Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 9:23am by Linda Buquet
How do you go from being a $300,000 a month affiliate to a $182 a month affiliate? Paul from UberAffiliate tells you how he did it and explains his huge drop in revenue. Most other super affiliates flash their big checks and tell you what they did to get to that level of earnings, which can be good information to have. However learning from someone else’s mistakes can often times be an even better lesson.
It must be very humbling for an affiliate that’s made as much as around $500,000 a month to talk about his worst month and outline all the reasons his income crashed, but it offers some good lessons too. Judging from the 52 comments so far, many affiliates were more inspired by this post than they are by the big money, check flashing posts some other super affiliates make.
Made $182.64 Profit Last Month
Yep that’s right kids, and no you didn’t read it wrong. Did the stats for last month and profit came out to $182.64.
When most affiliate bloggers make a post about earnings, it’s to boast about how much they made and/or for link-bait. Hey, I did it myself a couple times and it does it’s job. But what most affiliates don’t post about, are the bad months, and the very bad months. And last month just happened to be my worst month in affiliate marketing, ever. Nobody has the balls to admit when they’re struggling. I’ll admit I probably wouldn’t have the balls to post this if I hadn’t turned it back around and was doing awesome now. If I was still in a slump I’d probably just keep it quiet.
So instead of telling you how I earned $300k/month and what I did to get there, I’m going to tell you what I did to let myself slip and have a horrible month. Because affiliate marketing really is a roller coaster ride, there’s ups and downs. The real trick I’ve found out is getting off the rollercoaster and onto something more consistent, which is more long term niches and getting on the advertiser side of things. Here’s why I bombed out in November…More
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 10:34am by Linda Buquet
I’ve been anxious to see stats on Cyber Monday sales and am extremely happy to say the numbers were big! Cyber Monday 2008 sales ended up being an impressive $846 Million, according to Comscore. That’s UP 15% over last year and that makes it the the biggest Cyber Monday yet and the 2nd highest day EVER for online shopping! And it’s not just a one day fluke. Thanksgiving weekend sales were up 19% over last year. So in spite of the recession, online sales remain healthy and continue to grow, which is great news for the affiliate marketing industry.
Press Release: E-Commerce Spending Jumps 15 Percent on Cyber Monday to $846 Million, the Second Heaviest Online Spending Day on Record Eclipsed Only by Green Monday 2007
“Mark Twain might have said: ‘Rumors of the death of online holiday shopping have been greatly exaggerated’,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni “Consumers are clearly responding positively to retailers’ aggressive online discounts. With Cyber Monday promotions beginning in earnest over the Thanksgiving weekend, consumers have finally begun to open their wallets, setting off a streak of four consecutive days of extremely strong growth…”
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 7:00am by CT Moore - ShareResults.com
Ever hear the expression “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know?” Well, by building a relationship with your affiliate manager, you can gain a number of benefits, including (1) personalized support that’ll help you optimize your campaigns, (2) access to special promotions and commissions that you wouldn’t otherwise know about, and (3) a chance to influence the features of the affiliate program.
Building the Relationship
All business transactions are made possible by trust. For example, as an affiliate, you sign up with a program because you trust that they are going to pay you for your referrals. But trust is just the by-product of relationships. In the case of an affiliate program, you trust that you’ll get paid because that program has a relationship with other affiliates in the marketplace. And that relationship is usually sufficient for you to trust that you’ll receive commissions on any sales you refer them.
Getting Special Affiliate Promotions
Now consider the expression “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” By building a relationship with your affiliate manager, you are that much more likely to get access to special promotions and personalized support because they will learn that you’re not the kind of affiliate to abuse terms and conditions. That trust will, in turn, make them more likely to offer you special promotions when they’re available.
Personalized Affiliate Support
Since the affiliate program makes money when you make money, affiliate managers that know you will often take the time to provide you with tips and advice on how you can improve your campaigns. In addition to getting to know you, your affiliate manager will also get to know your channels (e.g. sites, newsletters, etc.), and will be able to provide feedback on what you can do to optimize your efforts across these channels. They’ll also think of you when an upcoming promotion is particularly suited for one of your channels.
Gaining Influence as an Affiliate
Have you ever had an idea on how an affiliate program can improve? Well, when you have a relationship with your affiliate manager, not only are they more likely to listen to you, but they’re also more likely to pass your suggestions on to those in a position to consider them. There’s never any guarantee that you’ll get what you ask for, but you never know when it’ll help speed up development of a function or feature that you’ve always wanted.
Business Relationships
All in all, building a strong relationship with affiliate managers just makes good business sense. Just as there are hundreds of affiliate programs out there, there are also thousands of affiliates. If you work hardest for the program that helps you the most, then why wouldn’t an affiliate manager work harder for you if you take the time to actively collaborate with them.
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CT Moore is part of the affiliate marketing team at ShareResults.com. A relationship-based affiliate network, Share Results works closely with affiliates to help them optimize their marketing campaigns. The software that powers their network is also available for white labeling.
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 1:44pm by Linda Buquet
Google Affiliate Network features hundreds of leading advertisers
including name brands such as Barnes & Noble, Bose, Citi Cards,
Crutchfield, Kohls, Sears, Target, Zazzle, Verizon & many more.
Hopefully everyone knows about Google Affiliate Network, which was previously DoubleClick Performics, but for those that don’t, here is an overview.
Google Affiliate Network connects advertisers and publishers who want to increase sales and drive leads through affiliate marketing. Google Affiliate Network can help you discover new advertiser referral programs and generate more revenue.
Whether you are a web publisher focused on creating niche content, aggregating coupons, data and offers or leveraging new media, Google Affiliate Network can help you drive more productivity through affiliate marketing.
Easy to use
Save time with an intuitive user interface, fast-loading pages, and creative trafficking tools.
Tracking and reporting
Track conversions and member IDs for loyalty marketing. Schedule and save reports.
Automated payments
Receive electronic payments, consolidated across advertisers, twice a month. Choose from a variety of commission structures.
Support and development
Contact our experts for technical support or to help you find new revenue opportunities.
Publisher recognition Earn AffiliateVIP and Rising Star status and enjoy exclusive marketing opportunities and greater visibility in the network.
Advertiser Benefits
As an advertiser using Google Affiliate Network, you’ll discover pre-screened publishers who can refer consumer traffic to you. Google Affiliate Network offers advertisers:
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 8:30am by Linda Buquet
Wish you had a crystal ball to know what the most sought after products are this Holiday season? Google poured over millions of recent “product search” queries to find some of the most searched for items. They offer a list of top Google product searches across several product categories.
Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 3:20pm by Linda Buquet
Today is Cyber Monday and I hope those Holiday sales are rolling in for you. Even though your Holiday promotions should be all set, there is still time to tweak and optimize various aspects of your campaigns to try to increase conversions.
You can watch and listen to the webinar below at your leisure or listen to the audio-only version while you work to try to pick up some tips that can help boost Holiday sales. There are some good case studies and examples worth checking out too.
“There’s been plenty of gloom, doom, and handwringing over this year’s holiday shopping season.
While your best bet is to keep projections grounded, not all hope is lost. Even in a tight economy, the Web has several advantages for shoppers, and ecommerce sites that capitalize on these will see more opportunities.
Optimizing a few key areas of your site and channels will help you increase traffic, make browsing and buying easier, and win more new and repeat customers – even beyond the holidays.
The MarketingExperiments research team has compiled this ecommerce holiday “playbook” with 13 specific practices to help you maximize your ROI in this difficult holiday season.”
Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 7:21am by Linda Buquet
HAPPY CYBER MONDAY 2008
Remember that good ole Mama’s and Papa’s song, “Monday Monday?”
I juiced up the lyrics and made it a tribute to Cyber Monday.
Sing it with me now, then spin around 3 times and pull on your right ear. I absolutely guarantee that if you do this little ritual, your Monday Holiday sales will increase!
(If funky eBooks promise you can make a billion $$ in your underwear, then I can make a crazy claim too!)
Monday Monday by the Mama’s and Papa’s
Cyber Monday… so good to me,
Cyber Monday it was all I hoped it would be
Cyber Monday morning, Monday morning will guarantee
That Monday evening sales will still be comin’ in for me.
Every other day, every other day,
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah…
But when Cyber Monday comes, when Cyber Monday comes
You can find me smilin’ all of the time…
If this song stays in your head all day and drives you nuts - please feel free to yell at me in the comments below!
OK, so last year when I posted this, I issued a challenge to Shawn Collins to sing the Cyber Monday Song I wrote, since he’s both a singer and a ham! However he said he was not a big fan of the Mama’s and Papa’s, so his rendition of the Cyber Monday Song is based on “MANIC Monday” by the Bangles. It’s pretty funny - and GOOD. Watch it!
Shawn’s Cyber Monday Music Video
(If by chance the video doesn’t show in your browser, here’s the link.)
Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 5:01am by Linda Buquet
Josh from the Scrappy Business Blog is a vagabond affiliate, traveling the globe and working his affiliate business from his laptop. I was scanning his blog Thanksgiving evening and found a post that I think makes some really good points. If you are trying to up your affiliate game and reach the next level, you’ll want to read this.
Josh describes the AFA‘Average Frustrated Affiliate’ as an affiliate “who has no game and rarely manages to convert offers profitably. Also an affiliate who tends to look to “gurus” for validation, buys a lot of ebooks, but never takes action.”
He offers 11 tips about how to avoid being an AFA. Here are a couple of them.
1. Write your financial goals for the year. If you want to make $100,000, then fine. Divide that by 365 to give you $275/day in profit. Now, how do you get to $275?
3. Now, time to figure out what your core competency is. First, what do you enjoy doing? PPC? Do you like managing sites? DO you like managing a team? Pick the top 3 things you like to do, then find someone to do the rest of the crap…
8. Start a…review site, start a direct linking campaign, do SEO, I don’t really care what you do. BUT DO IT. And FAIL. And I mean FAIL HARD and I mean FAIL FAST. You are new to this industry you are going to fail, so give it the best shot you got, learn from it, then move on. Don’t spend 4 weeks building an affiliate site.
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 2:48pm by Linda Buquet
It’s easy with the busy online lives we lead to take things for granted - yet by remembering to give thanks for all we have, we can attract even more abundance into our lives. So remember to take time out of all the turkey day festivities this year to give thanks for the many blessings in your life.
I’m extremely thankful for having the opportunity to run my own business and for this wonderful industry we call affiliate marketing. I’m also thankful for all my great 5 Star clients, blog readers, forum members & forum administrator, Larry.
I sincerely wish all 5 Star readers and your families the best Thanksgiving ever!
The Attitude of Gratitude
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” Melodie Beattie
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 10:22am by Linda Buquet
Merchants, do you have any loyalty toolbar affiliates or toolbar affiliates of any kind in your program? Do you know how they work and how they can negatively impact your bottom line??? Affiliates, do you understand the impact toolbar affiliates can have on your revenue? At the link below, Scott Jangro is going to show you in real-time exactly how toolbar affiliates earn commission for sales they should not be getting credit for.
In simple terms, loyalty toolbars INJECT themselves into the middle of a transaction that was already destined to take place, then they get credit for a commission they did not earn - either from the rightful affiliate that drove the sale or from the merchant’s own marketing efforts.
Scenario: An affiliate does PPC and drives a buyer to merchant.com. When the visitor buys, they deserve the commission right? Well if that visitor has a loyalty toolbar installed - AFTER the original affiliate successfully gets the visitor to the merchant, an alert on the tool bar essentially says click here to contribute X%. If the customer clicks, because they want to donate to their charity or school, guess what? The loyalty site plants a cookie and gets the sale that rightfully belonged to the original affiliate - a visitor that affiliate PAID PPC dollars to get! Even if the affiliate didn’t do PPC, they paid blood sweat and tears to build their site and did SEO, wrote an article or did some other type of marketing to attract that visitor AND got them to click through. (more…)
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 9:29am by Linda Buquet
There has been a trend the past couple years for merchants and affiliate managers to focus on the top 20% of their affiliates and mainly work with producers. Managers are told their programs should be lean and mean and they should cull the herd on a regular basis. I’ve never believed in that strategy as I think small or new affiliates deserve a chance plus having lots of small producers can potentially add up to lots of incremental revenue.
So I found the following 2 part article/interview conducted by Jeff Molander (more…)
Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 12:39pm by Linda Buquet
I hate to talk doom and gloom because it seems that’s all that’s in the news. But we can’t avoid the fact the economy is in a scary place. However that does not mean the opportunity for affiliates to earn revenue is necessarily diminished. Some affiliates who switch gears and look for ways to profit in this economic crisis could actually fare quite well.
Today I’d like to point you to two idea-filled blogs on the subject of affiliate marketing in a recession. 1st Lisa Riolo asks (more…)
Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 8:57am by Linda Buquet
The holidays are just around the corner and before you know it people will be out of time and trying to make decisions on last minute gift purchases.
So to help you AND your visitors out, Google Affiliate Network has put together a list of shipping deadlines from many of the merchants in their network. On this list they indicated: Gift Card Shipping, Christmas standard and premium shipping, Hanukkah shipping and Kwanzaa shipping. They also indicate whether or not a merchant offers in store pickup.
This information should be helpful for when your visitors need to determine just how much time they have to buy their gifts online so they arrive in time for the holidays. There may be more deadline information to come so stay tuned!
Some of the retailers featured in the Holiday Shipping Deadlines List include: Sears, Kohls, Target, Red Envelope, Crutchfield, Circuit City, Kmart and more.
If you aren’t a member of the Google Affiliate Network yet, you can get more info and join here.
Think you can promote, e-mail or SEO your way out of this recession? Until you stop thinking and functioning tactically you’ll keep failing to earn a proper seat at the management table - if not fail completely. Survival today requires divorcing yourself of the comfortable myths of “branding”, easy answers and digital hocus-pocus that pass for most marketing strategies.
Guest Speakers: Jonathan Salem Baskin, Entrepreneur, Consultant and Author of the controversial new book, “Branding Only Works on Cattle” Jason Billingsley, VP, Innovation at Elastic Path Software Jeff Molander, CEO, Molander & Associates, Inc.
Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 7:30am by Linda Buquet
Though we certainly haven’t maxed out yet, Affiliate Marketing has gotten huge! There are so many categories of affiliates, merchants, advertisers and publishers that are all helping fuel our industry’s growth. One of the categories that always piques my interest is a group of affiliates that calls themselves “Internet Marketers”.
These are the super affiliates that most advertisers and merchants are desperately trying to recruit into their programs. They are the ones that can double your annual traffic in just one day – the guys that do what every affiliate dreams of… they actually earn thousands, hundreds of thousands – and even millions in commissions. (more…)
Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 10:38am by Linda Buquet
Just in time for the Holidays a hot new keyword tool from Google called the “Search-Based Keyword Tool.” If you have an Adwords account it will pull up your sites in the drop down box. Select the site you want to look at and the tool will give you other keywords you’ve missed complete with search volume, competition and bids required to get in the top 3.
Select ‘other’ and enter a competitor’s site for competitive analysis. Oh and you don’t need to have an Adwords account to use the tool and there isn’t even any captcha. Click and check it out!
Here is part of the write-up from the Inside Adwords Blog(more…)
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 10:07am by Linda Buquet
Singlesnet.com Dating Publisher Program
Partner with the #1 Dating Site and Profit!
Dating affiliates! Join the highest paying dating publisher program online today. The Singlesnet.com direct program offers publishers the highest commissions and the most frequent payments available.
Work with the #1 Dating Site in The US according to Hitwise.
Singlesnet.com Publisher Program Highlights
.:. $4.50 Payout for Search and Banner Traffic
.:. Weekly Payments via ACH / PayPal
.:. No Scrubbing of Leads
.:. Dedicated Account Managers
.:. Continuously updated high performing creative
As always, if there is anything you need to be successful with this program, just let me know. Super affiliates… need a personal intro to the program manager? Just ask and I’ll be happy to introduce you!
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 9:06am by Linda Buquet
AffiliateBenchmarks is a research report that was compiled using survey data from over 450 affiliates. 9 out of the 23 questions the survey addressed are listed below.
Peter Figueredo of NETexponent commissioned the survey and just announced over at Revenews that AffiliateBenchmarks will be free to download until 12/12. Affiliate managers DEFINITELY want to grab this data. I’m thinking some of the info could be helpful for affiliates as well.
Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 8:38am by Linda Buquet
Datafeeds are an important tool for building affiliate stores but for many affiliates it’s just too much of a technical challenge to convert raw datafeeds into their sites.
Datafeedr is a powerful push-button store creation system that makes it fast and easy for affiliates to set up, manage and update a complete affiliate store WITHOUT touching any techy datafeed files, without having to learn a programming language or hire a programmer.
I’ve been wanting to blog about Datafeedr, but Ros did such a good overview I thought I’d just link to her blog and have her tell you all about it. (more…)
Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 12:55pm by Linda Buquet
Santa Barbara has a major fire that’s out of control with “no end in sight” according to reporters. The fire started Thursday at 5:30 PM and the evening wind whipped it into a frenzy. Depending on who you listen to estimates are coming in at 100 to 500 homes lost including numerous multi million dollar mansions. The fire hit a wealthy area where lots of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Rob Lowe, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Joneslive.
According to the latest evacuation maps I’ve seen, CJ and PartnerCentric are just right outside the mandatory evacuation areas. I’m sure they are close enough to be having problems with smoke. So if you need to reach CJ and have a problem, just be aware they are dealing with a severe emergency. People could be off because they lost or are about to lose their homes, or off helping family spray down their houses. The offices could possibly even be closed, I’m not sure.
Prayers go out to the people of Santa Barbara. Hope folks at CJ & PC are safe!
Just in time for the Holidays a hot new keyword tool from Google called the “
