Associate Programs Newsletter #179
While you’re reading this, Joanna and I (with any luck) will be in Los Angeles, recovering from a 13.5-hour flight from Sydney. I hope the jet lag has worn off by the time we reach Mark Joyner’s Guerrilla Marketing Boot Camp in Las Vegas.
After that, we’ll be taking a short break.
This newsletter won’t be published for the next two weeks.
This week I have an article by Shawn Collins, who is an affiliate and affiliate manager. His review of FreeFiliate, written from first-hand experience, will interest anyone who’s looking for a budget-priced way to start an affiliate program.
CONTENTS:
1. No free lunch, but FreeFiliate comes close
2. A swipe file you’ll use again and again
3. How to track sales through PayPal
4. About.com shifts focus, and other news
5. Be Free’s links meet new standards
6. New affiliate manual sells strongly
7. Thought for today: One priority above all others
__________________________________________SPONSOR__________
To learn how I made $1075 in a few days with a free affiliate
program, go to https://www.marketingtips.com/sr/t.x/648092
___________________________________________________________
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1. No free lunch, but FreeFiliate comes close
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By Shawn Collins
One of the burning questions when setting up an affiliate program is which affiliate solution provider to use. Generally, people gravitate towards the Big Four networks (Be Free, CJ, LinkShare, and Performics), or one of the hosted software solutions like My Affiliate Program (MyAP).
While these systems are ideal for many Fortune 500 and Media Metrix 500 companies, they are not always practical solutions for smaller companies. Affiliate marketing is a scalable model for any size business, but that doesn’t matter for the small merchant who can’t afford the higher end solutions.
Enter FreeFiliate.
FreeFiliate, founded by JB McKee in August 2000, has been the platform of choice for more than 500 affiliate programs over the past year.
The FreeFiliate proposition is a great one for the small merchant: the “Standard Account” offers a fully functional and easy to use affiliate tracking service that is not quite free, but very cheap to operate (activation fee of $49, and $1.95 per month).
There is also a “Premium Account” that costs $199 to activate, as well as a monthly fee (5% of the amount you pay your affiliates with a monthly minimum of $19.95).
The “Standard Account” is acceptable for a hobbyist, but the functionality includes sponsored pop-up windows, which tend to be a little annoying. The reasonably priced “Premium Account” is a great entry into affiliate marketing for the small retailer.
KICKING THE TIRES
The service is web based with no download required, and the activation fee is fully refundable for any reason within 30 days.
FreeFiliate supports the pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, and pay- per-sale models, and it integrates with the PayPal Mass Payment system for easy payment of your affiliates.
Some features from FreeFiliate that you might not expect at this price-point are free online support, online statistical reporting and tracking, customizable affiliate sign-up page, two-tier functionality, and a shopping cart system. My favorite feature is the ability to send personalized e-mail to the affiliates.
The set-up with FreeFiliate could not be closer to dummy-proof. If you run a pay-per-click program, there’s no technical integration required. Pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale programs require embedding a special HTML image tag into your “Thank You” page that is served up at the end of a transaction.
Affiliates can link with either a text link or as many as four different banners. There is a limit of one destination URL, so if you are offering multiple products, they will all have to be displayed on that page.
If you’re looking for a low-cost solution that has a surprisingly robust suite of features, I’d highly recommend FreeFiliate.
Shawn is the Director of Affiliate Marketing for ClubMom and the author of Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants.
[UPDATE: FreeFiliate became FusionQuest and then was bought by ShareASale affiliate network.]__________________________________________SPONSOR__________
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Then let me show you how to get YOUR pages at the top of
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https://www.scamfreezone.com/ispider/
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2. A swipe file you’ll use again and again
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Isn’t it frustrating when you’re struggling to write compelling sales copy and the words you’re trying to think of refuse to come?
To overcome that problem, master copyriters create a “swipe file” of powerful words, phrases and sentences which enable them to breeze through such moments.
They know from experience that certain phrases have an almost hypnotic power. So they keep a collection of them,
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could get your hands on a swipe file like that?
Now you can.
Joe Vitale and Larry Dotson have decided to disclose all of their copywriting techniques in “The Hypnotic Writer’s Swipe File”. This treasure chest of copywriting secrets contains the 1,550 templates and formulas that have made master copywriters rich.
Joe Vitale is a best-selling author and one of the most effective copywriters in the world. Larry Dotson is the author of five ebooks.
It took these successful writers years to accumulate the information provided in the “The Hypnotic Writer’s Swipe File” and you can have it at your fingertips.
Imagine next time you’re writing sales copy… Just refer to this treasure trove and you’ll be writing hypnotic headlines, hidden commands, irresistible mind-grabbing words and subliminal closings like the best of the professionals.
I’ve grabbed a copy and I know I’ll be referring to it over and over again.
“The Hypnotic Writer’s Swipe File” is exactly what you need to write sales copy that generates decent sales.
You can get your swipe file here:
https://www.associateprograms.com/swipefile
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3. How to track sales through PayPal
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If you run an affiliate program and you’re using PayPal, you’ll be interested in this tip from Neil Shearing of ScamFreeZone –
https://www.associateprograms.com/scamfree .
“I don’t know how many merchants track associate sales through PayPal,” Neil says. “According to my programmer, PayPal won’t pass third party variables, making it almost impossible to integrate.
“So what my programmer has done is knock up a script that e-mails me the name of all visitors who click to go to PayPal, along with the associate ID. If a sale results, I get confirmation from PayPal and can credit the appropriate associate manually.
“OK, it’s not as pretty as direct integration, but I can now track all credit card orders and PayPal orders,” Neil says. “Excluding technical mishaps, a 100% system (I don’t currently have mail-in or phone-in details on the site, although I’ll add those back, and track them too),” Neil says.
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4. About.com shifts focus, and other news
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Bad news…
About.com, a network of online directories, has shifted its focus from information toward e-commerce and has cut about 60 jobs in a bid to replace disappearing advertising revenue. Some 300 of About.com’s guides have been told their contracts won’t be renewed. news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7322010.html
Excite@Home will file for bankruptcy protection. AT&T Corp., which already owns a majority stake, says it will bid $307 million for the company’s assets.
The Motley Fool, which offers personal finance information, will be laying off about half of its 187 employees, according to a source within the company. At one stage, it had about 400 employees.
Good news…
RollingStone.com took a costly pay-per-click affiliate program and inserted valuable content in exchange for targeted traffic. By removing the cost of a per-click program, and the endless fraud enforcement, it got better traffic with qualified clicks from motivated affiliates using good content as the “payment” for space on their Web sites.
clickz.com/aff_mkt/aff_mkt/article.php/893511
PayPal, which has 10 million members and isn’t losing as much money as it once was, plans to sell its stock in an initial public offering, hoping to raise up to $80.5 million.
nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-PayPal-IPO.html
(requires free registration)
How to go from good to great. Start with 1,435 good companies. Examine their performance over 40 years. Find the 11 companies that became great. Now, here’s how you can do it too, says Fast Company magazine.
fastcompany.com/online/51/goodtogreat.html
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5. Be Free’s links meet new standards
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Be Free’s links are compliant with P3P standards and the new IE 6.0 browser, says Jennifer F. Roy, Director, Corporate Communications at Be Free.
“As I’m sure you know, Microsoft has released online, and in a month will be releasing with Windows XP, its latest version of its browser, Internet Explorer 6.0,” Jennifer says.
“This version of the browser incorporates some features to help users more effectively manage their cookies.
“Be Free does set cookies for both its BFAST and BSELECT services, and has taken action to ensure that all Be Free cookies are compliant. Be Free has long had comprehensive privacy policies, we have translated those existing policies so that the IE 6.0 browser will understand them, and there is no impact to our customers or their affiliate partners in terms of the services we deliver. Be Free affiliate links will not be affected by these new standards – both previously generated and newly created links alike.”
Commission Junction announced recently that its links are compliant with the new standards.
As Neil Durrant reports in The Affiliate Programs Managers Newsletter – https://www.affiliatemarketing.co.uk/ – if your program is powered by a network or ASP solution you need to ensure that your supplier is P3P compliant.
If you operate your program in-house and place your tracking cookies via your own server then you will need to ensure your site is compliant to P3P’s compact policy standard.
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6. New affiliate manual sells strongly
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Marlon Sanders’ new affiliate manual, the “Associate Program Marketing Handbook”, is selling strongly – just as you would expect for a product by this master salesman.
For the visitors I sent in September, the conversion rate was a very useful 3.6%. (That includes stats for all products.)
The book describes 25 techniques which affiliates use to achieve exceptional sales – for a surprisingly low price.
If you haven’t grabbed your copy yet, you could be missing out on the very information you need for success. It’s packed with powerful techniques that work, it’s excellent value, and comes with a money-back guarantee.
Grab your copy now and boost your affiliate commissions.
https://www.associateprograms.com/affiliate-manual
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7. Thought for today: One priority above all others
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“If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could.” – Jim Collins, in Fast Company.
All the best
Allan Gardyne
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