Associate Programs Newsletter #73
I’ve just updated my Top 10 – the associate programs which earn the most money for AssociatePrograms.com. There’s a high-riser and a brand new entry which has jumped in at No.1 spot. Next week I’ll describe two techniques I’ve been using to boost my sales.
Top 10:
Best affiliate programs
CONTENTS:
1. Astounding rankings in seven search engines
2. Rick’s Ezine Marketing Machine
3. Register.com starts paying commissions
4. Art.com doesn’t see the whole picture
5. Mike Enlow pays $200 commission
6. NetEzines doubles payout to 20 cents
7. Winners of FREE banner advertising
8. The King of Newsletters’ new book
9. Ad Tracker v. Click-It
10. Viagra seller says it’s OK
11. AIS improves brilliant online tracking
12. Hawaii reminder
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==============================================
1. Astounding rankings in seven search engines
==============================================
It’s a brave man who lists his high rankings in major search engines, knowing his competitors will try to chop him down, but that’s exactly what Ken Evoy does in the latest issue of his Site-Sell newsletter.
Ken has achieved high positions in seven major search engines.
What is even more surprising is that Ken is using OLD techniques. “I have barely touched the search engine program since I set it up almost two years ago,” he says.
He uses what he calls a common-sense, low maintenance approach and doesn’t obsessively check his site’s position in search engines.
This week, Ken, whose first site is PennyGold, was curious and checked his rankings.
(He has given me permission to quote from his SiteSell newsletter.)
“I chose one of the important keywords that I tried to master way back then… ‘penny mining stocks’. I entered this into every major search engine. I also looked for the more generic ‘penny stocks.’ What a shocker…”
—–SIDEBAR—-
You can double-check the results. Just do what the vast
majority of searchers do (URLs supplied below)…
o use each search engine’s default settings
o enter “penny mining stocks” (without the quotes).
—–SIDEBAR—-
“Despite the fact that I have neglected my SE program for almost two years, and despite the fact that there is a ton of new competition (I was surprised to see just how many), my first site still did quite well…
“Your goal is to be on Page 1 of any search result. So that’s what I stick to below…,” Ken says.
Here’s how PennyGold scores for the major search engines:
AOL.COM Search
search.aol.com/
Page 1, #8 for the more generic “penny stocks”
Alta Vista
altavista.com/
Page 1, #1 and #5
Page 1, #4 for the more generic “penny stocks”
Excite
excite.com/
Page 1, #5 (plus an article about us on Page 1, #4!)
HotBot
hotbot.com/
Page 1, #1 and #2
Page 1, #3, 9, and 10 for the more generic “penny stocks”
InfoSeek
infoseek.go.com/
Page 1, #1 and #2 (plus a forum about us on Page 1, #3!)
Page 1, #10 for the more generic “penny stocks”
Lycos
lycos.com/
Page 1, #4 (plus an article about us on Page 1, #2!)
Page 1, #4 for the more generic “penny stocks”
MSN Web Search
search.msn.com/
Page 1, #1 and #2
Page 1, #5 and #7 for the more generic “penny stocks”
Northern Light
northernlight.com/
Page 1, #2 and #3 (plus article about us on Page 1, #1!)
Page 1, #3 for the more generic “penny stocks”
Netscape and Google (Netscape Search is powered by Google)
search.netscape.com/
google/com/
Page 1, #1 (and #1a), #5
Page 1, #3 for the more generic “penny stocks” on Netscape
Page 1, #8 for the more generic “penny stocks” on Google
Ken’s methods will surprise webmasters who try to figure out the algorithms of individual machines.
He says you don’t have to build different pages for each engine or tweak continuously to gain an edge.
“You know what? I don’t do anything complicated,” Ken says. “I don’t design for each engine. One size fits all. I don’t try to trick the engines.”
By the way, Ken doesn’t just rank well in the search engines – he ALSO ranks incredibly well in the major directories.
You can examine Ken’s pages and see if you can figure out how he achieved those results – or save yourself a lot of time and frustration by reading how he did it in his ebook, “Make Your
Site SELL!” – https://www.associateprograms.com/myss – which includes a 200-page section on search engines. The book costs only $24.95 Canadian – under $20 (US).
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=================================
2. Rick’s Ezine Marketing Machine
=================================
One of the things that fascinate me about marketing on the Internet is that there are so many different roads to success.
Rick Beneteau, who has been marketing full-time on the Internet for two years, has become a master at getting oodles of free publicity for his business by writing articles for newsletters.
Jim Daniels, Kevin Nunley and many others have also had huge success with this traffic-boosting technique.
Rick’s ebook, “The Ezine Marketing Machine”, was favorably reviewed by Joshua Reimer in this newsletter on June 5, and Rick has since expanded and improved it. After acquiring a lot more favorable reviews, Rick has now launched a two-tier associate program paying $10 on each sale
and $5 on sales from your referral “partners”. It’s great value at only $29.95 (US).
Rick’s book tells you exactly what you need to do to get your articles accepted by newsletter publishers.
[UPDATE: This book is no longer available.]
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3. Register.com starts paying commissions
=========================================
Domain name registration company Register.com has started paying 10% commissions. Tracking is by ClickTrade.
It has more than 25 top level domain name options available, including .com, .net, .org and several lesser known ones such as: .ac (Ascension), .ky (Cayman Islands), .ro (Romania) and .sh
(St Helena).
I’ve used Register.com and found it quick and easy to use. It’s a good service.
Please, don’t register AssociatePrograms.ky or something similar. That’s unethical. The only reason someone would do such a thing is to try to deceive someone.
[UPDATE: ClickTrade was bought by Microsoft and closed.]========================================
4. Art.com doesn’t see the whole picture
========================================
Art.com has switched from Be Free to LinkShare, and upset some affiliates by bungling its announcement of the change.
At first Art.com, which has a good associate program, offered not even a hint of an apology. It casually said, “If you haven’t heard …” and implied that all that was involved for affiliates was generating new HTML code.
For website owners who have complex sites including many links to Art.com, it isn’t that simple. In those cases, a lot of time and work is involved.
There was no hint of real understanding. No hint of an apology. That came later, no doubt after a few squeals of outrage from affiliates.
The first announcement also didn’t make it clear that existing affiliates will remain at the 15% commission level and will be able to link to everything that they could through Be Free. It also didn’t make it clear that existing Be Free links will be active until October 30, to allow website owners time to make the transition.
Art.com, these are your ASSOCIATES, remember? They work WITH you, to help your company earn revenue. They deserve a bit more help and understanding – or at least sympathy.
Art.com says it is committed to providing affiliates “with the most current, state of the art technology available”. That will get the folks at Be Free and CJ.com bristling.
If affiliates generate a sale before October 30 with their new LinkShare/Art.com links Art.com will pay an extra $10.
[UPDATE: If you’re not already doing so, I suggest you use .htaccess 301 redirects so it’s easy to update affiliate links when they change. You can update dozens or hundreds of links by changing one line in one plain text file.]==================================
5. Mike Enlow pays $200 commission
==================================
While I was writing last week’s item about Mike Enlow’s high-paying Masters of Marketing Inner Circle, big changes were being made to the program. Like all good marketers, Mike likes to keep testing to see what achieves the best sales.
The first-tier commission is still huge at $200 on the full package and $80 if people buy web access only.
[UPDATE: This program has closed.]=======================================
6. NetEzines doubles payout to 20 cents
=======================================
TeknoSurf’s NetEzines program, which is available to all websites, has doubled its payout to 20 cents, and also pays 5 cents second-tier commissions. NetEzines is a family of 11 opt-in ezines which include Jokes4U. Your visitors can subscribe without leaving your site.
[UPDATE: TeknoSurf was renamed Advertising.com. The NetEzines domain now redirects to offerzoo.co.uk, which is owned by Advertising.com.]=====================================
7. Winners of FREE banner advertising
=====================================
I’ve just drawn the latest lucky winners of free banner advertising for a year on AssociatePrograms.com:
Tony Curtis
TNT Marketing
ExplosiveGrowth.com
Carla Spain
PerfectCents
PerfectCents.com
If you would like a chance to win free banner advertising for a year, it’s easy. All you have to do is provide a link to AssociatePrograms.com. Thank you!
[UPDATE: This offer has closed.]====================================
8. The King of Newsletters’ new book
====================================
You’ve probably already bought it, but just in case you haven’t, Chris Pirillo’s new book, “Poor Richard’s E-mail Publishing”, is the how-to Bible for anyone planning to publish an email newsletter, or for anyone wanting to improve an email newsletter.
Chris, of https://www.Lockergnome.com fame, certainly knows how to publish a successful newsletter. After all, 170,000 subscribers can’t be wrong, can they? And Chris is adding 10,000 subscribers a month.
The extremely comprehensive book contains everything you need to know on the mechanics, subscriber-boosting and ethics of email publishing. Every business on the web ought to have a newsletter, so every business on the web needs this book.
It costs only $23.96.
https://www.associateprograms.com/pirillo
While you’re there, be sure to read the interview with Chris.
=========================
9. Ad Tracker v. Click-It
=========================
Click-it, the ad tracking CGI script which is being sold by Todd Sumrall and which I described in last week’s newsletter, is apparently an adapted version of Wes Blaylock’s Ad Tracker:
muchsuccess.com/cgi/cgitrack.shtml
I asked Wes and Todd to comment. “Yes he did copy my script. In one file, only 3 lines were changed,” Wes replied.
Todd, however, says Click-It looks very similar on the outside but is much different on the inside. “It differs in a great many ways from Wes’s script.” Todd provided a list of differences.
Ken Evoy has suggested a good way of improving Click-it.
All three letters are on the Associate Programs Message Board, under Complaints, Criticisms and Problems:
https://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php
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==============================
10. Viagra seller says it’s OK
==============================
For quite a while I’ve had a link on AssociatePrograms.com warning affiliates of the possible legal consequences of promoting Viagra.
Jude LaCour, CEO of KwikMed, says the warning about affiliates being held responsible if something goes wrong with the medication is completely false.
“The affiliate is not actually making the sale, we are,” Jude says.
“There is absolutely no liability on the affiliate’s part. Trust me, we have spent more money than any other Viagra web site to keep this business alive. We are helping all the other little guys out there by doing what we do. Because of this, we know that the affiliate is not responsible,” he says.
“Heck, we don’t even charge the affiliates back when we get a charge back. How’s that for not liable?”
Jude says KwikMed has more than 12,000 affiliates now “and wouldn’t think of putting any one of them in jeopardy”.
Of course, there’s more than the legal aspect to consider. It’s your decision.
==========================================
11. AIS improves brilliant online tracking
==========================================
Thomas Harpointner’s Advanced Internet Solutions (AIS) has been hard at work improving its online tracking, which was already brilliant. You can now see all of your statements online and
your affiliates’ activity. The AIS system allows to you now instantly which particular banner or link achieved a sale, and also allows you to do mail-outs to your AIS customers as well as
your sub-associates. If you like testing various marketing methods, you’ll love the AIS system.
===================
12. Hawaii reminder
===================
Just in case you missed yesterday’s Special Edition: “Mr I-Sales” John Audette, Rob Frankel, Tom Reece and I will be speaking at the E-Commerce 2000 – Strategies For Success” conference in Hawaii. It’s going to be fun.
I received this helpful letter from Hawaii:
Aloha from Honolulu.
Looking forward to seeing you at the conference. Make sure
people make their hotel reservations and inter-island
reservations soon. For those who don’t know, Kona is on the
island of Hawaii. Most flights will go to the island of Oahu
and they will need to catch a short plane ride to the Kona
airport. Although I live on Oahu I know the island of Hawaii
well. Mahalo.
Scott Dieken
Thank you! See your there!
Turbo-boost your business. Book now:
https://www.associateprograms.com/hawaii
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All the best
Allan Gardyne