Becoming a Successful Niche Marketer

Online niche marketing is more than just an online fad. People have been earning amazing incomes from it for several years; every day, more and more people get on board and start living the dream, too. If you think that becoming a successful niche marketer is out of your reach, think again. With the right guidance, it’s truly possible for anyone to become a success in the niche marketing game. These days, the crème de la crème of the niche marketing how-to world has to be Micro Niche Finder. Get on board with that program and read the following info to get the ball rolling on your niche marketing adventure!

Step One: Researching Popular Niches

There’s a delicate balance to finding the right niche market. On the one hand, you want something that’s specific enough to keep the playing field as sparse as possible; on the other, you need a niche market that will earn you steady, reliable income. The first step to becoming a successful niche marketer is zeroing in on the right niche. There are literally thousands of them available; getting started can be quite overwhelming. Micro Niche Finder simplifies this daunting step, allowing you to pinpoint the niche that is right for you.

Key things to keep in mind when researching niches include:

Find Out what People are Looking For – To find the right niche, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of what people are searching for online. Any niche marketer will tell you that staying abreast of what’s popular in online searches is the backbone of making this venture work for you. The main ingredient to being a successful niche marketer is drawing in targeted traffic; once you have an audience, the battle is all downhill. Selecting a niche that people are seeking information about is a great first step.

Choose an Untapped Niche Market – Here’s where the balancing act comes into play: You need to select a niche that’s being searched for but that isn’t oversaturated. If there are hundreds of other niche marketers trying to get in on the action, your profits will be extremely diluted. This is why it pays to sign up for an automated system like Micro Niche Finder, which helps you zero in on emerging niches with ease. By getting in on the ground floor of a niche market, you will increase your odds of experiencing amazing success as a niche marketer.

Analyze Niches at a Glance – A big stumbling block for any niche marketing is analyzing the potential of any given niche market. Usually, doing this is extremely difficult. With MicroNicheFinder, you can size up a niche market at a glance.

Step Two: Finding the Right Product

The next step in becoming a successful niche marketer is finding the right product within the niche of your choice. In this case, it pays to get as specific as possible with your keyword research. Overly broad keywords and key phrases are going to leave you spinning your tires. You need to zero in on a product that can be found through more in-depth keywords and key phrases. Micro Niche Finder makes it a snap to analyze the usefulness and effectiveness of various keywords and key phrases, allowing you to pinpoint the products that will generate the most business for you.

Another thing to keep in mind when selecting a product as a niche marketer is gauging its potential in terms of affiliate marketing. For many niche marketers, affiliate marketing is one of their most lucrative sources of income. Some products do better than others in the affiliate marketing game. MicroNicheFinder makes it possible to get a feel for how well a product will perform for you in this regard.

Step Three: Setting Up Your Venture as a Niche Marketer

Once all of the analyzing has been done, it’s time to get the ball rolling in earnest. Yet again, Micro Niche Finder simplifies the process of getting your business off the ground. There are many ways to get going as a niche marketer. Setting up a series of small sales websites is a great first step. These sites can include forms that people can use to sign up for e-newsletters; you can then use those newsletters to expand your reach and make sales. As emphasized in the MicroNicheFinder program, diverting and converting are exceptionally important things that any niche marketer should know.

Basically:

Diverting – As a niche marketer, you need to divert as much traffic to your own sites as possible. This can be done in various ways, including press releases, pay-per-click programs, article marketing, email campaigns and backlinks.

Converting – Once the traffic’s been diverted to your site, you need to convert it into sales. You can do this by selling your products or through affiliate marketing. Another prime option you can use as a niche marketer is AdSense revenue; convert the traffic into email lists that can be used to generate income, too.

As you can see, there’s more than one way to go about becoming a wildly successful niche marketer. In fact, it pays to put as many different things to work for you as possible. If you’re really serious about becoming a niche marketer, though, you need to sign up with MicroNicheFinder. Between its indispensable assistance and the points made above, you’ll be able to skyrocket to the top in no time.

Paulson Management Group, founded by industry expert Heather Paulson, has recently launched PMG-AffiliateTV.  PMG-AffiliateTV takes an inside look at what’s going on in the affiliate marketing industry as a whole as well as the latest developments within PMG.

I think it’s exceedingly obvious Heather and her staff are trying to put us all out of a job by cornering all aspects of the online marketing sector, which is probably why she was recently honored as an Affiliate Marketing Legend Award nominee for Affiliate Summit’s Pinnacle Awards.  Congratulations to you Heather!

So, without further adieu here’s PMG-AffiliateTV Episode I with your host McKenna.  Enjoy!

About Paulson Management Group:

Paulson Management Group, Inc is a leading full service eMarketing management and internet consulting company providing affiliate management, search engine management or social media management. PMG supports these channels by developing affiliate media, micro-sites and web sites, landing pages, as well as affiliate videos. For a customized free proposal, contact PMG today at 1-800-384-7760.

As an affiliate, spreading the word about your products is your number one priority. If you aren’t constantly looking for new customers and for new ways to promote your products, you risk losing out on a lot of potential sales to the competition.  While the Internet has made advertising easier in many ways, it can also be tremendously confusing – believe it or not there are those who aren’t very familiar with it!

There are many different techniques for marketing online, but viral marketing is one of the cheapest and most effective ones.  With viral affiliate marketing, you can put the Internet at large to work for you, letting your message pass from person to person in an exciting – and potentially lucrative – ripple effect.

So What Is Viral Affiliate Marketing?

Viral marketing refers to any marketing phenomenon that revolves around the “word of mouth” concept.  As the name implies, viral marketing involves letting an infectiously popular advertising product or message loose on the Internet; as it gains momentum, it is passed along from person to person.  All the while, the product is promoting your product, service or business.  Just think about how many hilarious videos you were told to check out or were e-mailed this past year.

Viral affiliate marketing, then, refers to using those marketing techniques to promote your affiliate marketing program.

These days, affiliates and affiliate managers have numerous options at their disposal when it comes to viral affiliate marketing.  Whether you’ve used viral marketing before or not, the following tidbits, strategies and resources will help you become a savvier and more effective viral affiliate marketer.  Choose one or several of them to begin your foray into viral marketing; over time, you will become more comfortable with these techniques and will arrive at a solution that is perfect for you.

Viral Affiliate Marketing Techniques

Some of the most successful viral affiliate marketing campaigns are those that are completely custom-designed by business owners.  Many times, they combine several different strategies or techniques; other times, they use entirely brand new and completely innovative strategies.  Down the road, you may become experienced enough to devise your own viral marketing ideas; until then, use these techniques as a jumping-off point.

Videos

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years you’re probably very familiar with one of the most popular websites on the Internet, YouTube.  However, YouTube is about more than just funny cat videos and other random attractions – it is a great place to create, post and market a viral video.  By creating a YouTube account, you can set up your own page; on it, you can list your affiliate marketing site’s URL and other information.

The real fun begins, though, with creating your video.  While professional quality viral videos are viewed millions of times amateur viral videos have done just as well…if not better.  Just take a look at the “Baby Dancing to Beyonce” video which currently has over 6.6 million views in 2009!

I’m pretty sure the father who shot this video never dreamed his son would be a YouTube megastar or that his son’s little happy-feet would launch the website http://www.SingleBabies.com

Viral videos get that way by being something that people want to pass along to others.  Whether it’s especially catchy (like the video above), extremely informative or exceptionally useful, your video should be something that people will want to share with others.  As your video is embedded on social media sites and linked to in emails, people will be directed to your YouTube channel.  There, they will be able to learn more about your affiliate marketing program and will be able to visit your regular website.

Ebooks

These days, ebooks are very easy to create and simple to pass along.  This was NOT the case when I started back in early 2000.  Now however, there are several free programs for creating your very own ebooks, so you shouldn’t have any problem with the execution of one.   The issue, as with videos, is that you’ll need a catchy idea or a valuable premise that will prompt people to not only READ your ebook, but actually pass it along to others as well. Assuming your ebook is compelling enough, those who read it will want to share it with others.

Word of mouth concerning your ebook can easily start picking up steam; whether you offer it on your website or on an ebook directory, you should begin to notice a spike in the number of downloads that are made.  Within the content of your ebook, you should make sure to refer readers to your website, where they can find the products and services that you have to offer.  The more people that download and read your ebook, the greater amount of exposure your affiliate marketing program will receive – and the higher your profits will ultimately be.

Feeling A Little Creative?

Although videos and ebooks are the “big kahunas” of the viral marketing world, there are an endless number of permutations that you can play around with when doing this for yourself.  Consider a few of these great ideas for yourself; these are also great places to start brainstorming for your very own viral marketing concepts.

• Use a program to create your very own electronic post cards or gift cards and offer them on your website, social networking profile or elsewhere.  On them, include a link to your affiliate marketing URL so that readers can check it out for themselves.
• Hire a freelancer to create a simple digital game for you.  Have them incorporate advertising and marketing elements from your affiliate marketing program within the game.  If the game is playable and catchy enough, it should spark a decent amount of interest.  As it’s played, people will be taking in your advertising message and your business should enjoy a great deal of free, word-of-mouth exposure.
• Similarly, you could have someone create a simple but useful utility with the name of your affiliate marketing program marked on it.  Offering a free download for it on your website, blog or social networking profile will help it get spread around.  I see these all the time as mortgage calculators.

And What About Those Darn Widgets?

Ahh Widgetmania!  Affiliate marketers are turning more and more to widgets in their viral marketing endeavors.  Widgets are mini-applications; they are self-contained and can easily be dragged and dropped onto websites, blogs and other online places.  They are taking the affiliate marketing world by storm; it’s easy to see why.

With a few clicks of a mouse button, you can create widgets that highlight the products that you sell and then place those widgets on your social networking profiles and elsewhere. People who see your widget and like it can easily pass it along to others. In that way, widgets can be tremendously powerful viral affiliate marketing tools.

By their very nature, widgets are simple to use.  You don’t need a great deal of technical know-how or other training to use widgets effectively.  For the most part, you can jump right in and use widgets to promote your affiliate marketing program in no time flat.  However, if you want to strangle the market in a particular niche find a good widget/API developer and keep him/her happy.

Some Useful Resources And Tools

There is a plethora of information available online about setting up viral affiliate marketing campaigns.  You could kick your own campaign off and get it up and running in no time; use the following resources to help you get started:

• Viral Marketing Method – (New) A site that compiles a large number of valuable marketing tools for affiliates and affiliate managers. Many of these tools are completely free of charge.
• Easy Ebook Creator – Available for a very low price, this software program helps you generate slick-looking ebooks in record time. It’s so easy to use that you can come up with multiple ebooks without wasting a lot of time.
• Viral Manager – This site is a great place to get your feet wet in the world of viral affiliate marketing.  Browse it to gain valuable insights on techniques and strategies that you can use.
• Widgetbox – Find widgets.  Create widgets.  Very cool.
• Have some of your own viral marketing products/resources?  Let me know and I’ll grow this list out.

Thanks to affiliate marketing, the concept of working from home has never been more doable or accessible.  Promoting and selling vendors’ items online – and sharing a percentage of the revenue that is generated through such efforts – is surprisingly easy and can be incredibly lucrative.  The primary thing to keep in mind when trying to break into the affiliate marketing game, though, is “marketing.”  The vast majority of the work that you’ll be doing will revolve around gaining exposure for your website and the products that are promoted within it.  Luckily, there are several great tips and strategies related to affiliate marketing; familiarize yourself with a few of the best ones below.

Sell What You Know

Passionate salespeople tend to outperform less enthusiastic ones.  When you genuinely understand and enjoy the products or services that you sell, customers can sense it and those products and services become that much more appealing.  We’ve all met the bored salesperson with the monotone drawl – unenthusiastic online affiliate marketers can come across in much the same way, repelling customers and running into dead end after dead end.

Although it may be tempting to engage in an affiliate marketing program that offers the absolute best revenue sharing percentage or other key perks, if you’re uneducated, inexperienced and unenthusiastic about the things you’ll be marketing the extra compensation isn’t going to go very far.  Instead, look for an affiliate marketing program based on something you know and love.  In turn, you will be able to write more compelling and engaging content, which will attract more customers to you. In the long run, you’ll carve out a great niche for yourself and your sales will start flooding in.

Choose A Great Domain

One of the biggest mistakes affiliate marketers make is skimping on their website.  Rather than investing in a proper domain name – something that typically costs about $10.00 per year – they try to avoid that extra cost by using a free web hosting service like Blogger.  While the platform and tools that go along with sites like WordPress and Blogger are great, having a domain that ends in “.blogspot.com” is not.  Search engines tend to overlook sites with long, convoluted extensions and yours will probably get lost in the shuffle.  Think up a clever, catchy and unique domain name and invest in it – one ending in .com is generally best.

* Note:  I personally use www.Godaddy.com for all of my domains, they’re one of the best registrars in the business.

Create Killer Content – Or Pay Someone Else To Do It For You

These days, it seems like every site on the Internet is trying to sell something.  People are fickle, and simply slapping up affiliate links along with images of the products that you sell just isn’t enough. What draws people to your site and its products and services is content.  Regurgitating something that someone else has said is pointless; you need to create compelling, well-written and informative content, and you need to update it frequently.  If you have a knack for writing, enjoy it and have the time, do it yourself.  If writing isn’t necessarily your forte, hire a professional – it is well worth the money.

* Note: For over a year I have been using www.TextBroker.com for unique conetent generation on all of my new niche affiliate web sites.  In a word this service is AWESOME!

Submit To Article Directories

Assuming that you’re heeding the first bit of advice in this article and are selling something that you know and love, writing informative articles about it should come pretty naturally.  Those articles can be submitted to various article directories around the Internet, along with links to your website or to specific landing pages. In order to attract attention and traffic, those articles will have to be professional and should include a decent percentage of strategically selected keywords.  Educate yourself about the top article directory sites, then start generating articles for them.  Over time, your affiliate marketing business will truly start booming.

* Note: Online Marketing Research has put together a good list of quality article directories ranked by their Alexa rank.  I’m not going to recreate the wheel so here’s the link: http://www.seoresearcher.com/articles-directories-list-alexa-rating-ordered.htm

Create Topnotch Landing Pages

Landing pages are the bread and butter of many top affiliate marketers.  Basically, a landing page is a place where a person is directed after clicking on a link or an ad. In a succinct and direct way, landing pages convey what the visitor can expect and don’t require a lot of reading or involvement.  They can be used in a number of different ways, too, including:

• To Direct Traffic To Your Site – The most popular and basic goal of many landing pages is to funnel visitors to your affiliate marketing site.  Such a landing site will include compelling language within a link – usually called “anchor text” – to direct people to your website.
• To Extend An Offer – Landing pages are sometimes used to direct people to special offers, deals or sales on your affiliate marketing goods.  Sometimes, clicking the link on a landing site might send a visitor directly to the sales page for a specific product; other times, clicking that link might send them to a group of related products. The choice is up to you.
• To Allow People To Participate – You can use a landing page to link people up to follow you on Twitter, sign up for an email group or to become a fan of yours on Facebook.  The possibilities are endless, and they all add up to excellent marketing tools.

* Note: One of the best free resources to learn everything about landing pages can be found here: http://www.copyblogger.com/landing-pages/

So there you go.  If you’re just starting out in affiliate marketing I hope these quick tips and resources will help you out.  Aloha!

With Christmas right around the corner Linkshare has seen an increase of online fashion retailers joining their affiliate network.  A few are well established retailers you know by name with a few new up and coming retailers.  Here’s a few new fashion retailers to get you started on the Linkshare UK affiliate network:

Faith – A leading UK fashion high street retailer specializing in affordable women’s and men’s luxury footwear and accessories.

• Up to 8% commission on net sales
• 30 day Cookie period
• Newsletters sent on a regular basis to inform you of our best sellers, new items, offers and trends
• Access to product imagery and content to ensure your visitors are the first to know about the latest must-have fashion items and accessories
• Instant access to sales reports and tracking
• Affiliate page – http://www.faith.co.uk/faith-affiliate-programme-artlaffiliate_programme/

Jigsaw – Jigsaw is a British company that has been involved in the design, manufacturing and retailing of clothes and accessories for over thirty-five years. The first store opened in Hampstead in 1972 and the company has steadily expanded to currently operate over 40 stores in the UK. In 1996 Jigsaw Junior was established to extend the product range from purely women’s fashion. The brand has also seen international expansion in the USA, where it currently trades from 7 stores on the West Coast.

• Affiliate page – http://www.jigsaw-online.com/affiliates  (Affiliate program structure not listed on website.)
  

Fenn Wright Manson -Since the launch in 1974 Fenn Wright Manson has established itself as a leading British ladieswear fashion brand and has acquired a reputation for innovative and timeless collections. An emphasis on chic and feminine styles and cuts, in exhaustible and versatile range of prints and textures, have given the seasonal collections it’s distinct profile.

The Fenn Wright Manson London based design team produces inspirational and quintessential styles season after season, appealing to an ageless fashion aware woman who wants to invest in effortlessly sophisticated and everyday flattering pieces. Every style has attention to detail and are suitable for all aspects of life – from work and day and right through to evening and occasions wear.  

• 5% Commission on all goods
• Ggenerous 60-day Cookie Window
• (Affiliate program offering not listed on website.  Had to dig up the details.)

Matches – Since the first Matches store opened near Tom and Ruth Chapman’s home in Wimbledon in 1990, it has become a brand in its own right – an iconic retail experience, trusted by London’s most fashion literate clientele, offering the best of the best in established and new international labels.  (Good website and generous affiliate structure.  Definitely worth taking a closer look at.)

• £5 bounty on full-price orders placed by new customers’
• 45 day cookie length
• Up to 10% commission
• Instant access to sales reports and bestsellers
• Daily automated product feed
• Regular newsletters to ensure you’re up to date with the latest trends and must-have buys for the season
• Access to the product catwalk imagery (Nice touch there!)
• Affiliate page – http://www.matchesfashion.com/fcp/content/JoinUs/content

Fossil – Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 25 years you’ve probably heard of Fossil.  Fossil is a design, development, marketing and distribution company that specializes in consumer products predicated on fashion and value.  The company’s principal offerings include an extensive line of fashion watches sold under the company’s proprietary and licensed brands.  The company also offers complementary lines of small leather goods, belts, handbags, sunglasses, jewelry and apparel.  The company’s products are sold in department stores and specialty retail stores in over 90 countries around the world, in addition to the company’s e-commerce website at www.fossil.com.

• 17% commission on all of our products, on every referred sale (One of the largest percentages I’ve seen for this particular market.)
• Highly recognizable retailer
• Free shipping on every order over $75
• Checks cut monthly
• Also listed on Performics and Commission Junction
• Affiliate page – http://www.fossil.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Static____affiliateNetwork_custCareNav

Radley – Radley was founded in 1998 by Lowell Harder, our Creative Director. Radley is a great, creative British brand, which makes beautiful handbags and accessories  for women to own.

• Baseline commission: 6%
• Cookie window: 30 days
• A full Merchandiser product feed is available on the program
• JPG, Flash banners and text links for all promotions
• LinkBuilder also allows you to link to any page on the Radley site.
• (Affiliate program offering not listed on website.  Had to dig up the details.)

As you’re tweaking your Christmas affiliate marketing campaigns be sure to keep an eye out on new affiliate programs your preferred affiliate networks may have recently launched.  Stay ahead of the pack and always look for new unique niches you can easily dominate.

When Pepperjam launched Pepperjam Network earlier this year I was still in Iraq and only had a chance to sign up for the new affiliate network.  After returning back from my deployment and getting around to catching up on an obscene amount of backlog I finally got around to poking around the Pepperjam Network.

Logging into the affiliate control panel I was immediately impressed with the technology and detail.  Everything you need to run a successful affiliate marketing campaign is immediately at your disposal in an aesthetically pleasing layout.

Pepperjam has secured some HUGE merchant/retailer names.  Looking through their list of advertisers you’ll see many of the same wildly popular advertisers you love to promote and some interesting new advertisers in very specialized niche markets you may not be familiar with like Andy’s Airplanes.

In my opinion one of the best features of this affiliate network is pepperjamADS.

“pepperjamADS is an affiliate marketing widget that you can use to serve customized contextual ads from one or multiple Pepperjam Network advertisers at the same time. The ad units come in various shapes and sizes. You can mix and mash ads from any of your merchant partners. For instance, you can create a fashion widget by selecting various ads from multiple fashion merchants. Likewise, you can create a specific widget with ads from any one merchant.”

If you haven’t already signed up for the Pepperjam Network…what are you waiting for?  Pepperjam’s 2008 Inc. 500 ranking is #70 with three-year revenue growth of 2,447.5%.  Pepperjam ranks as one of the top 100 fastest growing privately-held companies in the United States of America!

The below article by Michael Wong, owner of Mikes Marketing Tools, offers some excellent advice for old and new hat affiliate program managers.  Take a look and see if your affiliate program may be breaking one of these 5 cardinal rules.  In my opinion Mikes number one mistake, “Competing With Your Affiliates”, is probably the biggest problem I see with many affiliate programs today.  Enjoy!

Affiliate Managers: Your Top Five Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes

In this article I will show affiliate managers the mistakes they should avoid if they want to build a successful affiliate program.

I felt compelled to write this article after seeing the same mistakes made by most of the hundreds of affiliate programs I have joined since I started promoting them in 1997. I have made a nice living from affiliate programs over the years, so I know a thing or two about them. I would dearly love to make more money with affiliate programs, but affiliate managers don’t make it easy for us affiliates. So hopefully this article will do a bit for the cause.

Here are my top five biggest affiliate program mistakes that I find today:

1. Competing With Your Affiliates.

This is by far the worst mistake made by companies that offer affiliate programs. I often see companies for products I am trying to promote compete with me in the search engine rankings and pay per click advertising programs.

Why companies invest money and resources in competing with their affiliates is beyond me. By competing with me, you’re trying to put me out of business. Have marketing directors ever thought of it in that way? Because if you succeed, you will no longer have an affiliate network to speak of.

The money would be better spent on supporting your affiliate network by creating a better product, providing more referral statistics, higher commission payouts, faster support, and more, fresh promotional creatives.

So if you’re an affiliate manager reading this article, tell your affiliate director at your next meeting to STOP competing with your affiliates, and support them instead!

2. Not Providing Your Affiliates With Useful, Real-Time Statistics.

All marketers rely on statistics to measure the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Yet most affiliate programs only provide their affiliates with basic statistics such as number of visitors sent, number of sales, and commission earned. These statistics aren’t much help to affiliates who want to measure the effectiveness of a particular pay per click campaign.

Affiliate managers – please consider providing these useful statistics so that I can market your products effectively:

• Archive of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly statistics and by date range.
• Commission earned, broken down by product or service, and how the customer was referred to the site.
• Daily email update of all affiliate statistics.
• Instant email notification of a new affiliate.
• Instant email notification of a new free trial sign up.
• Instant email notification of a new sale and all relevant statistics. I love getting new sales notification emails!
• Number of free trial downloads or subscriptions.
• Number of returns and all relevant statistics.
• Affiliate links with trackable IDs, so that affiliates can tell exactly which site, or ad campaign is sending the referrals and sales.
• Unique clicks – which refers to the unique number of visitors referred – in addition to raw clicks – which refers to the total number of click throughs.
• A list of top performing affiliate statistics, so that affiliates can compare how they’re doing and which areas they can improve on.
• Include the most important statistics at the top of the email and subject line. There’s nothing worse than having to scroll down to see what the referral purchased or how much commission I have made.

The following only apply if the affiliate program offers more than one level of commissions.

• Commission earned as a result of referrals sent by 2nd-tier affiliates.
• Commission earned, broken down by commission level.
• Number of 2nd-tier affiliates referred.

I’ve been promoting products and services via affiliate programs since 1997 and I have yet to come across an affiliate program that provides anything close to these statistics.

3. Not Compensating Your Affiliates Fairly For Their Hard Work.

The #1 incentive for any affiliate is cold hard cash. Money sells! So tell your marketing director to fire the search engine optimization firm and advertising department, and redirect the resources to paying your affiliates a higher commission rate.

Another thing I hate is seeing my commissions go down the drain because someone I had referred signs up to the affiliate program and purchases the product via their affiliate link. It almost feels like I’m being robbed blind! I highly recommend affiliate managers deter this practice by making it harder for affiliates to pocket the commission from their own purchases, at least the initial one.

4. Not Providing Enough Fresh Promotional Creatives.

Most affiliate managers seem to give their promotional creatives little thought. All they offer is a handful of 468×60 banners, buttons and text links. What happens is that affiliates end up using the same ads on hundreds, even thousands of web sites.

Affiliate managers – what about these promotional creatives?

• Articles and tips with embedded affiliate links
• Classified ads
• Customer testimonials
• Direct email ads
• Email signatures
• Newsletter ads
• pay per click ads
• Pop-up/under ads
• Product photographs
• Product reviews
• Product screenshots
• Rich-media ads
• Skyscrapers
• Staff interviews

Listen up! Different ads perform better on different sites. And ads generally have a life span of a carton of milk. So offer your affiliates a greater variety of ads, more often.

5. Not Providing Fast, Quality Support For Your Affiliates.

This is the 21st century. Don’t make your affiliates wait longer for an email reply than it takes to send a letter by snail-mail post.

Don’t outsource your affiliate support work. If you have to, then at least train your support staff so that they understand the ins and outs of your products and affiliate program. I’m often dumbfounded by affiliate support staff who can’t give me answers to simple questions.

Well there you have it – my five biggest complaints about affiliate programs today. I hope affiliate managers take note and take strides to better support their affiliates, because if you don’t, affiliates will find other ways to make money on their site.

Affiliate marketers – if you agree with what I’ve said, send this article to your affiliate program managers!

About The Author: Michael Wong is the editor of GoDefy.com – the world’s first online marketing comparison shopping search engine and Mike’s Marketing Tools. Michael is also the author of the leading Search Engine Optimization Guide and numerous marketing tips. Publishing Rights: You may republish this article in your web site, newsletter, or ebook, on the condition that you agree to leave the article, author’s signature and photograph, and all links completely intact. Full instructions on how to copy and upload my photo to your server.

A buy.at sponsored E-consultancy report indicates affiliate marketing is the most cost effective channel for driving customer acquisition.  The report identified:

• 95% of brands say affiliate marketing is ‘very cost-effective’ or ‘quite cost effective’
• An average of 18 per cent of the online marketing budget is spent in the channel
• Travel companies using affiliate marketing most effectively

The affiliate marketing report is jam packed with some very helpful marketing numbers and figures.  Take a quick minute and check out  the E-consultancy snippet for more information at:

http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/364296/affiliate-marketing-delivers-the-most-cost–effective-customer-acquisition.html.

The full results of the research will be released at ad:tech where buy.at will have copies of the sample report at stand number 471.

The research report is also available to E-consultancy subscribers, or on a pay-per-view basis, at:

http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/affiliate-marketing-merchants-report-2007/

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