How to check cookies to ensure proper affiliate tracking
Thursday, January 15th, 2009If you are apart of a affiliate network, for example Shareasale, you dont need to worry about verifying cookies. However, if you are going lone ranger and joining an in house affiliate program, you should doublecheck the cookies. An affiliate program might claim they have a 60 day cookie, but the only way to check is to actually click on your affiliate link and then take a look at the length of cookie before it expires.
I have personally had experiences where an in house program did not have the cookie length as long as they claimed. I immediately dropped those programs because that is completely dishonest. If you want to look at the dates a cookie expires, you have to look at them in Netscape/Mozilla or Opera browsers, as IE doesn’t display it in a user friendly format.
Ways you could get scammed by affiliate programs
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009I wish affiliate marketers didn’t have to worry about the affiliate programs themselves scamming us, but sadly it can happen to you.
1) Cookie length. Some affiliate merchants do not set the actual cookie length as long as they claim on the site. I wrote another article about checking cookies and highly encourage you to read it.
2) Incomplete/No tracking. This is more of a problem with in house programs because there is no 3rd party network to ensure they are tracking all of your sales correctly. Joining a affiliate network is not bullet proof as everyone checks compliance differently, but Shareasale by far has the best affiliate tracking compliance system.
3) Not paying. Some affiliate programs, usually small in house affiliate programs, will allow you to build up a nice commission balance, but will either suspend you before payment is due or just never bother to pay you. Pay per click programs also may use the guise of suspected click fraud, even if you are not guilty, to suspend a affiliate before payout is due.
What are Affiliate Data feeds?
Thursday, December 11th, 2008Datafeeds are a large product file that you upload your site to display a merchant’s products. The most common format shows the product image, the price, and a link to the site(with your affiliate link). Datafeeds are advantageous to affiliate marketers because they increase click throughs and save time in implementing complex product links into your site.
A datafeed file is basically a large file of records for each product from a merchant. Some datafeed files are only a few hundred kilobytes, while others are hundreds of megabytes. Each product record has a field in it, for example the product url would be one field for each each record. Datafeeds are an advanced affiliate technique because your job is to turn this large file and integrate it into your site’s pages.
In order to use a affiliate datafeed, you will need to have access to creating a database and uploading it to your server. You will need a script to help you easily implement the file into your database. There are also some online datafeed processors, that will create a SQL database file from your datafeed file, so you can just import the SQL file into your database. Datafeeds come in different file formats, but the most common is .CSV, which can be be edited manually in a Excell spreadsheet.
Most affiliate networks do not allow you to download datafeeds from merchants, unless you are a large selling affiliate or want to pay a fee. Shareasale is one of the few that actually lets you download them for free. One important final thing to remember about datafeeds, is you will have to download fresh copies periodically, to make sure the datafeed prices match the real current prices.
Affiliate networks don’t always guarantee merchant compliance
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008When a affiliate marketer first joins a large reputable affiliate network, they naively believe that every program is closely monitored and is always tracking their sales 100% time. That is not the case and there are instances where your sales will not be tracked and although it can be minimized, the risk can’t be totally eliminated. Each affiliate network relies on a positive money balance and for the merchant to have tracking software installed in their shopping software in order for affiliates to get paid. When one of these things stop, you lose tracking of your sales, until it is fixed.
Many affiliate networks like Shareasale and Clixgalore, have a auto-deposit feature available which is visible to affiliates before they decide to join a program. This means that when the money balance runs low, they charge their credit card automatically, so affiliate marketers don’t lose sales. Not every merchant uses the auto-deposit feature, but it is important because some merchants abuse the system by not using the auto-deposit so they can constantly run out of money. WHen they they run out of money the sales don’t get tracked during that time, which means the affiliate merchant doesn’t have to give you credit for that sale. Some affiliate networks tell you when a program is running on a low balance, while many others don’t tell you till it’s too late and you’re getting invalid click reports because you’re not getting tracked anymore. Shareasale is the best network for avoiding abuse, even with merchants who don’t use auto-deposit because unlike other networks, they are the only one that gives a program uptime history. There are many affiliates who abuse it, so it’s important you closely look at it for merchants, not using auto-deposit.
The other way a network must ensure tracking compliance, is that they actually are correctly tracking sales through the use of the software in the shopping cart software. Unfortunately, not every network is on the ball for periodically checking this. Clixgalore for example, waits months before checking compliance. I became suspicious when a big merchant on Clixgalore had gone more than 60 days without a sale. I did a test sale and found it didn’t get credited. I contacted Clixgalore, but the fact that I had to contact myself when it was Clixgalore’s job, shows their tracking compliance checking system is very poor. The only thing you can see is when their last sale was, if it’s been a while then they may have removed the affiliate tracking software. On the other hand, Shareasale consistently tests the merchants for compliance and they show visibly when the last test was done. Overall, Shareasale has the best system in place for affiliate marketers to decide the safest program and that is why I recommend them above all other affiliate networks.
What Option is More Profitable: Adsense or Affiliate Programs?
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008If you have read some of my past articles, I have stressed the importance of putting up more than just Adsense on your website. While Adsense pays great, putting some affiliate programs on your page can usually enhance your earnings.
How well affiliates can earn you, really depends on your niche and what you are marketing. I have a few websites on one subject, where the affiliate sales are outpacing adsense by a large margin. You have to pick affiliate programs that will work well for your visitors. It should be something you think your visitor will be highly likely to buy when visiting your site.
Some website demographics do better than others for affiliate sales. For example, I have a blog that talks about making money for blogger and it’s the hardest website I have to get affiliate sales per unit of traffic. I think this is due to the fact that many that come here, are skeptical of anything talked about dealing with money online. I also think its because users who tend to come to my site are more web savvy than the average net user and more likely to have “ad blindness”. I have read from other bloggers who cover similiar topics as as this blog, who also reported smaller earnings compared to their other sites.
Many might think putting up affiliate ads might decrease Adsense earnings and thus your overall profit. It may, but once again that would depend on the website. The only way to know for sure, is if you test it with affiliate ads. If after a few months, your Adsense earnings drop and aren’t made up by extra revenue from the affiliate ads, you may have to change affiliate programs. It could take some trial and error a few times to find a good affiliate program. Even if you lose a little adsense earnings as a result, I would never get rid of affiliate ads. You should always diversify your ad sources beyond just Adsense.
How to create a very effective affiliate marketing site
Monday, December 1st, 2008Affiliate based websites come in many different forms, but most essentially have one common goal: to get the user to click on a affiliate link. Once a user clicks on a affiliate link, most affiliate programs give a cookie on the user’s computer for 30 days at the minimum. Sometimes a person doesn’t buy from the store for days or even weeks later, but we get credit for those sales down the road because of this tracking cookie left on their computer. If you are getting many clicks everyday, someone from the group is bound to convert to a sale, even if it is not directly after visiting your affiliate link that day.
The most common types of “thinly veiled” affiliate marketing sites I see are; review sites, coupon sites, price comparison, and shopping malls. All of these sites give the impression they are informative or quality sites, but they are really nothing more than doorway pages with window dressing for affiliate links.
How are users fooled into not noticing it’s nothing more than a thinly veiled affiliate site? You have to remember, most internet users are not webmasters, so they don’t think like us. When they go to a website they usually don’t think about how a website is making money or understand how affiliate links work. Sometimes they just don’t care, even if it is because some may find the review or price comparison your site gave them, actually helpful. Now you can’t just slap up a website and expect a high click through rate, you still have to put some work into your site, if you want to maximize the clickthrough rate.
The first thing you should do for your affiliate site, is cloak the affiliate links. This makes them look like legitimate urls, that encourage users to click on the link. Normal affiliate links are usually very long and ugly and not inviting to clicks. Some affiliate programs automatically use cloaking techniques built into the link code, but usually you can make better ones by cloaking them yourselves. Cloaking links work especially well for review sites, where users have less of a tendency to click on affiliate links if they feel the review was “bought”.
The most important thing a affiliate marketing site needs to do, is try to make their site as professional looking as they can. This can be done by having a professional design and using a content management software such as joomla, wordpress, etc. You also should be adding many things, such as an about page, user registration, newsletters, blogs, forums, etc. Even if most of it is superficial, overall it gives the impression of a professional and quality site, even if most of it is just visual fluff. Most users won’t look deep enough into your website anyways, so all that matter is you have it there. The average users looks no more than 2 pages into a site and hopefully after that, they will click out from a affiliate link on your site.
Google Adsense Alternatives
Friday, November 21st, 2008Google Adsense is king in the PPC industry. Like Google or not, they pay the best and get the highest click through rate. Unfortunately, if you get banned permanently you will probably wind up having to go elsewhere.
Google Adsense pays very well as their contextual targeting and keyword bidding is unbeatable. However, in order to be paying those rates they also have to have strict terms of service and anti-click fraud measures. Google always favors the advertiser over their publishers. This also explains why with adwords, advertisers seems to be allowed to advertise anything.
I believe if Yahoo ever got their act together, they would be as big or probably bigger then Google Adsense. I think most people like Yahoo as a company better. I don’t know how Google got to where it was, but until Yahoo steps up to the plate, were stuck with Google as the best PPC advertising option.
Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) has been in beta since 2002, and usually only accepts high quality sites. If you been previously banned from adsense, don’t look at YPN as the answer to your prayers just yet. First they are only open to U.S citizens. As beta, they are also strict on quality and type of traffic your website receives. According to YPN, they continually monitor your site based on:
1. Suspicious click activity.
2. Advertiser conversion rates.
3. Overall quality of leads generated on your site.
If a lot of your clicks are coming from non-u.s traffic it is likely you will be banned in the YPN beta program. But if you been banned from Google Adsense, have a quality professional site, are a U.S citizen, then you have nothing to lose giving YPN a try. There are other PPC networks out there, but really YPN is the only one that can give Google a run for it’s money. Even if you haven’t been banned from Google Adsense, you probably should sign up for YPN (if you are a u.s citizen) as a backup just in case you are banned from Adsense.
If you are outside of the U.S there isn’t much hope for a real adsense alternative at this time. The rest of the networks are very poor earners (usually) in comparison to Adsense.
How Profitable is Adsense to their alternatives?
Thursday, September 11th, 2008Adsense is by far the most profitable PPC network for publishers, but how does it stack up against other advertising options?
Adsense profits compared to affiliate ads:
If you have Adsense and affiliate ads on your website, which gives better profits per month will depend on several factors. Even though adsense does well in the PPC network, in many cases, adsense will not be your biggest earner compared to your affiliate ads on your site. Factors that will determine which performs better is, how well you integrate your adsense ads, what affiliate ads you pick, and the topic of your website.
If you pick affiliate ads that few people will be interested in actually buying from, your Adsense will be the majority of your income. On the flipside, if you have some good affiliate programs from stores that you know a lot of people will want to buy from, you probably will make a lot more from affiliate ads than from Adsense. On some of my sites I have, the Affiliate sales right now are outpacing the adsense earnings.
Adsense profits compared to direct advertising:
Many find that sites like PayPerPost or Text Link Ad brokers such as Text-Link-Ads.com, or even direct ad purchases through your website, are their biggest earners. There is some drawbacks with using these options, as Google frowns on paid text links and is now taking a proactive measure against them. In the case of sponsored post sites like PayPerPost, there is also the issue of turning off your readers to your site.
If you’re looking for a variety of affiliate programs, I highly recommend you join Shareasale affiliate network. My biggest text Link ad earner is TNX I’ve tried many sponsored post networks and by far PayPerPost has earned me the most.
How to Find the best affiliate programs for your site
Thursday, September 11th, 2008Finding the best affiliate programs that fits the demographic of your website visitors, is key to getting maximum sales conversions. Unfortunately, most people do not spend a lot of research doing that. They see what some blogging “guru” is recommending and think that is what will make them lots of money.
The truth is, if you want the best affiliate program for YOUR site, you are going to have to do a lot of research and trial and error. It has to be a site you believe in and think visitors might actually buy from it. You have to think of what kind of visitors your website is attracting and target those kind of products to them. Make sure the affiliate program is something useful to your visitors. For example, if the prices are too high, then don’t expect it to convert well. If it’s not something you would buy from, don’t expect many others too either.
There is many other things to consider when picking a affiliate. Find out if the affiliate has a good reputation. Sites with good reputation tend to get better conversions because sales are often made days after the initial clickthrough and with cookies you still get credit. If you are joining an independant affiliate program you might be giving them your SSN or Tax Id, so you want to make sure the site is legitimate. Read the TOS closely so you know what sites and affiliate marketing methods are allowed. Some affiliates leave cookies for 30 or 60 days. The ones that leave cookies for a month or longer are the ones you should strive for because they really maximize your affiliate sales. The average affilite pays at least 10% on a 30 day cookie of sales transactions. I wouldn’t go less than that, unless you are having a difficult time finding alternative affiliates for your website.
To get started looking for affiliate programs, I recommend signing up to Shareasale. Shareasale has thousands of affiliate programs you can join there. They are my favorite affiliate network, as they do a good job of making sure affiliates are in compliance and have many great options for affiliate marketers such as; coupons, datafeeds, direct product urls, and 2nd tier affiliate programs for participating merchants.
Top 5 Picks for High Converting Affiliate Programs
Thursday, September 11th, 2008We have for the last 3 months been bringing you the latest top affiliate programs, but I wanted to list my very top 5 picks of programs that have converted very well for me on my own network of websites. The programs I will list below do very well because of their reputation, low competition, and because they provide a very worthwhile product.
Realize, that just because they are my top picks doesn’t mean all of them will work well on just any website. If your website niche is targeted for one of the affiliate programs mentioned below, then you should earn a tremendous amount of money from it. These are not ranked in any particular order.
PayPerPost – This program is very popular and well known among the blogging community. There is very few competitors and expect many signups. At $15 dollars per signup, this should be a blogger’s most profitable affiliate program.
Join PayPerPost
A1Supplements – I run a few bodybuilding and fitness sites. In general supplement stores do well for conversions, but I found this one to do exceptionally well. They pay 15% per sale on 60 day cookies and even pay you 5% for life on other webmasters who sign up under your referral link. I’ve had webmasters signup under me, which has helped make this program extremely profitable. It’s actually my most profitable affiliate program overall.
Join A1supplements affiliate program.
TNX – There is only 2 major players in the text link ad broker marketplace right now. Text-Link-Ads.com has been overpromoted making it harder for affiliate marketers to convert, but TNX.net is the newer one on the scene and it’s growing very quickly in popularity. They pay you 13% for life on the earnings of publishers you refer. This is one of my better paying affiliate programs and I believe in the long run as I accure more referrals, it will be the top paying one.
Join TNX affiliate program.
ABCTickets – If you have any music or sports sites, you’ll know how hard it is to convert to actual sales. I’ve found that ticket affiliates do best on these sites, and by far ABCtickets is the best. It pays out a whopping $30 dollars per sale on a cookie that doesn’t expire for a full year. My other affiliates don’t even come close on my sports sites to ABCtickets. I highly recommend this program
Join ABCtickets affiliate program.
NaturalHealthHoodia – You might have heard about the very popular Hoodia supplement that controls appetite cravings to help people lose fat. They pay $15 per sale on a 90 day cookie and 5% for life on sub-affiliates you refer. I’ve always found based on my experience, that the supplement affiliate programs are usually the most profitable affiliate programs because they are something that people use on a monthly basis. This affiliate program is my 2nd most profitable affiliate program overall, right after A1supplements. If you have a health, fitness, or bodybuilding site I highly recommend these 2 programs.
Join NaturalHealthHoodia affiliate program.
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