I wanted to let you know about a great company to see if you can work with them.

Face Time Strategy Direct is a customer acquisition center that is 100% sales focused and specializes in direct response inbound campaigns. From hard and soft offers to cross and upsells, they have perfected the formula for closing the sale. This is a perfect solution for direct response advertisers that need calls closed, and companies with offers that want them up-sold on a CPA or Per Call basis. Visit their website for more information.

If you would like to speak to them directly please contact:

Bridget Shields, Business Development Manager
phone: 321-265-5138
email: bshields (at) facetimestrategy.com

Pay-per-call affiliate network, Click2Call Network, has launch a really nice April 2012 promotion that will incentivize publishers with great prizes. If you are looking to participate in pay-per-call marketing sign-up with Click2Call here.

As you know, I always keep an eye out for emerging technology to help my industry contacts. I was recently contacted by Walter Long at RevGuard and he provided me with a demo of his Optimized Customer Outcome (OCO) product – it’s amazing and all merchants should defintiely check it out.

About OCO:
OCO turns customer service handling into a profit machine. It applies split and multi-variate testing to the automation and handling of inbound customer service phone calls. Effectively, it takes the same proven testing concepts all of my clients use to optimize landing pages for conversion and applies this to customer service. In applying their methodology, RevGuard’s clients are 60-80% more profitable using OCO vs. live customer service agents alone.

OCO Benefits:
- Reduces refund rates on trial campaigns by 50% – this has the biggest impact in profitability for merchants.
- Lowers live CS expense by 50%; OCO handles 50% of all incoming phone calls exclusively, so while you’ll still need your live call center, you’ll have half the calls to deal with
- OCO increases revenue by incorporating save sales at a similar rate as most live agents.
- Lowers chargebacks by as much as 40%

Additional benefits:
- 24×7 availability
- No hold times
- No abandon rates
- Split-test on the fly
- Utilize over 7 years experience in developing best practices for free trial/continuity/subscription programs
- Introduction analytic call to understand your objectives/goals
- Script writing
- Script recording
- IVR and Web platform setup
- Weekly report generation and analytic calls (to go over recommendations for optimization and next steps on testing).

Get in touch with Walter (walter (at) revguard.net) and ask him how he can make you more profitable. Let him know Evan sent you. He has preferred pricing and can waive up-front fees because you’re coming from me.

As part of their commitment to presenting exclusive CPA offers to affiliates, sterkly is announcing the launch of three new exclusive CPA offers.

FreeTwitTube is a safe, secure and FREE app that allows users to interact with the videos they watch without ever leaving YouTube.  By combining live streaming and never-ending content from Twitter™ with the vast video selection from YouTube™, users get a more social video experience. Once downloaded, users will see the FreeTwitTube easy-to-use toolbar under the video player whenever on the YouTube website. The toolbar not only shows tweets, but also reply and retweet whenever they choose. FreeTweetTube combines the power of Twitter & YouTube to give a richer video experience.

ezLooker is also a safe, secure and FREE app that allows users to transform their Craiglist search experience in a speedy slideshow that’s easy to use and pleasant to view. It offers three viewing options to users: regular text view, image view and multi view. It allows users to bookmark their favorite advertisements and share the ads on Facebook with ease. It’s the first of its kind in the market and exclusive through the sterkly affiliate network.

John Maxwell, a famous leadership authority and author of 60+ books, offers people multiple experiences focused on leadership development, his expertise. The two main learning experiences are:

1. John C. Maxwell Certification Program, a full-length leadership certification program including 5 complete systems of distance learning and a three day live training. As a John Maxwell Certified Coach, Teacher and Speaker, graduates are certified to coach, teach, and speak to any individual, company, or organization anywhere in the world utilizing John Maxwell’s curriculum, products, books, brand and learning systems. After signing up, subscribers receive one hour-long video introducing them to the John C. Maxwell Certification Program.

2. A three part video series in which they learn how Influence = Income. As a veteran in the leadership development industry, John Maxwell’s 3I’s video series shows subscribers how to influence their own lives for the better, impact others’ lives positively, and generate income through this process. After signing up, subscribers receive three 45 minute to hour-long videos over the period of approximately one week.

Traffic Types
The following traffic types are acceptable:

Display: banner
Display: text links
Contextual
Social Networks
Search: SEO
Search: PPC*

*Some restrictions apply, such as brand keywords.

sterkly, a premiere digital marketing company that stands for “strong, smart, marketing,” who have been operating in stealth mode since 2007, just opened their affiliate network to the public this past month. The sterkly team is comprised of established CPA marketing experts that have extensive experience in the bundling software space, empowering affiliate networks with offers, enabling exclusive offers and leveraging an expansive space of existing partners.

Apart from exclusive offers, such as the ones just mentioned, sterkly has punctual payments, quick-responding account managers and a leading affiliate tracking platform. The sterkly team takes pride in generating over 3 million installs a month and in building long-term, collaborative relationships with affiliates. Join the pride to get started promoting the FreeTwitTube, ezLooker and John Maxwell offers on the sterkly affiliate network today!

As sterkly says “Those who hesitate, go hungry.”

Here is my recent Affiliate Summit webinar! Let me know what you think!

Experience Advertising, a leader in outsourced affiliate program management, has announced their 2011 Holiday Affiliate Marketing Sales Contests. Every year, Experience Advertising’s clients award exciting prizes and cash bonuses to affiliate marketers that win in their sales contests. This year, Experience Advertising is awarding prizes including Amazon Kindle Fires, brand-new luxury watches, and cash bonuses to their affiliate contest winners.

Chastidi Correa, Director of Business Development for Experience Advertising states, “We love to run affiliate sales contests because all of our affiliates get pumped up to win great prizes. We like to award prizes not only for the top affiliate producers, but to the most improved affiliates and best new affiliates in our programs. This way, a more diverse base of affiliate marketers are able to win in our contests and everyone feels like they have a chance to win just by producing 1 sale in the contest period. Running exciting contests with guaranteed prizes is another aspect that sets Experience Advertising apart from other affiliate agencies and OPMs. Our affiliates know that our clients value their affiliates and are willing to spend money on fabulous prizes without any conditions upon winning. We regularly get feedback from affiliates that our contests set us apart from other agencies managing affiliate programs.”

Experience Advertising states that running affiliate sales contests makes it fun and exciting for affiliates and always results in increased traffic and sales volume during the contest period and beyond. “What we see is a marked boosted in affiliate participation, traffic, and sales production when running affiliate contests for our clients. And our affiliates really enjoy the competition aspect and of course love to get their contest winnings” says Correa.

Affiliate marketers have a tremendous amount of choice when it comes to deciding where to focus their affiliate marketing efforts. Experience Advertising maintains that running compelling affiliate contests is a great way to concentrate focus of the overall affiliate community on their managed affiliate programs. It is a key element in their efforts to grow their affiliate programs by increasing affiliate participation across the board and building affiliate loyalty for their clients.

Here are the companies participating in the Experience Advertising 2011 Holiday Affiliate Sales Contest:

WorldofWatches.com – Linkshare Network – 25 Watches – MSRP $995 Each

eWatches.com – CJ Network – 10 Watches – MSRP $995 Each

TheWatchery.com – Google Affiliate Network (GAN) – 10 Watches – MSRP $995 Each

HancockFabrics.com – CJ, GAN – 12 Amazon Kindle Fires

HubSpot.com – CJ Network – 7 Amazon Kindle Fires

IronPlanet.com/IronPlanetMotors.com – CJ Netowrk – Cash Bonuses to the Winners

Bestbuyeyeglasses.com – CJ Network – 7 Amazon Kindle Fires

PacificPillows.com – CJ Network – 5 Amazon Kindle Fires

DealYard.com – CJ, Shareasale Networks – 5 Amazon Kindle Fires

Online marketing is a tough niche to stay on top in, and staying active in your field even when you’re out and about is often essential to success. These seven iPhone apps are designed to keep you in the know concerning what’s going on with your business and market, so as long as you have a mobile broadband connection, you’ll be connected and able to answer any questions consumers may have, as well as update your customers on new products and details.

HootSuite – Managing social information spread can be hard, but HootSuite makes it easy even on the go. The iPhone HootSuite app allows you to access several twitter accounts, so if you’re promoting your business across several accounts, you can gauge the impact your tweets are having on potential customers. Analytics are included in the HootSuite package, so if you actively use Twitter to promote your business, then you should definitely have HootSuite as your Twitter app.

Feedly – If you follow RSS feeds of blogs related to your niche and you want to get instant updates, then Feedly is the perfect addition to your marketing suite. It operates on the Google Reader backend, so if you’ve already got your feeds set up in Reader, then you can install Feedly and instantly enjoy getting access to your feeds in style.

PayPal – Most affiliate marketing programs pay their affiliate through PayPal. The PayPal app allows you to quickly send and receive money, as well as check your balance and transfer funds to your bank account. The PayPal app has recently added bump transfers, so you can transfer money quickly to those you come into contact with daily.

Analytics Pro – Have you ever wanted to check your Google Analytics while you’re out and about to determine if you need to make any changes? This app will cost you some money, but it’s definitely worth it since you can determine how well your marketing campaigns are doing no matter where you are.

WordPress – As any affiliate marketer knows, keeping a blog related to your niche up to date is absolutely essential. If you find yourself occupied and out of the house for more time than you’d like, the WordPress app can help you keep your updates flowing no matter where you are. Since content is king in the affiliate marketing world, the ability to produce content on a mobile broadband connection is absolutely essential to operating out of the office.

SEO Pro – How well you perform in search engine rankings really determines how much business you’ll generate. SEO Pro lets you monitor your Alexa ranking, check your ranking for certain keywords, and gives you an overall view of how well you’re doing on targeting keywords efficiently.

oDesk – Don’t have time to create all the content you’d like to keep your affiliate blogs up to date? You can use the oDesk network to outsource all your work and get the quality you want, delivered when you want it. This app is great for busy affiliate marketers and online marketers in general.

Blake Sanders is a tech writer at broadband comparison site Broadband Expert where he specializes in mobile broadband, industry news, as well as the latest in wireless internet news and information.

Affiliate Summit is definitely the best Affiliate Conference and probably the #1 Internet Marketing conference there is. No where else can you go and learn, network, and share with so many affiliates/publishers, networks, and companies in one place. I mean they get thousands of people every year and every year it grows and gets bigger. Shawn Collins and Missy Ward, the owners of the show, do a tremendous job at orchestrating exceptional shows twice a year. Now they are doing local meet-ups which I’ve heard are great. They have an exceptional staff to help in the process so everything runs as smoothly as possible. I go every year and have since back when it was in Orlando. Their Vegas shows are always epic. Affiliate Summit East NYC is right around the corner, August 21-23, 2011, so make sure to get your tickets before it sells out. Here are some great reasons to attend the Affiliate Summit in New York:

1. Great People – you are guaranteed to meet tons of exceptional people involved in the Online Marketing industry at Affiliate Summit. It’s a really friendly atmosphere and bustling with people of all types. There are also quite a lot of international folks that fly in from other countries for the show. Some good people watching there too because they will try to stand out. The affiliate marketing industry is really friendly by nature and so you will undoubtedly meet people that can help you further what you are doing. Building relationships is what it’s all about, and meeting people in person always kicks it off on the right foot.

2. Great Speakers and Panels – Affiliate Summit always has great speakers and panels of experts on a wide range of relevant and timely issues to the Affiliate Marketing industry and online marketing in general. I will be speaking this time around..Yaaay! I hope you can come out and see me present about how to use LinkedIn to maximize your business development. You can go to Affiliate Summit just for the networking, but why do that when you could go and learn so much from the speakers, so I highly recommend getting the passes that get you in to see the speakers. Here is the Facebook Event for my speaking session, make sure to RSVP!

3. Great City - New York City is a great place to go to a conference. I really like the Hilton hotel for the venue because you can really bump into and meet people more easily than at a sprawling conversion center. Not to mention you can stay at the hotel and be more comfortable because you can just go up to your room if you need to whenever. Adtech was much better when it was at the Hilton, so I’m glad Affiliate Summit is still there. I don’t think I need to say much about New York City, great food, great sights, great times all around.

4. Great Parties - They always have really good parties at Affiliate Summit NYC. You have to find out which are the best though, which can take a little digging around and talking to people to know which ones will be the best. You can try to get invites to the ones that sound great. You really can’t go wrong though. I’m not huge into conference parties these days, but I like to go at least for a little while to see who I might bump into or meet. I might go out late one of the nights to get the full experience. Usually I’m pretty focused on business and talking to people, so the parties are like a fun novelty. If you go to the right ones you can really have a blast.

5. Great Networking - If you like to network, then Affiliate Summit is for you! You can’t help but network and meet people with that many people at the show. If you are proactive and willing to go up to people and introduce yourself, you can really make some amazing connections and you never know who you might run into that can help you further what you are doing more than you ever imagined. Their “Meet Market” event is really great to network at and you are definitely going to get a lot out of the experience. Make sure to bring a lot of business cards and you should try to gather as many as you can yourself at the show. A couple hundred business cards is definitely do-able.

These are some great reasons to attend Affiliate Summit East! This year will be a great show, so I hope you will attend and we can meet. Thanks and I look forward to seeing you there!

Facebook is at it again…getting their tentacles further into web traffic. And why not, it’s the greatest platform for social interaction ever developed. There are many ways to integrate Facebook social into your site and you should absolutely do it in as many ways as possible to get more traffic and sharing of your content going on. Here are the various ways you can integrate Facebook social plug-ins into your site.

Like Button
The Like button lets users share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click.

Activity Feed
The Activity Feed plugin shows users what their friends are doing on your site through likes and comments.

Recommendations
The Recommendations plugin gives users personalized suggestions for pages on your site they might like.

Like Box
The Like Box enables users to like your Facebook Page and view its stream directly from your website.

Login Button
The Login Button shows profile pictures of the user’s friends who have already signed up for your site in addition to a login button.

Registration
The registration plugin allows users to easily sign up for your website with their Facebook account.

Facepile
The Facepile plugin displays the Facebook profile pictures of users who have liked your page or have signed up for your site.

Comments
The Comments plugin lets users comment on any piece of content on your site.

Live Stream
The Live Stream plugin lets your users share activity and comments in real-time as they interact during a live event.

You should absolutely integrate Facebook social plug-ins into all of your sites and blogs that you can. Adding these types of plug-ins can only facilitate increased sharing and interacting around your content and Fan Page. Now go out and make it happen! Have a great day!

Are you looking for a great performing mattress affiliate program? You can now affiliate with SelectFoam and earn great affiliate commissions on their mattresses, pillows, toppers, foundations, adjustable bases, sheets, mattress protectors, and massage features. This wonderful mattress affiliate program is being run exclusively on the Commission Junction affiliate network.

SelectFoam Affiliate commissions are the following:
- 7% on toppers
- 7% Foundations and Adjustable Bases
- 10% on mattresses
- 20% for Pillows, Massage Features, mattress Protectors, sheets

New Commission Junction Affiliate/Publishers can Join here:
https://signup.cj.com/member/brandedPublisherSignUp.do?air_refmerchantid=3140875

If you are a current CJ.com Affiliate Publisher you can apply here:
http://members.cj.com/member/publisher/advertiserdirect.do?advertiserid=3140875

Come and get into this great affiliate marketing niche! Beds and Mattresses have high sale prices and good commissions can be earned by promoting SelectFoam. For the best-performing mattress affiliate offer out there, check out the SelectFoam affiliate program on Commission Junction Affiliate Network!

Affiliate Marketing has become an extremely large and varied sub-industry of Online Marketing over the past 10-12 years. There are literally hundreds of thousands, if not over a million individuals, all over the world, that have become hip to monetizing their websites, blogs, portals, and subscriber lists with affiliate programs. Now, there is a brand-new event solely dedicated to honoring the best and brightest in the Affiliate Marketing industry. The Affiliate Marketing Awards will be held on April 12, 2011, in San Francisco at the W Hotel. The categories will be judges by industry heavy-weights like Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit, Joseph Morin, Peter Bordes, Jay Weintraub, Oliver Roup and Steve Hall. There will be tons of honors given out and should be a really good time. The categories are as follows:

Best CPS Network
Judges are looking for a network that concentrates on cost per sale campaigns that may include some cost per lead campaigns which has been outstanding in the last year. Great advertising campaigns and great publisher support.

Best CPL Network
Judges are looking for a network that concentrates on cost per lead campaigns that may include some cost per sale campaigns which has been outstanding in the last year. Great advertising campaigns and great publisher support.

Best Coreg Network
Judges are looking for a network that concentrates on Co registration campaigns that which has been outstanding in the last year. Great advertising campaigns and great publisher support.

Best Merchant Campaign
Judges are looking for the merchant who has truly embraced affiliate marketing to produce successful results with great publisher relations.

Best Agency
Judges are looking for an affiliate management agency which has exceeded client’s needs and affiliates expectations.

Best Affiliate Manager
Judges are looking for that person who has done something special for affiliates in terms of hard work and communications we well as providing excellence in service.

Best Banners
Judges are looking for an advertiser or agency who has produces some great affiliate banners.

Best Overall Affiliate
Judges are looking for that person or company delivering great results for advertisers while benefiting the advertisers marketing

Best Content Affiliate
Judges are looking for that person or company delivering great results for advertisers while benefiting the advertisers marketing with content sites

Best PPC Affiliate
Judges are looking for that person or company delivering great results for advertisers while benefiting the advertisers marketing with PPC marketing

Best Merchant Innovation
Judges are looking for that person or company delivering true innovation in affiliate marketing as an advertiser.

Best Affiliate Innovation
Judges are looking for that person or company delivering true innovation in affiliate marketing.

Best Sales Campaign
Judges are looking for a campaign that delivered a great increase in sales.

Best LeadGeneration Campaign
Judges are looking for a campaign that delivered quality leads.

Best Mobile Campaign
Judges are looking for a campaign that delivered sales or quality leads using mobile technology.

Best use of Social Media
Judges are looking for a the best use of social media marketing in affiliate marketing.

Best use of Data feeds
Judges are looking for a data feed which has truly benefited affiliates and made it easier for them to make money.

Best Third Party Tool
Judges are looking for a tool which has truly benefited affiliates and made it easier for them to make money.

Best Marketing Affiliate Blog
Judges are looking for a blog which converse affiliate marketing and benefits both advertisers and affiliates.

Hottest Affiliate Manager
This award is just for fun and please submits your entry to be voted on. Voting will be set up shortly.

Hottest Affiliate
This award is just for fun and please submits your entry to be voted on. Voting will be set up shortly.

This should be a really great time and great networking as well. Be sure to use coupon code: EW10 to save 10% off your ticket!

Click here to check out The Affiliate Marketing Awards site and get your ticket today!

When looking to launch an affiliate program for your company or gain additional affiliate distribution for your offer, there are a multitude of options to consider. Everyone wants to grow a large, productive affiliate program for their company, but cutting through the misconceptions can be difficult for many companies. I will discuss the affiliate network options you have for your company and what I think is a good strategy to pursure in order to grow your affiliate marketing efforts as quickly as possible.

The first place to consider setting up your affiliate program is with one of the “major” affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Linkshare, Shareasale, and the Google Affiliate Network. The nice thing about the major networks is you have complete publisher transparency, i.e. you know who your affiliates are and how they generally promote affiliate programs. Most networks also provide referring url data so you know where the traffic is coming from, which is good if you are concerned with controling the quality of sites promoting your company or offer. My personal favorite affiliate network is Commission Junction (CJ) for a few reasons. CJ has a great tracking platform that has been quite reliable over the years. CJ has a wealth of diverse “affiliate/publishers” you can prospect from in their database, allowing you the ability to send recruiting emails to particular countries and categories of affiliates. They have a great email system, that allows you to send newsletters and promotions to your affiliate base without cost, and the deliverability is good. CJ also allows you to recruit affiliates into the program by sending them “pending offers” to join your program which they may or may not accept, but the option to do this is great. The other major affiliate networks do have good affiliates and good systems, I have just personally found that CJ is on it’s own higher level of publisher quality and platform consistency. All companies that are serious about growing a large, productive affiliate program, over-time, should launch on CJ and possibly 1 or 2 other major networks, but you have to really watch duplication of order IDs across networks when you run on multiple affiliate networks.

Companies with an “offer” that pays a flat fee or engaging in lead generation may want to consider “CPA Networks” or cost-per-acquisition affiliate networks. One of the issues with CPA networks is that they don’t give you that publisher transparency to know and interact with all of your affiliate-publishers personally. This is fine for some companies with CPA offers, but most medium to large size companies and ecommerce companies tend to shy away from CPA Networks due to the fact that you can’t work with your affiliate base personally or send newsletters promoting deals. However, some companies don’t mind this as long as the network is producing good sales or leads, so CPA Networks do work well for certain companies.

The 3rd option is running your own private affiliate network. Operating your own affiliate network can be a great idea because you can recruit affiliate partners directly and work with them one-on-one because you get their phone number and other contact information. Private networks don’t inherently have any affiliates, so you have to mobilize a force to recruit good affiliate partners through a lot of outreach to relavant websites and blogs. I recommend HasOffers.com for running your own private network because they are reliable, feature-rich, and extremely cost-effective (starting at $99/month). HasOffers allows your affiliate partners the ability to log-in and check their stats at any time in a nice interface. It also holds unlimited offers so you can operate with 1 offer or 100s of offers in your private network. I usually recommend operating a private affiliate network in conjunction with a program on a major affiliate network for the best results.

Regardless of where you grow your affiliate channel you need to have competent, pro-active affiliate managers minding the fort. If you launch in a major network without good affiliate management your program may not grow at all and seriously disappoint you. There are a few options for managing your affiliates, i.e. in-house managers, outsourced managers, or hiring an affiliate manager from the affiliate industry. In-house managers can be good if they know what they are doing and have some experience with the affiliate landscape, otherwise they won’t know how to handle issues and you may get burned by fraud if they aren’t watching it closely enough. Outsourced affiliate managers can be a great option if you use the right company with connections and good strategies for growing the program. Hiring an experience affiliate manager can be a good idea if you hire the right person that doesn’t have too many preconceived bad ideas about how to manager you affiliates. Whomever you use to manager your affiliates, make sure they are experience in web promotion, HTML, and SEO. Also they should be really nice, friendly, and a good social networker, so they can build great partnerships with your affiliate base.

All and all, launching and running an affiliate program on an affiliate network is a great idea for most companies. Keep your expectations in check and plan to grow it year over year strategically. Don’t be afraid to invest into your affiliate program by launching on major networks, running contests, bonusing producers, and other promotions to create excitement among your affiliates so they try to promte the company moreso. Running an affiliate program should be a fun and exciting endeavour that grows over time through the right management strategies and principles. It can be a very profitable channel for companies with little risk because everything is on a performance basis. Now get out there and launch your affiliate program!