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This session is my last for the day. It is billed for beginners to Affiliate Marketing, but the panel is made up of some of my favorite ladies and I am hoping to pick up some good tidbits.
Marty Fahncke,Fawnkey & Associates is the moderator for this sesssion
Carolyn Tang, Shareasale.com
Kristen Kinsey, Madhatter Consulting, Inc.
Tricia Meyers, Sunshine Rewards
The ladies are all going separately and then taking questions at the end together. We are getting the perspective of network, affiliate and affiliate manager.
Carolyn Tang – director of client services at shareasale.com
Orbitz & collectibles.com
Intro to affiliate marketing
Merchants party with third party entity with the purpose of getting traffic – not limited to online anymore
Compensation is performance based
The first stakeholder is the merchant – consumer completes an action
Second stakeholder is affiliate – drives traffic to merchant
It is tracked by a network – they follow the consumer from the affiliate site to the merchant
How do you evaluate the merchant? Is the merchant a solid site with relevant in stock items – your site can loose credibility
Positive earnings per click EPC – earnings per click
Low reversal rate
Fair number of return days – get credit when consumer returns after a number of days
Active and responsive affiliate management – can tell you what is good season, good match for your sites
Types of creatives – banners is how it started
Now there are widgets – they are interactive – consumers more likely to purchase
Video – trackable & shareable video ads can be uploaded by merchants or affiliates – sidebar can pop out with multiple links to relevant items in video at certain cue marks
Product data feed – spreadsheet with products & links – can be used with a tool such as web merge
Types of creatives offline
Pay per call – can be done offline – higher conversion rate on sales through a call center – can now put ads on Craig lists, billboards, etc
A good affiliate manager can resize a video through SAS for you
If you have a membership database, you could track sales through a specific link
Next up is Tricia Meyer – she is showing us one of her sites as an example
Buytwilightstuff.com – can take anything you are interested in and turn it into a blog site
It is a very basic wordpress site, but her best performing blog she has
It is a monetized blog – does not have a lot of personal followers – do you want people to return back? then maybe you don’t want as many ads
Google ad sense picks up ads that are targeted to the content – you might be driving traffic to another affiliate site though – you may get paid for the click but lose out on bigger sale
People then tend to move to standard banners – want to find merchants that fit your niche
She is using smaller banner on right from hot topic, because people are familiar with it.
She is using larger banner for customized girl because it is not something people are familiar with
A responsive affiliate manager will get you a banner that will fit a spot for you if needed
auto updating banner can be useful for promotions – let the merchant do the work for you – ie free shipping, seasonal banner – you only want to use them on sites that you touch regularly so that you can keep track of what they are offering
Need to start looking at specific products – work best for bloggers because you can integrate into your posts – some networks it is harder than others to get the specific product images – downside if the product sells out – want merchants that show products that are similar so that you may still get a sale
Popshops is invaluable – you don’t have to mess with the coding – you can search for specific products to insert into your posts
If you use php includes rather than javascript you get the seo benefit
Ebay – you can get paid on sales or if someone signs up as a new member with eBay – links to eBay for a specific item – the best for her is using phpbay plugin – this will pull up eBay auctions with relevant to your posts – constantly updated items – can be customized to match your sites – just one line of code into your posts
Widgets – great way to add extra content but require a bit more coding – ties into amazon and can launch a whole site related to items – printable games a to z has some great widgets for party planning
Other ways to monetize – video, golden can, cpa network ads, coupons.com, cpm ads
Goldencan is great for a site that uses coupons – mostly free – select all merchants you belong to and generates coupon site relevant to your site – it updates itself
Cpm ads you have to have a lot of traffic already
Last is Kristen Kinsey Madhatter Consulting
Was am for batteries.com
How to work with affiliate managers?
They are contact with your merchant – get in touch with them for best sellers, seasonality – they create links, banners, videos, content – they will pull links for you on specific niches
Can negotiate your commission rate
OPM – outsourced program manager – they manage many affiliate programs
They can help you find other merchants, programs & products that fit well with your site
Build a relationship, if they know what type of sites you have they can call you if they sign up a new merchant that fits
They have tools & resources and give you a heads up
Some of the best bloggers realize it is about relationships, reach out – pick up the phone and call them
Good way to get content is to get in touch with the am and have an interview with how the site was started, etc
Extreme Site Makeover
www.hotdoghockey.com
Difficult for user to find the blog to start off with
Has sponsored ads on blog from a local company – may not be relevant to the blog post
Add Olympic related merchandise
Are most readers local? – new blog
Should diversity ads – they are all the same currently from google
Look into paypercall merchants
Don’t just go with big name merchants – look for smaller ones because your commissions my be smaller
Google has a free testing tool to rotate ads that will show you which gets clicked on
www.sbenco.com
You have banner with affiliate summit network, use the affiliate program
Do a weekly video to discuss the topic, because you are an expert – distribute white papers embedded with your affiliate links
Google ads may be a deterrent and sending people away from your site
go daddy would be a good match for this site
click bank has information products that may be a good fit, high commissions, match your customers looking for information
And that’s it for this day. I have the Mentor Program Meetup, Shareasale Party, and Strike Out Breast Cancer bowling event still to go today. Bedtime is a long way to go…
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