Make Money Online

The first day of the Affiliate Summit expo welcomed thousands of affiliates, agencies, vendors, merchants and networks all converging at the Rio in Las Vegas for a jam-packed day of discussions, face-to-face meetings, and conferences. Some of the great benefits of the event for all those involved were:

Putting faces to emails: Being in the affiliate marketing industry, the majority of our communications with partners, merchants and networks is done via email and phone. In some cases, we have worked with partners and networks for several years, without ever meeting face to face. However, with the Affiliate Summit, AMWSO had an excellent opportunity to meet a variety of our long-standing partners and networks in person and put actual faces to the emails we contact virtually every week, such as Vinny Lingham CEO of Synthasite, Dan Foster, Account executive with Performics and Michael C. Jones, COO of Pepperjam Network.

Meeting new affiliates: A vital part of growing AMWSO programs is bringing new partners to our merchants and while many affiliates tend to be a quiet, rather secretive bunch, it was refreshing to have the chance at the Affiliate Summit venue to meet new affiliates in person in a wide range of verticals, who are looking to expand their revenue streams and bolster their commission incomes with the more than 35 merchants AMWSO manages.

Seeking new partnerships with CPA and up-and-coming affiliate networks: Another value from participating at Affiliate Summit is investigating new opportunities for AMWSO merchants that are not exclusive to their affiliate network, to reach out and expand their offering into the rapidly growing CPA and affiliate network space. Some of the interesting CPA and Affiliate networks at the event were Canadian Sponsors, an affiliate network focused on the Canada market and Revenue Loop, an affiliate network emphasizing transparency, and Affnet, a CPA network centered around financial and diet offers.

Regarding the conferences taking place at Affiliate Summit, one of the most exciting and interesting presentations was that of Will Reynolds, CEO of SEER, who talked about “How to Futureproof Your SEO Efforts”. Here is a list of the helpful and mostly free tools that were recommended during the presentation:

SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool
Use this tool to start small and stay realistic in your SEO efforts.

MSN Ad Center Intelligence keyword research and optimization tool with Excel 2007 plug-in
Use this to create pivot tables and research popular terms with actual search volume numbers data and seamless integration with MS Excel 2007. (Note: the plug-in won’t work on older versions of Excel such as Excel 2003)

Google Trends
While Google trends doesn’t feature actual search and click volume numbers, it is a good start for identifying what people are looking for on SEs and what kind of content you can create to acquire new traffic sources.

Tube Mogul
One of the key advice from the presenation was to develop a “Digital Asset Inventory” such as videos. Use this tool to upload your video and distribute to many sites at once.

Yahoo Search Assist
This is a great tool on Yahoo results pages that include the terms and phrases you are looking for anywhere in the query. For example if you type in “Football” into Yahoo search assist, it will automatically suggest “Fantasy Football” because that is the most popular result clicked on for the term football.

Google Suggest
While not quite as intuitive as Yahoo Search Assist, because it orders suggestions based on the first keyword typed into the search box, it also can offer keyword directions for your SEO research.

Touchgraph – Google browser
Use this tool to see how your site is doing in relation to competitors on Google

Quantcast
Use this tool to identify keyword volume on brand names

Copernic Tracker
Although one of the only paid tools recommended, the price point of $49.95 is relatively reasonable considering it allows you to track changes in code on any competing website.

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Affiliate Summit Update : Day 1

According to Shawn Collin’s Affstat Report the average salary for an in-house manager is $50,000 a year and up. Now, factor in health and other benefits, desk space, infrastructure, those costs rise significantly. To support an in-house affiliate manager, a business must plan to spend at least $70,000 – $90,000 in overhead. If the in-house manager decides to leave the company, all of the knowledge and the relationship history usually walks out the door with the manager.

Additionally, it may be difficult to find an experienced affiliate manager within a specific geographical area. Some larger organizations leave the affiliate program in the care of a junior level marketing staffer. This can be a mistake with lasting consequences. A well run affiliate program can be responsible for 10-20% or more of overall company revenue. Likewise, with the advantages of added revenue and reach, there are dangers in not carefully managing an affiliate program. Brand messages may be damaged and revenue from other channels pillaged via malware and parasiteware.

Most OPM firms charge either a flat fee plus revenue share, or at least a monthly minimum revenue share. Generally the monthly minimum of flat fee is between $2000-$5000 a month.

Now also consider the other benefits an OPM brings: experience, relationships, knowledge, and stability. An OPM has established working relationships with many if not all of the top performing affiliates. They’ve built a history of performance, and generally an affiliate will know the style of any certain OPM such as does the OPM have a stance against parasiteware, or are they accessible?

In relation to the experience benefits, the cost savings strongly favor an advantage to outsourcing an affiliate program. Focus on the business, do what you do best, and leave the success and growth of a well-managed experience program to experts who are focused on growing your business.

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Affiliate Marketing: Outsourcing (OPMs) is More Cost Effective Than Hiring In-House

Every now and then, we update the AdSense Terms and Conditions to make sure they’re in line with policies across Google, and to prepare for future changes to the products and services we offer. As part of these regular updates, you’ll soon sign in to your account and see that the Terms have been updated, prompting you to read through and accept them.

This time around, most of the changes to the Terms and Conditions fall into two broad categories: 1) future products and features and 2) privacy requirements. Specifically, one of the main changes is that the terms anticipate future products that may become available in other advertising formats and mediums, for example Gadget Ads. As we look forward to monetizing more online and offline content, we’ve re-worded some portions of the terms to make them applicable across a broader array of media and formats — anticipating, for example, that future products may be priced, paid, or managed differently than current ones.

We’ve also added some specific requirements that make it necessary for publishers to post and abide by a transparent privacy policy that users see. According to this policy, publishers must notify their users of the use of cookies and/or web beacons to collect data in the ad serving process. This change relates to advertisers’ use of innovative products and features like Gadget Ads and other offerings in the future.

The changes aren’t limited to the areas above, however; we’ve made small changes throughout, so it’s a good idea for you to review them thoroughly before accepting.

Posted by Julie Beckmann – AdSense Publisher Support

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Updated Terms and Conditions

I was recently looking to buy tickets for a sporting event online. I knew exactly what event I wanted to attend, where the event was being held, and at what time. When I visited the particular site that listed the event, it didn’t provide clear ordering instructions. After studying the site for a few minutes, I found a place to buy tickets. When I clicked to buy the tickets, I was taken to a completely different website.

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Keeping It Simple: The Online Buying Process

Here are some pictures and a clip from the awesome ShareASale “Under the Stars” party that took place on Sunday, February 24th at the 2-story Sky Villas on the top …

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ShareASale “Under the Stars” Party at Affiliate Summit

Here are some pictures from the PartnerMaker party co-sponsored by AMWSO that took place Saturday, February 23, 2008 at the Wine Cellar of the Rio Suites Hotel in Las Vegas.

James Martell of Affiliate Marketers Boot Camp

Kurt Lohse, founder and CEO of super-affiliate KeyCode and Jamie Birch of Converseon

David Delisle and Jeff Molander of The PartnerMaker

The PartnerMaker Party at Affiliate Summit