5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs

The eBay team has been analyzing recent buying trends, gathering predictions from eBay industry experts to help you identify hot products to promote for the 2007 Christmas season. Here are the top 25 hot holiday sellers then drill down by category for more.

The cute pic to the left is when she was pregnant. Isnt her preggo pumpkin belly cute? I bet Grayson is going to hate it when I call him “my little Punkin” in front of his friends when he gets bigger! Check video of my little Allie the Pooh. Awww…

This parable illustrates a couple points about the importance of making time for the big things in life and how being an affiliate offers you the freedom to make those lifestyle choices. What are the ‘big rocks’ in your life? Family, health/fitness, God, a charity or worthy cause, following your dreams, helping others and making a difference in the world?

I’m always happy to see and report on success stories, especially when they hit mainstream media. However I have a couple problems with this article. Google puts the ads on your web pages and you rake in the dough? I like the positive spin, don’t get me wrong but…

…the Conversion Formula they developed over the past five years with partners like the New York Times, Reuters, and Insurance.com. They are giving away their A/B split testing software and the 1st class for FREE.

The A4U Expo just ended yesterday. The very first A4U Affiliate Marketing Awards - the winners are… Good pics too. The Brits know how to party!

At 19 he started a little web business in the living room of his Grandma’s one bedroom apartment. Today he makes over 3 Million. How did he do it? He found a niche. A very nichey niche in fact, then leveraged his knowledge and passion for the topic.

Facebook will be making a major ad-related announcement in New York at AdTech. A flurry of rumors say it could be a rival to Adsense and could provide contextual ad targeting on sites other than Facebook, using the demographic data offered up in personal profiles. Major buzz includes…

Since so much holiday revenue comes from kids gifts, I thought it may be helpful and fun, to get Holiday sales tips for affiliates from a top toy retailer. I’ve been working with Linkshare’s PR firm to get these great tips from eToys for our 5 Star readers.

It’s getting pretty crowded here, but I’m so happy I can provide a safe haven. We’re helping to open one of our local churches to turn into evacuation center. Then I’m going to Costco to buy a bunch of food and supplies to donate to all the displaced victims, then we are all going over to volunteer.

Thousands have been evacuated - huge neighborhoods filled with multi-million dollar homes have been wiped out. I’m surrounded by fires, some family had be evacuated and some have lost their homes already. The sky is an errie dark reddish black…

Was there a time when you first started that you became despondent and thought about quitting? If so, what happened that gave you the confidence to keep going? This tip can make a difference.

If consumers use the immunize feature it’s killing CJ links. Here is part of the email David got back from CJ when he discovered his CJ links were not working after he had used the Spybot Search & Destroy Immunize feature.

The 2 videos below each show a single person almost completely dominating the entire 1st page of Google. WATCH Who Stole Halloween From Google? A Terrifying SEO Thriller

Diversification or Single site/niche Domination? The following 3 super affiliates outline the pros and cons of each strategy. Then I’ll tell you what I would do if I ever decide to SELL 5 Star and become an affiliate.

Affiliates in the 5 Star forum often ask if there is a good free guide to PPC. Most of the ebooks out there are either one trick ponies or… This one’s not an ebook but an in-depth guide from a bonafide super affiliate and it’s free.

The blog redesign and upgrade to WordPress 2.3 are complete, aside from a couple little CSS tweaks here and there. COMMENTS are open again. I’d like to thank Teli Adlam author of OptiNiche for all her help with the re-design and her patience in putting up with me and all the Vbulletin forum gremlins during the process.

Hang onto your seats, it will be a pretty dramatic change. So if you see any dust, sparks or anything broken - it’s not gremlins. It’s the designer and I trying to make the new theme, all the plugins and the latest version of WordPress jive.

Linkshare’s publicist sent me this PR earlier in the week, but this is the 1st chance I’ve had to blog it. Joining the LinkShare Network are several companies in the Internet Retailer 500 and leading brands such as Sony Creative Software, Waterfront Media, The New York Times

New programs mean less competition. Some of these programs are VERY cool and NICHE! Also new improved 5 Star website and WordPress upgrade so we can turn COMMENTS back on.

With all the M&A action of late in the online advertising space I can’t help but wonder who’s going to snap up ValueClick. It’s ripe for the picking! Potential suitors include…

Hot on the heels of the GoogTubeSense Video launch is Blinkx with a slightly different approach to monetizing videos.
So one of the major differences between GoogTubeSense and Blinkx is that Blinkx does a 2 way rev share (you, them) instead of 3 way (you, them, video producer.) The other difference is that instead of being limited

Here are some great tips for increasing CTR on your paid search campaigns. It’s important to note that these same techniques will help boost non-PPC affiliate click-throughs and conversion rates.

eComXpo starts tomorrow and it’s FREE. Here are some of the affiliate marketing educational sessions. A couple of our 5 Star Affiliate Program Managers will be speaking and/or moderating sessions.

We, in the biz, know affiliates rock - and this study proves it! Affiliates deliver shoppers that typically spend more with higher average order size sales than other online marketing channels. Affiliates on average also deliver more affluent shoppers and drive higher conversion rates.

FALL into the Holiday Season with these great new merchants that just launched on the ShareResults Affiliate Network. New programs mean less competition and there are some great high paying NICHE programs below.

Did you know that you could be a successful affiliate marketer, even if you do everything different than the rest of the crowd? In fact, most marketers have it all wrong. Learn to do your affiliate marketing correctly in Professionalizing Affiliate Marketing. Also see What Affiliates Don’t Know Can Hurt Them.

October is Webmaster Inspiration Month. In this contest, if you share your success story you can win cash and prizes. Or you can read and learn from other success stories. There is only ONE Affiliate Success story so far, so 5 Star readers should jump in to win.

In the annals of love-hate relationships, search marketers and affiliates are right up there with the classic ambivalent couples: Hamlet and Ophelia, King Kong and Faye Wray. The realization that each partner can be useful isn’t enough to dispel the suspicion that the partnership is unfairly skewed.

Was trying to keep this under wraps not blog it, but Shawn and Jim already spilled the beans. Facebook is up in arms and it’s harder to advertise now due to the black hatters catching wind of it. See example of my Facebook Flyer here.

This chart tracks the sales volume trends for the past 4 years in relationship to Black Friday and the 4 following Mondays, aptly tagged Cyber Mondays. Interesting to note that this year there will be 5 Cyber Mondays.

Why would the TOS prohibit affiliates that have Unattached Body Parts on their site? Is there a rash of rogue affiliates selling arms and legs or something? This is one of the biggest companies in the WORLD and the affiliate program is on LinkShare.

Videopreneur Shawn Collins goes in drag and doubles as Missy to give us a simulated video replay of their presentation at Affiliate Summit London titled: Affiliate Marketing View from the U.S.

Are you a CJ publisher or merchant that likes to influence change? Would you like to help mold some of Commission Junction’s new products and features? May be a great way to make a difference and have your voice heard.