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Affiliate Marketing and Aggregators II

Affiliate Marketing

There are several companies who bring together dozens, even hundreds of companies that offer affiliate programs that you can use. SBI! owners shared the following "user feedback" about some of the larger aggregators...

Commission Junction (CJ)

Commission Junction is one of the global, very large companies that some SBI! owners like, and others don't. Here's the good and the bad...

• CJ has a low monthly payout threshold ($100), along with a choice of direct deposit or check, but they have long wait times for payments (60 days or longer). They'll also drop you if you don't have a sale in 6 months.
• Searching for products is easy, but you can't add additional search parameters. You can search for individual products, even ones in companies you aren't affiliated with yet. But you can't find particular products from any one merchant if that merchant has over 1000 products.
• You have to find product links and add the code separately for each product you want to promote. You are limited to text links and image banners, which are very time consuming to use. The graphics are poor for many products. You might want to get the graphics from the affiliate company's site, as they often create low-resolution graphics for the aggregator's site.
• The reporting systems are fairly good, making it easy to track performance. It also has an immediate summary of money earned since your last payment.
• There are very few options to adjust the formatting of affiliate links.
• There are lots of affiliate companies but no way to easily sort by currency or country. It's easy to add more companies, but you need to remember to use different ID codes per company, especially if you plan to use PopShops.
• There is a good mix of advertisers that approve immediately and others that approve manually. Some advertisers take a long time to approve you as an affiliate.

Affiliate Marketing and Aggregators I

Article Marketing

A low-maintenance income stream for e-business owners is affiliate marketing. Combine it with the Google AdSense Program and you have 2 solid cornerstones for your diversified Monetization Plan.

Affiliate marketing involves aggregators. Use this article (and the upcoming series) to get up to speed about the advantages and disadvantages of aggregators. Let's start with these 5 points...

1) Most small affiliate companies these days use an aggregator to manage their affiliate program. If you experience problems, they tend to happen with the smaller companies, not the aggregator. Many of the problems are the result of companies forgetting to update the links and banners after deleting a product or ending a special.

2) Using an aggregator means you'll be paid sooner (if you use more than one company associated with that aggregator). You'll reach the minimum payment threshold faster when you combine earnings from two or more companies.

Three more points to go...

Affiliate Marketing - Get Your "Most Wanted Response"

Affiliate Marketing

A sale via any "affiliate program" is really a two-step process. It requires the delivery of two "Most Wanted Responses," yours and your merchant's.

As an affiliate, what is your Most Wanted Response ("MWR")? No, it's not to get the sale. That's the second step and it's also your merchant's MWR. Your MWR is to "get the open-to-buy click" (i.e., your visitor clicks through to your merchant with an open-to-buy mindset).

Writing to PREsell does not require genetic talent. It's not a "gift." Writing to PREsell is a skill you can acquire. Make Your Content PREsell! (MYCPS!), the only book of its kind on the Net, shows you exactly how to do it. Learn how to...

Affiliate Marketing With Search It!'s Help

Affiliate Marketing

Your visitors may not respond to your primary "Most Wanted Response," but they may be attracted to one of your secondary offerings if you diversify.

The key is to never be dependent on any one income source -- "all your eggs in one basket" is a high-risk strategy. By diversifying, you increase your revenue, stabilize your business, and take charge of your own business destiny.

With monetizing in mind, let's look first at the affiliate marketing model, assuming that this will be your primary model...

Affiliate Marketing Using Datafeeds, Part 2

Affiliate Marketing

We discussed in Part I (http://bit.ly/aZSThX) how datafeeds can be a huge time saver for your affiliate marketing business, what types of datafeeds exist and how to "keep it real."

Let's now look into customizing your product pages, when to use a datafeed and how to avoid paying a hefty Cost per Click (CPC), if you plan to advertise with Google AdWords.

Customize Your Product Pages

Don't just take the datafeed code and add it to your page. Customize it wherever possible, making it more relevant to your target audience's needs or desires. Or add a review for your visitors, followed by the product information. Why?...

Affiliate Marketing Using Datafeeds, Part 1

Article Marketing

Datafeeds are a huge time saver for your affiliate marketing business. To promote products from affiliate merchants, you need to display enough information about each product to entice your visitors to click to the merchant and make a purchase. This information includes the manufacturer, model, price and a photo of each product you list. Affiliate datafeeds allow you to include this information without having to copy and paste for each individual product.

Most datafeeds are fully automated. Depending upon your affiliate merchants, you may encounter three possible formats -- automated with javascript, automated with an RSS feed, or a manual feed...

Affiliate Marketing With Books - Alternatives to Amazon

Affiliate Marketing

Books are often part of an affiliate marketing strategy. After all, which topic has not been covered in a book? Unfortunately, the "big daddy" of all online booksellers, Amazon, isn't known for paying generous commissions.

Many affiliates report that they are generally earning very little from Amazon. Whether it's due to the low commission rate, or the very short chance to earn from a visitor's purchase (known as the number of return days), there appears to be a general level of dissatisfaction with Amazon.

Do you have pages dedicated to theme-related books and/or reviews? If so, here are two options that can increase your earnings...

Affiliate Marketing - PREselling With Product Reviews

Affiliate Marketing

An effective strategy for affiliate marketing is researching and/or using products and writing reviews about them. Your readers will value an honest, well written review that includes your personal experience with the product, a detailed description of its pros and cons, and other insider information. Your review helps them with their buying decision, so they'll be more inclined to make a purchase through your affiliate link.

Reviews are an excellent PREselling strategy for several reasons, including...

1. Helps you warm up your readers before sending them to the product's sales page.
2. Builds your credibility as a trusted source of product information in a particular niche.
3. Gives you a stronger chance of getting your readers' full attention as they are drawn in with your useful, interesting content.
4. Allows you to target specific product keyword phrases in order to rank well in Search Engines.

How To Write Articles for Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

Now that we've talked about the viral effect of articles for your affiliate marketing business, the next step is to create a solid plan for writing those articles. Your plan should include your topics, what information you will include, how you will engage your audience and how you will recommend the affiliate product you are promoting.

Decide on Your Topics

Make a list of topics that you'll enjoy writing about and that relate to the products you'll be recommending. Tip: Think about problems that the product solves and then write your article to address the problem but without giving away all of the answers.

You want to lead your readers to click on the answer... which is the affiliate product you recommend.

Organize Your Thoughts

The idea behind affiliate marketing is to share your knowledge with your readers both about the solution they might be seeking and with a link to the actual solution itself (the affiliate product). Aim to keep the article easy to follow, by using bullet points, for example.

How To Boost Affiliate Marketing With Article Writing

Affiliate Marketing

If you're doing affiliate marketing but you haven't tapped into the article submission world, you're missing out on an excellent way to earn commissions.

Top article submission sites have a major online presence. They're visited by thousands of Webmasters daily looking for fresh content. There's outstanding traffic potential here... if you know how to work it.

Submitting articles helps you grow your affiliate business in a viral fashion. First, a caveat. Avoid writing articles about Internet marketing. The topic is over-saturated and articles tend to get moved down the list quickly. It's very hard to break through the noise and cynicism in this category.

Also, writing and submitting articles is not about using your affiliate link within the content. The best article submission Web sites don't even allow you to include affiliate links in the article body.

Write articles about your primary areas of interest where you are knowledgeable about, and with an idea how you'll tie it into your affiliate product offers. When you submit an article on a particular topic, watch the "views" it gets. This will give you an excellent indicator as to its popularity.