Are You Leaving Money On The Table By Using Direct Affiliate Links?

Affiliate Marketing Tips – What Your Link Looks Like Affects Conversion

A guest blog:

By Susanne Myers

As affiliate marketers we’re all about conversion. After all, that’s how we make our money, by converting visitors and readers into buyers. There’s one little thing you may be missing that’s an easy fix and can have a huge impact on the amount of sales you make. Do you know what it is?
If you are guessing the way your link looks, you’re absolutely right.
Cleaner Looking Links Will Result In A Better Click-Through Rate
I did some testing recently. I created two test versions of a page promoting a clickbank product. One had the new default clickbank link, which was a combination of letters, numbers and dashes that didn’t really make any sense. Go to the clickbank market place and create any hoplink to see what I’m talking about.
The other was a redirected version of the same affiliate link that was my domain name followed by the name of the product (i.e. [http://www.somedomain.dom/productname/]).
In both cases the actual anchor text was the same (the product name).
After running the test until 2000 visitors came to each page, I compared the results.
The page with the redirected link generated 3 times as many clickthroughs to the affiliate product page than the “unhidden” link.
What was even more surprising was conversion rate. The page with the cloaked link was converting into sales at 2.4% while the uncloaked version only converted at .7% – pretty big difference.
Remember that the visitor would only see the actual link if they looked at bar at the bottom of their browser while hovering with their mouse over the link. I’m sure the difference in both click-through rate and conversion would have been much more significant if I had used the direct link (like I would have in an email message for example).
I believe the reason for this difference in conversion lays in the trust factor. An ugly affiliate link with funky characters and symbols just looks fishy while a pretty affiliate link with your domain name as part of the link just looks a lot more trustworthy.

For more tips like these delivered to your email inbox each week along with daily tasks that will help you grow you affiliate income , join Susanne’s Daily Affiliate Tasks at http://www.DailyAffiliateTasks.com

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Profiting from Error and Thank You Pages

Two Hidden Pages on Your Website That Can Bring in Huge Affiliate Commissions

A guest blog:

By Susanne Myers

You have some pages on your website right now that could bring in a nice and steady flow of affiliate commissions but chances are you’re not taking advantage of them. Let me show you how to turn those pages into money making machines that work 24/7 for you.
Thank You Pages
One of the pages I am referring to are the thank you page you send customers or subscribers to after they sign up for your newsletter or buy a product from you. You have already impressed these people enough to at least get them to give you their email address. Now is the perfect time to make them an offer.
Look through the various affiliate promotions you have on your site and pick the one that seems to convert the best and include it in your page.
On a thank you or download page for customers, I usually add it toward the bottom after the actual download link. On a newsletter signup thank you page, I tend to just thank them for signing up, then make the offer and give them the download link for any freebie they are getting as a “thanks for signing” up at the end.
Error Pages
The second page is your 404 error page (or any other error page for that matter). People will always mistype urls or link to pages on your website that don’t exist. In short, visitors will end up on your error pages so you might as well take advantage of it.
Again, look through your affiliate promotions and find the one with the most general appeal. Create a custom “Sorry this page couldn’t be found” message, and then transition into your offer.
With both error and thank you pages, set them and forget them. Go work on your site, write some articles or play with the kids. Both of those “hidden” pages will be working for you for added commissions.

For more tips like these delivered to your email inbox each week along with daily tasks that will help you grow you affiliate income , join Susanne’s Daily Affiliate Tasks at http://www.affiliatenichepacks.com

That is all until next time.

Affiliate Niche Packs

Don’t Miss These Tips For Bigger Affiliate Checks

A guest blog

By Susanne Myers

Try the Product
Before you start to promote something as an affiliate, go the extra mile and try the product. You can either ask the owner for a review copy, or just buy it and try it out. Then write an honest review of the product including the good as well as the bad. Your articles, emails and messages will be more convincing if you actually have some personal experience with the product you’re selling.
Diversify  
Don’t focus on promoting just one product. Keep a constant eye on what else is available in your market and try those products out as well. If they are quality items that your readers might be interested in go ahead and promote them as well. People will often buy several similar items if they are interested in a topic or are trying to find a solution for a problem.
Get Better at SEO
Sharpen your SEO skills to get more traffic to your affiliate site. It’s the least expensive form of traffic to your site. Start with the basics of making sure you pick good keywords, and then use those in the title and content of your post. Don’t forget to work on getting more links to point to your pages as well. Spend some time each month to learn some new skills in this area and apply what you are learning.
Follow Up
Let’s face it, not every visitor that comes to your website is ready to buy. Set up an autoresponder to capture their name and email address and follow up regularly. Provide them with good, useful content and build a relationship with your list. Continue to offer affiliate products throughout and if you do your job well, they will buy and do so frequently.
Find Recurring Products
What if I told you there was a way you could make a sale once and then get paid for it month after month. That’s exactly what you can do with affiliate products that offer recurring commissions. Check out things like hosting and membership websites for these types of affiliate paychecks.
Check out the Backend
No, I’m not trying to be funny here. Marketers that know what they are doing have quite a few backend products in place. With a good affiliate offer, you not only make a commission on the first sale, but everything else the marketer upsells your visitor on down the road as well.
Testing
Don’t be afraid to test out other offers. Always be on the lookout for other products in your market that pay decent commissions. You never know when you’ll come across one that pays a better commission or converts better than what you are currently marketing to your list.

Ready to put all this together and grow your affiliate income? Daily Affiliate Tasks make it easy with weekly checklists that show you EXACTLY what you should be working on each day. All it takes is 30 minutes per day!

http://www.DailyAffiliateTasks.com

 

Advanced Topics

Advanced Topics

We will covering some advanced topics in this weeks blog.

As you know by now, affiliate marketing can be incredibly rewarding when done
properly. There are also a lot of pitfalls you need to watch out for as well. One
of these is merchant fraud.

Merchant fraud, unfortunately, does happen. Merchants can use any number of
clever tactics to cheat you out of your commission. One of these methods is to
offer multiple payment options to customers without linking each one to their
affiliate tracking software.

For example, let’s say that a merchant offers credit payments, payment via
Paypal and payment via check to the customer.

The merchant tracks your affiliate ID up to the point of sale and credits you if
the customer chooses to pay via credit card through the merchant’s main
payment gateway. However, if the customer chooses Paypal or check, your
affiliate ID is immediately tossed.

The only way around this clever trick is an exercise of caution on your part.
When you evaluate a potential affiliate program, check to see how many
payment methods the merchant offers. Secondly, after you sign up for an
account, examine you referral links. In fact, if you have the budget to spare,
follow your own link and choose one of the alternate payment options and
purchase a product.

Did you get credit for that sale? Great! If you didn’t receive credit, though, it’s
time to can that merchant and move on to more ethical waters.

Here’s another ‘advanced’ tip to consider: use affiliate networks like
Clickbank to evaluate potential merchants. Joining programs via a
network is often a better choice than signing up at individual, non-networked
sites. The reason is simple: membership in an affiliate network imposes stricter
standards on merchant behavior.

You also have access to a wealth of data on the overall performance of other
affiliates in that merchant’s program.

Last but not least, you need to focus on building trust among potential
customers. If your merchant site doesn’t do a very good job of this, then send
your visitors to your web site. Make it clear what products and/or information
you have to offer. Also, be vigilant about posting your contact information in a prominent place.

Anonymity might be fun in a chat room, but it turns off consumers very quickly.

For an extra advantage, consider having your site evaluated “net cop” programs
like the one at http://www.i-cop.org/ and get your site listed in the online
section of the Better Business Bureau’s web site.

That's all for this week-

Link Theft

Today we’re going to talk about the dark side of affiliate marketing: Link Theft.
It’s not ethical, but it happens.

You should know that there are people out there who, for whatever reason,
absolutely hate the idea of someone earning a commission off their purchase.

These are the cranky, paranoid customers of the online world. There are also
fellow affiliate marketers who would deny you your hard earned commission as
well.

The term “link theft” isn’t entirely accurate, though it’s what you’ll see used to
refer to this phenomenon. The accurate term, in a nuts and bolts sense, is “link
altering”.

Quite simply, the link thief does one of two things:

1. Erases your affiliate link from his browser window, deletes any cookies set
by the link, and then proceeds to the merchant’s site via the main www url.
2. Erases your affiliate I.D. and replaces it with his. He then purchases
through his own link and takes his commission as a rebate.
The solution to link theft is “link cloaking”. Essentially, you turn an obvious
affiliate link such as www.clickbank.com/hop?=affiliate, into an encrypted link
or you mask it behind a short domain name.

There are pros and cons with each method. Link cloaking software such as
Affiliate Defender and others use javascript to encapsulate your URL into an
indecipherable scramble of characters. This prevents anyone from seeing the
real affiliate link at the bottom of their browser window when they mouse over
it.

The only problem is that your link can still end up exposed once the user clicks
on to the main site. The link often “unscrambles” and appears naked yet again
in the address bar.

Domain masking, when done properly, allows you to use your own short url
which redirects to the merchant site while keeping your url in the address bar.
You can use domain masking with any address you choose. For example, you
could register one domain name to devote to your affiliate redirects.

You can use subdomains (subdomainname.mysite.com).


The downside to domain masking: the technique involves what’s called an
“invisible frame”. The frame pulls in the affiliate site within the main window.
Imagine your site has a set of navigation links down the left-hand side, and
clicking those links causes the main window to pull up content, while leaving
the left column unchanged. This is the basis of the technique – it’s just set up
on one link and hidden from the surfer’s view.

Unfortunately, sites like Clickbank frown upon this practice.

There’s a good chance that your redirect link will break frames and wind up
exposing your affiliate URL anyways. Nothing wrong with that other than the
fact that you went through a lot of work for nothing!

A greater concern: frames have a bad habit of confusing affiliate tracking
applications. Your referral ID might not be recorded and you wind up losing the
sale.

Obviously, you are free to test out any of these “solutions”. Just keep in mind
that they aren’t fool proof. Ultimately, the link theft problem occurs much more
frequently in the Internet Marketing niche than it does anywhere else due to
the large number of fellow profit-motivated customers within the niche. Link
theft occurs infrequently, if at all, in other niches.

Those customers are less likely to know (or care) what affiliate marketing is –
and less likely to take notice of affiliate URLs in general.

The Importance of Building a List

Out of all the possible approaches to affiliate marketing, lead capture and list
building represents the smartest and most effective option.

Why?

A lost visitor is a lost sale. A lost visitor is the loss of potential repeat sales.
Think of it this way: you’re putting time and money into your advertising. If you
aren’t capturing your visitor’s email addresses, you’re basically throwing all of
that traffic right down the drain.

When you capture your visitors to your list, you open a whole new world of
profit opportunities – not just for the short term, but for the long term as well.

The Benefits of List Marketing

You can educate your prospects. This will increase your conversion rate by
giving you the opportunity to turn hesitant prospects into enthusiastic
customers.

You can market to your prospects over and over again. Your long term profit
potential exists in repeat sales. Never work for “just one sale”.

You can double your return on investment while lowering your advertising
costs. Once you’ve got a list in place, you don’t have to limit your offerings to
just affiliate product. You can bring in any additional, related products of
interest to your list and make sales immediately without going through the
same advertising process all over again.

Can you see the benefits yet? Why spend money over and over again sending
people to the same page and “hoping for a sale”, when you can capture them
to your list and have full control over the conversion process?

Any other approach leaves you at the mercy of the merchant’s web copy and
the customer’s mindset at first contact. You’ve got to lure your prospects in and
expose them to your message multiple times. This will save you so much time and
money you’ll wonder why you ever did it any other way.

It'll also put you in the top 5% of affiliates that actually do this. . .
Get started building a list, generating traffic, and earning money non-stop for free...
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Five Approaches to Affiliate Marketing

As a new affiliate, one of the first things you’ll want to know is where and how to
promote your affiliate link. In this week's blog we’ll cover several options and discuss the
merits of each method.

1. Direct Links via PPC Advertising
If you use PPC advertising, your PPC advertising should be SEO(search engine optimized) and target keywords .  You can embed your affiliate link to the ad and send the
prospect directly to the merchant’s site. This is a really lazy thing to do
though. You might make a few sales, but it’s far better to approach the process
as outlined in tactic #2.

2. Linking to Your 'Affiliate Enhanced' page via PPC's
Place ads for your target keywords and direct the prospects to your capture
page created with our AffiliateEnhancer software - Greet them with an invitation
to subscribe to your newsletter or to download a special report. This is
**Vital** because once you’ve collected a prospect’s email address, they are
yours to market to on a repeat basis.

3. Build Content Focused Sites
This approach aims for long term traffic through search engine optimization.
You’ll need to publish content related to the type of product you’re trying to
sell. Searchers will be drawn in by informative articles. You’re affiliate links will
be sprinkled discreetly across the site.

4. Advertise in E-Zines
This is a good method to use if you can find targeted lists for your product. Ezine
ads can be purchased in most cases, and in other cases you can snatch
them up for free by bartering with the list owner. Remember, rather than link
directly to the affiliate site use your Affiliate Enhanced page to capture
subscribers and build your list. Not only will this allow you to follow up and
convert more sale (for free) but it will also enable you to shield your affiliate
link.

5. Purchase text link or banner advertising on high traffic sites This type of
advertising isn’t quite as popular as it used to be. It is most effective when you
can find high traffic sites for smaller niche subjects. These sites tend to focus
heavily on content and run only a handful of ads on site. Space is limited and
rates are likely to be at a premium.

Beating the Odds

This will be a cold, hard dose of truth, but you need to know the facts. The
majority of people who go into affiliate marketing fail to break even. Some
people will earn thousands in this business, while others will struggle to
generate even a few hundred in sales per month.

Affiliate marketing is very competitive and cut-throat. You’ve got to stay on
your toes to win in this game. While I can’t guarantee your success, I can
provide you with some fundamental knowledge that just might help you beat
the odds.

Get ready to learn how to play hardball with the super affiliates.

#1: Never Stop Searching for Profitable Keywords

Successful affiliates are never satisfied with the status quo. Even if you endured
hours sweat producing research to find your target keywords, keep on
searching out new ones and adding them to your list.

#2: Become Obsessed with Testing and Tracking

If you aren’t testing and tracking absolutely everything – and I mean everything
from your keywords, your ppc ads, your web site copy and any thing else you
can think of to test/track, the odds are stacked against you.

Successful affiliates are maniacal about testing and tracking every detail of their
campaigns. They are details oriented and use all of their collected data to refine
their entire system on a day to day basis.

You might want to take a look at an amazing software tool called 

#3: Innovate and Update Constantly

Keep your approach fresh by testing new conversion tactics. If you rely on PPC
engines for advertising, start throwing in e-zine advertising into the mix. If that
doesn’t produce the desired results, investigate banner ads, classified ads,
message boards, offline media and anything else you can think of to get your
message across.

Don’t rely on one conversion channel. If you send your prospects direct to the
merchant, change up your campaign and start sending leads to your special
capture page created with our Affiliate Enhancer software and start collecting
email addresses. Experiment with your content and your web copy. Try out


different headlines. Never settle for the familiar. Tweak everything until you’ve
squeezed the maximum conversion power out of it.

#4: Pay Attention to the Industry and Communicate with Other
Affiliates

The world of affiliate marketing changes every day. There is always a new
tactic to implement, a change in the rules at one advertising service or another,
a serious technology failure at one of your merchant’s sites and so on.

Even though affiliate marketers are rabidly competitive group, they are also
quite helpful and willing to trade information and tips with one another.Well that is all for this week.