Glend Article

How do I pick and Affiliate Offer to run?

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Ubaidabcd from http://www.wickedfire.com forums wrote saying he was having some issues finding offers that worked on the affiliate networks. I started to respond on wickedfire then decided I needed a new blog post.

Bottomline - is a LOT of offers SUCKKKKKKK. Think about this. For most affiliate companies, all you have to do to run an offer is put up a small retainer even if they don’t know you at all. Now anyone can put up and offer, can you think of how many people might try that? What skin is it off their neck to just throw up and offer? Talk about the greatest opportunity for online marketing there is this is a guarantee’d ROI. You don’t pay unless you get something you’re going to make more money on. Now don’t get me wrong there’s definately some fraud in CPA offers, but that’s not the focus of this post. What I’m saying is you have thousands of people trying to make money as affiliates but only a few actually are good at it. .... Read More

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How To make a Script to check your Affiliate Landing Page is UP!!!!

Monday, August 18th, 2008

It’s midnight on Tuesday and all of a sudden the offer you were promoting isn’t working anymore!

Have you ever had this happen to you? There’s nothing worse then paying for clicks that aren’t going anywhere. Especially if those are 2-3$ clicks for a niche like mortgage or payday loans. You call your affiliate manager the next day, or even worse don’t notice for a few days, and ask them “hey what happened to xyz campaign?” Do you know what the words out of their mouth are always? “Oh I sent you an email…” but some how it ended up in your spam box or you didn’t pay attention as you get lots of emails from all the affiliate companies every day.

Now what if you had a way to make sure your offers were working and you had control rather then waiting for someone else to alert you? In this example we’re going to make it so that the alert comes to your email but of course this could be adapted to instant messenger, a text message, or any ot.... Read More

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Making Money From A Blog - December Recap

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Bad Holiday Traffic, Happy Holiday Income
December isn’t the best time for the year when it comes to Internet traffic. People are thinking about gifts and spending time with family than surfing the Internet. As a result of the holidays, the blog received just 94,697 visitors and 184,640 page views. This is well off the 217,876 unique visitors and 329,853 page views posted in November.

With traffic down by over 145,000 page views, you think income would be down by a proportionate amount. However, I’m happy to report that despite the huge drop in traffic, the blog still beat the record $2,123.93 November income. Here is the December earnings breakdown.

• Google AdSense: $693.36
• Vibrant IntelliTXT: $420.73
• TTZ Media: $152.91
• Text Link Ads: $508.50
• FeedBurner Ads: $345.60
• ReviewMe: $200
• Direct Ad Sales: $105.00
• Affiliate Sales: $195.00
• Free Stuff: $168.95
• Grand Total: $2,790.05

Traffic went down by 44% but income went up by 30%. If you look at the eCPM stats, the number looks even more impressive. Back in October, blog eCPM was just $3.77. That improved to $6.49 for November. The December eCPM hit a record $15.11, for 400% increase over October! How did I pull this off?

More Revenue Sources

As you can see from the above list, the blog derives its revenue from quite a few sources. When this blog was first monetized, its sole source of income was Google AdSense. Since then I have been adding other ad networks and affiliate programs into the mix. Ad networks that I joined in November started kicking in December. FeedBurner went from $57.14 to $345.60, Text Link Ads (aff) went from $30.00 to $508.50, ReviewMe went from $50.00 to $200.00, and direct ad sales went from zero to $105.00.

I also sold five SEO Book (aff) and signed up two Text Link Ads (aff) advertisers to make $195.00 in affiliate sales. I’m actually quite surprise at how well affiliate marketing works on this blog. In addition, I received $168.95 of free stuff. These are non-cash items, but I wouldn’t have received them if I didn’t run the blog, so I added them to the revenue total. The free stuff I received was a copy of the $79.00 SEO Book and an $89.95 kissing comforter.

If I had stuck with only Google AdSense, the blog would have made just $693.36 instead of $2,790.05. It is a mistake to put all your eggs in Google’s basket. You should always be on the lookout for other ways to monetize your site. However, it’s also important not to go overboard with the advertising. You need to find that balance which will give you maximum return and still give a good user experience. (more…)

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10 Ways For Affiliates To Generate Content

Monday, August 18th, 2008

The hardest job for quality affiliates is not designing the site, putting it together, choosing merchants nor deciding what subject or niche to work in - it’s generating the actual content that will make a website interesting and encourage visitors to come back.

A website without any original content is boring. It’s easy to build a site and then fill it with banners, standard datafeeds and the odd site map and feedback form, but where’s the real quality? What is that site offering that a million other sites aren’t offering too?

Like it or not, an affiliate needs to generate some original content to give their site some quality. The more original, quality content you produce, the better your website will be. The better your website is, the easier it is to rank well in search engines, get new and returning visitors and, most importantly, refer sales.

Producing content can be hardwork - being an affiliate can be hardwork!! So here’s 10 id.... Read More

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What Are Sub-ID’s and How Do I Use Them?

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Sub-ID’s are function that affiliates can use within MyAP V8 affiliate programs. They help you to track your links more effectively and provide you with easy information on which ones are the best performing.

You have an ‘Affiliate ID’ which differentiates you from all the other affiliates within a program, but this doesn’t help you in finding out which of YOUR links are performing the best. Yes, you can get a report that breaks down your links by the various banners you’re using but what if you are using the same link on two different pages, or even the same page? How do you pinpoint which exact link is performing better than the other one?

By using sub-ID’s you can find out how every single link is performing seperately.

MyAP V8 gives your Affiliates the ability to use Sub-ID tracking. This feature allows them to append each of their links with an ID of their choice (alpha-numeric up to 25 characters).

A normal Affiliate.... Read More

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Convert Your Visitors

Monday, August 18th, 2008

To help improve click through rates and conversions an affiliate needs to do a little bit of pre-selling to encourage the potential customer to actually make a purchase.

This doesn’t mean that you have to write loads and loads of in-your-face sales copy with outrageous statements and an excessive amount of !!!exclamation marks!!!!! All this means is that you have to satisfy a few doubts or questions that maybe in your visitor’s mind.

There is no need to cover every little detail about a product or service, as the merchant website will do this. Just pick a couple of key issues that you think will positively influence a visitor’s decision to buy. These might include;

1. Special Offers. If there is a special offer for a product or service then you should make your visitors aware of it. Remember to remove this content when the special offer is over though.

2. Price. When buying something, probably the biggest decision factor is the price. Y.... Read More

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