5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs

For the month of April you can get a 5% bump for switching out your CJ links. eBay Partner Network is live. Watch the video about how to build the new eBay links so you are ready to rock on Tues.

When you are doing BH techniques, there is a whole army of people out working against you trying to shut you down. Usually well funded and smart (like Google). On the other hand, when you are doing WH, you have a whole…

Large brands and publishers like the New York Times are up in arms about this. If G continues to roll this feature out to smaller sites it’s going to affect lots of affiliates and Adsense publishers. I’m surprised no one in the affiliate marketing community is talking yet

Urban blight - trash-strewn lots, payday lenders on every corner, graffitti-covered buildings. Websites afflicted with virtual blight bombard us with spam, offers that are ethically suspect and often illegal. They drive people out of the neighborhood and devalue our property just because we live next door.

eBay just dropped a bomb on thousands of eBook sellers and info marketers who sell products through eBay auctions. Starting immediately, you can no longer sell eBooks on eBay. Ebooks and digitally downloaded info products are no longer allowed in ANY eBay auctions.

This SEL article calls it theft and asks not only if this is a crime the affiliate could be prosecuted for, but whether Yahoo could be considered complicit in any potential crime as well, because they allow public editing of the search results.

I’m happy that the event organizers recognize affiliate marketing as part of the Web 2.0 mix, so I wanted to be sure to share the info with 5 Star readers. Sam, Lisa, Stephanie… will be discussing responsible affiliate marketing strategies in a web2.0 world.

Microsoft contacted me about an affiliate manager position they have for a relatively new division at Microsoft. Since I’m not in the market but have many readers that are affiliate managers I told him I’d help him get the word out. Here’s a snippet from the Job Details and below is more information about the division.

I know some CPA affiliates that are like online paparazzi, stalking all the news sources just waiting for a celebrity to crack, a disaster to happen or some hot news to break, so they can capitalize on traffic from the story and monetize it.
It’s a risky way to make money, because you have to […]

The hottest thing going at Affiliate Summit West 2008 was the new widget being offered by Qoof.com. This revolutionary widget combines the power of video ads with affiliate tracking codes. This widget is poised to take affiliate marketing by storm

Is this speaker for the Internet Retailer conference going to pull a Jason Calacanis or is this just link bait? Alan is highly critical of the affiliate channel, so this promises to be lively! Affiliate fan or foe, come watch the fireworks!

Affiliates, sometimes you come across a merchant you really want to work with that has a big 800# commission leak. You contact them and it turns out they didn’t realize the potential problem the way an affiliate sees it - as potential lost sales. They see the light and want to do the right thing, just aren’t sure how.

Widget advertising is a growing trend, especially within social networks. According to eMarketer, 22 percent of marketers surveyed used widgets as a social media marketing application last year. They predict that this year, the number of marketers who plan to use widgets will double to 47 percent

About a 19 year old that went from $0 to around $500,000 a month income in one year. If you’re curious about how Paul reached ‘Affiliate Superstardom’ so quickly, here’s how he did it!

Thought some of our 5 Star Readers that are PPC affiliates may be interested. I’ve been too swamped to even get over there and take a peek, so if you do, comment below and let us know what you think.

Plus you’ll learn the web’s best kept secrets about what information should be

Linkshare’s PR firm just contacted me about their new Platinum Publisher Program. So I wanted to share the info with you. Needed some good news to talk about today since everything else I’ve blogged today has been on the negative side.

ValueClick is having a REALLY bad day. 1st the news surfaces that CJ is losing eBay. Now this. The biggest spam settlement in history.

The newest version of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines have surfaced. Please realize, the reason I share this is to help ETHICAL affiliates learn to rise up to Google’s standards or at least understand what they are - not to help unethical affiliates learn to be better spammers.

The eBay Partner Network officially launches on April 1st, 2008 and will run in parallel with the Commission Junction program for one month to give affiliates a chance to change out all their links. So you need complete your migration by May 1st, when the CJ program closes.

Follow-up this brief brainstorms with Google searches and pay attention to the ads. Are you going to be competing against common every day brand names or a bunch of mom and pops? I would discount the top 3 names and focus on how hard it is going to be to break into the second tier positions. Don’t let 1 or 2 brand names scare you

She achieved a 400% increase in affiliate income working 3 days a week and visited Thailand, Australia, New Zealand for 10 glorious months then a 6 week trip to Fiji, Hawaii, San Francisco, Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, and New York.

Say you are scanning Google hot trends or Yahoo Buzz for new niches. Just highlight a phrase to see if there is a domain available. Warning: Dont use late at night when you’ve been drinking or you’ll wake up with more domains than you know what to do with!

I think this could create some big changes in our industry and most definitely will have a very positive impact on DoubleClick Performics. CJ and Linkshare have an interesting year ahead of them.

Lots of great landing page resources in the following categories: Articles, How-to Guides, Tips, Landing Page Related Blogs, Landing Page Tools, Conversion Consultants and Books.

I wonder what effect if any this will have on the Performics? I predict there will be an even greater increase in brand name merchants and possibly a huge shift in power between the top affiliate networks, after the deal is done. Could number 3 become 1?

If you are new to PPC/CPA marketing and trying to figure out the best way to get started, this is a must-read. If you are an old pro I can almost guarantee you will discover some new tricks you haven’t thought of before - especially in post #4 below.

Everyone knows video marketing is hot, but if affiliates want to use it they have to use a 3rd party tool to try to embed their affiliate ID to get credit for sales they send the merchant. To my knowledge none of the affiliate networks have come up with a seamless solution - that is […]

Affiliate Marketing Insider, a weekly online radio show focused on the affiliate marketing industry. Host Linda Woods will be interviewing three well-known industry leaders this month on her show including… topics will be…

Are you competing head-on with your ffiliates in the search space? Are you struggling to maximize revenue without cannibalizing your own search campaigns or threatening affiliate-generated sales? Learn how to scale up CPA affiliate marketing without compromising paid search

…just announced an important communication enhancement that will create more transparency between merchants and affiliates and several new feature enhancements to the ConnectCommerce platform. A webinar is coming up later this week to walk affiliates through these and other recently released features.

Many common health problems and addictions affiliates face. So since my carpal is killing me, I’m suffering from a caffeine jones (trying to kick the habit) PLUS am feeling lazy and just want to sit on my big fat butt…