I am really excited to be involved with the launch of a new forum for the affiliate marketing industry at www.affspot.com

Here is a video from AffSpot founder Sam Harrelson on AffSpot and what the goals of the forum are:

Forums like this are important because they are gathering places for the industry and places where people can exchange ideas in a public forum. As an affiliate, merchant, or service provider, there is much that can be learned from watching and more importantly participating in the discussion as you become comfortable and have something to share, whether this is insight on someone else’s question, or a question of your own.

You will notice that my company GTO Management and the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association have forums set up at AffSpot now. I hope you will join us there.

Okay - so the topic seems a little basic… all there is to it is to find a program you want to join, fill out their network or affiliate software application and off you go right?

Well… maybe.

If you are an experienced affiliate with a live site or blog that directly deals with the audience that the product or service appeals to and you have some traffic and other affiliate links posted, you are probably fine.

But what if your site or blog is new?

What if you plan to promote by a method that is not visible online like paid search or email marketing?

Here’s what I suggest to get your applications approved:

New Site or Blog:

1. Please DON’T apply with a “site under construction” or a domain that doesn’t resolve - you will get your application  refused 99.44% of the time if a live body is reviewing your app.
2. Please DON’T apply with your template based site and the placeholder content still in place.
3. Please DON’T apply with an email address that doesn’t resolve.
4. Please DO -  put some time into writing some content on your site for a few weeks or a month before you apply for any programs.   If you have no content - you will get no traffic, and visitors won’t stay long enough to click an affiliate link anyway.
5. Please DO- put up a page that you use in your affiliate program applications that lays out your VISION for your site and what you plan to do with it in terms of content and how you will get traffic.
6. If you don’t know how you will get traffic, I would suggest that you do some research on sites like ABestWeb.com and BlogClassroom as well as read up on Social media marketing to see how you can round up some traffic.  With no means of acquiring traffic - all the affiliate links in the world will not help you out.
7. Please DO- write on something you are knowledgeable in, or are throwing yourself into learning about and share your knowledge and insight - then surround your awesome and compelling content from offers that would appeal to your audience
8. Definitely DON’T - throw up a “banner farm,” what is a banner farm?  It’s a site where an “affiliate” throws up a bunch of banners with no content whatsoever.   THEY DON’T WORK

Paid Search or Email Marketing:

Please put up a page on your site or your blog that addresses how you market.  If you are a paid search marketer, talk a bit about the kind of sites you work with well, what engines you work on, and what your approximate average monthly spend is.   At the very least, identify that you are a paid search marketer.

If you are email marketing, please do the same thing and please provide links to some of your past email newsletters that show unsubscribe links and CAN-SPAM compliance.  PLEASE ONLY DO AFFILIATE MARKETING WITH LISTS THAT YOU OWN…. and that you have verifiable permission (preferably double opt in) to market to.

Please also provide some breakdowns on the demographics of the lists that you own so that I (or one of my affiliate manager buddies) can tell if your lists are a match for our merchant.

I think these suggestions will help you achieve a higher approval rate as well as a higher rate of success in affiliate marketing.

God Bless,

Wade

I had the pleasure today of sitting down for a chat with one of my oldest friends in the business - Rachel Honoway - the VP of Marketing at Affiliate Classroom. Rachel and I go back to about 2001 when I joined Kowabunga Technologies as the original manager at Team Affiliate - KB’s outsourced program management division. Rach was awesome to work for and is one of the sharp minds in the business.

We talked quite a bit about the Affiliate Classroom Live event coming up on the Saturday preceding the Affiliate Summit East in August. I attended the initial Affiliate Classroom Live event in Las Vegas and it was well put together in terms of speakers and was well organized as well. My only complaint was that there were no tables for laptops and notebooks and that the chairs were not the most compfortable. Rach has promised more comfortable accomodations. The event was a full day event with more classroom content than networking time and was definitely intended as a pre-sell for the Affiliate Manager Certification that Affiliate Classroom was releasing at the time.

Rachel mentioned that this event will be more networking focused. There will be some classroom sesstions this time lead by Heather Paulson and Rebecca Madigan as well as a number of Round Table discussions lead by industry luminaries like:

• Peter Figueredo
• Trisha Lyn Fawver
• Lee “The Lead Man” Gientke
• Sam Harrelson
• Lisa Riolo
• Brad Waller
• Karen Garcia
• Wade Tonkin

Lisa Riolo’s presentation sounds really interesting as she is focusing on how to sell an affiliate program internally as this can be tricky. Affiliate marketing and the techniques involved can be a bit tricky to sell in some companies and I am sure that Lisa will have some awesome metrics that we can use to help make the case to either launch an affiliate program for the first time with a client, or to help garner more resources for the affiliate channel.

You can find more information and register for Affiliate Classroom Live at www.affiliateclassroomlive.com

 

 Rachel Honoway of Affiliate Classroom [18:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (204)


I see it again and again; affiliates applying for an affiliate program of a merchant I work with.  I go to the application and click on the link to their site that they submitted for review.   I find…… a page full of banners and little or no content.

I do some homework with some cool little tools that I use to evaluate site’s traffic and I find very little or no traffic.   I’m not surprised.  Why would there be traffic?

Would you as a shopper knowingly seek out a page made up of just image ads?

The quality of the merchants you work with doesn’t even matter.   If you don’t offer any reason for someone to find you, let alone spend some time on your site, why would you expect them to act on your ads?

To be a successful affiliate - and by this, I mean someone who makes more than occassional latte’ or beer money from affiliate marketing, you need to add something to the conversation.  Better yet- why not start a conversation of your own?

“Banner farms” or sites made up of just a bunch of banner slapped up on a page - suck

Niche content pages are the way to go - find something you are passionate about, find a domain name that plays into your theme and start writing.   Review products, share your thoughts, share your expertise, react to other people’s thoughts and content - generate CONTENT.   Then, surround your content with ads targeting people who would be interested in your content.

Is your niche content page or blog about raising good Christian kids?   The you should be working with Nest Entertainment and Family Christian and promoting products that help parents raise good Christian kids.   Writing about Homeschooling from a Christian perspective?  You had better be hooked up with and promoting Alpha Omega Publications or Sonlight.

Do you see what I am saying?

Affiliate Marketing has NEVER been about just slapping up some banners and making money.  That is lazy.

Real affiliate marketing is about matching up people who are looking for a product with the product they want - and what better way to do that by giving your shoppers CONTENT to answer their questions and “pre-sell” them on the products that you would like them to buy.

You could also start a community based on your interest.  Chances are that other people have the same interests and concerns.  Let them start the conversations and suggests products and deals while you bring in the affiliate links.  It worked pretty well for FatWallet.com

Affiliate success is work… it’s not overnight.   But if you set out do do it the right way, you will be rewarded.

We’ll talk more tomorrow about pre-selling and reviews and the all important issue of INTEGRITY

God Bless,

Wade

I’m definitely recharged after the long weekend, and I was excited that I had an early appointment this morning to chat for a while with Josh Wexelbaum of PositionLeap and the Scrappy Business Blog.

Josh is a Believer and an affiliate who makes his living promoting merchant offers via paid search with Google, MSN and Yahoo.  His affiliate work has enabled him to see the world through some really far flung travel that will be continuing shortly as he heads off to Shanghai for 6 months (have laptop, will travel)

I met Josh through some of his travels - he had actually rented a room with a former employers sister in Cape Town. South Africa.  We had the chance to meet in person at Affiliate Summit - with Josh joining us at one of the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association events.

Josh and I spoke today on a range of topics surrounding affiliate marketing using paid search - here are some bullets on what we covered:

• Josh’s entry into the business
• The travel friendly lifestyle affiliate marketing has made possible
• The basics of paid search based affiliate marketing
• Some of terms and conditions he likes to see from merchants and networks
• The importance of merchants placing conversion tracking code for Super-affiliates using paid search
• Some of the techniques he uses to test offers, then profit big from the ones that work
• Why merchants shouldn’t fear paid search affiliates if well regulated

I had a great time and we chatted for about 30 minutes - I hope you enjoy.

If you’d like to follow Josh and his writings and videos on online and affiliate marketing, you can check out his blog at www.scrappybusiness.com

 

 CAM Blog Podcast #8 with Josh Wexelbaum [32:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (240)

I have been doing a lot of talking with folks lately on how to get started as an affiliate.   What is the best way to do it?  What tools do I need?  What skills do I need?   What does it cost?

I’m here to tell you that anyone out there can get started in affiliate marketing for close to free.  How?

Well, there are a few things that you need to get started in affiliate marketing.

1. a topic or topics that you care about
2. a platform for your marketing
3. a top level domain
4. a method for marketing to your visitors again
5. time to research affiliate offers to find the right ones for your site
6. time to write about your topic
7. commitment to write regularly

You’ll notice that I started with “a topic or topics that you care about.”  I should probably modify this to say a topic or topics that you are passionate about.   What does it matter?   It’s everything. The bottom line is this: being a successful affiliate takes time and effort and if you aren’t working in a topic that you are passionate about, and if you are just in it for the money, you will have a really tough time at putting in the time it takes to get traffic and more importantly, to get the trust of your visitors.

I’m passionate about promoting Christian merchants and building a niche market of affiliates who have access to the audience that the Christian merchants are looking to market to.  This makes it not just possible, but fun and inspiring to get on every day and write something about what I love.

I’m also passionate about food - so launching a site or blog that is centered on food and food related affiliate offers is easy to commit myself to as well.

What is your passion?   Have you studied the topic?  Are you someone your friends would consider an “authority” on it?

This is a great place to start.

Part 2 coming tomorrow - we’ll talk about a platform for your marketing effort that is super easy to get into in terms of both cost and technical skills needed.  We’ll also talk about top level domains and what I really suggest that you invest in one.

God Bless,

Wade

If you are interested in getting into the affiliate game, I have contended for the last year or so that the best, and quickest way to do this is by blogging. Why? There are a few reasons.

• Blogs are easy to set up and maintain
• You don’t need a lot of technical skill or programming ability to blog
• When formatted correctly, blogs get great rankings in Google - it’s a function of the fact that they are content heavy and of the link taxonomy
• It works for me. I am a total hack of an HTML coder and I made nearly $1000 promoting Affiliate Summit alone on this blog.

The fine folks at AffiliateClassroom.com and Rosalind Gardner have teamed up to bring you The Blog Classroom to show you how you can quickly and easily set up a profitable blog and get traffic in a hurry.

The Blog Classroom is in pre-launch and they would love you to come check out their system before it launches officially in a couple of weeks. They have some great videos in place from Anik and Rosalind that will get you off to a great start, from launching your blog, to getting your first visitors within an hour of set up.

Anik is promising some great deliverables over the 2 weeks of the pre-launch.

• at least 8 free video lessons
• 2 Teleseminars
• interviews with top bloggers

And this is all during the free pre-launch phase. The resources for the paying folks should be substantial.

If you are looking for that kick start to get into the affiliate business, I recommend that you head over and sign up for their free Pre-Launch Blog Classroom Course today. You can’t beat the price.

God Bless,

Wade

Let me take a moment to vent.

I just found a product that I am pretty psyched to promote to my audience here… I take their tour and I am impressed, I am happy to see that they offer an affiliate marketing program. I sign up for the affiliate program. I get approved a few mintes later. Awesome so far right?

I thought so.

I log in to pick up some link code for my site… thought I might throw them a banner and a write up to see if I could stimulate some business. I get logged and there are literally no creatives other than their default text link.

ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

Okay…. here is the deal. If you have a badass product, launching an affiliate program is a great idea. But for the love of Pete (whoever that is)

MAKE SURE YOUR AFFILIATE PROGRAM IS POPULATED BEFORE YOU LINK TO THE AFFILIATE PROGRAM ON YOUR SITE!!!

That is all… you may go…. I feel better now.

My invoice for affiliate consulting is in the mail.