Goodbye Popshops Hello Custom RSS

Goodbye Popshops, Hello Custom RSS!

You may remember that I mentioned how I was using Popshops a graphic interface system for creating product tables for affiliate websites using datafeeds. It let you include up to 99 (100?) products in a table and change the display css and column number all graphically. While this is very nice and at first I was extremely amazed by the product over time I discovered it wasn't the right product for my needs and this month I finally canceled my Popshops account.

This was actually planned this spring, but I was going to replace those product tables or "shops" as Popshops calls them, with my own custom RSS solution. Unfortunately I kept coming up with other tasks to do and kept seeing my credit card charged.  I decided to just cancel my account and spend the next couple weeks removing those old tables and add my custom display as I can.

Popshops is a good solution for people who want to have very general display of products that updates with other products from the same merchants OR people who want a few displays of products that are hand selected.  My problem was that I wanted to have UPDATING displays of SELECT products... see the problem?

Well actually it was simple. I wanted to be able to select up to 4 merchants and using positive and negative keywords show a display of products.  I had asked for that feature for their updates, but it must have been a low priority.

When I used their updating table feature, I'd get replacement products that were not very related. For example I'd have a table with men's swimsuits and I'd get baby clothes and womens bras appearing to replace out of stock or discontinued items. If  just had a general clothing site that would work, but if I call my page "Men's Swimsuits" and the site is for men's clothing there is a problem.

Yes, I could easily log in and scroll down my list of  "shops" find the offending table, remove the unrelated replacement products, do another search in their interface, and add new products. That process is much longer than just doing what I wanted to do which just takes a minute or two to get the right keyword combination and always have existing products appear on those pages.

While it is very easy to make a product table or "shop", it isn't so easy to keep them updated and relevant using that system. I really tried to keep them updated by logging in once a week and finding unavailable products and replacing them in the Popshops system, but sometimes I'd do that and find the next day that some of the replaced products are gone too! I actually got to the point where over half the products in my displays were invalid!  *sigh* Automation is important if you want to have more than one website.  Why reinvent the wheel and make busy work?  I'd rather update my code once in a while than spend a few hours a day updating product tables.      I suppose that isn't really a problem for someone with just one niche site, but with several or many sites, that's a big headache. As I said, it wasn't the right product for me, but it could be the right product for you.

In the last few months Popshops has been releasing a new API which will use positive keywords. (perhaps only one keyword) which looks like a step in the right direction, but I didn't see how that would integrate with a CMS like for the regular shops. I can't give a review of that system because I only saw an example page linked to a forum thread.  To use that you needed to have a more expensive "Data Pack"  account which now costs $59.99 a month pre-paid discounts (as of September 8, 2009). They have added some information on their website about what that service can do.  I unfortunately don't get enough website traffic to justify that expense.  If you have a high traffic website and you don't mind using an API, this might be a good solution for you. Lower traffic websites probably would find themselves breaking even or worse after subtracting their expenses.  Good economy or bad economy, you still have to renew your domain name every year, and pay for hosting in addition to fees for services like this one.

Conceptually the Data Pack service is an interesting option for people willing to program, but who don't want to go through the set up of getting and importing datafeeds from each merchant on their own hosting account.  If time is more important than money and you want to skip those steps  for your high-traffic website then this might be good for you.

Unfortunately, dear reader, I don't have any real alternative to recommend for what I wanted to do  other than to code your own system.  I found that RSS feeds are the easiest to work with when managing external content. That way if you switch from Wordpress to Joomla or Joomla to Drupal, etc.  you can just figure out how to import RSS and your display will still work.   I coded my own PHP display as RSS taking information from my mysql tables which got their info from merchant datafeed files. Sound complicated? yes, it was. It took me about a year to learn how to program in PHP and at least a couple months learning how to use mysql, automating my datafeed imports and at least a month working on the display and search options.  It isn't for the unmotivated. You have been warned.  :-)

My Love-Hate Relationship with WordPress

I love WordPress, but I hate it too!

I love WordPress because it is easy to use, install, and configure. I also love WordPress because it is updated 2-3 times a year so I don't worry about it not working with the next version of php or mysql.

I hate it because it is getting fat. This last few weeks I've been busy optimizing my own PHP scripts for better perfomance because i noticed some pages loading slowly. I've even redistributed my mysql tables and optimized mysql database table indexes. I also turned off and deleted many WordPress plugins thinking that work help. Yes,  they all did help. Unfortunately they didn't help enough. WordPress too often ends up in my "slow queries" log generated by my shared hosting.

After several months of integration of my php shop scripts with WordPress, I cut the cord!  I commented out the include file that loads the Wordpress backend so I could use the Supercache page caching plugin.

I saved around 10-18 queries!  I don't know why WordPress needs to do around 10-18 queries (depends on the version) just to let me load a plugin on an external page, but that is what Supercache was showing and I finally decided that it wasn't worth it.

Why did it take me so long to do it?  I had to set up my own page caching first.  Fortunately there are several php output or page caching script samples online. I tried one and after finding all of the bugs in the script that kept it from working I fixed it up and have it installed and working.

How much faster are external pages loading?  Comparing the processing time between the supercached versions of my external pages and the time with my own caching script. Some pages are loading between one third and one sixth of the time it took before while others are loading in about the same amount of time.  Page processing time is a good metric, but it isn't precise because it varies according to current server load. If the server is under more load, a script will take a little longer so you have to compare averages.

Another motivating factor in my decision to cut the cord to WordPress on my external pages are the somewhat recent changes to Supercache.  I'm sure Donncha has very valid reasons for doing so, but he removed the notice in HTML comments that a cached page was being served, so I couldn't easily tell if the cache was working or not ( often times it didn't appear to be serving the cache even though the files were being created).

Not really being able to tell if the cache was working or not was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I don't like working on blind faith when it comes to my web hosting and server stability.

Don't you love it when fixing one problem helps solve another? By setting up my own separate cache, I was able to disconnect the WordPress backend and speed up pages. It made me want to do a dance of joy.

What's next in caching?  I am thinking about setting up a menu cache for dynamically created menus on the shop category and shop discount pages.  If you notice an additional speed up in the next few days on those pages, now you'll know why.

Do you cache your php output or menus?  If you haven't already set up caching today!

Affiliate Marketers (and Merchants) Beware of Parasites!

Recently it has come to my attention that affiliate marketers not only have to compete with each other, but also with affiliate networks that directly compete with them though loyalty affiliates, software affiliates, incentive affiliates, and toolbar affiliates. In almost all such cases, they should be called parasites!



They are parasites because they get paid commissions for doing absolutely nothing. The idea behind affiliate marketing is that a marketer promotes a product or service and gets paid a commission for their time and effort involved. Merchants get more name recognition and sales leads sent to their websites.

Parasites don't do any of that. They don't promote the merchant at all, but they get paid a commission on every sale made when the visitor making a purchase has the parasite's web browser toolbar installed. The toolbar overwrites the affiliate tracking cookie (for referral use) and gets credited for the sale.



What about that hard working affiliate who actually sent the visitor to the merchant site? He gets nothing at all even though he might have spent plenty of time working on adding the content that got the visitor interested in making a purchase.

Ok, perhaps you're a merchant and you don't care if the affiliate gets credited or not. You lose money too! If an affiliate tracking cookie isn't set when the visitor arrives, but they have a parasite's toolbar installed, the parasite sets a tracking cookie with their affiliate id and get a commission.  No, they didn't earn it at all. There wasn't any benefit for your company at all, but you lost money.

It hurts the affiliate marketer as well as the merchant. The unbelievable thing is that several affiliate marketing networks allow and even encourage parasites!  Some parasites have even gotten awards and are called "super affiliates" for their high "sales".

Merchants might be wondering why this is a big deal if the big affiliate networks allow it. It is a big deal because most affiliate marketers work very hard and very long days. Every commission counts.  Affiliates will put less time and effort in promoting a merchant on a pro-parasite affiliate network than on a merchant on an anti-parasite, pro-affiliate affiliate network.

If you are a merchant you need to actively go through your list of affiliates and remove parasites. They are often the "super affiliates" at the top of your list that you are losing thousands of dollars a month on.

If you are an affiliate marketer, give preference to affiliate programs on the shareasale.com affiliate network. They remove parasites as they find them because they care about affiliates and merchants.

Merchants looking to start new programs should start them on either of these great networks. It will save some hassle. Yes, a merchant will still need to look for parasites since they try to sneak in, but it will be much less work and the affiliate program will be much more successful over the long term.

Which networks do I enjoy working with the most as an affiliatemarketer?

I have had the pleasure of learning affiliate marketing through trial and error over the last 12 months and that includes several affiliate networks.

Of all of them, I highly recommend two through personal experience. Both gave excellent customer service and both have good tools for using datafeeds, text links, or banners.

• ShareASale

ShareASale is general purpose, but is economical for merchants and have a great system for reporting and viewing stats. It isn't hard to get datafeeds by ftp either. You just need to insert your affiliate id when you use the feed. I do like how SAS's datafeed has more fields.

Using Popshops for Affiliate Marketing Product Tables: Service Review

Affiliate Marketing can be done in many different ways, but one of those is the display of products as a catalog or in an article or post. One service available for making affiliate marketing  product tables is called Popshops. I've used their service and currently have a Pro account which is one step up from their free trial version. I had an enterprise account for a while, but I later decided that current limitations weren't worth the difference in price. Here are some notes, basically a review, of Popshops to help you decide if it is right for you.

Popshops is faster than making a table manually in HTML

It is a time intensive process but using Popshops for handpicked product tables is much faster than making tables yourself.  You save time because it has a very nice graphic interface you can browse a merchant in the left sidebar or do a search for a keyword. When you want to add a product to a "shop" aka product table, you have to click a button, so this is only practical for handpicked products, not for adding hundreds or thousands or products. You'll click finger will go numb and your eyes will glaze over after a few hundred.

You get to set up basic table layout.

With Popshops, you can set the number of columns to display, their widths, product image width, spacing, font, number of characters in the description, and font size. They've recently added a "buy now" button.

Autofeed and automatic replacing of unavailable products is lacking

Popshops autoupdating features are still needing to be improved, their autogenerated results for related products normally show very unrelated products (at least in my experience ie baby clothes and women's tops on a table for men's swimsuits and china cabinets on pages for children's furniture) fortunately you don't have to turn on that feature. so if you are deciding between handpicked product tables using copy/paste and Popshops, go with Popshops, you'll be happy.

Wordpress Plugin

They have a wordpress plugin that allows you to add a shop to the end of a post when it is displayed by Wordpress or easily add the HTML of a product to a Post.

Account Upgrades

They offer different subscription plans starting at $5/month (as of writing this article). If you want RSS (limited to the number of products in a shop), you'll need an enterprise account which is much more expensive.  I wanted to go beyond that limitation, so I ended up writing my own RSS script in PHP. I don't blame them for that. Popshops wasn't designed for RSS, they just added it as another way to display a product table.  They're working on premium services for coupon feeds.

Summary

I found that while "shop" or product table creation was fast and easy, especially with their Wordpress Plugin for adding a shop to a post, keeping shop tables updated is a major chore once you have a few hundred shops in your account.   To be fair they do have a page to show you click tracking and shops with unavailable products. I only wish there was a way to set up keywords and negative or exclusion keywords so the autogenerated products and replacement products would actually be related.

Popshops wasn't and isn't designed to show many products or a catalog or even a category of products from a merchant or a group of merchants so if you are looking to do so you'll probably be happier with webmerge if you want HTML or writing your own PHP script if you want dyamic lists of an entire product category or product catalog. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from doing both or all three.

Am I happy with Popshops? Yes, I am. I am just a bit picky and my needs have grown since I started using it.  Since my newer needs weren't being met, I had to learn PHP and start writing my own product display scripts.  Hopefully they'll address some of the areas that need improvement in the coming years and I'll be able to use it more.

Website Automation is Important

Are you Automating your content and site upkeep?

While there are so many things that must be taken care of with an online business, Internet based businesses need to analyze their processes and procedures to see what can be taken care of in a more efficient and/or automatic manner.

It really doesn't matter what kind of business you have. Whether you are a blogger or a merchant selling tangible goods or perhaps you're somewhere in between like a blogger, you need to see where you can improve.  An investment of a week or two now could save you much more time in the coming months or years.

Check for repetition

If you're like me you probably don't know where to start and you probably started your web site as a hobby or as a supplement to your regular brick-n-mortar physical store.  That's ok, just start with where you are at now.  Ask yourself what tasks have to be done regularly. It might be a good idea to make a list of activities that you have to do every day, every week, and every month.

See which activities are very repetitive. Those activities are good candidates for automation.

Automation Examples

Consider using a CMS

Are you writing your web pages in plain HTML and copy/pasting product information in?  Parts of your website creation process can be automated. You could save the time spent on adding HTML, page layout, and menus, by installing a CMS such as Wordpress, Drupal, or Joomla or a forum like bbpress, or Simple Machines Forum.  By installing a CMS or Forum on your website, you preset the design and categories, and entries get added to menus. You'd just work on adding the content to entries such as blog posts or forum threads.

Automate your product displays

If you are an affiliate marketer or a merchant, you'll want to look into automating your display of products using a database.  In affiliate marketing, many merchants make datafeeds available which are electronic spreadsheets with a list of available products and other relevant information.  Affiliates can use PHP and MySQL to integrate those datafeeds into dynamic pages that visitors can browse or search.

HTML Make-a-Page creators are a short-term solution

While some affiliate networks offer HTML page creation with code ready to copy/paste into a website or blog entry, that static page information will soon become out-of-date and will require updating.

Don't rely on static HTML pages

I had made the mistake of relying too much on static and other difficult-to-update displays on my sites and found myself caught between spending half my time updating existing pages or creating new content. It was very frustrating because it worked, but I didn't know how to progress. I was so busy updating product information that I didn't have time to write original content!

Learn PHP and MySQL or hire a programmer

In this case you'll most likely want to hire a programmer or learn PHP and MySQL yourself.  I know it sounds complicated, and yes, PHP is a programming language unlike HTML which is just simple coding, but once you finish your first couple scripts, you'll find that it isn't too difficult with a little planning and patience.  If you are an affiliate marketer you'll need at least a couple scripts. You'll need one to import datafeeds into your MySQL database and another for displaying products. You can then expand your ability by allowing user search or by displaying products by keyword, category, or really any other feature you can think of.

Automate your XML Sitemap

Another great option for automation is your XML Sitemap, also called your Google Sitemap.  You can write your Sitemap in PHP and submit your php script to Google Webmasters.  If you have dynamic content this is crucial otherwise you'd have to do it manually!  That could take weeks for a large website.

If you have a small website, you might not think it matters, but what about when your site is larger in a year or two? Your Sitemap was easy to update manually when you had only 30 pages, but it won't be so easy-to-update when it has 200.  If you later delete a page from your site, you'll have to look through 200 pages to find it while a well written sitemap script will include all pages that currently exist.

Standardize your website design

If you have multiple websites, consider what goes into maintaining and updating them.  Are you customizing each site, or are you making different aspects modular?  If you need to update your CMS or your custom scripts, could you copy the files over to the other site and have them just work?   By standardizing things like page width, and locations where your scripts and software are installed, updating could just be a matter of uploading everything to the same place on each site.   There are tricks you can do in PHP that let you get the IP address and website name which you might need in the script, so instead of having to open and configure your configuration file, you could tell your script to look up the domain and IP it is running on and do different things based on that information.   By autoconfiguring your scripts, you'll save plenty of time when you need to upgrade. I only wish CMS designers would do the same thing!

Servers are good workers

Servers once set up and running can save you plenty of time once everything is set up. Servers don't get tired, sick, or bored. They don't limit themselves to business hours either. Any activity that you can give them is going to be much cheaper than paying someone or spending the time to a task by yourself. Even with shared hosting, you just go to your webserver's control panel and add a "Cron job". Cron jobs just tell a server to run a script using the frequency that you set. So if you want it to run a backup, or a datafeed import at 2:00 am, just set it up. If you can write or pay for a script to do a task, you can later set it up as a Cron job, your script will run, and the task will be done, rain or shine, or even when you're on vacation!

Who should an affiliate marketer promote Famous well-known brands or smaller companies?

You probably have noticed as an affiliate that there are thousands of different affiliate programs available to promote in 4 large affiliate marketing networks and many smaller networks and of course the many in-house programs for individual merchants.

One of my first questions as a new affiliate was "Which merchants or which affiliate programs should I join?". It can be very baffling.  How do you decide when you are still green?  The answer is really not that complicated.

First of all, you must consider the website you are working on. Instead of joining every program under the sun, pick the topic of your website and look for programs for that topic or issue.  Don't worry about the name of the company yet.

Secondly, Look at those merchants/affiliate programs and check the cookie duration and the commission percent.  The cookie duration is the time from when the website visitor clicks on an affiliate link during which the affiliate will get credit for a sale. If the cookie duration is 30 days then if a visitor makes a purchase before the 30 days are over, the affiliate earns the commission. If the visitor returns to the merchant site on day 31 and makes a purchase, no commission is paid.

You should avoid promoting affiliate programs with short cookies because most visitors don't really buy on the first day unless the products are very cheap consumables. The more expensive a product is, the more likely that it will not be purchased on the first day.  The merchant should offer a cookie of at least 30 days. 60 days or more is ideal.

The commission percent  is the percent of the sale not including shipping or handling that is paid to the affiliate. The percent will vary greatly, but in general you'll get around 10% for most tangible products and you should expect at least 20% for digital products since no manufacturing was involved and digital products can be e-mailed or downloaded automatically so no human was involved in processing the order.

You'll find many, probably, hundreds or thousands of websites telling you to only sell digital products that offer 50% commission or higher. I completely disagree. Most of those programs (typically offered on Clickbank) are crap,  yes worthless junk.  Not only that but those products are expensive crap.  Charging the same price or more than a print book would cost.  You might make a sale, but the visitor will not be very likely to come back to your site for products, advice, etc.  Can you sleep well at night knowing that you indirectly sold someone expensive junk?  I cannot.

I am not saying that digital products are bad. Many digital products are very nice. It is just that the ones offering 50% or more in commission are typically crap.  I have successfully promoted quality digital products (that were also much cheaper than the crappy ones) and best of all I can sleep well at night knowing that I let visitors know about products that meet their needs.  Electronics, computers, and books typically give the lowest commission of around 4%.

After you review merchants in the same category as your website, apply to those that have a decent cookie and commission.  Many will reject you. Wait a couple days and see who has accepted you. During your wait, work on your website design and add some non-affiliate content.

Look at your list of approved affiliate programs. You'll see a mix of famous well-known brands and others that you've never heard of. Here is the simple answer.

Do tests and see what works.  Some offer lower commissions and shorter cookies, but their websites have fewer leaks and great products with good prices. Others will offer high commissions but have few products or the products are much more expensive.

Promote each program separately and in the same way. After a month, check your conversions and total earnings for each one and compare them.  If the famous brand didn't convert into enough sales to make up for its lower commission percent then drop them.  At the end of the day the important thing is that you make money and that you can pay your bills.  Programs that don't convert should be dropped if you have competitor products on the same site that do convert. You need to remove the non-performing merchant's products because they are taking away clicks to the program that is working.

If none of your programs convert to any sales in a month then check your website and change the way that you are promoting them. Not every marketing method will work for everyone or every website.

Rejected by Affiliate Marketing Managers and Merchants?

Introduction

If you are going to do Affiliate marking or in other words, become an affiliate, you need to sign-up with merchants or outsourced programs. This can either be done through an affiliate network or via an in-house program. Regardless of whether you sign up with an affiliate program via a network or not you are going to be facing rejection. In fact many merchants and affiliate program managers are what I call deny-happy. Why, you ask, because they deny affiliate program applications from affiliates on a whim. Most don't even bother telling you why. Instead of letting you know why, they send a form letter with lots of possibilities which most likely none of which apply to you, or worse yet they just send a form letter saying that you are not a 'good fit' and that it doesn't reflect on you or your sites. They do not actually tell you on what it is actually based on.

Personal rejection and denial examples

Sometimes their replies are worse than their lack their of.  I had applied for the Target affiliate program thinking that their products would be a good match for a housewares site that I was just starting.  I got a reply from them saying that I had been denied because I was missing a Privacy Statement.  I don't know which site they were referring to so I went through each and every site that I had and I added a privacy statement and I e-mailed them. I got another reply stating that they couldn't find the privacy statement on my site. If the privacy statement were a snake, it would have bit them. Since I am patient, I sent the URL to a couple of them for two sites.I later got a form letter stating that I had been rejected from their affiliate program.  I made the extra effort to meet their requirements and they rejected me anyway and without comment. I did not bother continuing the application.

Another example is of the time around November that I had applied for TinyPrints's affiliate program. They sell greeting cards and considering how I have several websites about holidays, I thought that they'd be a good match. People often buy greeting cards and other cards for Christmas, right?  Anyway, I had applied for the program and got rejected with no comment. I reapplied to join and again I was rejected. I then contacted the affiliate program manager and I explained how I had holiday sites so it is relevant. I got a reply from the manager agreeing and telling me that I'd be approved. I reapplied several more times and each time I was denied.  I of course was very frustrated by this, so I e-mailed the AM and asked what was wrong and this time I was finally approved.

I started adding links to my very relevant websites and guess what? Not a single sale has tracked (registered) for this merchant although I get plenty of click-throughs from my websites. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you are being denied by affiliate managers when applying for affiliate marketing programs, do not worry about it. Just promote their competitors.

 What you can do to reduce the chances of being rejected or having your affiliate application denied

There are different things that you can do to reduce the possibility that deny-happy affiliate manages and merchants will reject you.

1. Display in the affiliate network profile the most relevant websites first. I mean if you are applying for a housewares affiliate marketing program, list your housewares website as your main or primary site. Most affiliate managers are very lazy and they won't bother to even look at the names of your websites to see if a related site is listed.

2. Make sure that your listed websites are not "under construction". They should be up and running and be attractive with some content.

3. If you are rejected or denied and you really think that is a good program for you, then e-mail the affiliate manager and explain how you'd market their site and products on your relevant website.

4. If you truly think  that this program is the best and the e-mail didn't work, then look up the affiliate manager's telephone number and call them.

My recommendation

In all honesty, there are few good reasons for an affiliate manager to reject an affiliate. I'll go into reasons and excuses made by affiliate managers in another post.  You really should not bother with most of those companies. If you get rejected and your websites are good, look for another company in the market and sign up with them. Yes, that is right, sign up with a competitor. no, it isn't blood-lust or my desire to get back at them. It is simply the fact that you are working on a website and you need programs to promote.

The best affiliate management programs are the ones that auto-approve or approve applications within 24 hours. I think If I go through the affiliate programs that bring the best conversions, they all approved within 24 hours or immediately.

What kind of affiliate marketing websites can I build?

OK, so you have already read my articles on what affiliate marketing is, and affiliate network, You have also read about how to get started. Your only problem now is to determine how you want to present your content and what kind of content you will use on your site.

There are many different ways to make an affiliate marketing website here are a few:

• Coupon and Rebate Sites - You offer online coupons to visitors along with other deals.


• Online "Mall" sites - Everything under the sun is sold here just like at your local shopping center.


• PPC - Pay per click (you spend money on per click advertising such as Google Adwords.


• Content Rich - You give information here. Basically reference material, tutorials, informative articles, etc.


• Product Review - You review actual products and services and you give details and honest ratings.


• Price Comparison - You show visitors the cheapest products.


• Product Catalogs - List products like a catalog.


• Mixed-Method website - You can mix and match the other methods to find the best one for the products and services that you're promoting.

If you are very knowledgeable about your website's theme then it would be the easiest for you to start with a content rich site. Write about your experiences and make tutorials, Make lists and how to articles. If you are not very familiar with your website's theme then one of the other methods would be the best. If you don't know what you're talking about, people will see right through it. No one needs regurgitated garbage info that you can find on thousands of other websites. Coupon sites are not difficult to set up, but they require constant updating because coupons expire so they'll have to be removed or replaced frequently. Mall sites require good organization and planning or they just become a bloated mess.

I cannot tell you which are the best for making money online with affiliate marketing. It depends a lot on your topic, your affiliate programs, and your knowledge of the topic. Experiment and see what works for you and duplicate that on new websites and change what does not work until it does.

How to get started with affiliate marketing?

I'm sure that many of you are interested in affiliate marketing due to the flexibility it gives. Perhaps you just want to make a few extra dollars or pounds for your next vacation or to save for retirement. That is ok too! You can put as much time and effort into affiliate marketing as you want because you are your own boss.

The problem for many is how to get started and people make some bad decisions, waste thousands of dollars on gimmicks, and then give up. You won't be making thousands of dollars per day unless you spend hundreds on advertising your sites, but you don't have to! I have been doing affiliate marketing since September 2007 and I haven't spend on advertising at all except for a coupon I got for Google Adwords for $25 I got from my web host. Without spending a dollar on advertising, I made almost $400 in December even though I've only been doing this for a couple hours a day for a few months. If I had put in 40 hour weeks I would have made much more.

Here are the basic steps involved:

1. Plan! What kinds of products and services do you want to promote? Pick something that interests you and that you have at least a little knowledge about. If you love to cook, you might want to have a website about gourmet foods and kitchen products. If you like sports, perhaps you'll go for exercise equipment, supplements, and sportswear. In any case pick a topic you enjoy! It will be difficult to motivate yourself to work if it isn't something you like.

2. Brainstorm! Make a mind-map of the topic that you chose and then make an outline and think about how you might organize your website. Also think about the visual aspects of your website so that it will also be attractive. Decide what kind of interactive or social features will benefit visitors. What kind of content will you use?

3. Pick a name! You need to give your website a name so make a list of possible names based on your topic and mind-map and put them in order.

4. Sign up for web hosting! You need a home for your website, so sign up for a cheap shared web hosting account. I recommend signing up with BlueHost or HostGator. In fact, I am currently using Bluehost for all of my current websites.

5. Register your website when you sign up for hosting.

6. Start your site using either HTML pages or a CMS program such as Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Many web hosts have a quick install option for CMS or blogging software. Both BlueHost and HostGator have special quick installs for WordPress and Joomla! called Fantastico.

7. Sign up for affiliate marketing programs for your topic. I recommend starting out with .

8, Start adding content and mix relevant and useful affiliate links in with your content. Don't hard sell! You are providing a benefit for the visitor.

9. Integrate a website statistics service into your website, so you can see what works and what doesn't. I suggest using Google Analytics which is free. Also check your statistics in the affiliate network to see where your sales are coming from and which programs are converting to sales.

10. If a program doesn't convert and you know that your content is good, replace the program with one of another merchant and see if you get better results. When I first started I had used some programs that just wouldn't convert. I tried some others and they did. What do I mean by convert? Your statistics will tell you when a visitor clicks on an affiliate link on your website, If the visitor makes a purchase on the merchants site and the sale registers, it "converted". In other words, the click through converted into a sale.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is a kind of marketing done on the internet that depends on an action taking place for compensation to occur.

It is really quite simple.  Merchants need to sell their products, but can't afford to have many sales people since that is a huge up front cost that won't necessarily be compensated for. Additionally sales people are typically paid base salaries and get perks which sometimes include company cars plus retirement plans and health insurance. Needless to say a huge sales force using the traditional approach is a losing proposition.

 What is it basically?

Affiliate marketing pays the sales person who works independently only for the sales and sometimes leads that he or she generates though online promotions.  Typically the Affiliate (independent marketer) is paid by the merchant a commission that is a percent of a base sale. It could also be a fixed amount.

 What are the benefits to affiliate marketing?

The are benefits for both sides.

 What are the benefits for the merchant?

The merchant saves money on benefits and knows for every commission paid, the company made money as well. Meaning all affiliate marketing program expense is covered by revenue.

 What are the benefits for the affiliate?

The affiliate wins because he or she can work anywhere they can find a computer and internet connection (for example your bedroom in your PJs. or even your home office).  This means that the affiliate could even become a world traveler if he had a portable computer and connected at hotels or used cheap internet cafes.

Another great advantage is the work schedule. An affiliate can set his on work schedule. He doesn't have to worry about calling in sick or getting to bed early or getting up early for that long commute. No need to worry about requesting vacation time or family leave time.  An affiliate can work the number of hours per day or week that he or she wants to spend.

Save money on transportation. If you live in a big city, you or someone you live with probably spends an hour or more to get to the office every day spending money on gas and eventually car repairs. With the cost of a car and gasoline going up every year, consider how much money you'd save working at home.

The affiliate also benefits from the knowledge that he won't be fired. Yes, a merchant could remove him from its program, but there are thousands of affiliate marketing programs available so it is just a matter of removing the old and adding new.

Probably the biggest advantage is that there is no limit on how much money an affiliate can earn.

What are the disadvantages of affiliate marketing?

Like anything else in life there are disadvantages.

What are the disadvantages for the merchant?

The disadvantages of the merchant are very few and mostly perceptual. One of them is the cost of maintaining the program. A merchant will need someone working full time to manage the program as a contact person and to handle sales tracking and accounting. If someone isn't available, the merchant could outsource the program by paying a monthly fee to another company to handle the program. The perceived disadvantage is the lack of control. Many managers in today's business are taught to have lots of meetings and to request and read many reports and do metrics to micromanage their salespeople.  Affiliate marketing cuts all that waste out of the equation. No reports are requested directly from the affiliate. The only statistics they'd pull would be from the sales tracking system. Of course, it is really a benefit (micromanagement is a waste of time).

 What are the disadvantages for the affiliate?

First of all, there are no benefits, so the affiliate has to put aside some of his money for health insurance and retirement plans. There is no paid vacation or sick leave either. If you are just getting started with affiliate marketing don't quit your day job until you are making enough money to pay your bills (and Christmas sales don't count).

Secondly, there are expenses. web hosting, domain name registration, taxes, Internet Service Provider bill if you work from home, and of course you need a computer. The up front costs or cost of entry is really quite low. I'll explain in other posts what you'll need to get started.

Working on your own means you need to be self motivated, a self-starter.  If you need a boss to make you work then you're not ready to work at home. Your earnings correspond to the amount of work you put into it.  Don't expect to be making thousands of dollars a month working only an hour or two a day.

Last of all, there is a social cost. Some people will miss the social aspects of working in an office. To them working at home is lonely or depressing. This can be overcome by setting your own schedule. Plan time for work and time for play.

 What are the responsibilities of an affiliate?

An affiliate is only responsible for the promotion of the merchant's products or services. This involves the placement of links that are either graphic or text, and keeping their website or websites up-to-date.  The affiliate should keep contact information current so that payment and tax forms are received without delay.

What are the responsibilities of a merchant?

A merchant handles customer service, shipping of the product, product returns, sales tracking, and payments to affiliates. In other words, the merchant handles everything except the online marketing done by the affiliate.

 Summary

Affiliate marketing is a pay per action system where sales is outsourced to independent contractors who are paid a commission on a per sale basis which results in lower fixed costs for the merchant and great flexibility for the marketer.  Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but instead a valid efficient system which gives back in proportion to the work put into it.  Affiliate marketing is NOT  multi-level or Network Marketing whereby someone makes money off of the person lower down on a pyramid. Affiliate marketing involves a direct relationship between the merchant and contractor or the Outsourced Program Manager and the contractor.

CPM Advertising for sites with plenty of traffic, and poor conversions

CPM Introduction

CPM Advertising refers to 'banner ads' shown on a website where the advertiser agrees to pay a specific amount per thousand impressions. This is different from the other kinds of monetization which I have mentioned in previous posts being CPA (cost per action for affiliate marketing, and CPC (cost per click like in Google Adsense). Many websites get plenty of traffic due to community features such as forums. Reoccurring traffic typically causes 'ad blindness' whereby visitors automatically don't see advertisements and therefore won't click on nor buy products that are promoted. In cases like this a CPM banner type ad can keep a trickly of funds coming to the owner of a site. It probably won't be as high as the other systems, but it would be consistent as long as the website continues to have fresh content.

Direct Negotiation

Many webmasters will directly negotiate advertising with advertisers after placing an 'advertise here' ad. When someone clicks on the announcement, he is taken to a page with contact information and possibly with pricing information. This method can be very time consuming and it can also generate higher income. A webmaster could even determine a monthly fee instead of a CPM fee.

Using Advertising Agencies

For webmasters who do not want to go through the entire process due to time or desire, there are advertising companies available to handle the process for you and send you a check and possibly PayPal once your site has earned enough. The problem some people find is that their website has a lot of traffic in their eyes, but not a lot in the eyes of the advertising company. If you find yourself in that situation, you might have to use another system until you reach the qualifying level. Each advertising company has its own requirement and CPM payment rates and payment methods, so it might not be a bad Idea to apply for and test several at a time to see which works the best for your website.

Here are some Advertising companies that specialize in CPM

* can pay publishers via PayPal (at the time this post was made) ** can pay publishers via PayPal, but does not absorb the PayPal fee

Advertising.com, Casale Media and ValueClick's FastClick place cookies! I don't recommend using those programs.

• Tribal Fusion (min. 2,000 unique visitors per day, min. payment $50 NET45)


• ValueClick Media* (min 3,000 Impressions/mo. min. payment $25 NET20)


• DoubleClick


• WidgetBucks* (CPM for Traffic from countries other than USA or Canada)


• RealTechNetwork* ( 12,500 unique impressions per month,min. payment $20 NET20)


• Adconion** (min. payment $50 NET30)


• Burst Media (min. 5000 impressions/mo. no user submitted content i.e. no chat or forums! min. payment $50, 45+)

Many people might be better off using Google Adsense along with one of these or another monetization strategy.

Shareasale is one of the best Affiliate marketing Networks

About Shareasale, a great Affiliate Marketing Network

One way to make money online with a home business is by being an affiliate marketer. Affiliate marketing is NOT a get-rich-quick activity. It takes a lot of work and time just like any other job, but it does have its advantages of simplicity. In this post, I want to let you know about the Affiliate Marketing Network Shareasale.

An Affiliate Marketing Network is a company that provides a common interface between affiliate marketers and merchants which offer affiliate marketing programs. They provide integrated sales tracking and payment for a fee to the merchant. The merchant saves time by outsourcing some of its tasks while the marketer gets merged payments and one site features.

What is Shareasale?

Shareasale is a great Affiliate marketing network with many affiliate marketing programs.

Reporting &Tracking

It offers real time click and sales tracking through its varied reports. I personally have checked my product and merchant links and they have updated immediately. I use two reports almost exclusively. Today's stats and activity summary.

Today's stats only shows a list of merchant's programs that have been clicked through on the same day. It resets at 11pm Central Time. This is useful for testing new links for tracking and to see which pages people are clicking through.

Activity Summary gives you a month to date and total figures by merchant so you can check overall performance. Since it lists all of the merchants that I have signed up for, it is a good place to make sure everything is running smoothly. If I don't see any clicks then I check to make sure that I've put up links and that they're working. I can also click 'get links' to find products, banners, and data feeds to use on my website(s).

Another useful report is past revenue which shows you your earnings by month.

Link Creation

Link Creation is simple with shareasale, but it is up to each affiliate manager to make those links available so the number of links available do vary.

Most merchants offer text links, banner ad links, and product links. Some merchants offer data feeds which is a type of database that can be integrated into a website using special software. Very few merchants will offer widgets.

If you like to use plain old HTML on your webpages, you can use the "Make a Page" feature. "Make a Page" makes HTML coded pages that you can upload on your website using your criteria.

Program Management

You can easily join different merchant affiliate programs through searches, categories, and advanced search. The categories aren't perfect but they are good enough to find what you need in a minute. Before you join you can check information such as the company URL, Percent of commission, Earnings, and tracking cookie duration. Many programs will automatically approve you so that you can start promoting right away. Others will requre a review by the affiliate manager.

If you ever get denied from an affiliate program that you believe will be a good match, send an e-mail to the affiliate manager and let them know how you are planning to promote them and most likely they will approve you. This is common when you have more than one website and the manager only looks at the first site which more than likely isn't related.

Payment options

Sign up is free for affiliates. When someone buys a product through a link, graphic, text or otherwise, on your website, a commission is earned and the amount is reported at the top of your Shareasale administration page as well as in the reports. Once your account reaches $50 or a higher amount that you manually set, you get paid.

Currently Shareasale offers direct deposit for United States accounts (and possible some other countries), check via FexEx for a $20-$55 fee (a good reason to see a higher minimum payment!), or check sent by US mail/postal service which is slow but doesn't incur a charge. Getting checks internationally even if only to Mexico can take weeks.

Conclusion

Except for the lack of PayPal or Mexican bank deposit, I'm happy with the Shareasale program. They seem to be more responsive than the other networks and their click tracking seems to work better meaning fewer lost sales. If I were starting over today I would have gone first to Shareasale and then to the other networks.

Go Ahead and sign up today, you won't regret it. Join shareasale.com, Earn Cash!

In-house affiliate marketing often brings better commissions and more control to merchants

Affiliate marketing is often a good solution to help monetize your website. It is also a good way to sell your products online, since you only pay a commission when a sale is made. It is cheaper than paying a full time sales person when you have a small company since you don't have to worry about benefits, recruiting, etc. A company can set up in-house affiliate marketing programs or join an affiliate marketing network.

From a website or blog owner in-house affiliate marketing programs can be good since they will often pay higher commissions. From a merchant's perspective in-house affiliate marketing programs can be good since it means they don't have to pay fees to a network.

The negative view for a website owner is that he or she will be paid one check or deposit (if available) per marketing program, so he or she will have to spend some time making sure they were paid instead of one check or deposit per network which is easier to keep track of.

The negative view for a merchant is that someone at the company has to manage the in-house program and somone has to keep track of payments to each associate and someone has to actually make the payments. Marketing networks allow them to pay for every commission with one payment made to the network. The network later distributes the payment to each associate.

It is difficult to say which is a better choice. Both affiliate marketing networks and In-house affiliate marketing programs have their pros and cons.

If you are a website owner and you are interested in advertising a specific merchant's products via an affiliate program, check their website and check the affiliate networks to compare their offers. If the in-house program offer is the same then the network is likely a better choice.

A merchant deciding between offering in-house affiliate marketing programs and joining an affiliate network, should determine which will have a lower cost and higher returns. They should compare fees against costs of managing a program.

Affiliate Marketing Networks

Affiliate marketing via Affiliate Marketing networks

While many companies offer affiliate programs directly from their websites, It is also important to consider the time it takes for you to manage programs' advertising and promotions and that you consider the reporting and payment options.

Here are the largest Affiliate marketing networks that I have signed up for. I will later post about my experiences using them.

• ShareASale


• Linkshare


• Commission Junction


• Performics


• Clickbank

Why should you sign up with an affiliate marketing network?

Well, there are many companies which don't offer in-house affiliate marketing programs, so you'll have to sign up with their associated network to be able to promote their products. If you like to promote products from many companies, you might prefer getting one or two paychecks instead of many. If you live outside of the US like me, you'll appreciate having to worry about fewer checks. If an affiliate program allows payment via PayPal or direct deposit to a Mexican account it is even better.

Why shouldn't you join an affiliate marketing network?

With the exception of ShareASale. I haven't yet done any tests, but I have seen examples of affiliate clicks being stolen. Typically this click piracy comes via web browser plugins which 'offer' discounts or promotions to typical internet users. They call these 'loyalty' programs, but behind the scenes they change the tracking cookie from that of the person who is promoting the product to that of the web browser plugin. They make the commission even though they did absolutely nothing at all while the person who worked hard or even paid to promote a product gets nothing. Although their websites say they go against piracy, I have seen examples of piracy that steal clicks. The only way the commission can be stolen is by replacing the tracking code in the cookie with ANOTHER TRACKING CODE. Therefore all they would have to do is cancel the affiliate account(s) being used with loyaltyware/Parasiteware. Parasite software is bad even if a customer arrives directly to a website without a referral. The parasite web browser plugin inserts its own cookie and makes a commission, again without providing any benefit. The company pays a commission that it wouldn't have had to pay. It is possible for an in-house affiliate marketing program could also be affected by parasites, but it is much less likely.