5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs

Exciting news and interesting possibilities. I have long been concerned about the reliability of cookie tracking, even before some of the recent news stories came out. I have heard reports from merchants and affiliate managers that as high as 40% of affiliate sales in certain programs are not tracked due to cookie issues.
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You know, I have been thinking about adding an affiliate marketing humor blog to lighten things up. Even affiliates and AMs need a good laugh sometimes.

So today I open up Adbump*, which I typically only quickly skim and the word “Herby” caught my eye. As I read this I almost spewed coffee all over the monitor. Anyone in the “know” who’s been in the industry for awhile will get a kick out of this too, I think.

gabby asks WebProWorld members if making $6,000 a month with affiliate marketing is realistic within 6 months and the best way to do it.

As soon as I read the news about Google and Urchin, I could totally imagine some of the speculation that would be going on in the forums. So I headed right over to some webmaster and SEO forums to read the buzz. Sure enough, I was right. Here are few comments with a link to the forum threads and the official news story.

n a recent thread on Sitepoint affiliates were discussing eye tracking and where the most important places are on a site to put your Google Adsense ads or affiliate links.

An article published today on Clickz sites a study that indicates people look at pages in an *F* shape. This article is focused on search engine pages but is very relevent for affiliate marketers too.

Interesting study from Shawn Collins was published today by MediaPost.
A new study suggests that affiliate programs can lead to business, with 14 percent of affiliates generating conversion rates of more than 5 percent. The study goes on to talk about affiliate’s average conversion rates, then moves into one of the affiliate manager’s most daunting tasks which is - Recruiting Affiliates. Then covers trademark bidding and parasites.

I spend a lot of time advising merchants and affiliates how to increase conversions, so thought I would share a great resource with you. This is some of the most powerful stuff I have read on increasing conversion rates and also persuasive copywriting for the web. Check the archives, sign up for current newsletter and learn to convert more Clicks to Sales!!!

Interesting affiliate program conversion stats released by Internet Retailer in the Daily News.

“18% of marketers say their conversion rates on affiliate marketing programs are 0.5-1%, while 14% cite rates greater than 5% and another 16% say they don’t know the conversion rate, according to a new study from Shawn Collins Consulting.

26% of the study’s respondents reported that 20% of their affiliates generated at least one click in the past month; 14% said 2-5% of their affiliates generated at least one click; 14% said they didn’t know how many affiliates generated at least one click.

One of our biggest affiliate program clients, SnapFish is about to be acquired by HP. Maybe we should double their monthly retainer???

Executives said the acquisition is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, but the deal should wrap up next month.

This question came up at a thread I was involved in over at Sitepoint. Well there are numerous markets and products that have over-saturated Internet exposure and I guess we would all have different opinions.

Web hosting? Mortgages? Insurance? Dating? Loans? Business Opportunities? Travel?
PPC? (As in Pills, Porn and Casinos) What do you think???

eFax has a popular affiliate program that pays commission on both leads and sales and is a 5 Bar earner in CJ with consistently high EPC rates. This months EPC has been in the healthy $65 - $80 range and eFax is one of CJ’s top performers.

PartnerCentric, one of the leading outsourced affiliate management companies, just took over the affiliate management of this program and re-launched eFax with increased cookie length and a kick-off sales contest.

As many of you are aware, I have been fighting the Norton ad blocking battle for over a year. Older versions of Norton Internet Security blocked affiliate and advertising links and banners, leaving a big blank space on the page. Well finally some good news! Norton has changed the default on NIS 2005 so that Adblocking is not on out of the box.

We all have a voice and can make it heard to affect change, even with a big company like Symantec. I have recently gotten several reports from affiliate telling me that the 2005 version has been changed. From webmarm on AffiliateBoards: “My NIS 2005 shipped to me with default ad blocking OFF. When I went into the control panel to switch ad blocking on, it gave me a big warning that web pages may not display as intended and are you sure you want to enable ad blocking.” I have had several others confirm this as well. Thanks for listening Symantec. That’s what we wanted to see.

Jamie Birch previously ran the affiliate program for Coldwater Creek, a top 5 national women’s apparel retailer and a $25 million program. Michelle O’Grady comes to us from Lightspeed Research, as a marketing manager where she generated and fostered their pay-for-performance and CPA online joint ventures. Roger Snow started his Internet Marketing career in 1999 with AffiliatePeople.com. For the last couple of years, Roger worked with KowaBunga Technologies, as well as PowWeb Hosting.

Since I mod and/or participate in most of the affiliate marketing forums, I am often asked by new affiliates about the best ways to get started or how to pick the best affiliate programs.

Here is a great thread with lots of good tips from larwee and Czar at the GeekVillage affiliate forums.

Working to make this blog a big repository of all the latest blogs and news that affects affiliates. Of course, one of the most important areas of concern is SEO and Search Engine marketing news. So just added a new blog page which includes the top articles from the Search Engine Watch Blog and the most recent headlines from the SEO Chat forums. I will be adding more and more resources and blogs to these pages over time, so check back often.

Help your visitors find the travel info they need and you will be richly rewarded for your traffic with a 50% revshare commission. TripAdvisor.com is the 7th most popular travel website worldwide and has won dozens of awards, including PC Magazine’s Top 100 Web Sites and Forbes Best of the Web. TripAdvisor provides a comprehensive travel search engine and directory that helps consumers research their travel plans via the web.

TripAdvisor is owned by IAC (InterActiveCorp), a name you can trust. The highly respected IAC Corp. also owns popular sites such as Hotels.com, CitySearch, Hotwire, Expedia, Match.com, TicketsNow, HSN, LendingTree and other high traffic Internet destination sites.

Cookie based tracking issues have been one of my top industry concerns for a long time. I have heard startling numbers about the percentage of sales that can’t be tracked due to various cookie issues - especially since spyware and privacy issues continue to be highlighted more & more in the news.

The affiliates at AffiliateBoards take Stephen Messer the president of Linkshare to task and ask some tough questions. There are 5 pages of questions and answers in this thread. How do his comments stand up under scrutiny? Will the mods be able to keep the flames in check?

“Affiliate Landing Pages - How to convert more clicks to sales” Register below to attend this no-cost event in partnership with MarketingSherpa and Kowabunga.

AOL’s Advertising.Com Ends Relationships With Adware Companies - Monday, Mar 7, 2005 7:00 AM EST

“AMERICA ONLINE’S ADVERTISING.COM QUIETLY STOPPED doing business with adware companies such as Claria, WhenU, and 180solutions last year, OnlineMediaDaily has learned.”

Affiliate News on the Big Change and Google Rules from Various Affiliate Blogs. Stay tuned to this space for the latest news and commentary on Google’s new rules and how these changes will affect the Affiliate Marketing Industry. Our team is doing in-depth research and will be coming up with tools and list of good suggestions to help affiliates and merchants with this issue. I will publish all the info here when it is ready. In the meantime, below are some very good blog topics & articles covering the Google Adwords policy change. To sum it up, allowing only one URL or domain to be listed in Adwords ads, will force affiliates to list their own sites in the ad instead of linking directly to the merchant or the affiliate network’s tracking code URL that goes directly to the merchant.

Online eCommerce retailers and merchants are looking for greater market share, higher revenues, increased conversion rates and better ROI for their marketing dollars. Many are realizing the resources necessary to run a thriving affiliate program are much greater than anticipated. Therefore many of them are turning to outsourced affiliate management. Advertising affiliate marketers are looking for high converting, high commission programs that pay well and deliver great partner support. Numerous affiliate marketers are using paid advertising on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Overture and they need to see a higher return for their CPA marketing dollars. Many have found that working with a responsive outsourced affiliate management company helps them get the attention and the rewards they are looking for. 5 Star Affiliate Programs and it’s partner, the leading outsourced affiliate management company, PartnerCentric, fulfills the needs for both sides of the marketing equation.