Text Link Ad Affiliate Referral

Today I received compensation for a referral that I sent to Text-Link-Ads.com. Although earning $25 is a nice boost, there is one thing that really sets this earning apart from other revenue channels. The difference, is that I referred the individual back in April.

That's right, Text-Link-Ads installs cookies that track a user up to 60 days after you refer them. That way, if I send a referral, they don't buy, but come back up to 2 months later, I still get credited.

Definately something to keep in mind when selecting affiliate programs, what sort of tracking do they offer?

The C Channel Network

The C Channel is building a multi-interest website that brings together 3 distinct sites - Travel, Shopping and Weddings. Each one features articles, destination profiles, vendor profiles and a whole load of new tools to attract a global audience. This includes the still young Travel Forum, and the Wedding Agenda, a promising tool that will be completely free and is due out in late 2006.

The C Channel network has also recently introduced The C Directories, 5 user-friendly directories of websites, blogs, online retailers and other sites categorized under thousands of differnet subjects. Only a month old, it attracts new registrations every day of eBusinesses eager to become part of The C Channel Network. For example, in our Tools for webmasters directory, we have a regular stream of new articles in different categories for you. We also provide links to some of the best SEO sites online such as SEO and Internet Marketing, The Webmaster SEO Blog and SEO Ireland. Plus, there's links to some of the best tools for webmasters, like Cheap domain register, Cheap domain hosting, and Webhost advisor.

There's plenty to see, so pay us a visit.

GeoDataSource.com Affiliate Program

GeoDataSource.com has announced a new affiliate program, which will enable all webmasters to earn 20% of new and recurring sales.

The program is designed and focuses on their GAP(Geographical Data Product Sales) product series. The program is free to join and below are a list of it's benefits to you, the webmaster.

• Members earn up to 20% commission on the total sales.
• Continue to earn residual income from renewal orders for as long as two-year.
• GeoDataSource handles all sales inquiries and account creation.
• No membership fees are required to join the program.
• Monthly payout by using PayPal.
  

To sign up to the latest affiliate program, look here.

Investing Affiliate Revenue

Investing your money is the best way to keep your revenue coming in. The old saying, "Don't work for money, make your money work for you", is what I'm referring to. But with so many investment opportunities out there, how do you know what's right for you.

Monex.com has some insight into what is the best method for investing and what to put your money into. In their latest press release their is discussion on the value of the almighty dollar. In later years the green backs have lost their actual value, rather than the price of commodities going up.

For example, a few short years ago it was possible to purchase a gallon of gas for a dollar. At this time the dollar was backed by real prescious metals, such as gold and silver. However, it takes upwards of $3-$4 to purchase that same gallon of gas, but it only takes the same amount of metal to do the same. Therefore, it's the USD that has lost value, not prices going up.

Because of the paper money's inability to hold value, Monex.com suggests investing your money into prescious metals such as gold, silver, and bullion coins. By investing in such precious metals your investment should rise and hold value much better than traditional investing.

Grand Gaming Affiliate Program

Here on DMB, we are quick to stress the importance of knowing your local laws in regards to gambling affiliate programs. The last thing I want to see is an individual lose all their earned revenue because they didn't understand the laws against gambling related advertisements.

That being said, Grand Gaming Group and Jon-Jon-Keegan to launch a G3 gambling affiliate program.

Looking for more info on this and what the G3 affiliate program has to offer, read here.

Selecting an Affiliate Program

Yesterday, American Chronicle posted an article that discusses the ease of online marketing, compared to traditional methods. Traditional methods included brick 'n mortar businesses, where it was a sink or swim situation. Ths cost of entry was higher and while the stakes were higher as well, the pay off took much more time.

The article then goes on to discuss the ways to properly choose an affiliate program. Making suggestions such as knowing the history of said marketing group, weighing the advantages and disadvantages, and finally stressing that an informed choice is the best route to go.

Check out the entire article here.

Webpage Accessibility and Google SERPs

Creating a site that generates traffic is a struggle and it's an even harder task to bring in organic traffic. Organic traffic are visitors that are produced through search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The ranking you hold in the SERPs(Search Engine Results Page) is directly related to how much traffic you receive from these search engines.

USWeb.com recenty published a press release stating the importance of Google's ranking methods and where it may be going, in regards to a sites accessibility. Google has long built their results page based on a number of hidden factors, including public ones such as page rank(PR). Now Google is adding another search function, which takes into consideration accessibility.

The ability of a site to remain at the top of one search function and not at the other lays in the hands of SEO(Search Engine Optimization) experts. What was once a level playing field, is not pitted against quality coding techniques and a sites ability to adapt to the needs of visitors.

Doing a search on Google for the term "Flowers" results in the site 1800flowers.com in the first position of the SERPs. However, once you do the same search through Google's accessibility function 1800flowers.com is not even located on the front page. The site that can be found ranking #1 is testco.com/flowers, a very well coded and user friendly site.

In addition, 2 of the top 3 sites for the search used USWeb.com as their search engine marketing firm. Not only were sites appealing to the eyes, offered function, but they were accessible. To take this test a step further we notice that a search for "Internet marketing" yields a position #8 for USWeb.com in regular search and a position #2 in the Google Accessible Search(GAS).

The results are startling for only a few of these keyphrases, but the impact will be wide spread. This will be especially true once Google Accessible Search catches on and it will be important to be diligent with your search engine optimization. Therefore, if your planning on choosing a search engine marketing firm to do your SEO work for you, USWeb.com is a safe bet, to keep that affiliate traffic rolling in.

Affiliate Content

Affiliating a product is easy, if you are familiar with the product you are affiliating. However, if you want to affiliate a product that you cannot easily create content for, free content is the way to go.

The Blackfox Article Directory provides a large list of articles that are free to use on your site. Assuming you keep all the live links, this content can be used beside your own or as itself to help compliment the products you are looking to sell.

Currently there are a handful of articles available in the general internet and more importantly internet marketing article category. Reading these articles can be informational for you or visitors to help you get a jump start on gaining traffic to your affiliate site.

Adsense is Affiliating

Apparently American Chronicle has a very lax definition for 'affiliate'. Their latest article compares Affiliate Marketing to Adsense, placing google as the medium for merchants.

Although there is some basis for their argument, Adsense is not affiliating. The first difference that sets Affiliating apart from being a publisher for Adsense is the fixed earnings. Adsense contextual ads fluctuate in how much you earn per click, due to a number of undisclosed factors.

Affiliating will produce the same results over and over for completing a specific action. For example, if you sell one magazine subscription you will receive $10. This example is true no matter what your pages content is, where the traffic comes from, your page rank, or any other variable.

The American Chronicle article does lead us to the goal, earning revenue. So, I encourage you to see what works best for you. I've seen Adsense whizz's make jack squat at affiliating and likewise for the opposite and it all boils down to knowing your audience.

Directory Submissions

Submitting your website to directories can be a long and daunting task, especially weeding through the ones that are worth your time. The Blackfox Directory Blog is a blog dedicated to covering link and article directories.

Are you owner of a directory and interested in how to gain traffic to your website, then check out getting traffic for your directory. This post covers free methods on how to build a solid base for when your directory launches.

After some hard work and persistance a directory can be a good source of affiliate marketing traffic. And, especially in the early days, your core audience will be webmasters. Take advantage of knowing your visitors, there is always something that a webmaster can use...espcially links.

Hosticanna Affiliate Program

Hosticanna hosting is announcing a new affiliate program to focus on their unmetered bandwidth hosting packages. Their affiliate program has several unique benefits other than offering you, the publisher, monetary gain.

Hosticanna's affiliate program offers giveaways, in addition to monetary appreciation, such as iPods and iTune gift cards.

“With HostICan, affiliate can feel confident that they are sending their traffic to a recommended host.” says Brian Lim from AffilateFuture “Every referral earning US$85 CPA commission, the company’s record-breaking growth pattern since 2003, and a great reputation for competitive pricing, affiliates will find HostICan offers an unbeatable web hosting offer.”

BlogKits Bought Out

Forge Corporation, LTD. has acquired Blogkits with a motive to bring advertisers and bloggers together. The union has been created with the best intentions, but will all end well?

There are already a number of services available that allow advertisers to work directly with bloggers. Blogitive and PayPerPost are a few that allow advertisers to make offers to bloggers in an attempt to gain linkage and market their products. This directly conflicts with the ideal that blogging is all about, unique opinions and owners own thoughts.

When big corporate is finally able to control a large amount of bloggers, it's essentially muddying the blog gene pool, so to speak(Please allow for improper grammar). There are no longer unique opinions ruling the blogosphere, but whoever has the most money gets the most buzz.

This is one affiliate venture I hope takes a nose dive and at the least does not become wide spread.