Hey everyone! We are very excited to have launched the ShoeScandal.com affiliate program on the LinkShare affiliate network!

ShoeScandal.com specializes in the creation of high-quality fashion footwear, leather goods and accessories. This innovative brand has been striving to keep the young and hip ahead of the fashion curve. We are celebrated by many style conscious and trend-savvy shoppers around the World, and with each season, our design team and stylists keep you on the pulse of latest footwear trends that are breaking in: London, Milan, Paris, New York & Tokyo.

The Secret to the Scandal of high quality & low price is that our shoes are manufactured in our own factories, using the same materials as many higher-priced brands you may know. As a direct manufacturer, we have established trusting relationships with footwear designers from around the globe. By building an intimate and unique experience for our customers, we can provide them with creative innovation, social engagement and world class service, leaving every woman feeling stylish and beautiful.

You can join the ShoeScandal.com affiliate program on LinkShare here!

Hey Affiliates and Publishers! Here is the latest Affiliate Program News for our client: DealYard.com! It is great to have you as a publisher for the Deal Yard affiliate program!

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, we are falling in love with text links. Sprinkling text links from Deal Yard throughout your blog or website content can increase the total amount of clicks your links receive, resulting in more commissions!

Popular sporting goods, stylish home decor, and top of the line kitchen appliances are all available from Deal Yard for at least 50% off! With such a diverse and practical inventory, you are certain to find a product to promote in the Deal Yard catalog. To make these offers even better, customers can now enjoy free shipping on their purchases!

Check Out These Top Text Link Promos from Deal Yard!
These promos expire February 29th.

Get $15 Off for February purchase of $200 or more at DealYard.com. Use Coupon Code: CJ122DY15.

To help you promote the Deal Yard affiliate program, we are always available to answer any questions you have or provide affiliate support through Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter or Email!

If you are looking for more information to help you take your affiliate programs to the next level, we have a number of great articles and resources available to you in our Affiliate Resources Section.

You can sign-up for the DealYard.com affiliate program here!

Hey all! We are very happy to announce that we have just launched adventure sports product website Krush.com on the Commission Junction (CJ) affiliate network. Krush.com is a truly innovated concept that features exclusive product launches from major brands in athletic, sports, and adventure. Members can actually get items for free when they friends crowd around the items they have shared socially. Krush.com is a truly innovate website that will quickly be gaining in popularity. Krush.com pays affiliate marketers 10% commission per sale.

Sign-up for the Krush.com CJ affiliate program here!

When looking to launch an affiliate program for your company or gain additional affiliate distribution for your company, website, or offer, there are a multitude of options to consider to do it right. Everyone wants to grow a large, productive affiliate program for their company, who doesn’t, but cutting through the misconceptions can be difficult for many companies. I will discuss the affiliate network options you have for your company and what I think is a good strategy to pursue in order to grow your affiliate marketing efforts as quickly as possible. Only through hard work and having an actual strategy in place to grow your affiliate program can you really hope to have a large, productive affiliate program for your company or site. All affiliate programs grow over time if you do the right things to achieve program growth. Make sure your website is a great “converting” place where the traffic affiliates generate will have a high conversion rate, otherwise your program won’t grow like it should. Do your part to make sure your affiliates make money promoting your company and it will grow much quicker than if you don’t make an effort to improve your conversion rate.

The first place to consider setting up your affiliate program is with one of the “major” affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Linkshare, Shareasale, and the Google Affiliate Network. The nice thing about the major networks is you have complete publisher transparency, i.e. you know who your affiliates are and how they generally promote affiliate programs. Most networks also provide referring url data so you know where the traffic is coming from, which is good if you are concerned with controling the quality of sites promoting your company or offer. My personal favorite affiliate network is Commission Junction (CJ) for a few reasons. CJ has a great tracking platform that has been quite reliable over the years. CJ has a wealth of diverse “affiliate/publishers” you can prospect from in their database, allowing you the ability to send recruiting emails to particular countries and categories of affiliates. They have a great email system, that allows you to send newsletters and promotions to your affiliate base without cost, and the deliverability is good. CJ also allows you to recruit affiliates into the program by sending them “pending offers” to join your program which they may or may not accept, but the option to do this is great. You have to know who the affiliates are in order to do this, so most Advertisers aren’t able to do this effectively without using an “OPM” or affiliate management agency. The other major affiliate networks do have good affiliates and good systems, I have just personally found that CJ is on it’s own higher level of publisher quality, quantity, and tracking consistency. All companies that are serious about growing a large, productive affiliate program, over-time, should launch on CJ and possibly 1 or 2 other major networks, but you have to really watch duplication of order IDs across networks when you run on multiple affiliate networks and have logic coded into your site to prevent paying out on the same order in more than one network. If you do CJ right, it should be the only affiliate network you ever need.

Companies with an “offer” that pays a flat fee or engaging in lead generation may want to consider “CPA Networks” or cost-per-acquisition affiliate networks, as opposed to the major networks. One of the issues with CPA networks is that they don’t give you that publisher transparency to know and interact with all of your affiliate-publishers personally, so there isn’t really any actual affiliate management or cultivating the program that can go on. This is fine for some companies with CPA offers, but most medium to large size companies and ecommerce companies tend to shy away from CPA networks due to the fact that you can’t work with your affiliate base personally or send newsletters promoting deals. However, some companies don’t mind this as long as the network is producing good sales or leads, so CPA Networks do work well for certain companies and offers. You have to have a really good process in place to verify any leads or sales that come in through an affiliate network so you can prevent fraud from occurring. Making a “welcome call’ to each order generated by an affiliate network source is usually a good idea to prevent any funny business from going on in your program or paying out on non-valid sales.

The 3rd option is running your own private affiliate network. Operating your own affiliate network can be a great idea because you can recruit affiliate partners directly and work with them one-on-one because you get their phone number and other contact information. Private networks don’t inherently have any affiliates, so you have to mobilize a force to recruit good affiliate partners through a lot of outreach to relavant websites and blogs. I recommend HasOffers.com for running your own private network because they are reliable, feature-rich, and extremely cost-effective (starting at $99/month). HasOffers allows your affiliate partners the ability to log-in and check their stats at any time in a nice interface. It also holds unlimited offers so you can operate with 1 offer or 100′s of offers in your private network. I usually recommend operating a private affiliate network in conjunction with a program on a major affiliate network for the best results. When you run your own network you have to prospect for your affiliates and partners, they certainly won’t come to you unless you make the affiliate sign-up link visible on your website or email your previous customers. You have to pro-actively contact relevant websites and ask them if they want to be your affiliate, which has to be done with a lot of tact and strategy to be effective. You can also advertise in the search engines for niche affiliates that would be a good fit for your affiliate program. You can also turn your customers into affiliate marketers by offering them your affiliate program to join. The way to really get production our of this type of scenario is to have a really good affiliate management in place that can follow-up with everyone that joins and make sure they can access your banners and links and incorporate them into their website, blog, or newsletter promotions. Really effective affiliate managers are able to work with affiliates to make them better affiliates by doing things like analyzing their website, providing helpful feedback, and providing resources that will help affiliates to what they do better and more effectively. However, the vast majority of affiliate managers and even affiliate management agencies (OPMs) don’t have the background or knowledge base to be able to help their affiliates be better affiliates. Affiliate managers should know how to be an affiliate themselves and be able to help affiliates with whatever they may need. They should also be available 24/7 to respond to questions, which most do not.

Regardless of where you grow your affiliate channel you need to have competent, pro-active affiliate managers minding the fort. If you launch in a major network without good affiliate management your program may not grow at all and seriously disappoint you. There are a few options for managing your affiliates, i.e. in-house managers, outsourced affiliate managers (OPMs, or hiring an affiliate manager from the affiliate industry. In-house managers can be good if they know what they are doing, have HTML and web skills, and have some experience with the affiliate landscape, otherwise they won’t know how to handle issues and you may get burned by fraud if they aren’t watching it closely enough. Outsourced affiliate managers can be a great option if you use the right company (like Experience Advertising) with connections and good strategies for growing the program. Hiring an experience affiliate manager can be a good idea if you hire the right person that doesn’t have too many preconceived notions about how to manager you affiliates. Whomever you use to manager your affiliates, make sure they are experience in web promotion, HTML, SEO, and Social Media. Also they should be really nice, friendly, and a good social networker, so they can build great partnerships with your affiliate base. Affiliate managers should be really proactive people that aren’t afraid to pick up the phone and speak to an affiliate about how to effectively promote the company through various online marketing strategies. In fact, good affiliate managers should be encourage affiliates to call them to discuss how to effectively promote the program. If this isn’t the case, you are falling short with your affiliate managers and therefore you affiliates won’t increase participation and production.

All and all, launching and running an affiliate program on an affiliate network is a great idea for most companies. Keep your expectations in check and plan to grow it year-over-year strategically. Don’t be afraid to invest into your affiliate program by launching on major networks, running contests, bonusing producers, and other promotions to create excitement among your affiliates so they try to promote the company moreso. Running an affiliate program should be a fun and exciting endeavour that grows over time through the right management strategies and principles. It can be a very profitable channel for companies with little risk because everything is on a performance basis. Now get out there and launch your affiliate program! Thanks for reading, please leave a comment and feel free to share this article with your Facebook and Twitter followers. Thanks!

Hey Affiliates and Publishers! Here is the latest Affiliate Program News for our client: HealthandMed.com on the Commission Junction affiliate program! Thanks for being a member of the HealthandMed.com affiliate program. We hope 2012 is off to a wonderful and healthy start. Our team wants to help you promote the latest in-home health and wellness products, with some great banner ads for your sites.

At HealthandMed.com you will find regularly updated deals on the latest health technology and health related products. Everything from infrared saunas, microderm abrasion kits, detox kits, and air purifiers are available with a 14 day money back guarantee!

Check Out The Latest Products & Banners from HealthandMed.com!
Innovated and Effective Health Products

Don’t Trust Your Drinking Water to Anyone Else. Get a Chanson Water Ionizer Today.

As always, if you have any questions or need help implementing any of the links or banners to effectively promote the HealthandMed.com affiliate program, please reach out to us by phone or email, we would love to hear from you!

We also have a number of great articles and resources available to you in our Affiliate Resources Section. We want to help you earn some serious commissions with this quality program. Feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email if you would like to have a discussion about generating more traffic to your website. Have a great week!

Join the HealthandMed.com Affiliate Program here!

Hey Affiliates and Publishers! Here is the latest affiliate program news for our client: Phone.com on the Commission Junction Affiliate Network! We want to say thank you for being a part of the Phone.com affiliate program! To help ring in 2012 the right way, we have some excellent banners and deals to help you make some new commissions!

If you are looking for a great deal on residential, or commercial phone service, you will find the best deals available in your area on Phone.com. With virtual office solutions, vanity 800 numbers, and group SMS, Phone.com is a truly leading 21st century phone company!

Check Out The Latest Promos from Phone.com!
These promotional codes are ongoing.

Get Virtual Office Phone Service! Activation Fee Waived (value of $29.95) any phone adapter or IP Phone! Use Coupon Code: Freeactv

Save an Extra 10% discount for 6 months on basic monthly plan – Code: Tenoff

Get Free Vanity Toll Free Number with Phone.com! Use Coupon Code: Freevanity This is one time purchase free waived

Slash Your Phone Bill! Get 10% Off Home / Residential Phone Service Plus for 6 months with Phone.com – Coupon Code: HPP10

Access more banners and links here in your CJ account: Advertiser Detail

As always, if you have any questions or need help implementing any of the coupons or banners to effectively promote the Phone.com affiliate program, please reach out to me by phone or email, we would love to hear from you!

We also have a number of great articles and resources available to you in our Affiliate Resources Section. We want to help you earn some serious commissions with this quality program. Have a great week!

Click here to join the Phone.com Affiliate Program!

Hey Affiliates and Publishers! Here is the latest Affiliate Program News from our client: iHomeAudio.com! We want to thank you for being a part of the iHome Audio affiliate program! We hope 2012 is off to a wonderful start. To help you ring in the new year with new commissions, we have some great banners, and a promo code available in this email. Your visitors can take advantage of 15% off of select items.

Everything you could possibly need to accessorize and customize your new iPad, iPhone or iPod is available from iHome Audio. Wireless speakers for your iPhone, iPad & iPhone speaker sets, chargers, headphones and much more.

Check out the latest coupon from iHome Audio!

Expires: January 31st
Get 15% Off on select items: iA91BZ, iP4, iD9SV, iA63BZX, iP1C and much more by using Coupon Code: newyear15 at iHomeAudio.

As always, if you have any questions or need help implementing any of the coupons or banners to effectively promote the iHome Audio affiliate program, please reach out to us by phone or email, we would love to hear from you!

We also have a number of great articles and resources available to you in the Affiliate Resources Section. We want to help you earn some serious commissions with this quality program. Have a great week!

Sign-up for the iHome affiliate program on Commission Junction here!

Hey Affiliates and Publishers! Here is the latest Affiliate Program News for our client: LuggageGuru.com on the Commission Junction affiliate network! Thanks for being a part of the Luggage Guru affiliate program! We want to help ring in 2012 with new opportunities to earn you affiliate commissions. In this newsletter, you will find some excellent banner creatives, text links, and deal information to help you promote Luggage Guru products on your site.

Luggage Guru is a leading online retailer of luggage, laptop cases, backpacks, duffel bags, travel accessories, & more. With deep discounts on top brands like Samsonite, TravelPro, Hartmann, Swiss Army, and more, your web visitors are bound to find the right piece of luggage to fit their needs, and save some money while doing it.

Check out the latest deal from Luggage Guru! Expires January 31st.
Get 10% Off on Everything Site Wide except Briggs & Riley, Jack Georges and Rimowa by using Coupon Code: winter2012.

As always, if you have any questions or need help implementing any of the coupons or banners to effectively promote the Luggage Guru affiliate program, please reach out to us by phone or email, we would love to hear from you!

We also have a number of great articles and resources available to you in our Affiliate Resources Section. We want to help you earn some serious commissions with this quality program. Have a great week!

Join the LuggageGuru.com Affiliate Program here!

Hey Affiliates and Publishers! Here is the latest affiliate program news for our client: Raxco.com! Happy New Year, Raxco Affiliates!

Raxco Software is kicking off 2012 with huge potential for affiliate profits and an affiliate sales contest with multiple ways to win 1 of 3 prizes!

Do you have IT/B2B traffic? We want to work with you – see more below!

Affiliate Contest!!!

3 phenomenal affiliates will win an Amazon Kindle Fire from Raxco! Ways to qualify:

Be the first affiliate to hit $1000 in sales in January 2012
Have the most improved sales from December 2011 to January 2012
Be the best new affiliate with the highest sales in January 2012
How can you meet these goals? Easy:

Promote Raxco Coupons

Remove our old coupons from your website and replace them with our brand new January 2012 coupons!

OLD – Expiring December 31:

25% Off at Raxco Software! Coupon Code: HOLIDAY25 (Home software only. Valid December 12-31-2011)

NEW – Valid Starting January 1: Log into Your CJ.com account to access these links!

Take 25% Off Eliminating PC Errors, Freezes & Crashes – Use Coupon Code: CLEANUPDATE on PerfectRegistry! Start A Free Scan

PerfectDisk VMware Workstation: Download Free Trial

Raxco sends a series of emails to each free trial user, helping them get acquainted with the software and make the most out of PerfectDisk for their unique environment, also encouraging them to convert their free trial evaluation into a purchase. If the trial user purchases during the trial, you receive commission for it. Once the trial period is over, you still have an additional 30 days to receive commission if the trial user decides to buy.

B2B Tip #1: You can also promote the Free 1st Year of Technical Support & Upgrade Protection Coupon for the PerfectDisk business software to help close the sale! This yearly service (which usually costs about 20% of the price of the software they are buying) ensures that if a customer purchases PerfectDisk 12.5 this year, they will receive the next version for free if the upgrade occurs within a year of the purchase. They also receive free world-class technical support from the Raxco Support team.

B2B Tip #2: The PC, Network & Server products are the most mainstream, standard purchases. The Exchange and Virtualization products are targeted to a more niche group. If you have questions about which business products to promote, don’t hesitate to ask! Email Lauren at affiliates (at) raxco.com for more information.

Do You Have Quality, Targeted Niche Traffic?

If you can provide quality, volume traffic in the following niches:
Windows/PC
Computer Hardware
Software Utilities – Registry Cleaners, Driver Updates, Defrag, PC Speed Optimizers
Antivirus/Internet Security Software
Servers/Virtualization
IT Professionals/System Admins/Network Admins
Tech Support/Helpdesk
Reviews
Office Supplies/Equipment
Consumer Technology/Business Technology
B2B

…let’s talk about how we can work together more closely – we’ll make it worth your while. Email/IM Lauren at affiliates@raxco.com / AIM RaxcoLauren /Skype RysenLauren for more information!

Thank you for being a Raxco Software affiliate and good luck in the new year! Feel free to reach out. I am available 24/7 including weekends for calls, emails, and chats. Have a great New Year weekend! – Evan

Hey Affiliates and Publishers! Here is the latest affiliate program news for Hancock Fabrics on Commission Junction and GAN!

Happy Holidays from Hancock Fabrics!!

We have a some new exclusive online promotions for you:
Christmas Day exclusive online promotion (Dec. 25th only):
Christmas Day Sale – One Day Only – Online Exclusive at HancockFabrics.com!

Winter Clearance Sale!
Winter Clearance Sale – Up to 70% Off Shop Now at HancockFabrics.com! This Sale is from December 26, 2011 to January 11, 2012.

Here is our Affiliate Resources Section for articles about how to drive more traffic to your websites and how to leverage social media.

Please be so kind as to promote these great deals through your affiliate marketing efforts. If you have any questions, or would like to have a conversation about how to effectively market Hancock Fabrics through Internet Marketing, please contact me immediately. Thank you and have a wonderful Holiday!