Associate Programs Newsletter #184
CONTENTS:
1. Grab this powerful promotional tools combo
2. RewardShare pays 30% two-tier, lifetime commissions
3. How tight focus produces 10% click-throughs
4. Affiliate heavyweights – Part 2
Do the math to improve your income
5. Dead e-mail addresses deleted
6. How Adam Boettiger lures extra subscribers
7. B&N drops exclusivity clause, and other news
8. Why I switched to Norton
9. Useful free resource: Google Groups
10. Thought for today: Your competition is in a funk
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1. Grab this powerful promotional tools combo
=============================================
I’ve negotiated an exciting deal with a massive discount for readers of the Associate Programs Newsletter.
You’ve probably heard of Internet Marketing Challenge (IMC). It’s a private site where you can find hundreds of information-packed articles on Internet marketing, and post questions to Internet marketing professionals for quick answers.
It’s like having several Internet marketing consultants on tap.
This special deal doesn’t only give you access to the private site. It’s a one-of-kind deal for a package of Internet marketing tools that will instantly allow you to…
a) Automatically submit your classified ad to 1,000+ classified ad web sites.
b) Submit your web site to the top 150 search engines automatically. (“We have never recommended search engine automation software before until we discovered this unique tool that submits the customized info they need to get you the highest possible ranking,” says Derek Derek Gehl, President of Internet Marketing Challenge. )
c) Get all of the step-by-step information, free consulting, site critiques and resources that you need to successfully start your business on the Internet.
This is your one opportunity to use these tools and resources all in one powerful combination to increase your traffic, boost your profits, and expand your over-all business at about 50% off the regular price.
If you don’t grab this really good bargain right now, you will only be able to purchase each of these valuable tools separately at full price.
IMC is so confident of the value this package provides you and your e-business that it’s willing to take all of the risk. To find out how you can claim this package now with NO RISK, go to…
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[UPDATE: This offer has closed.]“Having the tools to drive traffic to your web site is extremely important but unless you know how to convert those visitors into paying customers you are wasting your time and money,” Derek says. “With this powerful Internet marketing package you are not only getting the tools you need, you are also getting the training you need to convert valuable traffic into paying customers.”
Read the glowing testimonials and learn about the high-powered marketing authorities who back the private site here:
AssociatePrograms.com/combo
[UPDATE: This offer has closed.]======================================================
2. RewardShare pays 30% two-tier, lifetime commissions
======================================================
Here’s a new affiliate program, RewardShare, which looks well worth checking out.
Its conversion rates are 5 to 10 times higher than those on most affiliate programs.
RewardShare pays people cash for shopping.
“We use the best incentive to drive action – cash!” says President and CEO, William Sutjiadi, who also runs the search engine that helps charities, SearchToFeed.
Here’s how RewardShare works:
Refer your visitors once and get paid 30% commissions for life.
“All we need is a valid e-mail address from them to get started,” William says.
“We even pay your visitors $3 simply to join for free. We pay them cash to shop or complete great offers, and you earn 30% commissions every time they get cash from shopping or completing an offer at RewardShare for life, even after they’ve left your site.” (More than 700 big-name merchants are involved.)
In the powerful two-tier program, you invite other webmasters to join the program and you’ll earn 30% of your referred webmasters’ commissions for the lifetime of their membership.
Unlike other incentive programs that pay their affiliates only for one lead or per first time buyer, this program will bring you residual lifetime revenue for each referral “and we will do all the work to ‘activate’ those referrals through our cash- incentive program”, William says.
“We are currently experiencing over 50% conversion rate for new member sign-ups.”
That’s a phenomenal conversion rate.
If you hurry, you can promote RewardShare in time for the Christmas rush – and to make some quick cash for Christmas.
It’s a lively, professional looking site, brand new, with powerful cash offers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if your visitors convert at that 50% conversion rate.
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3. How tight focus produces 10% click-throughs
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Are you confusing your web site visitors by giving them too many choices?
Mark Frank doesn’t make that mistake with his affiliate-driven Discounts4pets.com – https://www.discounts4pets.com – which promotes pet food.
Mark concentrates his visitors’ attention on ONE company. He tells you which pet food company offers the best deal and why you should go there.
He also uses a nice clean design that you can scan fast.
His strategy is highly effective.
While many sites have banner ad and affiliate link click-through rates well under 1%, Mark says that Discounts4pets.com maintains an average monthly click-through rate near 10%.
Mark also owns Sunrise Designs – https://www.sunrisedesigns.com – which started as a hobby site.
“I was designing web sites for cat owners,” Mark says. “During the first year I learned a great deal about web site design. I also learned that cat owners don’t pay very well.”
It was on a cat web site that he began testing banners, design techniques and affiliate programs.
“One of my affiliate programs at the time was pushing discounts on pet supplies and Discounts4pets.com just seemed to naturally evolve from there.”
Mark has been developing Discounts4pets.com for two years.
“My first check was for $3.84.”
He continued to test layout and copywriting techniques to see what worked and what didn’t.
“Probably the most important lesson was that the target market of the web site should be the same market targeted by the affiliate programs,” he says.
“The more focused a site is on a specific market segment, the better your affiliate links work.”
Today Discounts4pets.com is focused on PetsMart.
“For a long time it also included many other pet supply affiliate programs, but when I checked my statistics, I found that PetsMart’s click-through rates, conversion rates, and payments were two to five times higher than any of my other affiliate programs.
“It finally dawned on me that every visitor who went to a different affiliate merchant cost me money. I eventually removed almost all of the other affiliate programs and concentrated on PetsMart.”
Mark says he has learned some valuable lessons about making money from affiliate programs:
You are not “just an affiliate”. You are a sales representative working on commission. Understanding this is crucial to developing a profitable affiliate web site.
Your web site is in direct competition with your affiliate merchants’ web sites. Your goal is to attract their customers to your site first.
Design your web site as a promotional tool to sell your affiliate merchants’ products.
Your web site should be focused on a niche. This can be a specific affiliate merchant, a specific product family, or a specific customer profile.
Give your visitors a reason to stay in your site. Pages that are just banners and sales hype do not perform well.
Most of the standard marketing tools work well if applied correctly. Banner ads work. Pop-ups work. Personal recommendations and product reviews work best.
Evaluate your click-through rates, conversion rates, and web site statistics. Get rid of low performing affiliate programs and fix low performing pages.
If you want to support multiple affiliate partners or multiple product families, put up several different sites. Web sites are cheap.
If you put banner ads on your site “just to see if they work” – they won’t. A profitable affiliate program requires a focused sales effort.
Mark has obviously also learned how to design pages which are found in search engines.
If you go to meta search engine https://www.ixquick.com and do a search for “discount pet food” or “discount pet supplies” you’ll see that Discounts4pets.com is in the top 10 in several search engines.
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4. Affiliate heavyweights – Part 2
Do the math to improve your income
==================================
(For “Affiliate heavyweights – Part 1” see: Super affiliates Part 1 )
By Scott McNulty, CEO of Afftrack
As an affiliate, you can use metrics as a quantitative guide to improving your income. This article will show you an overview of how super affiliates actually work with their data and metrics.
One of the most important aspects of using metrics is to improve your performance. It is important to keep a historic log of all your data so you can see the effects of season, promotion, traffic and other factors that might affect your numbers. There are two primary metrics you should be aware of:
EPC – short for earnings per click.
How it is calculated: (Total commission) / (Number of clicks)
For a great number of affiliate sites this is the true guiding metric. Your goal is to maximize your earnings for every click off your site. EPC is used to judge the performance of an offer. It can be affected by both the merchant’s ability to convert and your ability to properly target your offers.
CPM – short for cost per mil.
How it is calculated: ((Total commission) / (Number of Impressions)) X 1000
How it is used: This is most useful for measuring the performance of banners or other fixed areas on your site designated as advertising areas (as opposed to areas where you might have a variable number of contextual links). CPM is used to judge the performance of an ad based on the number of times it has been shown.
It can be affected by:
the merchant’s ability to convert
how well targeted the offer is
how heavily you are rotating it
what other ads are on the page with it.
Metrics can also be used as a prospecting tool. Here are some techniques that make the professional performance marketer stand a cut above the rest:
Aggregate EPC or Network EPC
How it is calculated: (Total commission) / (Number of clicks) or alternatively the Commission Junction Network EPC: ((Total commission) / (Number of clicks)) X 100
How it is used: Network or Aggregate EPC (as opposed to your own individual EPC discussed above) is calculated using the earnings and clicks of all affiliates for a merchant. It is most useful when comparing similar merchants or products to see which tends to deliver better.
What the affiliate hopes this metric represents is the merchant’s ability to convert sales while factoring in ticket size and commission percentage.
In reality, however, it will vary greatly based on the merchant’s ability to select quality affiliates and their ability to target traffic. Taken with a grain of salt, this metric is very useful but a high network EPC is no guarantee that this merchant will perform well for you. Actual results may vary.
Network or Aggregate EPC, by itself, is only a guide.
Conversion Percentage
How it is calculated: ((Number of Sales) / (Number of clicks)) X 100
How it is used: Conversion percentage will help you locate sites which are doing a good job of taking visitors and getting them to buy. Sites with higher over-all conversion percentages are good sites to partner with because you know they can achieve sales.
You may still have to negotiate a higher commission to bring their EPC in line with your acceptable range. This is something we call EPC Calibration, but that is outside the scope of this discussion.
Average Ticket
How it is calculated: (Total Sales Revenue) / (Number of Sales)
How it is used: Average ticket tells you how much your users are willing to spend in general on a shopping site. You can use this information to try to pick out other sites with products in the same price range. If your average ticket is only $10 it is safe to assume that most users will not be willing to buy a $300 MP3 player.
This is a rather simplistic overview of how some super affiliates use metrics to help their business. In the real world you would never guide your business using a single number, instead using a more complex model of inter-related numbers. While the scope of these metrics is broad it will give any sized affiliate some insight into the great things you can learn just by doing the math.
COMING SOON:
Affiliate heavyweights – Part 3
[UPDATE: AffTrack is no longer available.]================================
5. Dead email addresses deleted
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I’ve “lost” a few hundred subscribers – but they weren’t what you might call real subscribers.
Here’s how I lost them:
Hotmail has cracked down on abandoned accounts. People who haven’t checked their Hotmail email for 30 days are having their accounts shut down. (This doesn’t apply if you’ve bought extra storage space.)
AOL has improved its reporting of “dead” email addresses to Postmaster General, the service I use to distribute the newsletter.
It’s good to have real figures.
[UPDATE: I now use a variety of other newsletter distribution services and strongly recommend https://www.associateprograms.com/aweber=============================================
6. How Adam Boettiger lures extra subscribers
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If you have an email newsletter and are looking for ideas on how to lure new subscribers, have a look at how Adam Boettiger does it.
When he has attracted a new subscriber, he immediately asks that person to recommend another subscriber.
It’s a classy operation. See it in action here:
email911.com/pubinfo.shtml
“The script I use is Master Recommend Pro and Master Subscriber Pro,” Adam says. “Both can be purchased inexpensively from https://www.willmaster.com/ . He does phenomenal scripts.”
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7. B&N drops exclusivity clause, and other news
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BarnesandNoble.com has told affiliates that it is dropping its exclusivity clause. However, on this page – barnesandnoble.com/affiliate/faq.asp – it still says “…this is an exclusive program.”
Rebounding from a loss in the July quarter, the Dell Computer Corporation reported a third-quarter profit of $429 million. Let’s hope it pays affiliates on time from now on.
nytimes.com/2001/11/16/technology/16DELL.html
CoolSavings Inc., which has been slow in paying affiliates, was delisted by the Nasdaq this week.
revenews.com/archives/00000160.html
Amazon’s shares have soared, based on signs that sales – helped by discounted prices – may be growing.
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/
Google is engaged in a controversial experiment aimed at giving its users a say in ranking web sites – a move that could help the company cement its lead in the competitive Web-search market, or could potentially weaken its position. I find it hard to believe that its voting system could remain untainted.
news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7986789.html
The Trafficology site was down for a while this month because Wayne Yeager let the domain name expire. It’s back up again. Fortunately, Wayne’s unusually innovative, must-read newsletter is still being published.
[UPDATE: Wayne sold Trafficology to the smart guys at Nitro Marketing – https://www.associateprograms.com/nitro.]===========================
8. Why I switched to Norton
===========================
A reader asked me why I’ve switched from McAfee to Norton Antivirus software.
I discovered that while McAfee was identifying viruses, some of the viruses it identified had NOT been deleted. I found viruses still sitting in my Eudora/attach folder.
Also, I was annoyed with the way McAfee works when it updates the anti-virus files. I had to wait several minutes while it did the update and then reboot. In comparison, Norton does the updates unobtrusively.
Norton Antivirus software is sold at https://www.symantec.com .
(McAfee has an affiliate program. Norton doesn’t.)
[UPDATE: I’m now using F-Prot.]======================================
9. Useful free resource: Google Groups
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The Google Toolbar is a wonderful little free tool.
It increases your ability to find information from anywhere on the Web and to find information about competitors and potential partners.
When the Google Toolbar is installed, it automatically appears along with the Internet Explorer toolbar. So you can quickly and easily use Google without returning to the Google home page to begin another search.
Other features include:
Search Site: Search only the pages of the site you’re visiting.
PageRank: See Google’s ranking of the current page. (For example, https://www.associateprograms.com gets 6/10 or 7/10 depending on the search phrase used.)
[UPDATE: It might look that way, but it actually depended on which Google server was accessed.]Page Info: Access more information about a page including similar pages, pages that link back to that page, as well as a cached snapshot.
Highlight: Highlight your search terms as they appear on the page, each word in its own color.
Word Find: Find your search terms wherever they appear on the page.
It will take you only a few seconds to install. I recommend you do it now:
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10. Thought for today: Your competition is in a funk
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“How’s your business doing? Not so good? I believe this presents us with the best business opportunity in a decade! …your competition is in a funk. That means they are not paying attention to what you are doing. That means you can get out there and establish your brand as the leader.”
– Frederick Pearce
The Business Start Page:
https://bspage.com
All the best from Dunedin, New Zealand.
(Joanna and I are here for the southern summer.)
Allan Gardyne