Web Hostgods

How do I, in becoming actively involved as an affiliate to another website, technically speaking, actually place the affiliate ad on my website usually. Do I need to be knowledgeable as a computer technician? I need an example of how to technically, on my computer screen, become an affileate. Is there only one way involving copying and pasting there logo on your website or is there another general way.

In order to begin the journey of becoming an affiliate, your first step is to create a Web site. This requires that you have a host for your site, as well as a means for creating and uploading your pages.

As far as hosts, my personal favorite is PHP Webhosting ($9.95 a month).

Also, if you are serious about your efforts as an affiliate, I would urge you to purchase a domain name for your site. As far as domains, I like GoDaddy ($8.70 a year).

In order to create the pages for your site, you’ll need an HTML editor. HTML is the language used to create Web pages.

HTML is really easier than it looks. You can code the pages by hand (in Notepad), but it will take some learning on your part.

You can also jump right into a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) HTML editor, in which you can compose pages with a basic knowledge of Windows applications.

In fact, you can save a MS Word document (in the newer releases) as an HTML file — just save it as a “Web Page.”

According to a poll I took of ClubMom affiliates, 75 percent were using Dreamweaver, MS FrontPage, and a handful of other HTML editors for their sites.

Another 25 percent were composing their sites by hand with raw HTML or using Arachnophilia, which is a great free program (it’s what I use, even though the Dreamweaver devotees keep trying to convert me) that is basically raw HTML with shortcuts for some of the monotonous keystrokes.

When the HTML pages have been created, then you will need to upload them. Some hosts offer a utility to upload from the host interface.

Otherwise, you will need an FTP program. I use WS_FTP to upload my pages.

When you’ve created your site, then it’s time to apply to affiliate programs. Check out the affiliate program directory at AffiliateTip.com to guide you to the affiliate programs that are best for you.

The affiliate programs will provide you with snippets of HTML code to add to your site to display banners and text links. These snippets of code will include your affiliate ID, so the companies will be able to credit any referred leads or sales to you.

It may seem like a very basic suggestion, but you would be surprised how many people upload affiliate code that is accidentally corrupted.

Case in point - one of my top ten ’super affiliates’ was recently running bad links.

It’s essential for you to test, because you deserve to be paid for every referral you make to affiliate programs. And the tracking is erased when the links are corrupt.

The biggest culprit is when gremlins in HTML editors mangle the code.

Sometimes, various HTML editors will attempt to correct or beautify your code, and the result can be a big mess that sends traffic minus tracking. Or the click goes right to a dead link.

Visit http://www.affiliatetip.com/affiliate_tip_28.php for more details.

What is the best way to handle affiliates who don’t obey the rules; i.e., bid on trademarked terms, don’t update datafeeds for years, etc.? These people make decent sales, so I don’t want to drop them, but repeated emails aren’t working! Any suggestions?

This can be a big problem. As I mentioned recently in an article at iMediaConnection, only 45 percent of affiliates always read the affiliate agreement.

So chances are that your affiliates are oblivious to your affiliate agreement, and if they are not responding to your email, it may be due to their having an outdated email address with your network, or a spam filter is catching your mail.

However, it could also be that they are knowingly ignoring your messages, because they are aware that they are breaking the rules, and they are going to string you along for as long as you’re willing to let it go.

Either way, it’s time to step up the communication efforts. If you have a phone number for them, start calling. If the number on file is not correct, try dialing the number they’ve used when registering their domain(s) by going to http://www.allwhois.com/

If you still strike out in your contact attempts, I’d urge you to go old school and try reaching them through snail mail. Either send them a letter, or if you’re dealing with lots of folks not responding to you, try a direct mail postcard campaign.

If these steps do not result in a response, I’d suggest terminating their account for violating your affiliate agreement (assuming you account for the issues you mentioned in the agreement).

As far as I am concerned, you cannot have a mutually beneficial partnership with somebody that refuses to communicate with you.

I need to know what to look at to check that affiliates aren’t engaging in cookie stuffing and other problem behaviors. How is this done?

I’d like to preface this by saying that I am not an expert in sleuthing for cookie stuffing. I know some things about it, but one of the main ways that I keep up on the methods for stuffing cookies and some of the big perpetrators is by keeping an eye on the affiliate marketing message boards.

That said, there are many ways that affiliates effectively stuff cookies, and some are widely considered to be acceptable by affiliate programs, while others are strictly taboo.

A few years ago, I was speaking with a big casino program affiliate at an Affiliate Force conference, and he told me how he was making massive earnings with the affiliate programs by using IFRAMES.

Basically, he would join all of the big affiliate programs, and set up the IFRAME code to feature the affiliate links as 1×1 pixels. This way, when people hit his site, they would be cookied by all of the affiliate programs in the IFRAME without ever noticing a thing.

You can recognize this sort of behavior by looking at the source code of the affiliate’s site and searching for the word: IFRAME. Also, when you hit their page, look at the status area at the bottom of your browser - if you see tons of different URLs loading in, that could be a another sign of cookie stuffing.

Some affiliates also utilize a JavaScript to stuff cookies, but this is more difficult to recognize.

And then there are two of the more mainstream methods: pop-ups and pop-unders. While these are generally considered to be acceptable forms of marketing (aside from being annoying), they are stuffing cookies. The end user isn’t requesting to see the page of the company that is popping up or under, but they are getting a cookie anyway.

There are other methods, too. And the scammers are always innovating new ways to beat the system, so it’s essential to constantly learn about the new methods.

Take a look at Ben Edelman’s site, http://www.benedelman.org/, for more details on cookie stuffing and other tricky methods used by online marketers to generate affiliate commissions.

There is also an upcoming service called AffiliateFairPlay that “will provide Compliance Testing Results and will assess various mechanisms utilized by affiliates to invoke tracking mechanisms and the conditions utilized to invoke the tracking.”

I would like to publicly thank (most of) the affiliate managers out there, because your lack of communication with affiliates makes me stand out.

To those of you who can’t be bothered with responding to emails from your affiliates, who publish those one-paragraph newsletters, and who don’t bother to keep in touch with your top affiliates — thank you.

Seriously, I try hard to please my affiliates, and I’ve got to admit that I eat it up when I get emails that say:

“Having a great manager like you is truly a blessing in the midst of confusion.”

“I’m a new affiliate, and I want to thank you for all of your support.”

“Thanks, Shawn. You really help make things easier for us.”

“I love the professional way ClubMom handles the affiliate program.”

Below, I have outlined my manifesto for creating and maintaining happy and productive affiliates.

Create a Newsletter with Meat

If you’re an affiliate of any programs out there (and you should be!), I’m sure you’ve seen some of those one-paragraph emails that are being passed off as affiliate program newsletters. Forgive me, but I’m going to have to quote Clara Peller here: “Where’s the beef?”

If you are going to contact your affiliates, there should be a good reason. Present them with mission-critical information, tools, resources, etc.; otherwise, your newsletter is just another thing to drag and drop into delete land.

In addition to any urgent messaging, I generally include the following in my affiliate newsletters: updates and news about our program; links to our newest promotion; tips on search engines and general marketing and content for their sites; a short feature on the ClubMom affiliate of the month; a list of the top 10 commission earners for the previous month; and a plug for a similar program (in exchange for the same in that program’s newsletter).

Target the Good, Bad, and Ugly Affiliates

Don’t limit your contact with affiliates to a newsletter. You should also be touching base and stroking the high performers. What does it cost to send out 20 or 30 T-shirts to your top performers? Easy answer: a lot less than it costs to find 20 or 30 new top performers.

How about those inactive affiliates? The brutal truth is that as many as 90 percent of your affiliates will never bother to put up links. So make it easier. Send out email to the inactive affiliates with code for one of your links. Tell them you are available to help and include your contact information.

Between the super affiliates and the inactive affiliates, you’ve got everybody else. Talk to them, too. Identify underperformers, and offer incentives of a raise in commission or a flat-fee bonus if they give preferred placement to your links.

Great Customer Service Is a Must

If you’ve ever tried to contact the average affiliate manager (because we’re all affiliates by now, right?), you know that it’s sometimes impossible to get a response. If you’re not responding to your affiliates, you’re sending a message that they are not important. Don’t send that message.

Don’t outsource your customer service either. While it may seem onerous to maintain your contacts with affiliates, it can really pay off. Yesterday’s underperformer can easily be a search engine tip and a domain away from becoming one of your top affiliates.

What sort of turnaround time do you usually have for your affiliate inquiries? Now, put yourself in an affiliate’s shoes and think about how neglected you would feel if it took days for you to receive a one-line response.

I try to make it a practice to respond within 24 hours, 7 days a week. Generally, I get a handful of queries over the weekend, and I can knock them out in an hour. It makes Monday morning easier, and it makes my affiliates happier.

Call me an obsessive-compulsive, but don’t call me late to dinner.

Groupthink Can Be a Good Thing

What are your affiliates thinking? There’s an easy way to find out — start up an Yahoo Group, and you have a ready-made focus group about your program. I started up a ClubMom Affiliate Yahoo Group, and it’s been a tremendous resource.

The basic function here is an email discussion list where your affiliates can interact with one another to share tips, strategies, and success stories with your program. I use my eGroup to make announcements and bounce ideas off a segment of affiliates.

We all know how important it is to test banners, buttons, and text links, but that’s easier said than done. So if I’m trying to decide on different creatives or have an idea I’d like to develop, I run it by the ClubMom Affiliate Yahoo Group.

This free service also enables you to upload files (I use this to archive my monthly newsletters and search engine tips), provide links (I tell my affiliates where to find free hosting, registrars, marketing tools, etc.), and run polls.

If your affiliate program is not meeting your expectations, I would suggest that you examine your methods of communication with your affiliates. Educate, target, respond, and interact. If you communicate it, the results will come.

By Ronald Bell
iMediaConnection

There are many ways to make your affiliate program stand out and get noticed by affiliates. But some affiliate programs stand out for the wrong reasons. You see, it’s good to be a diaper dandy of affiliate marketing, but not so good to stand out as a red diaper baby. But enough of the Dennis Miller esoterica, let’s discuss the nuts and bolts of getting your affiliate program in the spotlight.

Affiliates sometimes have a short www.memory, so you’ve got to constantly take steps to get your affiliate program noticed for recruitment and later re-noticed for retention. I’ve got a ten step plan to help you make this happen.

1. Make your affiliate program better than the rest

What would you say if a prospective affiliate asked you why they should join your affiliate program? Most affiliate managers don’t have a quick answer for this. Ask yourself what are the three reasons an affiliate should pick your program over your competitors and formulate an elevator pitch.

Some highlights you might like to include are your conversion rate, average sale amount, EPC, top ten monthly affiliate earnings, suggested keywords for the PPC search engines and details on your data feed (this last is not applicable to all affiliate programs). If your numbers don’t look stellar, start working on repairing them.

Complete article at http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/4673.asp

I’m thinking of starting a member rewards site where members get rewards for banners, etc they click. Do you know if advertisers which pay good $ / click (like eBay) actually like this idea? Is is important that you tell them before you sign up that your website is an incentive based website?

There are a couple of things to consider when putting together a member rewards site that will act as an affiliate.

1. Sub ID Tracking - You will need to build an infrastructure to reconcile the Sub IDs, so that you know which of your rewards members are due how much affiliate commission. Some of the networks require applying and/or signing a special agreement to do Sub IDs.

2. Know the Rules of Each Affiliate Program - Some affiliate programs will forbid any sort of incentive for their click, lead, or sale. And some networks will ask you in your application whether you are an incentive site.

In general, merchants do not like incentive sites. Sure, they’d rather have the sale over seeing their competitor get it, but when a transaction is incentivized, the customer or user is being loyal to the deal, not to the merchant.

As far as eBay in particular, they do not allow affiliates to offer any sort of incentives without prior permission:

“Terms Governing Incentive Sites. You will not directly or indirectly offer any consideration or incentive for any Commission-Earning Activity or for clicking on an affiliate program-coded link unless expressly authorized to do so in writing by CJ. Each such written authorization will authorize only one specific incentive.”

Last time I checked, Amazon did not permit incentives, either. It’s a tricky landscape, so be sure to to clear things with merhcants in advance.