Problems with Berries

As reported by AffiliateTip.com, apparently Berries is/was having problems with their affiliate program. The problem arrose from the coding in their website not properly tracking their affiliate referrals.

Therefore, they submitted a letter to all publishers. My concern stems exactly as the same as the author from AffiliateTip, how do you know if you missed out on some sales if they were not able to track it correctly?

Due to a major website change in December 2005, which affected our ability to efficiently track business from affiliates, Shari's Berries International is terminating its affiliate program effective June 15, 2006. We truly appreciate your past support.

If you anticipate you are eligible for any unpaid commission, please respond appropriately to affiliates@berries.com by June 30, 2006. If we do not hear from you by this date, we will consider the matter closed.

Sincerely,

Shari's Berries Affiliate Program

Affiliate Startup Plan

When designing a website and choosing an affiliate program it's important to have the basics down. Going in blind will most certainly lead to failure, if nothing else a lot of frustration. So, come up with a plan, learn the basics, and THEN go in feet first. To get things rolling Startup Nation has come up with a good basics plan to help get you started.

The Marketing 101 Article focuses on 6 key points. These points apply to almost any affiliate situation where a startup is involved.

• Evaluate Marketing Channels
• Scrutinize Commission
• Focus on Retention
• Multi-teer Affiliation--
• Affiliate Measurement System
• Warning of Fraud and Spam

Saving Yourself Money - TheHandThatFeeds

Theft is one of the largest threats to automobile insurance companies. The replacement costs for stolen vehicles is what drives insurance higher and higher.

In a recent press release by CarInsurance.com, it states that California is home to 6 of the top 10 autotheft locations in the US. Because of such high theft numbers finding inexpensive auto insurance is difficult in this area. This finding was based on the latest report from the National Insurance Crime Bureau(NCIB).

What's the best way to protect yourself from paying high prices because of the thiefs that plague your area? The answer is simple, if you compare car insurance, your going to save money. In the CarInsurance.com press release it states that simply comparing insurance and finding the best deal can net you a great deal of savings. This is especially true when you are in high theft areas such as California.

Caution Easy Money Affiliates

CaveJunctionNews has a good article on being aware of pyramid schemes on the net as opposed to legit home based businesses. Warning that the idea of easy money rarely exists anywhere, let alone on the internet where there are predators looking to make a quick buck.

The article sites where most easy money schemes are produced through 'affiliate' style programs. However, the real bread winners are the ones who create the scheme and are not created to benefit the actual publisher of the program.

So, if your looking to start up an affiliate program and become a publisher make sure you know the ins and outs of the program you are affiliating for. Rushing into a program without knowing it's background can definately hurt you in the long run and basically be a waste of your time. No sense in making the big money for someone else unless you get your fair share.

Affiliating Nonsense

Pending legislation, it's possible you can be busted for affiliating gambling sites. I've touched on this notion before, but not to the extent that our friends over at 5 Star Affiliates have. Citing that it's possible for law enforcement to freeze assets, shut down your site, and possibly even face stiffer fines.

There is a fine line when promoting gambling in the United States and as such is gray area right now. Probably the most notable experience was when the Travel channel was advertising PokerStars.com. The federal government seized all the money that was paid to the Travel channel to do those advertisements.

You may notice that instead of advertising PokerStars.com the Travel Channel now advertises PokerStars.net. PokerStars.net is a free, no money exchanging hands, Texas Hold'em game. It's massively online multiplayer is attractive to those who are wanting to 'practice' their game. However, whenever they are ready to step it up and gamble real money, they are directed to PokerStars.com. This is how the Travel Channel now gets away with advertising for a gambling site.

Just a word of warning and make sure you are uptodate with all the legal procedings. The last thing you want to happen would to have all your assets taken away after you have made your affiliate so much money.

The Hand that Feeds

How many of you are creating online Affiliate Sites in the hopes of creating more money? I'm willing to bet that everyone does, it's not just for fun, and even hobbies make money sometimes. But when it gets right down to it, scrilla is why we are here, unfortunatley because its worth a lot less now than it used to.

It's been noted, that things are not becoming more expensive, rather the value of the dollar is being dimenished. The green yummies that used to buy so much more and quickly buying less and less. The real value is found in physical items, such as silver, gold, and buillon coins.

Monex is one such company that has suggested to invest a certain percentage of your stock portfolio in physical wealth, ie gold and silver. Recently, they have released a 'Press Release' that discusses the devalue of the American dollar(USD) and why not more than ever its important for gold investing.

Therefore, to start your investing out right, take some tips provided by Monex. Buy some Gold Bullions and live wealthy.

NetEnforcer Hoax

What's the latest affiliate marketing buzz? A hoax, an embrassment to hosting providers and Amazon Affiliates worldwide.

NetEnforcer, an online entity that supposedly represents major manufacturers, has been sending letters filed under the DMCA that states that a website is breaking the law and using copyrighted information. Citing examples of such infringement leads to the Amazon Affiliate link, which provides images and products specs.

As opposed to looking into such allegations some hosting providers are immediately taking sites offline. This down time has robbed many honest ebusiness professionals of money they would normally be making from their affiliate links.

Read More on The Affiliate Hoax

- Dathorn Forums
- Amazon Announcement
- Net Enforcer Homepage
- 5 STar Affiliate Article

Ebay Contextual Advertising

Well, it's happened, the auction monster eBay has decided to enter the Adwords style market. This will put eBay entering the market slightly later than the other major three that have already launched their contextual advertising product.

Google of course has Adwords, MSN has adcenter, and Yahoo has their publisher program. Lord knows the market will be saturated and advertisers won't know where to turn. I forsee this being detrimental to contextual publishers, due to advertisers being able to spread their money thinner amongst other mediums. Am I wrong?

Ultimately, I feel the price per click will go even lower, rather than higher. Still, the winners will be the home companies, ala eBay and the big G and others mentioned here.

Adsense & Affiliating

It's been touched on before, but being a publisher of Google Adsense also has other benefits. Google offers several products in which you can affiliate for, but the payouts vary greatly.

Google Packs - You can earn up to $2.00 per user that installs the google pack software.

FireFox - Earn up to $1.00 per user who installs Mozilla Firefox who did not have it previously installed.

Picasa - Earn up to $1.00 per user who installs this photo management software by google.

Google Adsense - Any user who signs up to be a publisher through your affiliate link will earn you $100 dollars, if they reach the $100 mark within 3 months.

Google Adwords - Earn $100 whenever a user signs up to their Adwords Advertising campaign and spends $100 in keywords.

While the spread of earnings is large, the potential for affiliating and running adsense can pay off. Using a good assortment of affiliate links and CPC can maximize your earnings potential.

Deep Links & Affiliating

Often times becoming an affiliate for a program will be ho-hum. As in, we like a certain product for a program, but the basic creative they provide only links to the programs homepage and not to the product in question. There is a fix to this and it is called 'Deep Linking'.

Deep Linking is not allowed by all Affiliate Programs, but they can prove a valuable tool so that you can gear your visitors directly to product you know they will be most interested in. Often times Deep Linking is as simple as adding the page url you want after the affiliate url, ie. &url=.

Just a reminder, make sure that the program that your affiliating for allows deep links, otherwise you may just be losing credit for your sales.

Affiliate Links Hurting Page Rank?

I've noticed a few questions coming through the popular webmaster forms of users questioning the affect on PR(Google Page Rank). The idea is logical and most definately will affect your PR and rank in SERP's. However, is it enough to even worry about?

The web has, is, and will always be a scary place...but why should we worry about who we link to. I say this as long as moderation is used. As a webmaster you should always be focused on linking to quality sites. That is the only guideline you should be concerned with when linking out to other neighborhoods.

Don't force the web backwards, embrace diversity and link freely, but responsibly. Don't hate thy fellow webmaster, embrace their success and achievements. Linking has to start somewhere, why not with you?

Repeat Visitors are Worth More

Building a quality site can not be placed second to affiliate or any type of ad placement. Your visitors must be the soul reason you are building your site, because if you don't please them, they won't please your pocket book.

By building a quality site you are accomplishing a couple different things. First you are providing a worthwhile resource for your visitors that they will want to come back and use. In addition, the quality of the content on your site speaks loads to a potential customer and lends its hand to brand marketing. The more professional a website the more likely a visitor will want to purchase something from you or one of your affiliates.

One of the latest articles from WebSideStory was that repeat visitors actually produce 800% higher conversion rates. This means a lot to affiliates and goes back to providing quality content and a pleasing site. The goal is to provide your visitor with all the quality content about the product in question, so that they feel comfortable moving onto the next step...purchasing.

Commission Junction Changing Things Up

One of the great things about utilizing affiliate programs as opposed to contextual advertising is the ability to 'modify' your listings to better blend with your site. Typically, contextual advertising requires an individual to 'not touch' the code, although small modifications are allowed 'pre-code creation'(Changing Text Link Color on Adsense).

Commission Junction recently announced that they are moving to Javascript style links and ads. Using javascript removes the ability for the publisher to modify their listing. This will remove one of the inherent benefits of being an actual publisher for an affiliate program. This move has upset a lot of affiliate publishers, many long term customers for CJ.

CJ responded:

"The Bottom Line: The new JavaScript linking format will give CJ more flexibility and control over their links and creative. The new links will also give CJ Google-AdSense-like insight into their publishers, which will help eliminate rogue affiliates from their network."

Is this a good move? Are they going to push publishers away? Time will tell if this does strengthen their affiliate program. The move is undoubtedly to appease investors, since the transfer to javascript will benefit advertisers more than publishers.

CJ's Homepage:

CJ Vantage enables advertisers to realize their performance marketing goals by combining Commission Junction's pay-for-performance expertise with advanced affiliate marketing functionality.

Advertisers rejoice and publishers cringe.

Blockbuster Online Affiliate Program

Blockbuster Online has raised their commissions once again!

Now affiliates will earn $26.50 per sale! Join now, and take advantage of this great offer!

Good luck, and happy promoting!

Affiliate Future announced BlockBuster Online raising their affiliate commissions. Exciting news, but don't go throwing together affiliate sites just yet.

Make sure whenever you create an affiliate site that you are aware of the programs policies. Many programs such as BlockBuster do not allow advertising that target their keywords. While this is a gray area, violating their TOS could mean you loose all your earned commissions.

So, just a friendly reminder. Familiarize yourself with the affiliate programs TOS and happy earning.

Affiliate Propaganda

When I search for a product that I'm interested in purchasing, I hope to be greeted with the most relevant pages. Typically, this would mean that I would find the 'official' page for the product in question. This is assuming that the manufacturer, retailer has an online pressence, but everyone does nowadays.

A study shows that 15% of Brand Searches Stray away from Company sites. This is extremely interesting and frankly exciting that affiliates have a chance to market a product for the big boys. Your affiliate page has the potential for being a point of sale for Brand Searching.

Users' behavior when conducting searches that include brand names is especially interesting in light of ongoing legal battles over search engines' trademark-related advertising policies. Queries involving brand names are growing in popularity, too.

Because of these findings no doubt trademark violations will be cracked down on a lot more. Google Adwords already doesn't allow the use of Trademarked names in it's campaign. But how does this affect affiliates and what advantages do 'official' sites stand to gain?

Time will tell if Google/MSN/Yahoo! want to truly keep affiliate sites out of the branding searches.

Parasites Stealing Your Affiliate Link Credit

Spyware does exist that would allow a hosts to transform your affiliate link into a link of the spywares owner. This would cause credit of the link to go to the spyware owner and not to you, the publisher. Educating yourself on these methods of 'stealing' and making yourself aware of ways to protect yourself can save you money.

5 Star Affiliate Programs offers a blog that tracks and monitors developments in the parasite world. Below are two articles, focused on parasites stealing your links.

Stop Adware
Parasite Protection

Protect yourself and your affiliate links by remaining ontop of developments in adware and the spyware world. For further news Digital Point has a thread worth reading up on as well.

Affiliate Cookies

When choosing an affiliate program cookies can make the difference!

The main purpose of cookies is to identify users and possibly prepare customized webpages for them.

The cookies will remember your referral, even though the customer may visit at a later date. This will ensure that you get credit for the referral, even though they did not enter the site through your creative.

Often times a customer will visit a site through your ad, but return at a later date to actually make their purchase. Potentially the customer is looking around, comparing prices, doing research and will return later for purchase. If your affiliate program does not offer cookies, you then miss out on the sale. So make sure you are getting the most out of your affiliate program, ask for the cookies.

Affiliate Pitfalls

When searching for Affiliate programs, be sure your comparing apples to apples. There are a number of merchant programs that disguise themselves as affiliates.

It's not an affiliate program if you have to pay, to sell their products. Such programs that charge to be a member are merchant programs. These programs provide you with a store front that you manage and sell their product. The basis for the charge is that you are purchasing the franchise rights to the site.

It's strongly suggested that beginners into the affiliate world stay away from such programs. Focus on what's free and build from there, there is potential to make plenty of money without paying for 'said' programs.

Utilizing Amazon Tools

Amazon offers a number of tools for you to use when affiliating with their products. From direct Product links to a search box they have you covered for the best creative to blend with your site. Knowing your visitors will help you decide what type of ad to use.

Utilizing the stats of your site to decide what creative to use can help increase your revenue and make your site more appealing. Knowing the entrance pages will allow you to target those pages with quality ads. In addition, knowing your most popular exit pages will allow you to take advantage of exit links, search bars, etc...

Trial and error is definately the name of the game with affiliating and patience is key.

Important Affiliate Links

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate Future
Chitika
Click Bank
Commission Junction
Amazon

Top Affiliate List

5 Star Affiliates

Affiliate and Marketing Help Forums

V7N
Digital Point

Keeping up with the sites on these links can help make your campaign a successful one. Knowing what each program has to offer, their strengths, and weaknesses will make you more revenue! Please feel free to make any suggestions on others that need to be added.