Ask Wade – What are you reading?

I’m always reading something in an attempt to keep expanding my knowledge and understanding of either the business I work in or the world I live in.    Lately, I am interested in expanding my knowledge and proficiency with Twitter as a way to help build my business and those of my clients, so I am reading (actually listening to) Twitter Power – How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time by Joel Comm while I am on the treadmill in the mornings.

I also just started reading a book that I think will be an awesome boost for my business and that of my clients called Faith-Based Marketing: The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian Customers by Bob Hutchins of Buzzplant.com and Greh Stielstra who was instrumental in the mega successful marketing of The Purpose Driven Life.

I’ll be posting with some tidbits that I pull from each of these books over the coming weeks.

If you have recommendations for more good reads – please comment away!

God Bless,

Wade

Ask Wade – What Content Management System do you use on your sites?

I got this question today from Neil and I wanted to answer it in public so maybe it would help other folks as well who are trying to decide what Content Management System they should use to build their affiliate sites or blogs.

Neil asked:

Hi ,

Do you use Joomla to run any of your websites?…

I have never used Joomla on a site of my own, although my company GTO Management used it originally as the Content Management System (CMS) on our corporate site.   I was always a bigger fan of WordPress – I consider it easier to use and infinitely more flexible.   I have also had really good success with achieving high Google rankings with WordPress and we never did with Joomla.   We may not have used it to it’s fullest, but it’s been a lot easier to get our rankings up since we switched the GTO site to a WordPress Blog back just before Affiliate Summit in January of 2009.

I’ve always used WordPress – installed on my own server for the CAM Blog and I am currently using WordPress in conjuntion with the Frugal Theme – which I really like because of it’s clean design and ease of use.   The creator of the Frugal Theme is a Christian as well and is an awesome guy.  If you are looking for a hand at setting up a really nicely designed custom installation, he’s available for handling set up and configuration and design tweaks for you.

Download WordPress Here

Download the Frugal Theme Here

PS: I asked my techie business partner Joel Garcia for the top 3 reasons why he was cool with going with WordPress over Joomla and here were his responses.  (#3 was most important to note;)

1) Blogging is by far the fastest and easiest way to get noticed by search engines. Other CMS platforms (like Joomla) can be used for blogging, too, though many offer it as a secondary feature. WP is a blogging platform first, with additional capabilities through the use of widely available plugins.

2) Ease of administration. The admin side of WP is vastly easier for novice web entrepreneurs to maintain. Joomla and other CMS options expect a significant degree of knowledge regarding server-level actions. You can use Joomla without this knowledge, but it will be intimidating and scary, and much more difficult to correct error should they arise. WP makes installation, upgrades, and plugin use very easy.

3) Using WP keeps my business partner happy.

Ask Wade- Social Security Number on Affiliate Applications

I just got an email from Denise, who I met at the BlogWorld Expo/ GodBlogCon last September that I wanted to address on the blog as I think it’s a good one that many people may have concerns on.

Hi Wade, we met at BlogWorld this past September and I just had a question
for ya.  I went to sign up for a Christian affiliate and was required to enter my
social security number. Is this common and are you comfortable with it?

I makes me a little nervous, but I really want to do it. Thoughts?!

Great question Denise!

At some point, you are going to be asked for your social security number (or your Tax ID Number if incorporated)  by either the affiliate network (if you are working with a network) or by the merchant if you are working with them directly.

Why?

Well – because whoever is doing the paying of the commissions needs to be able to report your “Independent Contractor” earnings to the government come tax time.   Some networks treat this differently than others – with some requiring this info on sign up before they will even approve you, and some requiring it before they will issue a payment.

As a manager, I’d prefer to get this out of the way as early as possible so I don’t have to be following up with affiliates trying to round up this information before I can cut them a check.

One thing that I would advise though is to be smart about the environment you give this information in – meaning – make sure the page that you are on when providing this information is a “secured” page – there are a couple of ways to tell.

1. The url that you are on should begin with “https://”
2. Your browser should display a “lock” graphic

The major networks are great about this and at a quick glance it appears that Shareasale, Linkshare and CJ are all doing this.  As long as you are supplying the information in a secured environment – you should be fine.

If you are really serious about the affiliate business and privacy concerned, you could also consider forming a corporate entity that provides you with a Tax ID number that you can use instead of your social security.

Hope this helps!

God Bless,

Wade

Ask Wade Live – Coming to UStream October 3rd

I am really excited to be able to do live video streaming shows.  Thanks to Successfool and Jim Kukral for inspiring me to make the leap into uStream.

I’ll be taking questions on affiliate marketing on Friday October 3rd from 11:30 am to 12:00 pm PT at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/christian-affiliate-marketing-today

So – if you want to ask me some questions about affiliate marketing from the Christian perspective, or just want to see how goofy looking I am live and how messy my office is, tune in.

(I promise there will be no ukelele music)

Ask Wade – what tools do you recommend?

I got an email today from Russ from Minnesota who asked:

I like the fact that your site is a Christian site. I’m looking to create a website, perhaps we can link up together down the road;

1) as a first time site builder, I need software or a tool that is fairly intuitive, what software do you use to create your websites?

2) what reputable company do you recommend to host websites?

3) have you ever used Domans By Proxy to protect your personal information to help reduce spam, etc.?

4) what reputable company do you have that handles your eCommerce transactions?

Thanks,

Russ

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Thanks for your email. I will see what I can do to help here.

1. I use WordPress to power my sites. It’s a blogging platform that is super flexible and requires no real programming skills. This is good of course because I don’t possess any. If you have some money to invest in your future, I highly recommend that you check out the Blog Classroom and put their advice into play. It will save you all kinds of time through showing you a road map to launching a blog, getting traffic, and building out a business using a blog. They offer payments in installments to make it a bit easier to take. It’s worth every penny though.

2. As far as hosting, I think the BlogClassroom guys recommend ThinkHost – they have a really easy to use control panel that includes super easy blog set up. It’s easier than the one I use at 1and1.com for sure.

3. I don’t use private registrations myself as I want people to know I am accountable for what I put out on the web. As an affiliate manager, I also know that whois lookups (searches on domain ownership) are one of the ways I identify and contact affiliates I want to work with… so private registration is a pet-peeve of mine
It’s up to you though.

4. What kind of ecommerce transactions do you need to take? I use EventBrite and PayPal for most of what I do – but my needs are simple.

Thanks and God Bless,

Wade Tonkin

Ask Wade: Why do you turn down affiliate applications

From the CAM Blog Mailbag:

Wade – Why do you turn down application from prospective affiliates for the programs you work for? What can I do to make sure I get approved?

Great question – yes, I have been known to decline applications for affiliate programs that I manage. I’ve declined quite a few of them actually. Some ( a lot of folks on ABestWeb) would argue that this is a bad idea. They argue that you never know who your next big affiliate in development might be – and they may have a point in a few cases. I do have a few things that I look for in an affiliate application that I base my judgements on. Here is a short list:

• A live website or blog that I can look at and see some content
• Links live on the site from other affiliate programs
• I HATE “banner farms” and will decline any application from one. What is a banner farm? It’s a site that offers nothing but banner after banner after banner in a big long scroll monster, or even categorized.
• I look to establish actually ownership of the domain in question.
• PASSION – I love to work with affiliates who love their site topic and the products they promote
• Traffic levels – My clients want results – and sites with existing traffic (judged by a combination of tools like Quantcast and Compete.com)
• Blogs – I love active and well written and commented blogs. Well written blogs will have natural traffic from the search engines.
• Sites or blogs featuring product reviews, or better yet product reviews using video.
• If you are a Paid Search affiliate, send me to site where you explain how you drive traffic.
• Sites with a focus – if you try to be everything to everyone, chances are you won’t do well for any of them. If you love camping, blog or build a site on camping and camping products, etc.

If you have one or more of these things going for you, and the site you list in your application has something to do with the program I am managing, I will most likely approve you right away.

If you don’t, I will probably email you and ask you what you have in mind, and if you can show me any of your online properties that do match the program.

If I don’t see any obvious fit at all, or I see content that my client wouldn’t associate their brand with, I will probably decline. If I miss something, please email me and point me in the right direction or ask me to reconsider (professionally)

For best results, here is what I recommend that you do.

• Make sure to keep your network profile updated so I can see the right site or sites that you would like reviewed
• If the network (like SAS) allows you to make a note specific to the application, write me a quick note explaining what you have in mind.
• Email me when you apply – “Hey – I just applied for your program – here is what I do, here is what I have in mind, and here are some of the other programs I promote, and btw, I have 5 sites/blogs and an email list that I think would really work well for promoting XYZ.com’s products.

If you do this (with any program) you will have a great chance of getting approved.

God Bless and happy selling!

Wade

Ask Wade: Are there any specific Christian networks?

The question today comes from our sister site at ChristianAffiliateNews.com from Al:

Are there specific networks of Christian affiliates that you would recommend?

The answer is yes, with one fewer option recently. In the past year, 2 Christian focused networks were launched. Manna Marketing was launched by my business partners Joel and Karen Garcia, and sadly was closed up last month. The other network is actually a former employer of mine. The United Sharing Network is a “Faith and Family” focused network with traditional cost per sale and CPA offers that are either Christian or family friendly secular offers. Check them out.

If you’d like to sign up for the USN, you can do so here.

John Porricolo and Jack Cain, the two guys behind the USN are definitely Men of Faith and deserve the support of believers in the affiliate industry.

God Bless,

Wade

Ask Wade – Why do you recommend AvantLink for catalog retailers?

The question today comes from Samantha at Fingerhut.com

What are your reasons for recommending AvantLink for catalog retailers?

Best,

Samantha

Samantha, nice to hear from you. There are a few reasons why I recommend that any catalog merchant that uses product feeds to promote their products should take a look at AvantLink.

Their datafeed tools for affiliates are absolutely top notch- and they don’t charge anything additional for set up on either the merchant or affiliate side to use them. They make it easy for affiliates to merchandise products, and have some awesome features as well like coupon feeds that you can use to traffic specials on affiliate sites and update on the fly.

They have also just recently ( at Summit) added on board support for video creative – which is ahead of the curve.

And my personal favorite – they make all affiliate contact info (email, name and phone) available by default.

Their roots are in working for a catalog retailer in Backcounty.com and they have built the tools that affiliate managers need (and affiliates need) to get the job done. They have really focused on working only with retail, feed-based merchants and developing a feature set that would be just what the doctor ordered for them.

They also do some cool innovative things like RSS based reporting for the affiliate manager.

Check them out

God Bless,

Wade

Ask Wade – affiliate tracking for merchants with no program

Hi Wade,
I have been a subscriber for a while and I first want to thank you for your blog. I appreciate it and I have started to get my feet wet in Aff marketing… But, the one main problem that I am running into is conversion tracking. I tried hitslink and conversionruler, but all of the affiliate links on my pages link to the manufacturers page – so I don’t have the BUY page on my site. Both hitslink and conversionruler seem to only be good if you can put the code on your purchase confirm page (which I don’t have)

So, what I really want to know is if there is any way to follow the user from the Google search to the purchase, IF the buy page isn’t on my site?

I appreciate any thoughts you may have on this
thanks,
bob

Hi Bob, and thanks for the question.  I am going to assume some things here -

1.  The merchants you are working with have no affiliate program in place
2. They have no interest in adding one at this tim

I have heard some super affiliates talk about requiring merchants to place their  own conversion reporting for them to allow them to effectively audit their PPC affiliate efforts.    In either case, there will need to be either an affiliate system integrated or some of your code placed on the site.   There’s simply no way that I know around this.  If the transaction is taking place on the merchants page – you need to have code there that will report when a conversion is successful.

Let me see if I can ping some super affiliate buddies to see if we can get you a hard fast answer on this.

In the meantime, if the merchants you are working with actually do their job of selling online effectively, you may want to steer them towards launching a low cost affiliate solution.   You can pick up software apps like GroundBreak or PostAffiliatePro that are pretty effective and feature good reporting.

You could also steer them towards a network like Shareasale or – if they are a nice online catalog retailer, AvantLink

Anyone have suggestions?

God Bless,

Wade

Ask Wade- What is tax status of affiliates?

Hi Wade

I would like to know if an Affiliate Marketer is Self-employed or an Independent Contractor?

I ask this question for tax purposes. Some Affiliate sites say self-employed and others say Independent Contractors.  The IRS makes a distinction! I am confused, what do you say is correct?

Thank You Sincerely,

Evette

Evette,

Thank you for your question.  Most of the affiliate agreements that I have seen have referred to affiliates as independant contractors who receive an IRS form 1099 (statement of earnings) for any commissions earned over $600 per year.

I’m not a tax specialist by any means, but this is what I have seen most commonly and what I have used in the programs I run.

Your best bet is always to consult an accountant/tax prep specialist.

God Bless,

Wade

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