Affiliate marketing is probably 80 to 90% of performance based marketing. Affiliate marketing has been around for over 10 years and it really just started as a way to compensate referrers who are sending business through to various types of websites. It actually started in the adult space, but it quickly grew into the mainstream space and a lot of it has evolved with various networks and tracking platforms. So what should you do as a merchant or advertiser looking to launch into affiliate marketing? You should launch on a major network. If you are a merchant or a website owner and you are selling products or generating leads, you should launch on one of the major networks if not more than one.

Recruiting Affiliates – this is one of the biggest question marks as to how and methodology. Recruiting affiliates is really easy if you know how. You have to do a lot of pro-active reaching out, contacting websites, contacting known affiliates…doing it very tastefully and offering them some benefit of working with your company, otherwise you just become one of the thousands of companies vying for their time, which is why it’s important to differentiate yourself by standing out from your competitors. another way to recruit affiliates is to advertise online. You can advertise in Google and Yahoo under “affiliate program” keywords. You can advertise on forums and in places where affiliates frequent in order to recruit affiliates to either your affiliate signup page or directly to one of your affiliate network signup pages.

Managing Affiliates – This is one of my favorite phrases: “Management is everything.” If you launch an affiliate program or a performance marketing channel and you don’t have intensive management behind it, it’s likely not going to gain traction unless you are a huge Fortune 500 retailer that’s never done affiliate marketing before, then it might grow on its own. But otherwise, it needs a lot of doting upon and lots of TLC. You need proactive affiliate management, this is what our company does. Whomever handles your affiliate management, or is working with your partners, needs to do a very intensive job and really take it extremely seriously, it really is a seven day a week type of process.

Affiliate Payout Levels – payout levels have got to be looked at frequently and you should look to payout as much as you can and make it lucrative for your affiliate/publishers. You should also look to throw in some kind of incentives and say, “if you make 50 sales this month or even 10 sales this month, we are going to give you a $100 bonus,” or we are going to give you an iPad or an iPod or pay more now. Pay as much as you can initially and then you can reserve a couple of percentage points for people who can produce serious amounts of volume.

Don’t be Cheap with your Affiliates and Partners – this is one of the biggest mistakes companies make. They really just don’t reward people well enough and they kind of look at it as just another other channel and say, “I really don’t need to payout much because it’s just, I don’t know what it’s going to do.” Wrong attitude! You really should look at it as a real sales force as your online “feet on the street” so to speak and you need to make it lucrative for people to work with you.

Affiliate and Partner Management – personalization works best. Typically, personalized affiliate management always works better than a mass approach, but you have to have experienced people in order leverage personalized affiliate management preoperly.

Affiliate Network Choice – one network versus many networks. This is a common issue in performance marketing because the more you spread out your offer or your advertiser account onto several networks, the more management has to come behind it and then you have to make sure the same order isn’t being credited to more than one network source. So it can actually have problems when you branch it out a little bit wider with more networks. So I usually recommend maximizing one network and then maybe trying a couple others when you want to add more volume if there are additional partners you can pick up there.

Want your Affiliates to Succeed – make it worth their time, make it worth their efforts, if you just look at as just another campaign, then don’t even bother because you really have to put a lot of love into it, blood, sweat, and tears in order to get the most out of your performance marketing in your affiliate channel. Facilitating your affiliates and partners with good management, with tools, with resources, with providing them content, original content, about your company, keywords, non-trademark keywords or even trademark keywords depending on your stance, to let them succeed and market effectively.

Strategize on Growing your Affiliate Channel – don’t just sit there and kind of let it happen, you know, every month you should be putting a new strategy together…”what are we going to be doing in August”, what are we doing in September, what are we doing for Q4 to maximize this our affiliate channel? Are we going to pay out a little more or are we going to do recruiting campaign? Are we going to run new promotions? So you really have to strategize pretty heavily and leverage experts. Leverage people who you decide can really help you in this endeavor and they are out there, you just have to find them and meet them and talk to them. contact us to further discuss the key aspects of affiliate marketing for Advertisers and Merchants!

There are many different third party “affiliate tracking programs” to use to run your affiliate program on, such as: LinkShare, Commission Junction, and ShareASale…probably being the top three. Then there are the multitudes of CPA networks, which operate on various platforms, and you can include your offer or your website in their networks as well.

The main difference between CPA networks and what I call major affiliate networks, like CJ, LinkShare, and ShareAsale, is the publisher transparency issue, in that you don’t necessarily know who the publishers are driving traffic to your offer through CPA networks. Whereas on a major affiliate network, you have all the affiliate contact data and you know exactly who’s driving you traffic and sales, so you can easily go check-up on the producers and monitor it really closely.

The major affiliate networks tend to have more overall numbers of affiliates and partners, because they’ve been doing it for 8 or 10 plus years. Some of the smaller CPA networks just haven’t been around that long so they don’t have the sheer affiliates and publishers that you can partner with. Problem is, most new merchants getting into performance marketing are like baby Einsteins…they are beaming with energy but they are like a clueless baby. Most new Advertisers getting into affiliate marketing are unrealistic about how quickly their affiliate channel can grow. It’s a long-term strategy with short-term gains along the way. If managed properly, your affiliate program should grow monthly over month and year over year, ebbing and flowing with your traditional seasonality.

It can be really tricky picking exactly which affiliate tracking platform you want to go on as a company. I usually recommend choosing one of the “major affiliate networks”, and maybe a couple of “CPA networks” to test out to see how the quality is. Using an internal affiliate tracking platform like HasOffers can be beneficial to working with Affiliates directly. HasOffers is very affordable and it can handle all your internal onsite tracking of your partners, affiliates, and online campaigns.

As an Advertiser, you need monitor very closely what’s going on on these networks, i.e. what kind of sales you are getting, are the numbers are matching up to your back-end numbers, and who is generating the traffic and sales. There has to be some real management internally just to make sure the orders coming in, and the leads coming in, are matching up to what the numbers are reflecting on these other networks, to make sure you aren’t double paying for the same order or lead.

So those are your basic options for affiliate tracking platforms. If you would like to speak to a knowledgeable, experienced person about your affiliate network options, just give us a shout. Thanks!

Hello all! We are very excited to announced that we have taken over affiliate program management for Fashion Playtes on Commission Junction, Linkshare, and Google Affiliate Network. Fashion Playtes is a really awesome website that allows you to custom-design your own fashions…how cool is that! Fashion Playtes is an online fashion community for girls who love to design their own clothes and accessories. The best part is that you can actually order your designs online and have your custom clothes and accessories shipped right to you! As a Fashion Playtes designer, you can create your own personal brand and fashion collection. They give you everything you need to become the ultimate designer, so there are tons of embellishments and a tool that lets you customize your own label! Fashion Playtes is designed for girls ages 6-12 but can be used anyone who loves fashion, no matter how old! Our sizes range from small to extra large, targeting most girls 6-12. It’s a great project to do with a parent, friend or relative.

We hope you take a moment to join the FashionPlaytes Affiliate Program on CJ, Linkshare, or Google Affiliate Network. We look forward to working with you on the project. Let us know if you have any questions at all. Thanks and have a great week!

Hey everyone, I hope you had a good week! We are very excited to announce that our new client Urinozinc has officially launched their affiliate marketing program on the Commission Junction (CJ) network. If you’re looking for a great performing affiliate program in the mens, 50+ demographic, then you have to check out Urinozinc. Urinozinc is a leading men’s dietary supplement designed to alleviate the symptoms of an enlarge prostate. The product is available on a Nationwide basis through several large retailers like: Walmat, Walgreens, RiteAid, Amazon.com, Target, DuaneReade, and more. Urinozinc also engages in traditional advertising which boosts conversions for affiliates. They have a great deal of brand exposure so consumers are actively seeking their products, which is great for search engine placements with pages targeted to Urinozinc’s products with content. If you are looking for a great performing affiliate offer in the mens 50 and over demo, you should definitely sign-up for Urinozinc in CJ. Let us know if you need anything at all to effectively promote this affiliate program, we look forward to working with you!

Click here to sign-up for New Affiliate/Publishers of CJ.com

Click here to sign-up if you a current Affiliate/Publisher with CJ.com

Affiliates and publishers! We have released all of our June, Graduation, and Father’s Day coupons from the our Retailer affiliate programs. Now you can grab the current coupon codes and post them to your sites or blogs. Here are the coupon codes for you to access. Let us know if you have any question at all about how to implement these coupon codes on your website. You have to be joined to these affiliate programs in order for the commission to track to your CJ account. Some of these merchants are also available through the Shareasale affiliate network. Thanks and we look forward to hearing from you!

We are very excited to add NannyPro.com to our wonderful list of affiliate programs we represent. NannyPro can currently be found on the Shareasale affiliate network. We will soon be launching NannyPro on the Commission Junction affiliate network as well. If you are looking for a great performing baby sitter and nanny finder affiliate program you simple must check out NannyPro! If you would like to join and promote the NannyPro affiliate program, please let us know and we will get you up and running in a jiffy! Thanks for taking a look! – Evan

Technorati Tags: affiliate manager,affiliate marketing,affiliate evolution,affiliates,recruiting

Affiliate marketing is evolving day by day and with the involvement of several affiliate networks, it is absolutely essential for every company to have a smart Affiliate Manager or Affiliate Management Company who will lead their affiliates/publishers to achieve the utmost success in very short span of time without any sort of huge headaches.

Affiliate Managers are the driving force of any affiliate program and most importantly, no affiliate marketer would be able to gain the highest amount of profit without a suitable affiliate manager guiding them.  A competent affiliate manager will guide your affiliates with all the tools you need for PPC marketing, SEO, Article Marketing, Viral Marketing, E-mail Marketing and more. In short, Affiliates + Responsible Affiliate Manager + Good Offer = Profits for both affiliates and the company.

The origin of affiliate marketing was initially introduced with very few affiliate managers but as time has gone on most companies will assign you your personal affiliate manager who is responsible to your queries, questions and other issues. However, not all affiliate managers are knowledgable in all aspects of internet marketing and this can seriously affect the growth and properity of your program.

Here are some attributes every good affiliate manager should possess.
Affiliate marketing is a game of cards, where an affiliate manager plays the role of the Ace.

• Affiliate managers will support you in-terms of promotional materials, quality tips and more. Providing you resources like the best affiliate forums to join.
• They will even provide you with the top-most converting keywords every week so that you may earn more and operate from a position of strength.
• A personally assigned affiliate manager will talk to you via an E-mail, Live Chat, or even on telephone.
• You will be appreciated by your affiliate manager and they will boost your confidence and abilities.
• Whether you are earning $10 a day or $1000 a day, a responsible affiliate manager will treat everyone equally as every affiliate matters!
• If you are confused by affiliate marketing, your affiliate manager will sort out the issues for you and guide your way.
• Affiliate Managers implement several goodies for you like tracking conversions, adding SUB-ID’s, placing a pixel tracking code and more.
• With an affiliate manager by your side, you will actually feel that there is someone out that who really cares about your success and helps you whenever you are in trouble on your quest to making serious money.
• If you are totally lost into affiliate network offers, as there are more than 200+ offers in a single affiliate network, your affiliate manager guides you through the process and urges you to try the best converting offers which would work with your appropiate niche.
• Payment issues are sometimes a real pain, in this case you should contact your affiliate manager who will address this situation for you so you feel comfortable with the payment terms. They also will check on sales or leads if the reporting isn’t looking accurate.

Above are some of the basic advantages of having a responsible affiliate manager. Look at the top super-affiliates and check their blogs and see why they are pushing everyone into having good affiliate management, as those super-affiliates find themselves being assited by good affiliate managers.

Technorati Tags: affiliate,affiliate networks,affiliate marketing,make money online,niche marketing,commission

Many webmasters do have high quality websites but they are still unaware of how to make money online and how to choose the right affiliate program which will work with their website. A high quality website with original content, friendly user-interface, unique materials would definitely make a lot of money.

With that in mind, I have provided various tips regarding how to choose the right affiliate program for your website and how you would get yourself into it:

• Always choose those affiliate programs which matches with your website, like if you have a website regarding health niche, choose an affiliate program related to health and it may be like herbal products, ebooks etc. Don’t go for car insurance programs or any other kind of affiliate progams which are unrelated to your niche.
• Don’t go for peanuts. There are multiple affiliate networks which pays only 1%-5% commission on a sale and instead of them, hunt something huge as there are so many affiliate networks which pays a giant commission of 10%-75% on just a single sale.
• Two-tier affiliate programs would be another cute thing to earn extra income, this will enable yourself to earn and as well as others can make money too and you will get commission on their sales too.
• An affiliate program which have only 2-3 products in a niche is not going to let you make huge money so the best way is to join those affiliate networks which offers a line of products in various niche for you to choose the best product that converts for you pretty well.
• Join affiliate programs which provides quality support via an e-mail, live chat, telephone etc. Affiliate managers plays very important part here as your affiliate manager will guide you with pre-made tools, sales letters, promotional banners, top converting offers etc.

Always remember, the top affiliate programs will make a lot of money with you and they will provide enormous support to you as they look forward to working with you for life-time. Also, try joining multiple affiliate programs and rotate products time to time and check which offer converts the most.

Well its official, Google Affiliate Network has been born out of the ashes of Performics. What will this mean for affiliate marketing as we know it? Not sure yet, but there could be good things in store of Performics merchants. Google definitely has the money and influence to serious grow their merchant and affiliate base. What will the Google Affiliate Network do for affiliates? I think it will benefit affiliate quite a bit. I think Google will try to bring its Adwords and Adsense advertisers into the performance-based marketing fold. Google Affiliate Network could be the greatest thing to ever happen to the affiliate industry. What a benefit to have those vast resources at your disposal to invest into the affiliate industry.

As a merchant looking to dive head first into the affiliate channel, you have a few things to consider before launching. First, you have to be willing to commit to a long-term affiliate program strategy that will grow over time. You also have to be willing to allocate and commit the necessary resources to growing your affiliate program. Most affiliate programs, when managed properly with intense attention paid to affiliates, will grow over time as more and affiliates come on board and start producing. Working with new affiliates and providing them the necessary tools to effectively promote your products and services should be a constant effort.

There are 3 main US-based affiliate networks that you have to choose from as an online merchant or lead generation company: Linkshare, Commission Junction, and Shareasale. Linkshare and CJ are the 2 primary networks that have been around the longest, however Shareasale has really emerged in the last few years as a very affordable and productive option. Since Linkshare has always maintained merchant exclusivity, online retailers have had to choose either Linkshare or CJ if they wanted to go big-time. I personally think all three are great and hold a lot of value for growing your affiliate program. I usually recommend Shareasale to merchants that want less initial risk but still want to create great affiliate relationships. CJ and Linkshare are pretty much a toss-up, but I personally tend to lean towards CJ because I’m just more familiar with the backend system and I feel more comfortable operating through there. I don’t think there is an issue at all by running in multiple networks simultaneously. Some affiliates prefer one network over another and it’s good to give them that choice.

There are several other affiliate networks like Performics, Pepperjam, Hydra, Rocket Profit among others that have show some good results, but overall you pretty much can’t lose with affiliate marketing if you run it well. Using the right affiliate management and recruiting technique is very important as well. Providing good ideas about how to actually promote the merchant on affiliates’ websites will help get more affiliates active and producing. If your company is looking for quality affiliate program management at affordable rates, you should use Experience Advertising. We know how to run affiliate programs in order to acheive the greatest success in the shortest period of time. We can be contacted through this website. Feel free to comment about this topic in our forum.