site

2005-10-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

Recently I've noticed that I am getting a lot of comments in my blogs. This is a good thing, right? Wrong! Most of these comments are from people who think that leaving a comment in my blog provides them with a quality link back to their blogs or web site. In today's post I want to explain why this is not so.

There is not enough traffic to this blog

First of all, I do not get enough traffic to this blog to warrant anyone linking to me in an attempt to siphon off some of that traffic. I do not get enough traffic from people who would actually buy any goods or service that you might provide a link to in the first place. That is not the emphasis of this blog, so when you place a link for irrelevant goods and services here you will probably not get any traffic from it.

Most of the traffic to this blog is from other small affiliate marketers who are trying to earn a living like me. Those are the people that this blog is aimed at. This is one of the reasons that I am writing this post, I want to educate my fellow small affiliate marketers about Comment Spam.

Links to this blog can be clicked on, but...

One reason that leaving a comment with a link in this blog or any blog really is because it is not a very efficient way to get a link back. Not only is it not efficient, but the probability that the search engines will find your link are small. And I will definitely not link back to you, unless I know you are linking to me. If you read my post titled A Tool To Get More Traffic To Your Blog you will see that I use the refers at the bottom of this page to keep track of the web pages that link here. And as soon as you provide a link to me, the refers automatically provide a link back. Also for me to link to you the content of your site must fit with my way of doing business, that is you are not using pop ups or other underhanded methods to drive traffic to your site or blog. I would think that every blogger would do the same.

Then there is the technical reason for not using Comment Spam. The Blogger help section explains this in their "Keeping Comments Clean" post.

If you read the post above you will learn that all links placed in comments will automatically use the rel="nofollow" tag, so they'll receive no PageRank boost.

The Blogger help section also explains word verification which helps to stop the automated placing of comment spam.

So I have decided to delete the spam comments

The reasons that I have decided to take this course of action is because I realized that some of the sites that were linking here were;

1. Using questionable methods, such as having pop ups that force web surfers to click on a link that downloads adware and other malicious software. So I warn all visitors and readers of this blog, be careful when you click on a link in a comment.

2. Most of the post have nothing to do with my original post. And take the emphasis away from some of the points that I am trying to make here in my blog.

3. I am a annoyed by others trying to gain traffic from my hard work.

There is no barrier to entry to get into Affiliate Marketing. Which means that many people enter this space looking for a quick buck. I personally believe that there is no quick easy way to do this. The best way to get and keep good quality traffic is to create content that readers will want and will link to. In my mind this is actually easier then doing some of the underhanded ways that spammers do it.

file under;

tips
links
tools
spam
affiliate
bloging
marketing
comments

A Tool to Get More Traffic to Your Blog.

2005-09-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

Like most bloggers I am continually trying to figure out ways to get more traffic to my blogs. So today I want to introduce a site that I think fellow bloggers and affiliates can use to get more traffic to their sites.

This tool is called a Referrer Feed and it is offered by the good folk over at Referer.org. In my opinion this is an awesome tool and I really like it.

A Referrer Feed allows you to instantly (as soon as someone visits your page through that link) see which website has a link to your site and on which page the link to your site is located as well as which page of your site they linked to. Perfect way for reciprocal link exchange - as soon as someone links to your site and sends you a visitor - return link to their site appears on your page! If their link to your site is removed - your link to them will disappear from your page automatically! No need to monitor!

And it does work. For example if you go to their site right now and add the refers code to your blog and then click back to my blog you will be on my refers list it is just that easy. And if you click on the line back to your blog on my refers list my blog will then end up on your list. Easy and cool.

One way that I like to use this is to locate other blogs that are using the Referrer Feed Service and then link to them. That way I get traffic from that other site, as some visitors exit their site via the refers list. Sometimes I find a great site and then I check out all the sites that are on their refers list. I can not tell you the interesting information I have found this way.

Other advantages of using a referrers feed;

It enhances your visitors experience by providing relevant links of interest.
Your site will get more links from other websites who wants a link back from you.
It is easy and fast to get started.
The service is free!
No approval needed and no registration.
Easy to install but is completely programmable.
Shows you how people are finding your site.
Allows you to see as well as show where your visitors are coming from.

Another referrer feed that you might want to check out can be found at truefresco.org

file under;

tips
tricks
tools
traffic
auction
marketing

Forbes says that ValueClick Remains A Top Sector Pick

2005-09-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

According to Forbes online ValueClick Remains A Top Sector Pick."

The above article states that;

...the online marketing firm is "well-positioned" heading into the seasonally strong fourth quarter.

A Couple of Cool Tips: Rotating Adds & Changing Colors

2005-09-19T14:16:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of interesting tips that affiliate marketers may be able to use to rotate banners and to change the colors of Adsense. I have been wanting to say something about this for a while now, but Quick Online Tips beat me to the punch. Check out their very informative tips.

Commission Junction SmartZones : Rotate Banners Advertisements

Rotate Google Adsense Ads Colors : Reduce Ad Blindness

file under;
affiliate marketing
advertising
marketing
affiliate
ads

Blogging Hurricane Katrina

2005-09-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

If you read any of my blogs you may know that my home town is Shreveport Louisiana. And I can not tell you how sad I am as I hear more and more bad news from my home state and the Gulf Coast as a whole.

The information flow is spotty and slow. Major News organizations are having a hard time getting out the news from this rural area of the country. The New Orleans Times-Picayune did not have a print edition for three days, they and other papers and TV stations are operating on the web.

A reader of one of my other blogs from anoter country said, "Thanks for the links - the info I get here is very general." So I thought a country boy like me might be able to help to gather some helpful links to inform and help the people of the area.

PHOTOS

Before and after pics of the flood from flickr.

flickr photos for the neworleans tag.

flickr photos for the katrina tag.

NEWS

The Times-Picayune

WDSU Blog

WWLTV News

COMMUNITY BOARDS @ FORUMS

New Orleans Craigslist Community Board

Times-Picayune Missing Persons Forum

Red Cross-Salvation Army

CNN Reported Safe List

Full Circle Katrina flood Victims and familys board

Katrina: Family-Friends Forum

Vieux Carre (French Quarter) Life Forum

BLOGS

Polimom Says

New Orleans Metro Blogs

Looka at Gumbo Pages

Ernie the Attorney

MAKE A DONATION

Red Cross.org

FEMA: Where to Donate

Net Work For Good

File under;

storm
gulf coast
hurricane
Katrina

An Idea for Affiliate Marketing

2005-08-28T01:08:00.000-07:00

Here is an idea that just popped into my head. I can't help it, the ideas just keep coming and that is one of the reasons that I maintain the Affilinfo blog. The blog gives me a place to post my ideas and review and keep track them. I have to tell you that this idea has not been implemented by me yet and all the details have not been worked out. I'll leave that to you.

But I think that it could work for some enterprising affiliate who implements it. And truth be known some affiliates may already be using this idea. So it may not be the most original idea to come along. Anyway, here goes.

My idea is, to monitor auction sites like eBay.com, Overstock.com, uBid.com, Liquidation.com, Amazon.com and see what are the most popular items or areas that items are being sold under. And then start a blog for that area or item. Once you start a blog for the popular items or the area that you are interested in, then you use the tools of affiliate marketing, SEO (search engine optimization), RSS Feeds, and web design to attract buyers to these popular items. And if you generate any sells then you earn a percentage of the price or a commission on items sold, or leads generated.

If you imagine all the people that are searching for a particular item as a stream, and you imagine that you can divert parts of that stream and tap into its income earning potential than it is easy to see how this approach can work.

If you have read other parts of this blog you will know that I am a proponent of using the most low cost methods available to you. So that is why I recommend that as a beginning affiliate marketer you use blogger or one of the other free blogging tools to start with.

So here are the steps to implement my idea;

1. Study auctions sites for popular items or popular areas to link to.

examples; indie music, Britney Spears , Aeon Flux , mp3 players, Brad Pitt , Angelina Jolie, etc.

2. Find and locate affiliate programs that provide links to the items in
step one.

examples; eBay.com, Amazon.com, Overstock.com

3. Create a blog that can act as a focal point to discuss the popular item and link to the affiliate merchants items.

examples;

BabyBuggyBumper
BackBeat
SqueezeMyLemon

How the Affiliate Marketing Industry Is Dealing With Fraud.

2005-08-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

Today I'd like to draw your attention to an article titled How the Affiliate Marketing Industry Is Dealing With Fraud. It is by Danay Escanaverino @ EccommerceTimes.com.

With so much legislation and buzz about other Internet marketing issues such as spyware, adware, SPAM and click fraud making daily news, it is simply a matter of time before an effort towards some solution solidifies into real standards. Information on sharing is still an essential element in stemming the tide of fraud.

This article, in my opinion, is well written and covers some of the issues of fraud in the Affiliate Marketing Industry. It provides links to several forums which I agree will offer the beginning affiliate marketer much needed knowledge. It suggest that reading forums allows affiliates to learn from each other how to identify fraud and the best practices of affiliate marketing.

Local Affiliate Marketing Ad

2005-08-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

The idea that I want to share with you today is an idea that dove tails very well with my last post (where I detailed how I created a blog for a local Plumbing business). A lot of what goes on in affiliate marketing is global, by that I mean many of your customers and the merchants that you are affiliated with are global businesses. You have very little face to face contact with them or you deal with them via the phone or through email only.

I think that it is a good idea to try to focus on local markets. As I stated in my last post the trend towards doing local marketing is picking up. And all the big search engines are trying to crack the nut of how to offer better local marketing too.

In keeping with that trend I thought that I would try Craig's List. So I created an ad that links to this blog. I also created a Craig's List ad for the blog that I created for my friend at Mini Rooter, the plumber. I think that the combination of using free blogs, and free Craig's List ads is a low cost winning combination that almost any small business can use.

Click here to see my Craig's List ad for The Affilinfo Blog.

Click here to see my Craig's List ad for Mini Rooter Plumbing Business.

As I pointed out the blog can be used by any small business to highlight goods and service that they offer.

If you are reading this because of my Craig's List ad, please read some of my first post to this blog, where I give tips and tricks for beginning affiliate marketers and give a lot of how to information. There is lots of good information about how you can use affiliate marketing to enhance you online business as well as ideas of how to break into affiliate marketing.

Please book mark this blog or add it to your list of favorites. Feel free to either email me or leave a comment with any question that you might have.

Creating Blogs for Local Small Businesses & Affiliate Marketing

2005-08-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

Idea: Create Blogs for Local Small Businesses & Affiliate Marketing

OK the latest project that I have been working on is to create a blog for local small businesses that I can also use to do affiliate marketing.

I think this is a good idea and that many beginning affiliate marketers could do the same thing. This idea will take advantage of several trends that are going on in the world at large.

Trend One: Local Marketing The trend to do marketing locally, also referred to as localized on line advertising. It is where businesses are contacting or presenting ads only to consumers who live within certain regions. Content relevance takes on a new level of meaning with local marketing.

Trend Two: Publishing for Local Areas Publishers that use the search business model are finding local marketing to be a valuable paid search advertisement tool. These publishers can tell the search engines to serve their advertisements only when a search is associated with a particular region, state, city, or even zip code. The more precise targeting results in lower costs and higher returns for search publishers. For example, publishers marketing plumbers campaigns can exclude any areas out side the service area of the plumber, ensuring that their search advertisement budget is allocated in the most efficient manner possible.

All the big search engines are trying to get into Local Search. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN all have local search sections. They are even using technologies that deliver local searches rather you ask for them or not. They understand that you really are looking for things that are close to you. For example, I live in San Diego, and I entered plumber into Google. I noticed that the top listed plumbers were San Diego based plumbers. It seems that Google is so smart that it knows where I am at without me telling it.

Although it is beyond the scope of what I want to talk about in this post, I believe that Google knows where I am at based on my IP address. Cool.

Well this got me to thinking about the small businesses in my area. And I thought about how many of them could benefit from having a blog. And how if I built it for them I could use the blogs as a platform for affiliate marketing and the small business could use the blog to serve their local customers.

So I created a blog for a friend of mine who is a plumber, that is why I was searching for plumbers in the first place.

You can check the blog that I created here; MiniRooterSD. My idea with putting together this blog for my friend was that he could use it to communicate with his customers. You can note a couple of features that I built into this blog.

1. I highlight one of the services that he provides. We use Water Jets. In this post I show a diagram of how water jets work. Any small business could do a post for each service that they provide to help better describe what it is they do.

2. I provide him a post titled "Frequently Asked Plumbing Questions". As his customers ask him questions he can answer them and interact with them, there by communicating with future customers as well. And he as able to communicate his expertise as a plumber in this post. I will update this post for him as more customers questions come in.

Now you may be wondering what this has to do with affiliate marketing, well I think that as my friend gives out his business card that has the URL of this blog to his customers, the blog will get more traffic and as people visit the blog they will may click on some of the other affiliate links that I have provided.

This post is just one example of what an affiliate marketer could do to create blogs for the businesses in their local area. I am using the cheapest and most available tools here just to show you how it could be done, but you could use much better tools to create a more polished final product.

As Local On Line Marketing evolves, it will become more of an embedded part of existing marketing vehicles, but there is a great deal of opportunity for early adopters right now!

I would be interested in hearing how some other affiliate marketers out there think they can use this. Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

A Note for Audiobloggers

2005-08-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

If you are an audioblogger who stumbled on to my last few post you may be saying. "What is this guy talking about?" That thought occurred to me as I was doing work on my audioblog, called BackBeat. I mentioned in a recent post that I wanted to get the audioblogging community and the affiliate marketing community together, because I see a lot of opportunity for both communities.

Most affiliate marketers are looking for good ideas and ways to promote the merchants that they are affiliated with, and most audiobloggers are on a tight budget and do a lot of work building content sites for little to no pay. And my idea is that via the use of affiliate marketing techniques, audiobloggers can start making a little money on the side.

There are some audiobloggers who have figured out affiliate marketing, so most of what I have been writing is aimed at the beginning affiliate and the beginning audioblogger.

Having said all that, for you audiobloggers out there who have no clue as to where to start with affiliate marketing. Take a look at some of my earlier post and check out these two forums.

AssociatePrograms.com a friendly forum where you can get questions answered and rub elbows with other affiliates.

ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum is an Affiliate Marketing forum for both newbie and experienced affiliates to learn and earn more by sharing information.

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 6

2005-08-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

OK in today's post I just want to give you a look at the example blog that I built for my "How to build a music blog" series. I will explain the affiliate links that I used in a later post. And also give you some insight into why I did certain things in certain ways. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

SqueezeMyLemon

Note the affiliate links that I am using. Also notice the mp3s that I link to as well as some of the images.

And if you still are not convinced that using blogs is a very popular thing, read this; One blog created 'every second' this from the BBC who based it on the number of blogs being tracked by Technorati.

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 5

2005-08-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

Bay Area music journalist and scholar Oliver Wang, 32, whose site Soul Sides many bloggers look to as a model for its clear presentation and Wang's thoughtful essays, spent 10 years as a college radio DJ. He began posting sound files in February 2004, making him a granddaddy of the genre.

Some Lite Reading RE MP3 Blogs

2005-07-24T02:31:00.000-07:00

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 3

2005-07-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

Using Referes
Linking Strategy
RSS Feeds
Photos and Blogs

I will cover these topics in future post. And I hope this information is helpful and would love to hear from anyone who is trying this.

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates. Pt. 2

2005-07-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

Name it after a band that plays the type of music you will blog about.

Name it from a music lyric.

Name it for a musical instrument.

Name it for a performer, songwriter, or individual related to music.

The purpose of the Squeeze My Lemon blog is to be a blues music resource. It will be a collection of links to other blues music resources, including books, blogs, articles and other media. The main focus of the blog will be a place for blues music fans to download legal mp3 files.

Squeeze My Lemon is a blog that will review other blues mp3 blogs as well as provides links to free and legal online mp3s. Discussions of digital music and the hardware needed to play digital music will also be covered. Tips, and "how to" information will be provided to help the modern music enthusiast make informed choices.

It will also be a platform for affiliate links. Links to digital music providers as well as hardware and other music equipment will linked to.

List of possible purposes for your music blog (besides being a platform for affiliate links).

1. To keep others informed about the music industry. News, concert dates, venues, trends.

2. Hardware, mp3 players, car audio, home stereo equipment, portable digital players.

3. To interface with other fans of a certain band, group or performer. ie a bolg about Led Zeppelin.

4. Provide links, references to music.

5. To give the history of a band, musical form or style of music.

6. Again there could be many purposes for your blog, this list is just provided to get you thinking.

Sources of content - Now that you have chosen a name for your blog and you have a good idea of the purpose of the blog it is time to think about the source of content. This is the biggie. The other steps in planning
were the lead up to this step.

The sources of content depend on the purpose of the blog. And the purpose is reflected in the name you chose. For example if your purpose is to inform, then your sources may be news web sites, books, magazines and other resources that give you news.

If your purpose is to entertain then you may have to create content or find legal sources of entertainment out on the web.

If your purpose is just to collect a group of resources for your own edification (which is an excellent reason to keep a blog / journal) then again, you will have to do some searching to find sources.

In my case because I have chosen to blog about blues music. I will use the following sources (they are being presented here as examples).

1. Amazon.com down loadable music.

2. Other music blogs.

3. The local edition of my news paper.

4. Local Bands.

5. Various RSS Feeds.

6. flickr.com.

7. Google images.

8. Yahoo images.

How to build a music blog: An Example For Beginning Affiliates.

2005-07-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

The Planning of a new affiliate blog. (oh my God not planning)
Selection of tools used on the blog. (This is where my inner Geek will shine)
Linking Strategies. (It is kind of like chess, with web pages)

An interesting Article about the Business Blogs

2005-07-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

The Business of Blogging

"An informal eMarketer survey finds that just 4% of major US corporations have blogs available to the public — and even fewer produce active sites with the link and feedback features that most readers associate with true blogs. Blogging by small businesses is probably even less common."

The above statement is interesting to me. It is one of the informative insights in this article found @ eMarketer.com. Another interesting statement made in this article is how many readers of blogs came onboard during the last political campaign, but there seems to be a bit of a stall going on in the readership of blogs in general. The article also makes some interesting points regarding research that is going on to determine the average age of those who read blogs.

The idea that blogging by small businesses is less common shows that there are many opportunities for small businesses to expand in this area. And many affiliate marketers could be considered as small businesses.

The question of the age of the readers of blogs is an important one. As someone who writes in several blogs I am often wondering how old my readers are and if I am connecting with them.

I think this article is a step towards understanding some of the trends that affiliates need to understand.

Latest news in Affiliate Marketing

2005-06-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

Third Wave Gentrification

Half.com recently had an Oregon city named after it. The Half.com company donated computers to the local school and promotes the local tourism "industry" on its Web site. You can read about it here.

The Town of Half.com Web Site

New Casio Exilim EX-S500 on Amazon.com

Camborg reports that the new Casio Exilim EX-S500 is already listed on Amazon.com for pre-order.

Casio announced the new slim 5MP digital camera EX-S500 about two weeks ago. The Exilim EX-S500 comes in grey, orange and white. Amazon.com has them available for pre-order for $399.99. The camera will ship August 15th. More details on Camborg.

Myth Breakers: Affiliate Programs Running on Auto-Pilot

The following is what Karen Stairs of the USADATA had to say in response the the question, What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved? ...

Guest Editorialist Danay Escanaverino | Conquering Affiliate Fraud

... thing. It happens with email (SPAM and PHISHING). It happens with search click fraud. And so it is with affiliate marketing, as well. ...

Flyte Blog makes some good points.

2005-05-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

While doing my daily reading regarding issues about affiliate marketing, I ran across a post in a blog that I really liked BusinessWeek Letters Page on Blog Issue. It is the observations of Richard Brooks of the Flyte: What works online blog.

In this post Mr. Brooks makes several good arguments for why small businesses, like affiliate marketers should use blogs. I found it both interesting and informative. Check it out.

Ideas to Promote the links in your blog.

2005-05-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

In an article from Webpronews.com Affiliate Programs: Promote Your Links by Wayne Hurlbert he states, "Affiliate links. Many bloggers have a few of them. Some bloggers have many affiliate programs available through their blogs", and he thinks that is a good thing.

This is one of the points that I have been trying to make here at Afillinfo. I think it is very easy for bloggers to learn how to convert their blogs into a money making endeavor.

Death to Affiliate Marketing?? Do Tell.

2005-05-19T23:36:00.000-07:00

MSN NBC ask the question Death to Affiliate Marketing??

According to Rick Aristotle Munarriz of The Motley Fool.com that is. But I'm not so sure that I agree with his assessment. He says that due to the difference in stock prices between Google and affiliate networks like DoubleClick and Fastclick it is a done deal.

Well what about affiliates that are not part of a network, like Amazon and eBay (two big players in affiliate marketing I might add). They are going to be hurting too, says Mr. Munarriz. His question is why would anyone put up a banner ad, when they can put up ads for Google.

How about;

1. The Google relevance problems. Ads do not match your content.
2. You have an image intensive site that does not have a lot of text for the googlebots to read.
3. You notice that almost every site you go to these days has ads by google.
4. If banner ads are so bad, why did Google recently start delivering banner ads?
5. Not all affiliates use banner ads.

I could go on, but I think you will get some insight from reading the article and making your own list of reasons why Affiliate marketing is alive and well.

Strategies for a digital music affiliate blog.

2005-05-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

In my last post I talked about an area that the beginning affiliate marketer could use to quickly get started in affiliate marketing. I mentioned that I would talk about strategies and that is my intention for this post.

How to get started as an affiliate for digital music.

First you probably need a blog or web site to start your affiliate marketing.

Then you need to think about the kinds of merchants that you want to affiliate yourself with. What kind of blog would you like to start? What kind of music do you like? What sources will you be using for your music?

These are all questions that you need to work out prior to starting your digital music affiliate blog. I will provide some answers, you do not have to use these methods, but these are provided as examples.

What kind of blog would you like to start? A blog that reviews music and provides samples of music via mp3s.

What kind of music do you like? Classical Music.

What sources will you be using for your music? I will refer readers to Amazon.com's collection of downloadable mp3s as well as classical music radio stations, which also offer free legal downloadable files.

After answering these questions, you are now poised to decide on the merchants that you will use. As listed in last post any of the following would be great for an affiliate that was considering a music affiliate blog.

apple iTunes
Sony Music online
Music Match
etc

I hope this post gave you some ideas of how you can get started in affiliate marketing by starting a digital music affiliate blog.

Digital Music; an area for the savvy affiliate.

2005-05-04T15:18:00.000-07:00

An idea that I'd like to present to beginning affiliates is a subject area where I believe there is a lot of growth potential. I think that blogs and web sites devoted to digital music have the potential to explode.

In todays post I will briefly state the reasons why I believe this and give a few ideas on how this knowledge can be used by the savvy affiliate.

1. Digital music is the next wave in the continuing progression of music. Younger people aged 18 - 35 are very interested in digital music.

2. Everyone loves music, or knows someone that does. It is true that younger people love music but older people love it to. So music is a universal area to do affiliate marketing in.

3. There are many quality affiliate merchants that an affiliate marketer for digital music can work with.

Examples include;

iTunes Essentials

Visit the Sony Music Store today!

Music123

Musicmatch Jukebox Plus

Amazon Associate Program

Musicmatch Jukebox Plus

Rhapsody - which has a free down load promotion going now

Also there are affiliate Networks that will administer many of these merchants for you, for example; LinkShare is an e-commerce business solution for over 3.5 million online relationships. Become an affiliate of the LinkShare Network for FREE and earn revenue by linking to over 500 premier online merchants.

And then there is the All Posters.com program which states;

Hey Webmasters! - Make $$$

The AllPosters.com Affiliates Program is a great way to make money with your website.
All you have to do is place links on your site to AllPosters.com.
When your site visitors click on your links and make purchases at AllPosters.com, you earn 25%-30% of the sale.

Sign up today!

4. There are tons of material that an affiliate can write about and use to keep there site and or blog up to date with.

For example Amazon.com has a complete list of mp3 files that can be linked to and written about.

In tomorrows post I will talk about strategies that the beginning affiliate can use to create a blog for digital music.

-----------------------------------

And in other interesting affiliate marketing news;

Online industry executives recently tried to distance themselves from the controversy over adware and spyware, while at the same time insisting that they are working to solve the problem. Well lets hope for the affiliates sake that they get a handle on some of the underhanded tactics that are being used in the name of affiliate marketing.

Which give us all a bad name. You can read all about it here;

Online execs wrestle with adware issue

Eliot Spitzer to go after spyware and adware.

2005-05-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

You can read this interesting article provided by Shawn Collins.

David and Goliath - an Affiliate Marketing Story (But Who's Goliath?)

According to Collins Spitzer may have a good chances of taking on companies that put spyware and adware out there.

A few things I have learned about affiliate marketing.

2005-05-01T23:30:00.000-07:00

1. The internet changes daily. If not by the hour.

2. The hottest trends right now in affiliate marketing are RSS Feeds and Pod Casting.

3. Blogs are not fully addressed in e-books.

4. The speed of change is too fast for e-books.

5. When you buy an e-book you are most likely making someone else richer.

6. Affiliate marketing requires a lot of hard work.

7. You can not believe everything you read.

8. Be careful and do the due diligence needed to understand how each affiliate program works.

9. No one is going to do it for you. You have to do it for yourself.

10. You must learn something new ever day.

Affiliate Marketing and Google's AdSense

2005-04-30T17:07:00.000-07:00

Many affiliate marketers agree that Google's AdSense is one of the best tools you can use to draw dollars to your site. And because there is a lot of buzz about this program I thought I would write about it and give a brief overview of the program and touch on some of its finer details.

But then it dawned on me that Darren Rowse The Pro Blogger himself has written a whole series on AdSense and that the best I could do is tell you to read the Google AdSense overview.

Darren on the other hand gives a very complete and up to date explanation of best practices that affiliate marketers should read. Note I said should, that is how good his analysis of Google's AdSense is.

Topics that he covers include;

Suitability of your blog for AdSense

AdSense RSS testing

The best placement of AdSense on your blog

Breaking news about AdSense

His writing is clear and easy to follow. I am of the opinion that he is giving some of the best analysis of AdSense that you will find any where on the net right now. And I think affiliate marketers could benefit by bookmarking his site and subscribing o his RSS Feed.

Affiliates who are also Drop Shippers

2005-04-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

Drop Shipping might be a method of breaking into the affiliate world. Or vise versa.

I have had this post sitting in my drafts folder for a couple of weeks now. I have been trying to collect enough data to write something that my readers may find useful about the overlap of affiliate marketing and drop shipping.

While I do not use drop shipping it should be obvious to anyone reading this that I am an affiliate marketer for various merchants. I came to affiliate marketing through the online seller channel. I have been selling books and collectibles via various online auction sites for the past three years or so. And this introduced me to many individuals who use drop shippers and I feel that I understand drop shipping as well as you can and not be a drop shipper.

My take on it is that I prefer to sell items that I know a great deal about. That is why I sell books and a very narrow set of collectibles. The collectibles that I sell can not be drop shipped (they are antiques, and there is no manufacturer or distributor for them). You can check out my selling site Fitz'sBargain.com here. But that is just my business model, you on the other hand (armed with the right knowledge) could make a go of drop shipping.

OK now that I have gotten that out of the way I want to try to answer a question that I found on a forum devoted to online marketing.

While surfing online to get ideas and to rub elbows with other affiliates I often see beginning affiliates ask about drop shipping. As in this question;

Affiliate Income vs. Drop Shipping?

I think to answer this question it is probably a good idea to start with a few definitions so that we have a common starting point for further discussion.

I also blogged about these definitions in my Online Seller Tips blog.

Drop shipping defined - Drop shipping is you selling items for a manufacturer or distributor. The manufacturer or distributor does all the product developing, inventory tracking, maintaining inventory and shipping. This allows you to sell high quality, brand-name products on your Web site for a profit.

Affiliate marketing defined - Affiliate marketing is you creating a web site, where you display links to merchants that you are affiliated with for the purpose of sending traffic to their site. In different affiliate programs you may be paid for generating sales, leads, impression or clicks.

Advantages to drop shipping;
Saves on inventory cost
No leftovers
Quick selling of new items
No need for storage space
Less physical and administrative work
Access to a large and varying inventory of items
Access to professional quality marketing resources

Disadvantages to drop shipping;
Customer service (you have no control over this)
Quality Control (you have no control over this)
Unlimited choices (this can actually be a bad thing as well)
Complicated Fee Structures
Difficult in finding reputable drop shipper
Lots of Competition in successful programs

Issues with affiliate marketing;

Affiliate marketing also has pros and cons. But they are beyond the scope of this post. But I want to say that one of the biggest pieces of misinformation out there is that affiliate marketing is easy. You will read many articles and post in forums about how all you have to do is buy an ebook and you can instantly start making large sums of money. One of the most difficult parts of affiliate marketing is getting accurate and credible information.

I am reminded of the "California gold rush" where it is rumored that it was not the miners that got rich but the general store owners who sold them all the picks, axes and shovels used in mining. That is what many affiliate marketing programs are like. The sellers of ebooks are getting rich while the actual affiliates earn little to nothing.

So my advice is to do the due diligence needed to understand affiliate marketing. I have tried to provide information in this blog that will help you make good decisions.

How drop shipping might help the beginning affiliate.

1. Drop shipping can help you learn about online retailing. While selling stuff is a very common practice and there are those who argue that everything is sells. Online retailing has some fine details that drop shipping will help you learn as you also do affiliate marketing.

2. Help you learn customer service. As an affiliate you are paid to send traffic to other web sites where the customer service is handled by the merchant. To make good decisions about which merchants are good to work with you need to understand customer service from the shippers point of view. This is why some online sellers who use drop shipping fail, they depend on the shippers to get the customer service right without knowing customer service from the inside out.

3. Help you learn some basic web design and other presentation skills. To be an affective affiliate or drop shipper you have to build web pages and one complements the other.

There are many ways to skin a cat

So the old saying goes. And there are many models of being an online entrepreneur. You can sell items on the various auction sites. You can sell items for distributors (drop shipping) or you can sell items for other merchants via an affiliate program. It does not have to be one or the other. You can mix and match these approaches to selling online, it just depends on your skill set and your goals.

I look at it like a cafeteria menu, you can take a little here and a little there. And like creating a meal, you can create an online business by selecting and combining the features of affiliate programs and drop shipping.

You can build a site that sells items that you buy to resell and on that site you can be an affiliate for a merchant that sells items that complement the items that you sell. And you could drop ship similar items or complementary items.
You can create an information site (or blog) that provides information on a subject that you are knowledgeable about and use it to also be an affiliate for a merchant that sells items that complement the information that you provide. And you can also drop ship similar items or complementary items. Here is an example of that, this is a music information blog that I created to do affiliate marketing for music merchants (BackBeat @ journalspace)

The best way to determine the mix of affiliate to drop ship is to arm yourself with knowledge. To help in that endeavor I provide the below books for you to check out.

Books At Amazon on Drop Shipping

Books At Amazon on Affiliate Marketing

Drop Shipping as a Marketing Function : A Handbook of Methods and Policies

Marketing Your Products via Drop-Shipping. : An article from: Web Marketing Today Free Weekly [HTML]

Drop-shipping cuts reseller inventory cost. : An article from: Computer Dealer News [HTML]

Drop shipping marketing methods

Money in Your Mailbox : How to Start and Operate a Successful Mail-Order Business (Small Business Series)

Other online resources.

Using Drop Shippers for Your Online Store: Article from entrepreneur.com

Cut Startup Costs By Using a Drop-Shipper: Article from entrepreneur.com

Drop shipping guide - dropship tips and strategies.

Drop Shipping:Five Rules to Profit By

One last word, if you have any good ideas about how affiliates can use drop shipping feel free to let me know.

A deeper look at RSS Feeds

2005-04-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

In yesterdays post I blogged about the Basics of RSS Feeds. In today's post I want to give a few more references that will give my readers a deeper understanding of RSS Feeds and how affiliates can use feeds to add content to their web sites and blogs.

I know there are not that many people in the affiliate marketing world talking about this. Many are arguing if content is even necessary to generate profits and are looking for new ways to attract visitors to their sites and to get visitors to click on the links of their merchants.

Some are concentrating on how to sell e-books that are outdated and do not address many of the leading edge techniques that can be used to create content and to attract readers and customers. But the net is not a static place, it is in a constant state of change and you have to be constantly changing with the times. The time is now for RSS Feeds.

My idea is that you can use RSS Feeds to easily generate content. And with rich and focused content you will be able to attract new customers. The reason that I share these ideas is that there is a bit of a technical hump that you have to get over to get the most out of RSS Feeds and they are so new that the really killer aps for them have not been created yet.

If you have any new ideas about how to use RSS Feeds to support and advances your affiliate marketing ideas feel free to leave a comment.

The below links are provided for your reading pleasure.

News aggregator - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

RSS Feed Reader / News Aggregators Directory.

Aggregators Attack Info Overload.

The AllPosters.com Affiliates Program

2005-04-21T01:25:00.000-07:00

Hey Webmasters! - Make $$$

The AllPosters.com Affiliates Program is a great way to make money with your website.

Link to AllPosters.com and earn 25%-30% of every purchase made by your site visitors at their website. If the visitor decides to purchase within 10 days of their last visit from your website, you'll still earn commission on the sale!
You can link to AllPosters.com from a selection of over hundreds of thousands poster and art print images as well as poster stores and mini stores.

They have posters related to just about everything (e.g.
movies, music, sports, art, animals) so no matter what the content of your site is, you will find images that are a good fit.

It’s easy to sign-up, track your sales, and build links because the site generates all the HTML code for you.

Sign up today!

Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs

2005-04-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

Pay per click, like the name states pays you for each click that your site generates for a merchant. Not the most common affiliate model because pay per lead, pay per sale, and rev share are all more popular. One of my favorite programs Google Adsense is an example of a pay per click affiliate program. There are many options out there for a webmaster or blogger who is interested in this type of revenue stream.

Some of the advantages to the pay-per-click model are that you get paid whether or not the person clicking on the ad buys anything or not and the easy with which it is to set up most pay-per-click ad promotions.

Pay-per-click also has some disadvantages. The pay is less than what you could make for a rev share or cost per acquisition type campaign. And right now the biggest disadvantage is because of click fraud, pay per click affiliate programs are getting more and more difficult to find.

But it might be possible to use other models in addition to pay-per-click and measure the results of each campaign and then comparing them.

For example to calculate the cost per click of a rev share program, you would look at 500 to 1000 clicks (the more clicks the more accurate the number will be). To determine what you made per click divide the commission by the number of clicks. The model that creates the most revenue would be the one that you should focus on by giving it premium placement on your web site or blog, or maybe even using that method exclusively.

Affiliates who are also Online Sellers

2005-04-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

The affiliate who is also an online seller has some options open to them that others affiliates do not.

1. No matter what you sell you can probably find an affiliate program that will complement your selling activities. For example no matter what you sell you can find a book that goes along with that item. And when you sell a widget, you can offer a book that goes with it. There are many affiliate merchants that sell books.

2. By selling goods online you also will have a base of customers that you can upsell the goods and services offered by your affiliate merchants.

3. Online selling brings with it a skill set that can help you succeed at being an affiliate. Online sellers have to learn marketing, web design, customer service and other skills that are helpful to the affiliate.

4. Even if you only drop ship, you may still reap some of the benefits of being an online seller.

For more tips and tricks that can help you integrate online selling into your affiliate activities check out my blog for online sellers.

Basic Steps To Affiliate Marketing

2005-04-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

1. Set some goals. How much money do you think you can make by affiliate marketing. While it is true that you can make some very good money, it is also true that you could make nothing, after a great deal of work.

So figure out what you think you can make a month, a week, or a day.

How much work do you want to put into it? Why make this a goal?

Because the amount of money that you will make is a function of how much work you will put into it. So make this a goal also, eight hours a day, forty hours a week. It is up to you and is a function how much energy and how motivated you are.

2. Learn as much as you can about Affiliate Marketing by reading forums, blogs, affiliate net works. And understand that as soon as you learn something, it will probably change. Affiliate programs change, technology changes, the web changes, merchants change. The only thing that is certain is that there will be change.

Check out the various Affiliate Networks like LinkShare for example.

3. Find your niche. You will be more successful if you market things that you understand, and have some passion for.

Niche is defined as;

a. A situation or activity specially suited to a person's interests, abilities, or nature.

b. A special area of demand for a product or service.

You really have to give your niche careful consideration. By picking something that you have passion for you will probably be more successfully. No one can tell you what your niche is. I think you just have to try things and move toward things that you like. Affiliate marketing requires you to do a lot of writing, you will write ads, you will write copy for web pages, you may even write in a blog like this one. If you care about the subject matter you will write better and your readers, and customers will detect this.

Here is an example of a journal for mp3 blogs called Backbeat. I built this journal / site to market merchants in the music industry. It is an industry that I enjoy and am willing to put in the work required to keep track of what is going on in the mp3 / digital music world. I write reviews about mp3 blogs and promote companies that sell music products. This is the type of blog that you could also put together. You just have to pick a niche that you care about.

4. Identify Merchants that match your niche. What will your web site be about? Is your niche, something that will allow you to you sell books, toys, collectibles? Your niche will determine the merchants that you select to promote on your web site.

In the example above I have chosen the following merchants to promote on my mp3 blog.

iTunes Essentials

You can see from this line up of merchants that they all are related to the music industry and so they all are appropriate for my blog.

5. Build a useful, interesting web site on your niche. That last sentence makes it sound as if it is easy, but it is not. A good affiliate marketing site should be content rich, have many key words, and be easily found by the search engines.

There are many ways to reach this goal. And there is no one right way to do it. Also being found by the search engines requires some knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization). See this post for some ideas of how to get your blog found.)

And building your site again involves researching and writing. Some people focus on the search engine aspect of their sites, while others focus on the content side. (you can read articles here about the merits of both approaches).

How well do you know your Affiliate merchants

2005-04-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

As a beginning affiliate you may be in the phase where you are applying to as many affiliate programs as you can. And if you get accepted, all the better. Right?

Well you may want to ask a few questions about the merchants that you decide to affiliate yourself with. The best place to get answers is to read the "Affiliate Agreement" or "Terms and Conditions", this is the name given to the legal document that you sign when joining an affiliate program.

During this discussion I will be using the term merchant, to refer to the organizations that you promote on your site and that you sign up for as an affiliate. Much of what is said could also apply to affiliate networks as well. But because merchants that have a program on the same affiliate network will often have different programs, I use the term merchant most often.

Here are a few questions you may want to ask to get to know your merchants better.

1. Do they use malware and what is the role of cookies?

While the use of malware by affiliate merchants is a practice that seems to be going away, it is still a good idea to understand if a merchant is using it. There have been merchants who used malware to manipulate the earnings of their affiliates and publishers.

You want to know if this is a problem before you spend time creating content and putting up links to a merchant that is using malware.

Next comes the role of cookies. Cookies are small files that contain information that allows the merchant to track the performance of affiliates. They allow the merchant to know which affiliates sent them which customers. One characteristic that cookies have is how long they are active. It is a good idea to know how long cookies stay active, the longer the better. The reason that this important is because your income over an extended period of time may be effected if the cookie expires and gets overwritten by a new one.

While there is not much that the average affiliate can do about deleted cookies it is best to understand how they work and what affects they can have on your earnings. This will also help you decide if you want to work with a merchant or not.

2. How does the merchant calculate your earnings?

This is a complex question, because there are many factors that go into determining how earnings are calculated.

First is how earnings are generated, do you earn for sells, commissions, leads or what. This will help you determine what kind of content to build. Because the content for selling is different from the content needed to generate leads.

Next is what percentage of revenue generated will be used to calculate earnings. This again varies from program to program and from ad to ad within a program.

Some of the programs have tiered percentage levels. The more revenue you generate for the merchant, the higher percentage that you are given in earnings. As an example if you are the affiliate for a book selling site, and you are given 5% for the first twenty books that are sold via your site, and 5.25% for all books after the first twenty. And the percentages may keep climbing depending on the number of tiers that the program has. You could find programs that give you an extra 0.25 % of earnings for each tier.

3. Is there a commission threshold and what is it.

As stated above merchants pay affiliates a percentage of the revenue that is generated by them. These payments are called commissions. The commission threshold is the minimum amount that you have to earn to receive payment for that pay period.

For example an affiliate program that has a $100.00 commission threshold may stipulate that you must earn at least $100.00 in order to get paid. Earn only $90.00 and you do not get paid.

Along the lines of the threshold is rather or not the merchants allows roll overs (carry overs). Roll overs are when you do not reach the commission threshold and the money that you made during the last reporting period (often by quarters or months) will be kept and added to your next pay periods commissions. Most programs do this, but you want to know for sure.

4. What kind of products do they carry.

While this may seem like a "no brainer", you really should go to each merchant site through the front door as a customer and give all the merchandise for each merchant a thorough examination. There are several reasons for this, (1) the better you know the products the better you will be able to generate content for them. (2) You may be surprised to find that your merchant sells some items that you did not know that they sold. For example, if your merchant sells books, do they sell audiobooks, do they sell CDs, do they sell VHS tapes and other medium. Some merchants may are many not do a good job of letting everyone know what they sell. Some of the value that affiliates add is being salespeople for the complete line of the merchant.

5. What has been their track record over the last year, last five years?

One thing that you want to know is how long has the merchant been around and what is their track record. You would be surprised by some of the many changes that have occurred in the past with almost every program. And it also helps to know if you are working with a merchant that knows how to do this or if they are just starting out.

6. Are they part of an Affiliate Network?

Is your merchant a part of an affiliate network, or do they have a stand alone program? If they are part of a network, does the network have features?

If so what are they and how can you use them to your advantage. Some of the resources that networks provide are html links for your site, answer questions, provide a forum where other affiliates for that program get together and discuss the program. I can not tell you how valuable this is.

You can learn a lot just by interacting with other affiliates on forums.

Final words and main points;

Most affiliate merchants have good solid well ran programs. The offer realistic terms, fair conditions and the give some level of support. But there are also the not so good merchants out there that make it difficult to be a good affiliate. Some merchants do not understand the value of affiliates.

This all means that as an affiliate you have to keep your guard up and make sure that you only affiliate yourself with programs that fit into the goals that you have set for yourself. As a minimum, become aware of the many options that you will find in Affiliate Agreements. Understand what these options mean to you and how they can effect your earnings. Beware of pitfalls that make some merchants not as attractive as others.

As is often the case knowledge before hand is better than learning once there are problems.

How to use webdirectories in affiliate marketing

2005-04-01T13:25:00.000-08:00

Web Site Resources: Web directories are similar to search engines, but they are usuly edited by people. Submitting to Web directories will ensure that your site is included in all major search engines and can give your site higher rankings on those search engines.

Click here for a Guide to Web Directories. This link will take you to a page that has a list of general web directories, business web directories, and web master directories. It also has a list of helpful tips on submitting your sites to directories, and pagerank and link popularity.

Blog Resources: If you have a blog that you want to get more exposure for you may want to try the below blog directories.

blogarama
blogcatalog
blogdex
blogdigger
blogexcerpts
bloghop
blogit
blogpulse
blogsearchengine
blogstreet
bloguniverse
blogwise
daypop
etalkinghead
quacktrack
rsstop55
start4all
technorati
weblogs
yourwebloghere

A few more ideas about getting web traffic

2005-03-30T23:11:00.000-08:00

I wrote about traffic in my last post. But I don't think I fully expressed myself on that topic. One point that I want to make is that traffic is really only a part of the story. The more the better right?

Well maybe not. You have to have targeted traffic, that means that the people who are coming to your blog or web site should not be people who are wondering around on the web and find themselves reading your blog, for no particular reason. It is true that it is called surfing.

You will read about attracting more traffic and get advise on which keywords to optimize for, but one of the important skills that I personally have been working on is what to do after you get the traffic. For example, you are reading this, why are you here. Well I hope it is to get some ideas about affiliate marketing, but I can't really be sure that is why you are here. And this is true of most of the traffic that you get to your blog, or website.

I have to ask myself if I am really steering the traffic that I get towards income generating pages. No matter what their point of entry onto my blog or my website is. And try to restrict the choices on transit pages to try to avoid loosing that all too valuable traffic.

I try to think of a set of actions that I want each visitor to choose from and then present them with a limited number of relevant options that lets them find the action page most appropriate to them.

I'm trying to learn to not distract my readers, and blog visitors from the reason that I have created this blog anyway.

I mean I would love if I could get hundreds of repeat visitors to this and my other blogs especially if I could get a conversion rate out of it.

I am starting to analyze my traffic better and to figure out where people are actually coming from, as opposed to where I think they are supposed to.

OK, I want to wrap this up with an idea that I been reading about lately. I have been thinking about ways to use online business networking communities that connect with other entrepreneurs like myself. My idea is get other entrepreneurs to do link swaps and joint marketing ventures. I found a few of them on the Web. They're kind of like dating or social networking sites but they are used by business people to find other like minded businesspeople so they can help each other out.

These sites can offer great opportunities for affiliates to establish joint marketing ventures with other affiliates, or simply to find link-swap partners who can help drive more traffic to their sites. These sites can also help generate traffic because some of them allow their members to create profiles that also can link to your affiliate sites. These links can serve as back links, and help ranking with the search engines.

If you join one of these communities, it is best to make sure that your affiliate sites are complementary to the ones that you partner with. It will help you if you and your partners attract the same kind of traffic. As an example, if you are an affiliate that sells books, than someone who is an affiliate for audiobooks might make a good fit to partner with.

Here are some business networking communities you may want to check out:

Ryze
LinkedIn
AlwaysOn
Spoke

Web Traffic is King for the Affiliate

2005-03-19T00:16:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post I asked if content was king. Well you could have the best content on the web but if you don't have any traffic then it really doesn't matter does it?

If content fell in the woods but there was no
traffic, would anyone know?

Probably not. So the point I am trying to make is if you want to be a successful affiliate then you have to have the traffic.

And not just any traffic. You need traffic that you can convert.

OK, so how do you do that.

Well you have to answer a couple of questions.

1. Who is the ideal customer for you site. In the case of this blog, the ideal person to be reading this is a beginning to intermediate level affiliate.

It is a good idea to draw a picture of your ideal customer. Is it a he or she? Young or old? Of a certain ethnic group or race? Married or divorced. These are all factors that could help you determine who your ideal customer is.

2. Where do the types of people that you are trying to attract hangout on the web? Where do they shop? What do they read? What games do they play? Do they chat? Do they blog? Do they hang out in forums?

The answer to these questions will tell you where you need to focus your attention at as far as getting through to your ideal customer.

3. What kind of ads, promotions, sells pitches work on your ideal customer. Is that teenaged girl who is looking for the latest video game going to respond to the same kind of ad that an elderly man who is looking for classical music?

Probably not, but if you have an idea of which one of these people is the kind of traffic that you want you will be better armed to make a sell.

OK so you have an understanding of what your customers are like. You have a good idea of who they are. Now you need to match that up with your merchants. You now need to promote the right products to those customers. And your ads need to have relevance.

You probably should not try to mix different types of merchants on the same web page. For example if you are selling books, you may not want to have ads for apparel on the same page. While an ad for audio books might be just the thing.

Main Point: Know your customer and what it is they are looking for to help your efforts to get traffic.

Another very important factor in getting traffic is the name of your web site. Many people do searches to find the things that they need. But there are also many people who enter a domain name into the address box on their search engines. This is direct search. And ISPs and web portals support this feature.

If you are looking to buy and you type in a name like item-name.com, this will probably get you to someone who is selling that particular item. The great thing about this type of traffic is that when they get to your site they were looking for you. Not a whole lot of convincing has to go on here.

You just have to be able to provide the goods or service that your potential customer was looking for. And if you could not do that you would probably have chosen a different name for your web site.

Main Point: Choose your web site name carefully, it can help you get high quality traffic.

Using Googles Alearts In Affiliate Marketing

2005-03-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

Google Alerts are a great tool to use in your Affiliate Marketing Campaign.

1. You can use them to keep track of the various Affiliate Networks that you belong to.

2. You can use them to keep track of the latest news on your merchants.

3. You can use them to keep track of the products that you sell.

It is very convenient to have information about various subjects that are related to your affiliate activities emailed directly to you. Instead of you going out on the web and spending time searching for information, the info that you need can arrive in your mail inbox.

What I really like about it is how you get them as soon as the news breaks, which means that you do not need to wait for the news to be part of your normal news gathering routine.

Give it a try and see if it does not help to make your affiliate marketing easier.

uBid.com in the news

2005-03-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

Woolston says, "It's a great day for a small company and a great day for uBid.com."

Woolston who is the founder of MercEcxhange and a partial owner of UBid inc made these statements as reported in the following articles.

Court Rules on MercExchange v eBay Patent Case (auctionbytes.com)

Mixed Verdict on EBay Appeal (washingtonpost.com)

UBid.Com is one of the merchants affiliated with this blog