GROWMAP.COM » Affiliate Programs http://www.growmap.com MAP Your Path to GROW Your Business Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:31:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Affiliate Tips Tuesday: How to Deep Link ShareASale http://www.growmap.com/deep-link-shareasale/ http://www.growmap.com/deep-link-shareasale/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 22:35:30 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=4089

ShareASale Affilate Network

We recommend the ShareASale Affilate Network

One of the best Affiliate Networks for both merchants and affiliates is ShareASale.  An important skill new affiliates will need is how to create a link to a specific page on a merchant’s site.

I asked Affiliate Manager Adam Riemer to share this how-to on deep links:

Step-by-step process for creating links at ShareASale

ShareASale is the Affiliate Network that we recommend to merchants and the one we recommend for bloggers and anyone new to affiliate marketing. They have a reputation for running a very clean, ethical affiliate network free of methods to steal commissions from merchants and other affiliates.

It is very important that we all be aware of bad behavior and only work with Affiliate Networks that run parasite free affiliate programs that control toolbar  affiliate theft. That is specifically what SAS is known for as you can tell from this excerpt from Compare the Brands Affiliate Network Reviews:

“Shareasale (SAS) is probably the most trusted and respected affiliate network by experienced affiliate marketers. Although it is relatively small, and has less-known merchants, when compared to Linkshare, this network’s programs are probably the cleanest in the industry.

If you are worried about affiliate parasites and cookie-theft, or getting paid in-full and on-time, this is the network for you. There are some big name brands, as well as many lesser-known brands. Sometimes it is the smaller brands that pay out the highest commissions and convert the highest anyway.”

Whether you have been involved in affiliate marketing a long time or are just getting started be careful whose advice you follow. I previously wrote about the three ethical affiliate marketers I trust. You will find some related posts from one of them below.

AFFILIATE RESOURCES:

]]> http://www.growmap.com/deep-link-shareasale/feed/ 32 Merchant Affiliate Management Tips http://www.growmap.com/affiliate-management/ http://www.growmap.com/affiliate-management/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:48:02 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=3618

A Best Web

You may know Adam as Rollerblader in ABestWeb Affiliate Forum

I am fortunate to be collaborating with Adam Riemer who is the most ethical, hardest working Merchant Affiliate Manager I have come across in all the years I’ve been working with ecommerce stores online.

Adam now provides affiliate management for Executive Gift Shoppe’s gift affiliate program which I wrote about in How to Evaluate an eCommerce Merchant.

Search for the Affiliate Marketing Experts section for exceptional
Affiliate Marketing Resources
including forums, training, blogs and tips from power affiliates

I suspect many merchants are challenged to find a good Outsourced Program Manager (OPM) because they don’t know what to call them. I had never heard of an OPM until I met Adam even though I’ve been researching affiliate management for merchants for years.

Reading Adam’s post on What You Should Expect From Your OPM is an excellent place to start for merchants interested in possibly starting an affiliate program or hiring a manager. I suspect that there are not many OPMs willing to work that hard but you can use it as a guideline on pitfalls to avoid.

I also recommend his post on Common Affiliate Management Mistakes. I have been planning to write about Adam since we started working together and am doing so now to share my comments in his latest post Should Merchants Pay Afffiliates For Repeat Sales.

I encourage merchants, affiliates and OPMs to read that post and then my comments below. I recommend that merchants DO pay on repeat sales to the same customer for these reasons:

1) The affiliate sent you the buyer in the first place so you most likely would not have closed either sale without them.

2) It is very likely that the affiliate able to generate repeat sales has their own mailing list, subscriber base, and regular readers which are resources they own and created and are using to continually promoting your products and services. That next sale is not based on a one-time click – it is likely to be from repeated work they have done on your behalf.

3) If your repeat sale comes from your newsletter, your cookie is most likely going to overwrite theirs and you will not be paying them for a sale that comes from your newsletter instead of their site.

Your affiliates who generate repeat sales do so be reminding their readers about you repeatedly and not from that buyer remembering to come back to you on their own.

ShareASale is the Least Expensive Cleanest Place for Merchant Affiliate Programs

ShareASale is the Least Expensive, Cleanest Affiliate Network

Adam has laid out many examples in this post about ways your affiliates are sending you buyers. Their continued promotion of your products will be key to those repeat sales and they deserve to be compensated for the work they do to send you buyers.

Remember that they are only getting paid for sales they generate and not for all the work they do that may not create a sale. They have to invest their time and expertise and have the same risk you have that it may not pay off. If they are buying traffic they may even have MORE at risk than the merchant.

Affiliates and merchants are partners in what they are working to achieve – not adversaries. Instead of fighting over the existing pie they should be working together to make the pie ever larger!

AFFILIATE MARKETING BLOGS:

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]]> http://www.growmap.com/affiliate-management/feed/ 34 Recommended Wedding Affiliate Program: Bridaluxe http://www.growmap.com/wedding-affiliate-program/ http://www.growmap.com/wedding-affiliate-program/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:45:19 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=3250

Wedding Affiliate Program

Wedding Affiliate Program

I recently wrote a comment strongly recommending the Bridaluxe Wedding Affiliate Program in reply to this question from JBird85 in the WAHM forum:

“I was looking for different programs for people in the wedding niche and I came across a network called Bridaluxe.
Has anybody here used them, and is it a good (legit ) program?”

Hoping to be helpful, ampris2000, who has an online gaming fun site, replied “just type bridaluxe scam in google and see what shows up”

While it is obvious TO ME that she didn’t mean to imply Bridaluxe was a scam, I was concerned others might not realize she was offering generic advice not specific to them.

I realized what I wrote in my comment is a perfect description to share with my readers about why I recommend Bridaluxe. Here is the comment:

I highly recommend the Bridaluxe niche Wedding Affiliate Program and assure you it is definitely not a scam. It is one of the very best affiliate networks and for any wedding site it is as good as using Commission Junction and ShareASale (considered one of the cleanest affiliate networks) and better for wedding related sites.

You can add one line of javascript code to any site and instantly have a Wedding Store complete with products from all of their merchants (without having to apply to a single one!) – and that store is automatically updated with daily specials.

On top of that Bridaluxe stores will convert better than manually created sites because they have an algorithm that rearranges the products being offered based on what is currently selling best. If something gets media buzz and becomes hot your store will automatically have that product in prime position for maximum sales.

Their stores are far superior to Amazon stores especially in this case. I manage one site that has a Bridaluxe store and am the advisor to another that has an Amazon store. There is no comparison. If you operate in the wedding niche definitely go with Bridaluxe.

Bridaluxe collects your commissions for you and pays you directly the same way Commission Junction and other affiliate networks do. I have never heard a single complaint of them not paying their affiliates on time – and I recommend them regularly in my own blog.

There are a couple of points I forgot to include in that comment. One is that Bridaluxe has the longest cookie duration of any affiliate program I have ever seen. They use 365 day cookies. That makes sense if you consider that many plan weddings over a very long period of time.

They also have tiered commissions that are very beneficial to the affiliates while less so to the merchants in that affiliates are rewarded with higher commissions for combined sales from all merchants. I encourage affiliate publishers to read more about the benefits of joining Bridaluxe.

Both merchants and affiliates should know that Bridaluxe runs a clean affiliate program free of toolbar publishers, parasites, cookie stuffers, coupon scrapers, or any other bad players.

Merchants selling wedding related products should consider Bridaluxe because of their innovative stores that automatically feature hot selling products and their willingness to personally train affiliates for you in their use.

They can provide instant visibility for merchants on many prominent wedding related sites and dozens if not hundreds of blogs. See details on their merchant wedding affiliate program.

P.S. If JBird85 had any information in their profile they would be linked in this post (and if they let me know I will still do that for them).

Bridaluxe is such a great idea for bloggers that I sincerely hope they will license their solution to create stores for other niche affiliate programs.

WEDDING AFFILIATE PROGRAM RECOMMENDATIONS

These links are reviews of wedding affiliate programs:

AFFILIATE MARKETING for AFFILIATES

How to get started; advice from affiliate marketers:

AFFILIATE MARKETING FOR MERCHANTS:

Advice specifically for merchants:

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]]> http://www.growmap.com/wedding-affiliate-program/feed/ 65 AdJump Demographically Targeted Ads Deliver Over 1.5 Million International Leads Monthly http://www.growmap.com/adjump-leads/ http://www.growmap.com/adjump-leads/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:41:01 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=2828

AdJump logoADJUMP Specializes in International Lead Generation

Their target audiences are:

  • Merchants interested in generating leads Internationally through cost per view (CPM), cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per lead (CPL) campaigns
  • Publishers experienced in lead generation with large traffic volume and readers in the US, UK, Canada (French & English speaking), Germany, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand

INTERNATIONAL REACH:

AdJump – (Twitter) – continues to grow their reach in International markets. Merchants expanding Internationally and publishers and affiliate marketers with readers in these specific countries can view AdJump’s current list size and reach below:

COUNTRY – CURRENT LIST SIZE – REACH ACROSS ALL CHANNELS:
  • Australia - 1,140,000 – Over 6 million
  • Canada (English) - 1,100,000 -Over 8 million
  • Canada (French) - 321,000 – Over 2 million
  • Germany – 27,000 – Over 1 million
  • Ireland – 65,000 – Over 500,000
  • New Zealand – 90,000 – Over 600,000
  • United Kingdom (UK) – 1,2 00,000 – Over 12 million
  • United States (US) – 220,000 – Over 20 million

BENEFITS TO MERCHANTS:

  • Multiple online advertising distribution channels: email marketing, banners, search, social networking, affiliate marketing
  • Adjump specializes in providing quality leads based on your target demographics: age, gender, marital status, children, language, other
  • They can target multiple verticals at once to get the highest quality leads
  • Geographic targeting by location: country, province/state, city, postal code
  • Offers cost per view, cost per click, cost per acquisition or cost per lead, or a combination

BENEFITS TO PUBLISHERS:

  • Quality offers for experienced lead generation providers with large volumes of traffic in the U.S., U.K., French Canada, English Canada, Germany, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand.
  • Ad Jump has extensive experience creating optimized advertising campaigns for maximum conversions

Let adjump create the right cost per view (CPM), cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per lead (CPL) campaign for you!

Read testimonials from their clients.

MORE ABOUT ADJUMP:

]]> http://www.growmap.com/adjump-leads/feed/ 41 Wedding Boom Predicted for Next 22 Years http://www.growmap.com/wedding-boom/ http://www.growmap.com/wedding-boom/#comments Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:06:06 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=2775

Whether you have an existing wedding related business or have an interest in selling or writing about a new niche market, demographic predictions* related to the wedding industry point to strong potential growth.

Couples spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year getting married … and that number is about to get bigger.

Regardless of your current business, you may be able to position products or services for the predicted wedding boom.

U.S. Average Wedding Cost By Year 1945 - 2009/Q3

U.S. Average Wedding Cost By Year 1945 - 2009/Q3 ~ Graph provided by TheWeddingReport.com

At least 3.8 million children have been born each year since 1987 in the U.S. Because the average U.S. woman marries at 25 and these women start turning 23 in 2010, they will start planning their weddings soon.

Graph of U.S. Weddings by Year 1945-2008 in Millions - Attribution WeddingReport.com

Graph of U.S. Weddings by Year 1945-2008 in Millions - Attribution TheWeddingReport.com

Weddings mean huge opportunities for wedding clothing, accessories, catering, wedding planners, flower shops, honeymoon planners, travel and gifts. There is also a visible increase in sales related to gay weddings as more states legalize same sex marriages.

A huge wedding boom will start soon and last for at least 22 years.

The good news is there is much available wedding market research and many strong existing online markets you can use to greatly increase your visibility now to be positioned during this wedding boom.

Estimated Median Age at First Marriage - Click image for full Bridal News Network Wedding Trend Report (PDF)

Estimated Median Age at First Marriage - Click image for full Bridal News Network Wedding Trend Report (PDF)

The bad news – which is actually good for some including destination weddings and wedding DJs – is the economy is changing spending patterns so to maximize your results you will want to stay ahead of these wedding trends.

Wedding planners are consistently reporting an increase in the number of weddings but a decrease in the amount spent and more interest in bargain shopping, requests for discounts, and brides trying to save using do it yourself or having friends take on some responsibilities.

According to The Wedding Report, wedding spending is estimated to be down about 6-8% across the board in 2009, then grow by about 6% by 2014. Number of weddings is estimated to grow by 1.2% in 2009 and 5% by 2014. These numbers will vary by market. [I believe they mean geographic area.]

The fastest way to grow wedding related business is through identifying and using some of the very strong wedding niche sites that already have the lion’s share of the traffic.

Top Wedding Sites by Compete Traffic - TheKnot, WeddingWire, MyWedding and Wedding Bee - click to enlarge

Top Wedding Sites by Compete Traffic - TheKnot, WeddingWire, MyWedding and Wedding Bee - click to enlarge

According to traffic numbers from Compete, the top Wedding sites by traffic are TheKnot, WeddingWire, MyWedding, WeddingBee (shown above) and  ProjectWedding, OneWed, WeddingMapper and 1WeddingSource (below).

Other Top Wedding Sites

Compete Traffic Comparison for Wedding Sites ProjectWedding, OneWed, WeddingMapper, 1WeddingSource and WeddingIMC - Click to enlarge

Although the graphs above reveal wedding niche sites with more current traffic, of these wedding sites the one we feel is most promising is OneWed. They have an excellent reputation and are very creative and active in Social Media.

Advertisers will find them very pro-active in following up and collaborating and their knowledge of the wedding industry is exceptional.

Did you know that January is the top month for wedding planning because so many get engaged over the holidays?

OneWed is the force behind Matrimony Monday, Kicking Off the Prime Wedding Planning Season on the Second Annual Matrimony Monday. Their Press release includes this quote according to TheWeddingReport.com:

“Approximately 35-40 percent (550,000-650,000) of engagements in the US take place during the winter holiday season between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day*. Thanks to the romantic nature of the holiday season, the majority of proposals take place between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, making the first Monday back at work the peak time to start searching online for planning ideas and inspiration.”

Now is the time to get moving in your wedding related promotions. We will be writing much more about OneWed and why we will be working with them and also about Bridaluxe, an exceptional wedding affiliate program that allows any blogger to add a fully stocked Wedding Store with one line of code.

Read how much easier Bridaluxe is for affiliates in Derek Semmler’s excellent review of the Bridaluxe wedding affiliate program.

BACKGROUND RESEARCH:

[NOTE: *Some demographic predictions data used in this post came from http://www.ideablob.com/posts/366 which is no longer available due to the bankruptcy of their parent company.]

WEDDING AFFILIATE PROGRAM RECOMMENDATIONS:

AFFILIATE MARKETING for AFFILIATES:

AFFILIATE MARKETING FOR MERCHANTS:

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]]> http://www.growmap.com/wedding-boom/feed/ 68 Congratulations Murray Newlands Best Blogger Finalist, 2010 Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards http://www.growmap.com/pinnacle-awards/ http://www.growmap.com/pinnacle-awards/#comments Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:57:48 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=2738

Congratulations Murray Newlands - Finalist for Best Blogger - Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award

Congratulations Murray Newlands - Finalist for Best Blogger - Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award

Congratulations to Affiliate Marketing Expert Murray Newlands on being selected one of  three finalists for the 2010 Best Blogger Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award.

Murray is also one of the affiliate marketing speakers on the 2010 Affiliate Summit West Agenda.

Gold and Platinum Pass Holders can hear what Murray and the other speakers listed below have to share about this topic:

Monetizing Blogs for Affiliate Marketing and SEO (Session 2a Location: Brasilia 1-2 Time: 1:30pm-2:30pm) ~ Learn to maximize affiliate commissions using blogging, increasing your community, and utilizing SEO.

MONETIZING BLOGS for AFFILIATE MARKETING & SEO SPEAKERS:

If you see Murray at Affiliate Summit Say Hello

If you see Murray at Affiliate Summit Say Hello

There are so many excellent sessions occurring simultaneously at Affiliate Summit attendees may find it really challenging to decide between them.

If you want to know more about Murray read this Murray Newlands interview written by Lynn Terry – (Twitter) – at the  ClickNewz Internet Marketing Blog. Be sure to check out Lynn’s Internet Marketing Product Reviews.

Will you be at Affiliate Summit? Even if you can’t attend that session do look Murray up. I’ll include his photo here so you can find him more easily.

Affiliate Blogger Joe Sousa of  What Does Joe Think shared his insights on who the winners of the 2010 Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards may be – thanks ReveNews for alerting us.  Who do you think will win?

]]> http://www.growmap.com/pinnacle-awards/feed/ 20 Adsmarket Fast Lane Publisher Competition http://www.growmap.com/affiliate-contest/ http://www.growmap.com/affiliate-contest/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:45:19 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=2369

Did you know about Adsmarket’s latest promotion for Publishers? The international affiliate network is pushing for it everywhere: the Adsmarket website homepage, theirfacebook fan page, and if you ran into an Adsmarketer at Ad:Tech New York, chances are you picked up a flyer. What’s it all about, you ask?

The FAST LANE promotion is all about speed, people. If you aren’t yet an Adsmarket Publisher, now is a GREAT time to join and start generating some serious revenue, and fast…

Adsmarket is offering one lucky Publisher who registers between November 4th and December 31st, 2009 the chance to win a spectacular European vacation! (Chevy Chase and German frau not included, sorry)

Here are the details. Apparently there is something about a Lamborghini???

Adsmarket FAST LANE Publisher Competiion

Register to Adsmarket as a Publisher

There are some rules, but not many:

The New Publisher who registers between Nov 4th and Dec 31st and generates the most revenue will win the competition. Winners will be determined based on total revenue generated from valid leads in accordance with Adsmarket Ts+Cs. To be considered eligible, publishers must meet a minimum total revenue of $25,000. All prizes are for the winner only, with a free option for an additional person on most activities, excluding flights.

Click on either image for more details and to register for your chance to win.

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]]> http://www.growmap.com/affiliate-contest/feed/ 20 Gift Affiliate Programs Make Dollars and Sense http://www.growmap.com/gift-affiliate-programs/ http://www.growmap.com/gift-affiliate-programs/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:00:00 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=2312

No matter what niche you are in we encourage you to read our guest post at Murray Newlands Marketing Blog on why gift affiliate programs are the ideal fit for just about any blog or Web site. Who doesn’t shop for gifts during the holidays or for some other special occasion? Surely your readers do!

Right now is the perfect time to start creating or increase your affiliate income. No matter what niche you’re in there are products to interest your readers. The more personal your suggestions and reasons for recommending specific gifts and the stronger connection you can make to either you or your site the better.

It has never been easier to add affiliate products to any site. Read our entire guest post Gift Affiliate Products Fit Any Niche to find out why and how. There will never be a better time than now.

]]> http://www.growmap.com/gift-affiliate-programs/feed/ 45 How to Evaluate a Merchant Gift Affiliate Program http://www.growmap.com/gift-affiliate-program/ http://www.growmap.com/gift-affiliate-program/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:50:04 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=2203

Image credit: Most Cool Media Web Development

Image credit: Most Cool Media Inc. ~ Web Development and Ecommerce Web Design

I just found a great post on Beginner Basics of Affiliate Marketing by SugarRae (SugarRae)  while doing research for a post on affiliate marketing experts similar to yesterday’s Top How to Make Money Blogging Resources.

Some of the things I learned during my years of managing AdWords accounts are effective for evaluating merchant affiliate programs too. If you are a merchant you can also use this list to evaluate and improve your ecommerce store.

When it comes to conversion rates check for these specific attributes on the merchant’s site:

  1. An improved search function: search for several words related to their products and make sure you get relevant results. No results or page after page of results that are not specific will cost them sales and you commissions.  Most users will only make one search and leave if they don’t find what they’re seeking. Use a color plus the product, or material plus product, or brand name and product name, etc.
  2. Make sure shipping costs are easy to find; the earlier they are displayed during the shopping process the better. Free shipping increases conversions more than any other factor because high shipping costs (even when they aren’t) is the number one complaint of online buyers.
  3. If the site requires potential buyers to register or create an account before they can shop don’t bother promoting that site. Conversions will be dismal. If they require registering or creating an account prior to checkout but after putting items into the cart that is still bad but will not depress sales nearly as much as not even being able to shop first. Buyers will give you personal information AFTER they’ve decided to buy – but rarely before. Most will just leave.
  4. So many common shopping cart solutions don’t work consistently that I started accepting only stores built at Yahoo! Stores, Volusion or ProStores or using Google checkout. If they use anything else you need to know how to test the shopping cart – it won’t matter how well you pre-sell or advertise if good sales are rejected because the merchant account has fraud controls that are set too aggressively or the cart returns errors the buyer can not figure out how to fix!
  5. Look for additional store upgrades such as shop by brand, search by price range, add to a wish list function (either in-house or WishPot) and upsell tools that suggest related products
  6. What payment options do they offer and do they display icons indicating their store has been Security Verified? The more methods of payment available the more likely visitors are to buy.
  7. Look for and subscribe to their mailing list function to see what and how often they send newsletters with sales offers. Email is very beneficial to increasing sales – and your commissions if the cookie duration is long enough.

When I managed pay per click (ppc) accounts I knew that it did not matter how well my ads brought merchants traffic if their sites would not convert. Having access to Yahoo! Store data plus analytics plus AdWords made it easy to test changes to an etail store and see how they affected sales and conversions. Wise online retailers quickly learn that improving their store increases their profits.

RECOMMENDED AFFILIATE MARKETING PROGRAM:

Follow @ExecGifts at Twitter

Follow @ExecGifts at Twitter

One of the stores I’ve worked with the longest is Executive Gift Shoppe, a Yahoo! Store offering a huge selection of personalized gifts including business card holders, Official Sports Team Logo Memorabilia, Corporate Gifts and groomsmen gifts. I manage the Executive Gift Shoppe gift affiliate program for them and am seeking affiliates who would like free consulting and personal assistance sending them traffic.

Their affiliate program provides these advantages to affiliates:

  1. Two affiliate programs: ShareASale paying 12% with 60 day cookies plus an in-house program paying 20%
  2. Conversion rates between 2-3% and an average sale value of $60-$70 – very large sales are not unusual
  3. The ExecGifts data feed is available at DataFeedFile, DataFeedr, PopShops and Bridaluxe
  4. Over 6,000 products in stock; I provide custom spreadsheets of their top selling products by type on request
  5. Fast, accurate engraving
  6. Enhanced site search including search by brand, by gift recipient, and by price range plus an upsell upgrade that suggests related products on each product page.
  7. Expanded product descriptions with reviews
  8. Regular mailing list specials
  9. Discount coupons
  10. Free shipping on all sales over $75
  11. Their shopping cart is 128 bit SSL secure and verfied by both TrustGuard and ShopperScanned.
  12. They accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express and PayPal
  13. An exceptional guarantee – they replace products and deal with the manufacturer’s warranty themselves
  14. Excellent reviews and an A+ BBB rating
  15. An active ExecGifts Twitter account with 1,252 followers
  16. We provide personal free advice and one-on-one assistance to affiliates via email, chat, phone or in the comments
  17. We teach affiliates how to promote their sites, build links, generate traffic, comment and share on Social Networking sites and will personally send them traffic and link to them from our blogs

We hope you’ll check out their store and seriously consider collaborating with us. The holiday season is already upon us and their inventory is perfect for many niche sites and holiday shopping. Be sure to read The Top 7 Reasons Why Your Blog Still Isn’t Making Money for some great tips on writing better product reviews and best blog design for higher earnings that you can immediately implement.

If you love creating content and do not have the skills to build your own site our Joint Venture partner Derek at Threaded Web (@dereksemmler) can build one for you. If you do not have the funds to pay up front he may be interested in collaborating with you for a percentage of sales IF you are very serious and will work with us to make sure you make money. Read our post How to Create a Successful Blog Based Business for more details.

THE Premier Affiliate Marketing Conference

Click for Details on THE Premier Affiliate Marketing Conference in Jan 2010 in Las Vegas

AFFILIATE MARKETING EXPERTS ON TWITTER:

  • TweepML has many Affiliate Marketing Twitter users. Easily select those you wish to follow and click once for each list to follow everyone you leave checked.
  • To follow all the Twitter users mentioned on this page use this button:

EXPERT AFFILIATE ADVICE:

LOCATING BEST AFFILIATE PROGRAMS:

AFFILIATE BLOGS:

SUPER AFFILIATES:

AFFILIATE MARKETING FORUMS:

Which forums do you use most or like best? Tell us in the comments? Read what forums the readers of Direct Sales Web Marketing prefer. Wanda and Paula at AffiliateBlogOnline highly recommend WealthyAffiliateUniversity and the forum there.

AFFILIATE TRAINING:

AFFILIATE MARKETING FOR MERCHANTS:

AFFILIATE MARKETING DATA FEED SOLUTIONS:

  • DataFeedr – Quickly and easily feeds products into WordPress blogs
  • DataFeedFile – Free affiliate feeds with price comparisons
  • PopShops – Winner Best Affiliate Marketing Tool 2007-2008
  • Bridaluxe – Higher commissions and WordPress plugin for Wedding related bloggers

AFFILIATE COMPETITIONS:

  • Publisher Challenge – runs competitions for various affiliate networks by giving away great prizes to the top new and/or highest earning publishers – they have generated over $1 million in sales and given away $30.000+ to affiliates.

TOP INTERNET MARKETING BLOGS:

** Special thanks to Murray Newlands for providing recommendations on great affiliate related resources to include. **

PREMIER AFFILIATE SITES:

Visit our Favorite Shopping Comparison Site

Visit our Favorite Shopping Comparison Site

ShopWiki is our best current affiliate and a great example of a really useful shopping comparison site. I’m including my ShopWiki review at StumbleUpon because I consider them very useful and a great role model for other affiliates:

The best thing about ShopWiki is you can use it to quickly find exactly what you want and I just found additional ShopWiki sites for the U.K., France and Germany. If there are others I will find out and add them. (Links to each of these at the bottom of this review.)

ShopWiki crawls over 200,000 online retailers and manufacturers so the selection is huge. No wonder they are such a popular shopping portal.

They have a really useful and powerful search tool that allows you to search for a very specific range of products. You can specify a price range, only see items with specific features or only those products in your favorite store.

They also feature a number of tools to help you find exactly what you’re looking for, including search by color and brand.

They also have some very useful ShopWiki buying and gift guides to help shoppers through the research stage of shopping.

From the site: “For example, if you’re interested in a digital camera, but you don’t know a megapixel from a memory stick, the digital cameras guide outlines what you need to know to make a smart purchase.

Or maybe you’ve been invited to your old college roommate’s brand new house and are stumped on what to buy. The housewarming gift guide helps you decide between the traditional options and something more Feng Shui.”

Additional ShopWiki sites specifically for other countries:

U.S. ShopWiki
U.K. ShopWiki
ShopWiki France
ShopWiki Germany

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AFFILIATE PROGRAM RECOMMENDATIONS:

AFFILIATE MARKETING for AFFILIATES:

AFFILIATE MARKETING FOR MERCHANTS:

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]]> http://www.growmap.com/gift-affiliate-program/feed/ 65 Do YOUR Blogging Goals Include Monetization: Benefits Our Readers Receive http://www.growmap.com/twtpoll-blog-store/ http://www.growmap.com/twtpoll-blog-store/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:43:01 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=1182

NOTE: This post includes:

  1. A survey asking whether your goals include selling products online
  2. Information on a faster, easier way to add products to an existing site even if you have no technical skills
  3. How to have an entire WordPress based store and blog built for you (example at NoBogies.com)

I know that most of my readers are bloggers. I know this because I intentionally followed serious bloggers and also because almost all of those who comment here have their own blogs.

What I don’t know is whether my posts are reaching small business owners who would greatly benefit from the proven methods I share on how to increase their traffic and conversions. Bloggers also benefit from this same information and I have some exciting new ideas for them too.

Please take a minute to answer just one question in the simple poll below. I bet you’ll be interested in the results too!

Select the option that is closest to what you do or what you would prefer to be doing online and add any details you would like to share or questions you have in the comments of this post.

Some know that I’ve been collaborating with another blogger on a golf blog that includes both blog content and a store. That particular store was created using Datafeedr to display products offered by others through affiliate programs.  The reason I am sharing this is because some may wish to use this strategy to quickly monetize their blog.

Even with datafeedr, building a store in this manner is not all that simple if you’re not highly technical. It is faster – you can add hundreds or thousands of products related to your niche in one day. Or do what I do and have someone who is really sharp do it for you while you focus on creating content to feature specific products or types of products.

We are interested in assisting other bloggers to add a store to their blog. If you want to know the truth – whether you are likely to make money, how long it will take, what else you need to do to get this to work – you know I am going to tell you.  I will personally evaluate your existing site, discuss your traffic and what you already know and offer you free guidance.

For those with existing sites the cost is minimal and we may even be willing to add products with no upfront costs on a percentage of sales basis.

If you don’t already have a site or want to create a different site we can help you with that too. Simply leave a comment in this post letting me know you’re interested and I will contact you via the email address you use. You can also contact me at Twitter.

We are particularly interested in assisting those in golf-related businesses related to golf gifts or anyone whose blog would be a good fit for the affiliate program of Executive Gift Shoppe. They sell personalized and engraved gifts suitable for personal gifts or business gifts. They have an enormous inventory, great service, and very competitive prices so they may well have one or more product categories perfect for your store. And they pay a VERY HIGH affiliate commission of 20%.

We are also seeking those in wedding related niches because Executive Gifts started out as a Groomsman Gifts store. Imagine having thousands of wedding related products almost instantly added to your Wedding Planner or other wedding niche store. Datafeedr also supports Bridaluxe so all your favorite stores can be quickly imported into your blog.

Already have you own store? Consider subscribing to our feed so you don’t miss the proven strategies for growing your business, increasing your traffic and converting more visitors to buyers.

TIP: Turn your visit into a valuable incoming link with your selected anchor text by leaving a comment.

One last thing: Do you know a blogger or business owner who could benefit from reading our blog? Would you assist both them and us by recommending us? If you’re a blogger you might even consider including us in one of your posts. We recommend and link to other bloggers all the time and share their posts at Twitter, FriendFeed and cliKball. We thank those who have already taken the time to write about us and hope YOU will consider it too. Thank you.

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MAKING MONEY WITH AFFILIATE PROGRAMS:

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