Commission Junction, or CJ, is the largest of the major affiliate networks out there. If you are looking to launch a new affiliate program on CJ, or currently have one, it’s imperative that you have good affiliate managers in place. Merely having a program live on CJ is not enough to guarantee your affiliate program will perform like it should. You need excellent affiliate management in place to work with the affiliates and make sure their every need is taken care of. Proactive affiliate management is the best way to increase the affiliate participation level in the program, and therefore the revenue it produces. Having knowledgeable affiliate management help to increase sales because more affiliates have a chance of producing, once worked with. Make sure to have really good affiliate management in place when you run a CJ program to ensure your affiliate program will reach its fullest potential!
Category: Marketing
New Affiliate Program Banner Archive from Experience Advertising
Looking for some great examples for affiliate program banners? You should check out the animated gif and Flash banner designs from Experience Advertising. Having great affiliate banners is a must for ecommerce companies looking achieve a high click-thru rate for their affiliates. These are some really great designs, so check them out!
Blog Outreach: 8 compelling reasons why you should be doing it now
Blog outreach involves communicating with bloggers to engage their audiences with your message. Bloggers are online influencers, and the best of them are prolific writers with a dedicated readership. Bloggers value relationships and will respond well to companies and individuals who reach out to communicate with them and do it the right way. Until recently it was innovative, at this point it is a necessary part of any ongoing marketing or public relations campaign.
Blogger outreach can be as simple as getting them to review your product or as involved as building an extended relationship with bloggers in your field that you can consistently give stories to and get feedback from.
1)Increase Sales- Good product reviews on the right blogs will lead to more sales from that blog’s readers. There are respected blogs in every field and thousands of readers who use the web to research their purchasing decisions-
2)Increase traffic- A review on a blog that ranks well in search engines is a powerful and effective way to increase search traffic. Since the reader is already online, they are just one click away from your product, a huge advantage over a product review in printed media.
3)Improve Search Engine Ranking- More links to your website will increase the search engine position of your site. This will help people find your product online directly through search engines.
4)Lead the Conversation- If you are not leading conversation in your subject area someone else will be. By reaching out to bloggers, you can start the conversation and make sure you are there to comment, respond and take part in whatever direction it goes.
5)Build Relationships- Reaching out to bloggers will help you build a relationship with the online influencers in your market- and that will add value and presence for your company in the online space.
6)Valuable Feedback- Engagement with your audience will lead to useful feedback for your company. If you are reaching out to bloggers, you will certainly get feedback from them. Even more important, you will get the extended feedback and exposure from their network through social media channels and blog comments.
7)Get the Jump on Competition- You should be building relationships with the blogging community before your competitors do. The online community knows what companies “get it” and who is good at
8)Follow Your Own Lead- If you have read this far you already know you need to do blogger outreach. You are getting guidance from a blog right now- the people you need to reach will do the same.
No matter your reason or duration, understand that blogger outreach is building a relationship. Bloggers respond well if you communicate with them as individuals, not to being on an impersonal mailing list. It’s best to learn something about their blog before contacting them and have a good idea of what they write about and their perspective.
Murray Newlands on blog outreach.
Holiday eCards Just Got Easier and Better with pingg
I wanted to let you all know about Experience Advertising’s new affiliate management client: pingg.com.
Just in time for the holidays, this service allows you to send ad-free
custom designed / branded eCards to your customers, suppliers etc… it also includes a branded eCard web site where you can post interactive content like photos and videos, and integrate your twitter stream etc…it’s really freakin cool. You should check it out.
I know a few people traditionally find eCards cheesy, but this is done *right*! Save a few trees, time and money, and check it out here.
Their affiliate program is available through the CJ affiliate network: https://signup.cj.com/member/brandedPublisherSignUp.do?air_refmerchantid=2838046
Thank you,
Evan
Experience Advertising Ranked #1 Affiliate Marketing Company
Experience Advertising has been ranked the #1 affiliate marketing company by topseos.com, an independent online marketing review website. Experience Advertising is an outsourced affiliate management agency or OPM focused on growing affiliate programs for Advertisers on the major affiliate affiliate networks. Experience Advertising manages both large and small Advertiser’s affiliate programs primarily on the Commission Junction affiliate network, but also manages programs on Linkshare, Shareasale, and Google Affiliate Network.
Experience Advertising uses personalized affiliate management techniques to connect with their affiliates to increase production. They also have a philosophy of actually doing the work for the affiliates, such as composing original content and helping launch niche sites and blogs free of charge. If you are interested in growing your affiliate program to it’s fullest potential you should definitely check out Experience Advertising.
On Page SEO: Online Marketing’s Building Blocks
On Page SEO: Online Marketing’s Building Blocks
2009 Update: Changes You Need To Know
Search engine optimization comes in many flavors, but marketers must think about more than on-page elements and old best practices. Good on-page SEO is only part of the solution you need to attract quality visitors to any type of site. Good SEO is the heart of online marketing. Poor on-page SEO will cause any site’s efforts to crumble in other areas.
Marketers should already know about page titles (aka title tags), alt image text and font decoration. An online marketer must be able to speak with absolute conviction about the characteristics of these and other influencers.
A wise soul described search engine optimization as a predator and prey game where the search engines show just enough about ranking factors to aid their mission, but not enough so that the results can be gamed. As search technology changes, marketers must also quickly change.
Consider these 2009 changes to on-page SEO so far:
Changes To Previous Best Practices: After an off-the-cuff (that’s how it seemed from the audience at SES San Jose 2007) remark about “no follow” links, Google announced in June that this type of “page rank sculpting” was unnecessary. And in October, Google pulled “PageRank” from its Webmaster Tools console. Why? Google says it’s a good indicator to use as a success metric any more.
Google also confirmed in September that meta keywords convey no search ranking attributes. A month later, Yahoo said the same, but then admitted a week later that it assigned a weak ranking signal for meta keywords.
To reduce duplicate content, all four major search engines agreed in February to support the “canonical” tag. Multiple ways to address the same page, including those resolved by rewrite rules or redirects can be winnowed to one “canonical” page, deemed to be the source and authoritative page.
And the fastest way for any site to be indexed, Yahoo’s Paid Inclusion program, will end in 2009.
New Partnerships: After chasing Yahoo! for a web eternity, Microsoft announced a search deal in July that would combine the #2 and #3 company’s search results. The deal is nowhere near final, but happened fast on the heels of Microsoft’s June launch of its rebranded Bing search engine in June. The new entity, quickly dubbed Microhoo, is expected to use Bing algorithms on Yahoo! properties.
New media darling Twitter cut its own deal with Microsoft and quickly announced a nearly identical deal with Google as both companies try to move into “real-time search”.
New Search Results: Google debuted six variants of search engine results pages (SERPs) in 2009, starting in January with a Timeline view that had previously only been seen in Google Labs. The largest search company followed with announcements in March of its “Vince” update that gives more weight to brands and branded terms. Google also previewed “Caffeine” in August – a jumble of traditional search results, news, video and even blog comments on the same page, but mixed together.
Google had already taken steps to assume searcher intent by starting to automatically display local results for service and product searches even if a geographical term wasn’t included in the search. Combined with the Vince/brand update, ranking nationally for generic words that brands traditionally use became extremely difficult using traditional methods.
Bing quickly countered with visual search in September, and as Google shortened its hotlist of trends to 40 terms, other companies including Twitter, Wikipedia and Bing quickly filled the void and reported on what terms were seeing the most search activity.
Title tags are important. But as an online marketer, you must stay abreast of monthly, sometimes weekly, changes in on-page SEO to enjoy continued success.
Guest Blog by Silver Beacon Marketing
Who Said Kindle Users Were Snobby Intellectuals?
Affiliate Summit Hospitality Room Music Playlist Leaked
Does PageRank Still Matter?
Just in case you were wondering, Google’s Matt Cutts makes it official (on Twitter nonetheless):
Curious to see what your new PageRank is now? Here’s a nifty tool (of course, you can always go the toolbar route, but that takes away all the mystery and surprise).
Personally and professionally, PageRank is meaning less and less these days. Why?
1. Social networking sites (like Matt’s Twitter page) have taken on just as much authority as blogs yet these social profiles and pages fall outside the playing field of PageRank.
2. Sure, PageRank is important for SEO and PPC to some extent, but if you’re doing marketing work in the niches, PageRank becomes increasingly non-relevant the more niche you go. Someone, like myself, who loves and deals in antique books doesn’t really care if a blog on 19th Century German translations of Hebrew texts has a PR of 6.
The point is, PageRank is great if you’re dealing with keyword buys on large scale sites or blogs, but it’s not the ultimate determiner of a site’s authority.
3. PageRank has always been a standard for determining a site’s legitimacy for consumers, affiliate managers, bloggers and even Google itself. However, in the ongoing process of “web fracturing” (nice network science term), a metric built solely on the number of inbound links doesn’t scale.
4. Affiliate managers and advertisers have better tools to determine if a site is legit these days. PageRank is a part of that mix, but not the dominant part anymore.
5. Google itself doesn’t seem to always abide by PageRank only in its own SERP’s. Why should we rely on it solely as the metric of authority?
All in all, PageRank is sill a necessary part of any marketer’s daily life. However, the almost clinical obsession some people have over their PR number seems silly in a world where the determination of authority is increasingly based on intelligence and discernment rather than an algorithm.
One of my favorite pieces I’ve ever written was a March ’07 post on the rise of search motors to replace search engines:
My college students don’t use Google near as much as I do, or I would expect them to do. In fact, they don’t seem to use (or know how to use) many search engines at all.
They do know how to use Wikipedia, though. The idea of going to a specific “search engine” or “search site” in a few years will seem as stupid as dialing in to an AOL server to get on the internets. We’re going to be talking about “the good old Google days” soon enough.
Google is our generation’s AOL, I fear.
What young people seem to be realizing (and helping the rest of us realize) is that reliance and dogmatic faith in the preeminence of one search engine is not efficient or natural. Instead of relying on inefficient search engines, individuals doing search on the web are moving to search vehicles that rely on countless tiny motors.
What I realize now is that social networks are those motors. Facebook, Twitter, etc are the new search motors that run on fuels much more efficient (and better for the environment) than the fossil fuel of PageRank.
Geek Dads @Home 2
We recorded episode 2 of GeekDads@Home today. Seriously, it’s a great show.
Geek Dads @Home: “This week, the GeekDads (Daniel Clark, Joe Magennis and Sam Harrelson) welcomed a new member to the show, Brad Waller. Brad has pretty strong credentials as both a dad and a geek, as he explains, so he’ll be a welcome voice to the show.”
Here’s the mp3 or you can look for us on iTunes.
If you like geeky stuff, guys talking about guy stuff and guys talking about how fun/hard/challenging it is to do conference calls while bottle feeding, this is the show for you.
Give it a try.
FailSense and Putting out the FeedBurner Flame
I thought Google would buy RSS wundercompany Feedburner. I made the prediction on a couple of podcasts with Jeff Molander and his gang and was subsequently called silly or something to that effect.
However, Google did buy FeedBurner, and I thought we would see a revolution in both RSS technology (more mainstream adoption, etc) as well as AdSense and contextual advertising.
Turns out I was wrong about those two. Google continues to sit on FeedBurner without offering much in the way of innovation beyond shutting down the paid premium option and shutting down the popular (and well written) FeedBurner blog, instead sending folks to the AdSense blog.
So, instead of innovating RSS or contextual ad serving, it seems that Google is content with wrapping FeedBurner into an AdSense delivery system and not much else.
Sad.
Especially when you get results like this (from my RSS reader on a post about ice cores):
Really does make me sad. I thought we were on the verge of something big on the syndicated web. Google keeps disappointing me as it seems to keep going for the chedda and not much else.
BTW, make sure to visit Chedda’s blog. It’s off the chain.
Subscription Pop Ups Are a Bad Idea
This piece puts a thumb on what annoys me so much about the Aweber subscription pop-ups/lightboxes that so many people in the marketing blog space seem to be using these days.
So annoying:
No-Permission Pop-up Subscriptions Are A Bad Idea:
Thanks (or not so much) in part to some meta bloggers, pop-ups have crept their way into the blogosphere. I am seeing more pop-ups on blogs, especially in the marketing, tech and social media niches. Pop-ups are a dated tactic that were thrown out by many design and usability conscious marketers years ago for good reason – they interrupt a positive user experience on a website and are not permission based.
Go read the whole piece (especially if you’re following the “make money online” bloggers and putting, or considering putting, these on your pages).
In my opinion, let people sign up as they please. If your content is good enough, people will gladly sign up for your newsletter. You don’t have to throw a lightbox in front of people to have them be aware of subscription options.
I’m not making any “rules” here, Jim. I’m just pointing out some common courtesy for readers and how playing the long term game is often more beneficial than gunning for short term rewards.
Just sayin’
Facebook Connect Now Live on Disqus
Awesome:
Disqus Blog » Facebook Connect now available on Disqus: “We began our Facebook Connect integration with our announcement last week. Tonight, all websites using Disqus now have the option to enable Facebook Connect.”
You can try it out here in the comments (if you’re logged into Disqus already, you have to log out first).
Kindle Taking Over America
More love for my beloved Kindle from the NY Times:
More Readers Are Picking Up Electronic Books – NYTimes.com: “Amazon’s Kindle version of ‘The Story of Edgar Sawtelle ’ by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Ms. Winfrey’s book club, now represents 23 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.
Even authors who were once wary of selling their work in bits and bytes are coming around. After some initial hesitation, authors like Danielle Steel and John Grisham are soon expected to add their titles to the e-book catalog, their agents say. “
Good stuff. Here’s my outrageous prediction… the Kindle will develop as a platform like the iPhone (but all geared towards book nerds like me). Watch.
Of Mentors and Mentees
My pal and former mentee (and frequent quoter of inspirational books on Twitter…ugh), Mike Buechele of 1115Media does a little thing on the Affiliate Summit Mentor Program (this year headed up by the awesome Jen Goode):
I’m participating in the program this year and have another awesome mentee who I’ll be introducing all of you to at the show. Hopefully, he won’t start pulling out inspirational quotes on Twitter anytime soon.
Whatever your persuasion (veteran or newbie), you really should participate. It’s a blast and a great way to meet new people.
Plus, I hear Jen is giving away signed lithographs of penguin art to the most awesome mentor/mentee team. Right?
Disqus Now Gives Option of Requiring Verified Emails
I first implemented Disqus here in October of ’07. Despite all the ups and downs, I’m still a Disqus fan.
Glad to see this new feature and I think it’ll go a long way in curving curbing (sorry, Jangro) some of the spam problems we’ve been seeing pop up:
Disqus Blog » Admin Feature: Require verified email address: “Now, you can also choose to only allow Disqus users with a verified email address. This is ideal for sites that want the most administrative control over the participants of the discussion.”
I would make a Jangro crack (even though he got a tshirt and I didn’t), but I’ll refrain.
Social Media Spam Sucks
4-for-1 Theme Sale from WooThemes
WordPress themes are generally free, but as has been discussed in numerous posts around the affiliate blogosphere, having a custom or premium theme really makes your site stand out for both potential customers and merchants.
Working on the affiliate management side, I can tell you that having a premium theme goes a long way towards making me want to do special promotions with affiliates, etc. It’s just generally a good idea.
For the next seven days, WooThemes is having a pretty awesome sale now where you can get for of their themes for normal single price of $70:
The 4-for-1 Special | WooThemes: “Ho Ho Ho! Santa has arrived a week early here at WooThemes headquarters, bearing lots of gifts and instructing us to dish them out to you in the form of a 4 for 1 special for all our WooTheme visitors!”
I’ve been using Ambiance, Gazette and Busy Bee on random sites over the last few months and really enjoy the ease of use and customization options in the WP Dashboard. I wouldn’t recommend these things if I didn’t enjoy them myself.
So, if you’re shopping around for a new premium theme for your WP affiliate site or blog, check these out. In fact, I’m going to pick up some more now…
ShareASale 80’s Party at Affiliate Summit
Evidently, we’re all going through an 80’s thing in affiliate marketing (see previous post):
ShareASale Blog » Blog Archive » ShareASale Under the Stars (Like Totally) Party
Sunday January 11th
Time: 8-12PM
Drinks (including 80s ‘spiked punch’), light appetizers, party favours, disco balls, etc…
DJ will play us our favourite 80s tunes all night.”
One can only hope this madness ends soon.
Breakfast Club Called…
DISQUS and Facebook Connect Hook Up
Nifty!
Go, Disqus…
Disqus Blog » DISQUS and Facebook Connect under the mistletoe: “Facebook Connect is new technology that allows websites and blogs to plug into the Facebook platform. This holiday season, Disqus will enable all websites with Disqus-powered comments to easily integrate with Facebook Connect.”
Eat it, Jangro.
Ir-Relevantly Speaking
Sad. I really enjoyed the Relevantly Speaking blog. It is not common that an affiliate network is willing to blog about things besides “company news and offer promotion.”
Mediatrust Blog: “First, Relevantly Speaking as you know it today will change drastically. First, the blog portion will cease to exist. As proud as I am of the work we’ve done on it, we just don’t have the resources to continue writing two blogs for our company. That said, all of our blogging will be done here at blog.MediaTrust.com. The focus of that effort will be performance marketing, company news, and offer promotion. The goal is to really concentrate on our brand and make sure our blogging efforts really support our core business of performance based marketing.”
I really don’t see how it costs anymore to keep up a high quality blog rather than one focused on telling a (what will probably be dwindling) reader base about the HOTTEST NEW OFFERS! in a network.
And the interviews from places like the last Affiliate Summit were top-notch.
Oh well. Economy sucks.
Calacanis and Affiliate Spam 2.0
Last year Jason Calacanis gave the keynote at Affiliate Summit and made the point (if I may summarize) that affiliate marketers are bright and have lots of potential but think too small…instead they need to make quality platforms that people and VC’s will get behind.
Clearly, that mindset should have changed as the economy continues to dive bomb and the Silicon Valley companies (such as Calacanis’ VC backed Mahalo) that Jason lauded continue to make double digit percentage staff cuts in the name of runway to survive the long recession/depression that we’re in for.
However, I’m listening to the new This Week in Tech from Leo Laporte, which features Jason Calacanis, John C. Dvorak (drink!) and Sarah Lane. Listen to the first 15 or so minutes if you’re interested in how much Jason’s views haven’t changed over the last year regarding affiliate sites being equatable to parked pages and spam.
Look, I hate spam as much, if not more, than the next guy. Just follow me on Twitter if you’d like to see an affiliate marketer filled with self-angst over the spam problem. I recognize that some “affiliates” use tactics that suck and should be looked down upon. But that is not the majority of affiliates considering that “affiliate marketing” itself is mushrooming to encompass a whole range of publishers because of the evolution of the social web.
However, an outsider calling all affiliate sites spam for his own business gain is just lame considering Mahalo itself is an affiliate site. I guess the Valley way to eliminate competition is to call it spam.
Good luck with those runways, Jason. We’ll keep the traffic flowing in the control tower.
MyBlogLog’s Failure and the Problem with Marketers
My pal Angel Djambazov of ReveNews has a great post on his frustrations with the MyBlogLog platform and its incessant spam problem.
I offer up a few thoughts about why and how this could be resolved in the comments there (basically, the model of MBL is flawed and that’s why Twitter is the winner).
Some from Angel:
MyBlogLog Needs to Wake Up Their Porn Problem | ReveNews: “MyBlogLog has all the elements of a really great tool. Blog owners, especially those whose content is more news orientated, will find the oversight that allows these spammers in as a poor reflection on their community.
Yahoo needs to realize that in certain cases a picture can equal a thousand words of spam. Until then actual readers can get their news and their g-string pictures at the same time.”
And some from me:
“That’s why I think Twitter and the platforms that have been made popular since MBL was sold to Yahoo back in ‘07 have done so well (especially for those of us in the marketing space)… it’s the publisher or user who gets to be the gatekeeper and fend off the spammers as they arise. The follow/no-follow/block paradigm is much better than the wild-west mentality of MBL.”
Good convo going on there… head over to ReveNews and add some of your thoughts.
Google Reader Update
I’m a power RSS user.
I normally have somewhere around 200-500 feeds that I actively read on a daily basis (yeah, I know).
So, I’m glad to see an update from Google Reader. It’s been the app that has kept me from selling my soul to Google since NetNewsWire kicks its webby butt.
That might change.