There are a lot of companies launching into the performance marketing space with an affiliate program, a great amount of desire, and “wanting-ness” to succeed. But if you don’t have certain things in place, it’s going to fall flat on its face or never gain the traction that you want it to.

So, the first thing you need to address is your website and your conversion rate. How well does it convert? How well does your landing page convert? Do your part. If your website isn’t performing like a rock star, your affiliates aren’t going to be very happy. If they send 100 quality clicks and they aren’t making any sales they are going to say, “this sucks” and they will move on and you are going to lose the opportunity to get them as a regular producer. Now, if they’ve sent the same 100 clicks and they got three sales and they made $50-100, then you are in the ball game. So you have to keep working on your website to make sure it performs for your affiliates to gain traction.

Effective ad units and banners are a must. You have to have dynamic banners, good text, and email creatives. However, the creative you are using to facilitate your partners has to be high-end, has to look good, has to have calls to actions, has to have a high click-through rate in order to just get the clicks. Give them a chance actually to make a conversion now that you’ve got to them there. Reliable tracking is essential. We recommend HasOffers to handle internal tracking. With internal tracking you can track everything. Not only can you track direct partnership and affiliates, you can track major networks and CPA networks all through one central interface. You can also track your paid search and whatever other paid campaign you are engaging in.

You must have responsive, pro-active affiliate managers…this I can’t stress enough. I would say 90% of affiliate managers aren’t pro-active enough and that might even be a generous amount, giving them a 10% pro-active rate, because a lot of the problem is people don’t know what to say to people. So if you don’t have a very experience affiliate management person in-house or using a very competent affiliate management agency, it’s kind of like babysitting your kid with a zombie. They’re not going to get that nurturing and that education that they deserve and that’s going to enrich their lives. They are going to get someone that’s sitting there on the couch watching TV while your kid beats his head against the wall. So you need really good affiliate management or partner management, and then obviously you have to take it really, really seriously.

Have a strategy for your affiliate marketing growth…put a strategy together! Ask yourself: How are we growing this affiliate channel? The performance channel in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4? Don’t be cheap, don’t say, “what’s the cheapest we can do this for”, say “what can we spend to grow this effectively and what’s a good expenditure of money to grow our affiliates.” If you can spend money wisely, you can really grow your affiliate channel broadly and very quickly, but you have to do the right things and you just don’t spend money willy-nilly anywhere, but you should confer with somebody that can advise you accurately on how to spend the money. You can effectively spend money to grow your affiliates and grow your partners, but like I said, talk to the right people to advise you.

You should be offering to provide tools, resources, and training for your affiliates. Give them resources, give them tools, give them keywords, give them content, fresh content, unique content, something they can use to market with. If you facilitate people they will market easier. It will be a much broader program if you can facilitate a thousand people as opposed to a hundred people. So you really have to manage on a broad basis in order to get the most participation.

Behavioral re-targeting is something that’s sort of all the rage. Try out companies like FetchBack, Advertise.com, and Google (does behavioral re-targeting now through AdWords). It’s going to increase conversions overtime by retargeting them with banners when they leave the site. When they visit, the affiliate cookies are going to drop, and they are going to make the sale. So when you’re retargeting the visitors of your site, you’re kind of giving an affiliate a chance to get an extra conversion, which only benefits them and you.

Find more partners and do more BizDev, BizDev, BizDev. I will beat my head against the wall about Biz Dev because companies just don’t do it enough and they don’t do it smartly. It’s really kind of troubling to me because it could be so effective if you just did it occasionally with the right amount of gusto and the right amount of follow-up. Business development is a very effective thing to do, but a lot of companies just don’t do it the right way, so it’s a little personally frustrating, but it can be done properly and it can be fruitfully.

Networking socially through social networking is an absolutely must! Your affiliate managers, your business development people, your marketing directors, they should all be on Facebook and Twitter, working your fan page, on forums, meeting people, networking with people, getting Linkedin with people, building their networks. In my own personal network, I have over 2000 LinkedIn connections that I worked very hard for years to acquire and it took a lot of work, but it allows me to have a lot of reach and have a lot of partners that I can turn to in a second to work with. So building their own personal contact network on behalf of your company is very, very important.

Affiliate conferences are very important to developing relationships. Affiliate Summit, that’s definitely the number #1 conference. Great show…everyone should go to at least one of them a year. Ad-Tech is sort of the mother of all digital marketing conferences and I think the New York Show and the San Fran Show are a must. LeadsCon is a newer show that focus on lead generation and they’re having one very shortly and then the Performance Marketing Expo is the new show that is coming to Miami this September, and this is going to have some great speakers and some great attendees. Should be a great show. So you should be sending someone from your company to these shows every year to meet people and to network…and tell them not to be scared! Tell them to be friendly and go up to people and shake people’s hand. Tell them what you do, ask what they do. If they aren’t going to network, don’t even bother, don’t sending them, make sure they’re really friendly and proactive.

These are but a few of the ways you can ensure you gain traction with your affiliate marketing program. Thank for reading and let me know your comments!

Okay, so what types of affiliates, publishers, and partners are there really out there for Advertisers to work with? There really are so many different types, it’s such a large industry. Over the last 10 or 12 years affiliate marketing has really exploded. I mean it’s really a worldwide phenomenon. Here are some of the various types of affiliate marketers:

Webmasters - Webmasters are people building sites and people who own sites. There are an infinite number of webmasters out there who are in various stages of expertise and development of their website, or multiple website, that will likely have signed up for a CJ or Shareasale, and you can meet them through there and you can also flat out contact their website if you find it and say, “Hello, I found your website, I’d love to partner with you. This is pay out we can offer.” If you do it in large amounts you’ll get a certain amount of response.

Search Affiliates - SEO, PPC, media buying - there is a whole crop of affiliates who spend their own money and really try to leverage the search engines, Facebook advertising, and various other paid advertising models in order to generate an ROI for themselves with affiliate offers. This is a whole sub-culture, really you could say, because they are usually very entrepreneurial business minded, smart people, testing different things. These are affiliates you want to have as partners as long as they are following the right procedures and rules. SEO and media buying affiliates can really drive a ton of traffic and revenue for you. So these affiliates need to be catered to and made friends with.

Bloggers - bloggers are great for posting content about your company, reviewing new products, you can send them samples, you can say “hey review our product on your site, here is a sample”, which can be very effective at spreading the word. Not only that, anything bloggers write about tends to rank organically in the search engine. So its never bad when you have a blogger who is willing to promote your company or do a product review for your company as an affiliate. Mommy bloggers are very good affiliates and there’s probably an infinite amount of mommy bloggers that aren’t even in affiliate marketing right now that can be approached and proposed a business deal where they are being compensated on what they produce via their blogs.

Coupon Sites couponing has become very, very big. It has really exploded in the last couple of years with the recession, where people are going searching for coupons for particular merchants prior to purchase and they also find merchants before even thinking about purchasing via coupon sites. It’s a little bit of a double edge sword, in that you will get additional volume from the coupon sites, but you will see coupon sites sort of capitalizing on organic rankings related to your company name and the word “coupon code.” So you have to sort of take the good with the bad and really try to maximize the good and not really trouble yourself too much with who’s ranking organically with your company name and the word coupon code, because it’s going to happen as soon as you launch an affiliate program. But there is a tremendous amount of potential with coupon code affiliate sites because they likely have member bases and they usually drive a lot of traffic.

Review Sites - review sites are pretty popular among affiliate marketers. Affiliates will build a site that reviews five or six different advertisers in a particular niche, hosting is big with review sites, also dating, phone companies, flowers, basically anything where you can take four or five different advertisers and put them on one site and then drive paid search or organic search through those pages that feature different reviews, usually in a chart format. The affiliate would then earn a commission whenever he refers business to anyone of those advertisers. So that’s a very big and well converting demographic of affiliates traffic.

Loyalty Portals loyalty portals are very, very big. These are companies who have large membership basis and they are able to expose your advertiser offer to the membership base and there may even be a cash back component. There is many, many loyalty portals out there that you can place your offer in and it’s on a performance basis, so they have to be hunted down. Mall Networks is a good example of a loyalty affiliate publisher.

Incentive Programs This is where you are running into volume, but you are also running into possible issues because people taking actions when they are being awarded points can tend to skew down quality of leads certainly and then possibly sales and possibly increase the return rate. Virtual currency is another — it’s a quickly growing industry that kind of was born out the social networking thing where people are earning virtual currency and then there is companies who leverage affiliate advertisers to let people redeem their virtual currency and make purchases and save money and so forth. But again, a double edge sword, as you can get good volume, but you can also get some “iffy” sales and some sales that can tend to have a higher return rate.

Email Marketing - Email marketing has been around for years and it’s gone through a few different revolutions let’s say and it went from the wild west to something a little more regulated, and from what I can tell its pretty much the wild west again. It’s all about getting into the inbox. My recommendation is being very picky with it and don’t use everyone but pick maybe four or five email vendors that can blast your offer on a performance basis and just make sure everything is CAN-SPAM compliant and you shouldn’t have issues, and it should be an additional revenue source for you.

Partnerships and Business Development who in your company is handling business development? Is it someone who is pro-actively reaching out? Is it someone who is going after companies saying, “Hi I found your website or I found your company, we would love to partner with you on a rev share basis. Here is what we pay out by join our affiliate program and running it through our direct tracking program on site.” So you have to reach out to a lot of possible partnerships in order to get handfuls, but once you have a really good partnership on rev share or CPA basis, it tends to be a good producer and it tends to last a long time. So always look for partnerships and it kind of falls outside the realm of affiliate marketing. It’s one of those things you handle internally with a Biz Dev person, a business development director, that should be a very proactive person who follows up a lot. Yhey can definitely be going out and getting rev share deals for your company.

Big Web Properties - Big Web Properties are great! What’s better than a site that gets a couple a million visitors a month with your banner on it. You have several large websites in the affiliate networks, one that comes to mind the Meredith Corp, they publish 10 huge magazines and huge online web properties. Big web properties are definitely more receptive to CPA deals and rev share deals than they ever have been and the more inventory they have, the more they need to fill that inventory with something that converts for them to make the money, hence affiliate offers.

Traditional Media You can get TV, print, and radio on a CPA basis on a rev share, it’s doable, it can be done, it has been done, I’ve done it myself. You have to propose these deals to the different media outlets and individual stations and say, “can you run some of your remnant inventory with our ads, and we’ll pay you on a performance basis, we’ll set up a dedicated 800 number, we’ll set up a coupon code, a dedicated URL.” You can run traditional media on a performance basis. So look for those type deals as well and there are few companies that specialize in that.

Phone Calls - generating phone calls on performance basis, usually done on a per call basis or a warm transfer basis or live transfer where you are paying extra amount for that transfer to the call centers. But there are companies out there who will do it on a strictly per sale basis. So you just have to find those companies and get your company kind of in with them and run the campaign. See if it works for both parties. If it does you continue, if not you move on and say thanks for trying or you can do it on a different metric and see if you can make that work.

These are some of the various different types of affiliate marketers you can work with on a performance-basis! Hope you enjoyed the read!

There are many aspects that need to be just right to run a successful Affiliate Program in the Performance-marketing channel. If you don’t have all your bases covered adequately you will not allow your affiliate channel to grow like it should. Here are some of the key factors determining the success of your affiliate marketing efforts:

Electronic Tracking - Good electronic tracking is an absolute must and it has to be nearly fail-safe, 100% accurate, and it needs to be checked periodically to make sure it’s working accurately. Affiliate marketers will not stand for any tracking issues and will leave your program and go to your competitors if they thing you have “tracking issues”, so make sure your affiliate tracking is solid.

Affiliate Reporting - Affiliate reporting is a big factor because affiliates and partners need to check their stats. They need to know how much revenue they’re generating, how many click-throughs they accumulating, and that should be as real-time as possible. So checking one’s stats and checking reporting is absolutely a must for affiliates.

Payout structure - Payout structure refers to what you are actually going to be compensating people for referring new business on a performance basis. Usually I recommend that companies pay out as much as they can to affiliates. It really behooves you to be generous and to pay out as much as you can with your affiliates and partners, so that they’re motivated to produce revenue. If you have to wait to hit certain “performance-tiers” and start at a lower pay out and work your way it’s less motivational early on, which is the majority of your affiliates.

Conversion Rates - The conversion rate conundrum is probably the number one issue I talk about most with our clients that own websites and are driving traffic or any type of referral business to their website. You know…what are you doing with that traffic once it gets to your site? Are you converting it adequately? Are you doing a good job converting it into sales and leads? If you’re not, then you need to work on it and you probably shouldn’t even get into the performance marketing arena until you have a really well performing website that converts the traffic adequately enough. If that isn’t the case you need to work on it internally and/or there are companies that can run your site through different landing pages and testing procedures to get the best combination of variables on the page, content, and graphics in order to increase that ratio. My personal feeling is companies should take it upon themselves to focus on increasing their website’s conversion rate.

Incentive to Perform - What are you doing to motivate affiliates and partners to produce more revenue or more traffic to your website? You can give them bonuses, you can run contests, you can run promotions, etc. In fact, you should be running these types of promotions and you should be running them frequently in order to focus attention on your company or your affiliate program and really stand out. Be different, stand out from the crowd. It’s definitely something that sounds cliché but when there are 10,000 affiliate offers out there, you really have to convert well, pay out heavily, build up your affiliates and your partners, spoonfeed them what they need, and make friends with all your affiliates and partners, which will ensure a healthy and productive affiliate program that will grow.

These are but a few good suggestions to running a successful, growing affiliate program. I hope you enjoyed the article!

Outsourcing your affiliate management is viable solution for advertisers on the Linkshare Affiliate Network, one of the oldest and largest affiliate networks. Streamlining the way a company earns and produces can be dealt with through outsourcing. Companies such Linkshare offer a great affiliate platform for advertisers and publishers looking for extended reach and success.

Linkshare provides a full-service of online marketing solutions for both advertisers and publishers. Linkshare specializes in the area of Search Engine Marketing, Lead Generation and Affiliate Marketing, offering those innovative strategies and solutions that bear fruitful results, however their strength is in affiliate marketing.

Advertisers who need help finding and retaining new consumers can turn to Linkshare for its unparalleled management in creating a burgeoning and successful affiliate marketing program. Linkshare can craft a marketing plan in conjunction with your timetable and staff to achieve your overall goals and maximize your revenue objectives. Linkshare understands the ever-changing landscape of online marketing and can be a useful tool to reaching your goals. Linkshare keeps your company prepared for perpetual success.

Publishers can enjoy a network filled with some of the most successful brands and advertisers in the world. The Linkshare network offers tools and technologies to optimize your opportunities and help your business. Publisher dashboards, obtaining links and reporting are all easily accessed through the Linkshare website.

Establishing a relationship with Linkshare also offers educational opportunities and access to the latest news and information facing the affiliate industry. Linkshare University provides ongoing training; education and the best practice information to help advertisers and publishers reach their goals through newsletters and web seminars. Advertisers can obtain useful information on the latest online marketing strategies while publishers, new and experienced can benefit from the continuing education that Linkshare University provides. Linkshare University is a committed to sowing the seeds of your success.

Linkshare also offers Symposiums throughout the year, across the globe offering a variety of ways for clients to network and optimize their sales initiatives. After successful events in San Francisco, CA, London, England and Tokyo, Japan, Linkshare offers Symposium East, in New York, NY on June 22. Among the sessions in the Symposium is a Key Note discussion led by Sucharita Mulpuru, VP of Forrester Research. Ms. Mulpuru will elaborate on the Key Trends Shaping the Future of Performance Marketing. There will also be a panel discussion on Affiliate Marketing in Today’s E-Commerce Landscape along with other opportunities to network and increase your business.

Linkshare stands committed to your needs as an advertiser or publisher. When outsourcing your affiliate management we suggest using Experience Advertising, Inc. the leading outsourced affiliate management agency.

Performance marketing, or affiliate marketing, is one of the most powerful and effective consumer acquisition tools available to online merchants. For publisher/affiliates, opportunities to open new avenues to merchants are a top goal. ShareASale offers elite marketing and a strong network that can optimize affiliate marketing strategies for merchants and affiliates alike.

ShareASale offers award winning innovation and service to merchants looking for an edge in their performance-marketing network. A merchant can customize a plan to fit its needs, whether it’s which actions constitute a commission and how much that commission is worth. Once you are part of the ShareASale experience you can choose from banners, text ads, links and other creative you make available for affiliates to choose from. Affiliates will be paid determined upon the rates you have preset and from your individual ShareASale account.

Publisher/Affiliates enjoy a network of over 2,500 merchants to work with. After establishing a marketing strategy, you can pick and choose from a list of reputable merchants to promote and begin receiving commissions from your work. Real time reporting allows you to track your success at any moment and all payments are consolidated from the programs in which you participate. Payments are made on time, through check or direct deposit by ShareASale. Affiliates can also preview merchants before signing up on the ShareASale web site. Allowing you to streamline your marketing strategy before making a decision.

ShareASale has a strict ‘no malware’ policy so affiliates and merchants will not have to deal with affiliates utilizing toolbars, adware or other desktop software. ShareASale also provides expert support in dealing with all accounts whether merchant or affiliate.

ShareASale has been awarded several awards, exemplifying the service ShareASale provides along with the level of respect it owns from within the affiliate industry and amongst its clients.

ShareASale offer performance marketing made easy. Merchants are trusted and well respected. Affiliates are safe and creative. ShareASale is committed to creating a community of performance marketing that ensures success for all parties involved.

If you are looking to launch an affiliate program on the Shareasale affiliate network, you should use an outsourced affiliate management agency like Experience Advertising, Inc. They have become the leading affiliate management company managing dozens of affiliate programs across a number of verticals.

Affiliate management that provides lucrative results helps both advertisers and publisher/affiliates looking for new and innovative ways to earn and produce. Outsourcing the management of your affiliate program to online affiliate networks, such as Commission Junction, can provide these types of lofty results when managed properly.

Commission Junction is a global leader in the online advertising channels of affiliate marketing and managed research. Blending quality results with a focus on developing sustainable relationships, Commission Junction delivers superior service through performance-based solutions.

Advertisers can rely on Commission Junction to provide extended reach by partnering your company with an array of affiliate publishers that is unmatched through CJU’s productive and ever-expanding network of publishers. Increase your sales through customized programs that offer a fully managed and integrated search engine marketing solution.

Unique solutions include CJ Access, a self-service solution that provides small and medium sized advertisers access to a global network of publishers, educational resources and creative options. CJ Vantage, a strategic based initiative, offers support and guidance to larger firms by creating road map to reaching the most lucrative and successful solutions possible. Hands on, and thorough, CJ Vantage is a full service program that is built around ensuring your company’s success.

Publishers can count on maximized profit potential by joining with and creating sustainable relationships with top advertisers. Performance leads to high premiums—get paid for every sale and lead you generate. Qualifying publishers can take their affiliate programs to the next level with industry solutions exclusively provided by Commission Junction. CJU commitment to long-term excellence is the priority for Commission Junction and its unparalleled network of publishers.

Joining forces with Commission Junction gives advertisers and publishers access to a variety of learning opportunities to increase your knowledge in the fresh, innovative solutions being used to streamline affiliate programs and to maximize success. Commission Junction University is a conference where clients can spend three days networking, listening and learning about new strategies and insights on the affiliate industry. The 2010 CJ University will be held September 21-23 in Santa Barbara, California.

Commission Junction also offers Webinars outlining issues that affect the affiliate industry and, ultimately, your business. CJU offers these webinars for both advertisers and publishers and can be accessed at your convenience. Advertisers and publishers alike can stay connected to their business while taking time to learn new about new strategies and takes on important issues.

CJ is a great place to launch your affiliate program, however make sure to use a good outsourced affiliate management company, like Experience Advertising, otherwise results can be less than desirable.

Hello all! This time I wanted to bring you the best new affiliate programs for May of 2010. These are new affiliate programs so you have the opportunity to get in early and carve out your online presence with these Affiliate Advertisers!
1. NutsOnline.com - NutsOnline is the premier source of nuts, health snacks, gifts, and chocolates. They have a great new affiliate program that pays out 10% of the sale to affiliates. NutsOnline affiliate program is available on the Commission Junction affiliate network and through their inhouse affiliate tracking program.

2. Revival Soy - Dr. Tabor’s Diet Program - Revival Soy and Dr. Tabor are leading the charge with health, delicious soy products for health and weight loss. They have an exceptional affiliate offer that pays 15% of the sale to the affiliate. Make sure to get in on this red hot niche by signing up here on the CJ Affiliate Network.

3. Vitalicious - Deliciously healthy food has never tasted so good! Vitalicious has developed an amazing selection of nutritious and delicious health food products that will transform your snacking into health eating and weight loss. Vitalicious is one of the best performing affiliate programs in the health food category on CJ.com. Sign up here.

These are a few new affiliate programs from the top affiliate management agency Experience Advertising. You can view and sign-up for all of their affiliate programs here.

Are you looking for a great performing affiliate program in the nuts, snacks, chocolates, and gifts niche? NutsOnline is the leading online healthy snacks company and has been in business for years! They have just launched a great new affiliate program that pays out 10% commission per sale. Health food is a tremendously good affiliate marketing niche and NutsOnline delivers great conversion rates for affiliate marketers. They have a huge product feed with thousands of excellent products you can represent. This affiliate programs goes well with many niches including:
- Health and Wellness
- Family and Parenting
- Food and Dietary
- Weight Loss
- Online shopping

If you are interested in joining the NutsOnline.com affiliate program you can do so through their in-house program or Commission Junction affiliate network. Here are the respective signup links:
Merchant Direct: http://nutsonline.hasoffers.com/signup
Through CJ.com (if you are not a publisher with them): https://signup.cj.com/member/brandedPublisherSignUp.do?air_refmerchantid=2965448
If you are a publisher for CJ.com: http://members.cj.com/member/publisher/advertiserdirect.do?advertiserid=2965448

This affiliate program is exclusively managed by affiliate management agency Experience Advertising, Inc.

TopSeos.com, an independent Digital Agency review website, has ranked Experience Advertising the #1 ranked affiliate marketing company for the 5th month in a row. Experience Advertising, focuses on managing and growing affiliate programs for both large and small Advertisers primarily on the Commission Junction affiliate network, as well as Shareasale and the Google affiliate network. They are an OPM, or outsourced program managers, for dozens of Advertisers on the CJ.com network. Experience Advertising manages cost-per-sale and cost-per-lead campaigns on behalf of their clients, focusing on one-on-one affiliate management to gain the most affiliate participation possible. They specialize in recruiting affiliates into their affiliate programs through proven affiliate recruitment methods such as: cross-recruiting, site contacting, and email-based invites sent through the affiliate network. If you are looking for the best performing affiliate program management company, then you should definitely check out Experience Advertising, you can view a list of their current affiliate programs under management here.

Commission Junction, or CJ, is the largest of the major affiliate networks out there. If you are looking to launch a new affiliate program on CJ, or currently have one, it’s imperative that you have good affiliate managers in place. Merely having a program live on CJ is not enough to guarantee your affiliate program will perform like it should. You need excellent affiliate management in place to work with the affiliates and make sure their every need is taken care of. Proactive affiliate management is the best way to increase the affiliate participation level in the program, and therefore the revenue it produces. Having knowledgeable affiliate management help to increase sales because more affiliates have a chance of producing, once worked with. Make sure to have really good affiliate management in place when you run a CJ program to ensure your affiliate program will reach its fullest potential!

Looking for some great examples for affiliate program banners? You should check out the animated gif and Flash banner designs from Experience Advertising. Having great affiliate banners is a must for ecommerce companies looking achieve a high click-thru rate for their affiliates. These are some really great designs, so check them out!

I wanted to let you all know about Experience Advertising’s new affiliate management client: pingg.com.

Just in time for the holidays, this service allows you to send ad-free
custom designed / branded eCards to your customers, suppliers etc… it also includes a branded eCard web site where you can post interactive content like photos and videos, and integrate your twitter stream etc…it’s really freakin cool. You should check it out.

I know a few people traditionally find eCards cheesy, but this is done *right*! Save a few trees, time and money, and check it out here.

Their affiliate program is available through the CJ affiliate network: https://signup.cj.com/member/brandedPublisherSignUp.do?air_refmerchantid=2838046

Thank you,
Evan