Affiliate Marketing

Out of the thousands of affiliate programs on the web how do you wade through and find the real gems?  Diamonds in the rough do exist but I’d rather not spend any time polishing them up for the merchant myself. 

Here are some quick check points you’ll definitely want to run through to ensure you don’t throw precious advertising and marketing money down the drain when choosing an affiliate program.  Here we go!

DEMAND: 
Flat out this is probably the most crucial factor in launching a successful marketing campaign.  You can have fancy ad copy and an affiliate site that would make John Reese green with envy (LOL) but if there’s no viable demand for the product you’re toast.  Do your research.  Find out if you’re target audience is interested in the product and whether or not you can easily push that product.

THE SALES PAGE: 
Would you buy it?  Don’t just glance over the sales page if you’re going to promote a product.  Read ALL of the ad copy and then look for leaks in the page (i.e. off site links, other ads, too many pictures and not enough whitespace, too many steps to complete transaction, etc.)  If you don’t trust your own critique of the landing page get a second opinion.  Send it to a friend and just say, "Hey, check this out."

PROFIT: 
What’s my bottom line going to be?  Will I make enough money promoting the product to spend my time and up front advertising and marketing costs on?  If it’s a digital product you can expect a fairly high commission.  In most cases you’ll make at least 50% of the sale, sometimes even up to 75%.  However, if you’re pushing physical products you’ll generally earn between 5- 10%.  That number may seem low but if you’re promoting high ticket items like tanning beds that 10% can go a long way.

QUALITY: 
Granted, we can’t always buy the product we want to promote (i.e. tanning beds).  However, if the product passes the check points up until this point I’ll usually try to get my hands on it.  You need to feel confident in the product in order to effectively sell that product.  How can you really sell a product to a potential customer if you don’t know how it performs?

AFFILIATE TRACKING: 
How does the merchant track sales, impressions, click through rates, etc.?  Are they using a major affiliate network, front line affiliate tracking software such as DirectTrack, MYAP, iDevAffiliate, or proprietary in-house software?  I don’t get to caught up on this if the rest of the check points add up because there are plenty of tools out there to track your visitors, click throughs, etc.  A few that come to mind are the KaizenTrack Optimization System, Offermatica, and SiteSpect.

Select the affiliate programs you’re interested in promoting wisely.  Take the proper time and research required to launch a successful initial and long term marketing campaign.  There’s no need to try and promote every program on the net so relax, put your Adwords campaigns on pause and take a second look at what you’re promoting.

http://www.Top-Affiliate.com
http://www.FreeAdvertisingBlog.com

[tags]affiliate programs, affiliate program, advertising and marketing, marketing campaign, ad copy, landing page, high ticket items, digital products, physical products, click through rates, affiliate tracking, adwords campaigns[/tags]

LinkShare has just announced a new Web services offering for affiliates, called Automated LinkGenerator.  Linkshare’s Automated LinkGenerator creates LinkShare affiliate links for any product on a merchant’s site that offers LinkGenerator. 

Here’s what LinkShare says:

This new feature provides the same functionality as the LinkGenerator tool in the Individual Product Links interface, without having to log into the Affiliate Interface to get your links.  This new tool does not replace Merchandiser (LinkShare’s datafeed), but will be helpful for getting direct links from merchants that do not offer Merchandiser feeds.

If you are interested in using the Automated LinkGenerator, e-mail LinkShare at linkgen_request@linkshare.com to have this new tool enabled.  Once you are enabled, the Automated LinkGenerator will be located under the LinkShare Feed Synergy Services area of the Affiliate Interface.

To create an Automated LinkGenerator link, you will use a REST (Representational State Transfer) Web services to request links for a given merchant URL. You will then send a URL from the merchant’s site to LinkShare using the specified link format (see the Automated LinkGenerator Help area).  The URL can be sent through a browser, a tool like wget or curl, or an automated script.  For each URL provided, LinkShare returns a click link.  You can request up to 1,000 links within an hour.

Web services applications are accessible using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and REST. Web Services use HTTP with XML for communication. These are ubiquitous technologies and any device capable of using these technologies is able to both host and consume Web services.  Web services concepts are simple to understand and with the addition of various tool-kits provide a low barrier to entry and easy software development.

For information on setting up a Web services, please visit the following sites:
REST - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer
Web Services - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service
Web Services & PHP - http://webservices.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2004/03/24/phpws.html

I think this is a great  enhancement within the LinkShare affiliate network.  I like to use direct links whenever I can because they obviously convert MUCH better.  Many of the retailers I promote with in-house affiliate programs already offer this feature so I guess it’s about time LinkShare stepped their game up.  What do you think?

http://www.Top-Affiliate.com
http://www.FreeAdvertisingBlog.com

[tags]linkshare, automated linkgenerator, web services, affiliate links, representational state transfer, REST, simple object access protocol, SOAP[/tags]