Make Money Online

In yesterday’s blog post, we delved into brand bidding, as it relates to merchants. Today, we are re-examining brand bidding from the affiliate’s perspective, with at look at some trends, consequences and some good old fashion advice.

Brand bidding is when an affiliate targets specific keywords associated with a brand, as opposed to a generic word, such as a noun or adjective that describes the product. Usually when brand bidding, an affiliate is bidding on a trademarked name, and is often therefore “competing” directly with the merchant.

Every merchant will have different policies when it comes to brand bidding, so it makes for good practice to check out a merchant’s Terms & Conditions as you join a program. If you’re not sure, or the policy seems unclear, reach out to the affiliate manager to seek clarification. Going ahead with brand bidding without permission could lead to a myriad of negative outcomes, including having your sales declined, missing out on a performance bonus, being out-of-pocket for your PPC investment and even being kicked out of a program completely.

Many merchants may not allow bidding on their brand name, but may allow bidding on misspellings or variations of their brand name. Either way, affiliates should consider the cost of brand bidding. With other affiliates bidding on these keywords, as well as merchants, the costs can be high, and depending on what an affiliate has in mind in terms of ROI, may well be out of their spending budget.

That being said, it’s not just about how many people are bidding on a keyword that will determine your PPC price. Relevancy and quality content are equally important here, and may in fact play a more critical role in determining your bid price. As a general guideline, the better your landing page, the lower your bid price, so keep this in mind when investing in PPC.

For affiliates, it really is paramount to be in line with a merchant’s rules and regulations, especially concerning their brand name. It’s in your best interest to create long-lasting relationships with merchants that are based on loyalty and trust. The benefits of creating this kind of positive relationship are numerous, and may indeed lead to exclusive promotions, co-branded marketing tools and even the exclusive use of keywords.

Originally posted here:
Brand Bidding: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly Part II

A recent article on ClickZ.com cites that businesses in the Entertainment and Health industries paid more for lead gen services delivering “premium” details “during the second half of 2009.” Another clear sign that lead generation or lead gen is big business for companies, especially those in affiliate marketing. Thousands of companies in the affiliate marketing industry specialize in lead generation to acquire new customers. There is a strong preference for the ease with which an affiliate can get paid commissions simply for referring customers through a lead form rather than an action that requires a credit card. As such, affiliates get a bit overzealous about generating revenue and forget that merchants have specific needs for their products and services, too. That said, an affiliate should be aware of what exactly the merchant needs from them, in order for both sides of the business to benefit from lead gen campaigns.

Evaluating Traffic Placements
Affiliates often are driven to sign up to an affiliate program when the payout and the offer looks like an attractive fit. However, these days, traffic placements are more comprehensive now that social media has entered the mix. A paid search affiliate should ask more questions about whether or not a merchant will permit things like brand name bidding and direct link. Even more important, some merchants may not be too keen on lead gen affiliates using social media to generate leads. For instance, Planning Family is a great offer that has gained popularity with Share Results affiliates, but this merchant does not allow affiliates to generate leads via channels like Facebook or Twitter. To be certain about what methods of promotion are accepted when generating leads, go directly to the affiliate manager of the program.

Evaluating the Potential Customer
Affiliates should evaluate whether or not they have the right prospective customer base for the product or service. A database of 100k US-based female users may seem like the perfect fit for an offer like Free Stuff For Your Baby, but what percentage of them are expectant or new moms? What is their average age of their children? Do they have any other children? What is their average income and do they respond to products for babies? This is just something to think about before launching a campaign for a merchant that is targeting a niche market.

Quality not Quantity
Lead gen affiliates often make the mistake of thinking that when generating leads for a merchant that it’s all about volume. This isn’t always the case. A merchant like eLearners may be interested in a high volume of education leads, especially during peak school months like January and September. However, unless they see those prospective students actually enrolling in the months ahead (especially during a downturn economy), it’s not very profitable for them to payout a lucrative amount for each lead. So, evaluate the quality, by asking the affiliate manager of the program for merchant feedback. Also, Share Results Traffic and Transaction Reports are available to use in order to determine just how many web visitors are clicking through specific tools and are successfully filling out and completing a lead form.

Negotiating Commission
Some affiliates have come to us requesting higher commission on an offer before they’ve even signed up to an affiliate program. While $1.20 CPL may not seem like a lucrative payout for a lead, there’s more to consider than just the commission. Remember that merchants have to look at how much they can offer based on their budget. They may only have a small margin to work with and need to be reassured that those leads will actually convert. If a commission is not that lucrative, but the offer is an excellent match for the customer base, one approach to getting a higher commission can be to launch a test campaign over a period of one to three months (or whatever can be afforded) and then ask for feedback from the merchant about how those leads referred actually converted. If the conversion rate is high enough, it’s a good time to inquire about getting a commission increase. Communicate with the affiliate manager for the program and make a case. This obviously doesn’t happen overnight, but stay the course and keep being open to negotiations, just don’t do it before signing up.

Thanks to affiliate programs like eLearners.com (and now CuteKid.com’s CPL campaign) affiliates are getting their feet wet in the lead gen business. Remember that success in lead gen doesn’t happen overnight. It can be a long process of establishing what the merchants need in a customer and the need for affiliates to refine their strategy used to target that audience.
What are your thoughts on lead gen? Feel free to contact us via affiliates [at] shareresults [dot] com with your feedback and questions?

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What Lead-Based Merchants need from Affiliates

I think I do. I don’t follow football but I do follow gossip. Celebrity gossip. So Gisele
(Victoria Secret model, mother of one, wife of Tom Brady) has had her baby boy and The Patriots are totally not in the Superbowl. That is an in-depth of an analysis as you’re going to get out of me.

BUT, with a little elbow nudging, my colleague Adam has graciously given me the “G2K” (good to know) guide about this year’s big game on Sunday.

1. The teams that are playing in Super Bowl XLIV are called the Saints and the Colts.

2. The Colts are heavily favored because of Peyton Manning.

3. Peyton Manning is the quarter back of the Colts and is apparently “awesome”, “really good” and “the best goddamn quarterback of all time”. Also he was just named the NFL’s MVP.

4. Sean Payton is the head coach for the Saints. He is so not a quarterback.

5. New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton has been quoted saying he is “confident his players can ‘deal’ with Peyton Manning in Sunday’s Super Bowl”.

6. So really this game thingy on Sunday is just a beef between two guys, Payton and Peyton. Cat fight!

7. I’m still not watching. But will eat the ceremonial football chili!

If you plan on watching, how are you going to show your love for Payton’s team (The Saints) or Peyton’s team (The Colts)? If you’re at a loss, you should check out TundraGear’s site they offer up NFL pins and hats of your favorite team. OR unfavorite, whatever you decide.

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Do You Miss Tom Brady?

Earlier this blog series, we discussed effective text and image creatives and how to use them to most efficiently promote products and services. In this post we’re going to look at monitoring the efficiency of your campaigns and some strategies for going about it.

At Share Results, we believe strongly that relationships are the basis for effective affiliate marketing programs. Strong bonds between affiliates and merchants are the foundation for any effective affiliate marketing program. With this in mind, we’ve created an affiliate marketing software solutionthat not only enhances transparency between the two entities, but also allows them to work together closely by using in-depth tracking and reporting features that monitor how well your creatives are performing.

In order for affiliates to be successful, the merchants whose products they are promoting must provide effective creatives to their affiliates. Knowing which creatives are going to be most successful requires some information:

1. The number of impressions must be tracked. How many viewers saw the page where this ad was located? Knowing how your traffic got there, and who they are is also a big part of this equation. It’s very important to understand who your visitors are. Did they get there via a search engine result, or were they recommended by someone else’s site? These differences should play a part in directing your campaigns.
2. Then, the click through rate must be examined. How many people who saw the ad clicked on it and went to the landing page (the page where the item can be purchased?
3. And lastly, the conversion rate: how many people who clicked through to the landing page actually made purchases?

If an ad is getting a high volume of impressions, but very few clicks, then there are several questions that you can ask. It could be that the ad’s placement on the page needs to be adjusted.  And it could be that the ad itself, be it a text or image creative, needs to be reworked.

Ask Yourself

Are you reaching the consumers you want to reach? Is this the right page for this ad? Does that ad have a strong call to action?

Use rotating ads with different images and text to test these until you find the one that works best.

If your ads are attaining a decent amount of clicks per impressions, but visitors are not converting into sales, then it is up to the merchant to look at the efficacy of the landing page. Also, it could be that the creative is misleading in some way, or has not effectively targeted the individuals who are most likely to convert into a sale upon arrival at the purchase page. There are many variables, so it is worth trying many different tactics to reach potential purchasers, and follow the results closely.

Merchants have the ability to see which affiliates are sending traffic to these landing pages, plus their URL, by using the ACID report in Share Results. With this information, they can discover the top performers and what kind of website works best for their product or service.

A great way to achieve success in this area is to constantly be testing and refining your campaigns as well as the creatives you are using to run them. Using a software system that can track all of this information for you will put you miles ahead of your competitors who may not be armed with the same information that you have at your fingertips. Merchants and affiliates must work together to ensure the success of affiliate marketing programs and the reports available in the Share Results software solution help them to do exactly that.

Once again—and there is no way we can stress this enough—always be testing your creatives.

A better understanding of how your creatives are performing = the ability to tailor campaigns based on top performing creatives = the ability to make more money from your affiliate marketing campaigns.

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Image creatives are often known as banner ads. These were very popular in the early days of online marketing, but at some point began to be slightly less effective. With recent innovations in design and technological advances, image creatives are once again becoming a very effective tool in an affiliate marketer’s toolbox. Indeed, banner ads are everywhere on the Internet and it’s likely that anyone surfing the Net on a given day will come across several.

Banner ads come in all sizes and flavors. From small square ads to rectangular banners that take up almost the entire length of a page and everything in between. There are no real rules or specifications as to what makes a successful image creative, but what is clear is that with so many being shown to surfers on a daily basis, one must find a way to stand out from the others.

The point of an image creative is simple: it is designed to entice someone to click on it, taking them to a landing page that should eventually lead to a sale. Why will a person click on a banner ad? Simplicity reigns here again. They will click because they have been offered a good or service that they are interested in obtaining. So how does one go about creating an ad that does this?

You must get their attention.

You ads must stand out on a page. As already mentioned, with so many banner ads out there, standing out in the crowd can sometimes be difficult, but there are a couple of ways to grab the attention of your potential customers. The answers aren’t all that much different than create great print ads, but with the Internet, there are more possibilities.

That said, an ad should not be distracting, nor should it intrude upon the page that it is on.

Images should have something to do with the product you’re promoting. A great way to get those images to stand out is by using animation.  Animate, however, with caution. Even though big, blinking ads that scream at you will command attention, these are often ignored. Also, people often associate this type of ad with scam sites, so keep your animations engaging, but simple.

When using images, use ones that convey the message you want to send to potential customers. If the product is a vacation, an image of a couple relaxing on a beach sends a positive message to the viewer that indicates what they’re going to be getting out of this product or service. Show them the benefits.  And let your images be of top quality. The quality of the ad will be associated with the product you are marketing, so be sure to adjust accordingly.

In addition, these banners must load quickly. Slow loading banner ads may miss their chance to reach the audience you are trying to attract. Work with designers who know how to make ads that will appear on the page quickly, and in the time necessary to reach your audience. This is important as image quality is inversely proportional to load times, so finding a good image optimization technique will help you to find the middle ground between those two issues.

And once you’ve got their attention, image creatives must tie in what we learned about yesterday: the text that accompanies the image must be clear and concise, with a strong call to action.

Again, and we can never stress this enough, the way to find out which image creatives are going to work the best is by testing, testing and retesting. Keep abreast of the statistics of how your creatives are performing, and rotate your banners to test several at once. Never limit yourself to just one creative.

Affiliates and merchants must work together to create effective ads. The most important part of this equation is to understand the efficacy of these ads, and it’s through tracking the results that this information will be gleaned. In the next part of our series, we’ll look at how to use Share Results’ affiliate marketing software to track your ad campaigns, be they text or image creatives. Come back next week for more!

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You may, from time to time see us refer to “creatives” on this blog. Enough people have asked us, “What are creatives?” that we have decided to launch a four-part series on what creatives are and how you can use them to help you build your business.

When we refer to a creative, we are talking about any advertising method by which you attempt to reach consumers. For example, the text in a PPC ad can be considered a creative, as could a Flash banner advertisement. Some creatives – mostly image creatives – are available directly from merchants, while others will be created by affiliates, or even a third party.

Essentially, anything that you do to market goods and services that requires imagination, artistry, innovation, and inspiration is a creative.  Everybody uses creatives in different ways, but they all fall into two basic categories: text and images.

In the first part of our series, we’ll look at text creatives and how they can help you reach your audience. We’ll talk about the importance of powerful PPC ads, and solid, relevant copywriting. We’ll also explore how SEO fits into the big picture, and how it can be used within your text creatives to reach your target audience.

In the next part, we’ll look at image creatives. We’ll explore what makes a successful image creative, where to place them on your website to get the best results, and some things to avoid.

And in the final part of the series, we’ll take a good, hard look at the value of monitoring your creatives and how tracking them can help improve your business. We’ll investigate how to use the Share Results software to help you get more information on what creatives are working for you, and how you can enhance your strategies in order to improve your conversion rates.

Come back tomorrow to read all about text creatives, and how to use them effectively. And be sure to get in on the conversation by leaving a comment or by sending us an email to let us know if you have any further questions.

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In our last post in the How to Become an Affiliate series, we looked at a few of the different types of affiliate marketers. In this, the third and final installation in this series, we will look at two more types of affiliate marketers.

Email Affiliates

If you can get people to sign up for a newsletter that will promote certain goods and services, then you can become an email affiliate. Obviously, you need a forum to get people to sign up for a newsletter, so that’s step one. But once you have a list of individuals, you can start sending targeted promotions and offers.

The great part of this strategy is that you know that, having signed up for the newsletter, they want to receive your emails, but the disadvantage is that some of these emails might not make it through their spam filters. Another downside is if they choose to unsubscribe, you have lost them as a lead forever.

PPC Affiliates

Pay-per-click, or PPC marketing, is a little more advanced, but can be a very lucrative way of generating income. What’s most important about this advertising method is having a good idea of how to do it before attempting it. Because you pay every time someone clicks on your ad, you have to know exactly how to target the right people through proper keyword usage, effective text, and relevant landing pages.

For those who choose to put in the effort, the rewards are there. PPC gives you a great deal of control over your budget, and you will be able to directly target very specific audiences. Comparing how many surfers clicked your ads versus how many signed up for services will allow you to easily track your ROI (return on investment).

However you choose to go about it, the most important thing to remember is that you only get out what you put in. The chances of an affiliate being successful with a neglected blog with a few banner ads, are slim to none.

However, if you’re willing to dedicate just a little bit of time every week to your marketing efforts, then this can be a great way to make some extra money. And if you’re willing to go all-in and become a full-time affiliate marketer, then you have to approach it as such, or you’ll be back at your old job before you know it.

No matter which direction you choose, one thing you can be assured of is that you will never be bored. The world of affiliate marketing is fascinating and there are many exciting aspects. Learning how to effectively market products is a science in and of itself. Learning new ways to target specific audiences and tracking campaigns to more efficiently manage your business can be a compelling activity. Once you’ve been bit by the affiliate bug, you’ll finding yourself really enjoying your marketing efforts.

If you want to get started in affiliate marketing, or if you are an affiliate who wants to become more successful, our affiliate management team can give you a hand. The Share Results team is here to answer whatever questions you have, and can supply a great deal of information on how to create a successful campaign.   Contact us at affiliates@shareresults.com for more information.

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Affiliate marketing has been around for quite a few years now. Ever since the first affiliate program on the Internet in 1996 started, it has grown to become a huge industry, attracting people from all walks of life. Allowing ecommerce sites to make more connections with consumers via affiliate marketing sites has changed the marketing strategy of many online businesses and has put money in the pockets of millions of affiliate marketers and now many people are wondering how to become an affiliate.

Even though affiliate marketing on the Internet has been around for about 15 years, it’s only recently becoming something that is mainstream. Personal websites are becoming more commonplace, and far more people have at least a rudimentary understanding of the Internet, website design and SEO practices.  Arming themselves with enough knowledge to get started, these are the kind of people that are becoming affiliates.

So, why all of the interest in affiliate marketing? The fact is that almost anyone can become an affiliate marketer, and we’re seeing more and more people using this great business model to earn extra income, or even make a living. And when I say, “anyone,” I mean that you can too.

With the advent of Web 2.0 platforms, the Internet has become increasingly accessible to a progressively diverse group of consumers. Blogs and online communities that focus on interaction have given many people a greater awareness of the capabilities of the Internet and what an excellent opportunity it provides to reach people. And there are more people to reach now than there ever have been before. There are almost 2 billion Internet users already, and that amount has grown by more than 380% since 2000.

If affiliates are willing to promote goods and services in exchange for a commission, it just makes sense for ecommerce websites to put some effort into helping their affiliates become successful. The more money an affiliate earns, the more the businesses they are promoting make, so that investment in time and effort can be very worthwhile.

Anyone can become an affiliate marketer.  There are, however, some conditions that ecommerce sites, or “merchants” want people to meet before they allow them to sign up for their programs.

First of all, some means of marketing their products is required.  A website, a list of email prospects or some knowledge of PPC campaigns is generally a prerequisite. If you’re going to be using a website, then merchants will most likely want your website to have relevant and non-offensive content. For example, if you have a site that is all about knitting, chances are that a merchant that is selling books may think twice about adding you to their affiliate program. The reason is that without relevant content, the chances of you being successful are slim.

Evaluating what you want to market and how you’re going to go about it is the most important step in becoming an affiliate. It’s not necessary to stick to one product or service, but having a plan for your marketing strategies is vital to your success.

With so many merchants and marketing options to choose from, many people turn to affiliate networks to help them manage their businesses. There are many advantages to becoming a member of this kind of a network. You’ll get advice from affiliate marketing managers on how to best market to your target audience, and because there are many different merchants in these networks, you’ll have a consolidated group of marketing opportunities with easy access to all of their marketing tools.

Because merchants want their affiliates to be successful, they will provide marketing tools to help you be more profitable. Quite often they will provide affiliates with website creative, like compelling text, or Flash banner ads to help generate traffic to their site. And as a part of an affiliate network, you’ll get up-to-date information on which merchants have promotions on their products, and who is providing performance bonuses to affiliates.

In the next two posts we’ll be looking at the different types of affiliates. Check back for more, and to find out more about how to become an affiliate, contact one of our affiliate marketing managers here. They have all the answers to help you become a successful affiliate marketer.

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How To Become an Affiliate: Part 1

It’s that time of year. January is often the month when we pause, we plan and we look ahead. With 2010 having just begun, it’s an ideal time for merchants and affiliates to consider different approaches to improve their affiliate marketing campaigns. To get you started, we have put together a couple of suggestions for merchants and affiliates who are looking to make this New Year their best one yet.

For Merchants

1. Focus on improving your product to make it more attractive for affiliates to promote and in turn increase your own profits.

2. Review and improve your customer sales process to get your conversion rate as high as possible. This is a key factor that affiliates look for when choosing which brands to promote, and it will help your overall sales as well.

3. Help boost your affiliate channel by investing time and/or resources into other forms of advertising, such as TV and print campaigns, SEO, video, viral and social networking. The more well known, respected and recognized your brand is, the more affiliates will be likely to want to promote it, and the easier it will be for them to do so.

4. If you’re not already involved in social media or some form of two-way interaction with your customers and by extension, affiliates, get on it, but in a strategic manner.

For Affiliates

1. Share program feedback with your affiliate managers. Think it’s awesome? Let them know why, specifically, so they can help apply the same tactics where possible across other programs they manage. Think it’s not worth promoting? Give specific, constructive advice so that those programs can be improved.

2. Develop more open relationships with your affiliate managers. Let them know how, when and why you want to be contacted, so that you can have more efficient communication, and a more effective partnership.

If you’re in the Share Results network, and you’re a merchant, tell us about a great new product you have, your new and improved sales process and any new advertising channels you’re experimenting with. Call us, or email us at support@shareresults.com.

Affiliates, let us know what you love, and what you don’t love about the programs you’re promoting. And hey, it’s a New Year, let’s chat about new opportunities that may be waiting for you! Call us, or send us a quick note at support@shareresults.com.

And Happy New Year!

Originally posted here:
Make 2010 your Best Year Yet

Everyone likes a real bargain. I’m not talking about a small change in price; I’m talking about a real discount off something that regularly would cost much more. Here lies the true value of Boxing Day (a Canadian tradition in similar vein to Black Friday/Cyber Monday), which has recently become Boxing Week.

Trends

For all the bargain-hunters out there, standing in line at 7:30 am amidst a crowd of hungry shoppers might give them a boost of adrenaline that comes along with the territory, but for the most part, there is a better way of achieving these discounts; online shopping!

What’s even better about shopping from the comfort of your own home with eggnog in your hand and your jammies still on, is the fact that stores are “open” all-year round. Many Boxing Week Specials begin on Christmas, and the only way to access them is via a web browser. Online shopping continues to build momentum as a reliable and efficient means of purchasing and this year’s numbers are a strong reflection of the growing confidence in it.

Affiliates

In fact, many deals are only available through the web, which gives even more value to relaxing while saving. For example, AdditionElle, Penningtons and MXM are offering an additional 50% off Sale Items and 30% off Regular Price Items including New Arrivals. Along with these offers, many merchants are offering exclusive coupons for Boxing Week that can drive customers to your site.

According to IMRG, this trend is expected to continue this Christmas as more and more shoppers turn to the internet for their shopping fix and take advantage of the Christmas sales. The year on year growth in sales value for December 2009 is expected to be around 14% and there have been strong sales performances across the online industry…

All this to say, we can expect this weekend and right into January to be a very busy time of year for shopping, and if you can partner with the right merchants and inform your customers, everyone stands to gain.

Happy e-shopping!

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There are only 9 days left until Christmas!  We wanted to just give you a few updates below on the latest creatives and promotions you will benefit from when promoting our exclusive Christmas programs, Santa’s Ornament Shop and Imaginary Greetings. These Christmas Affiliate Programs have been converting up to 30% and accept both US and CAN traffic and can help you maximize your earning potential during the last few shopping days in December:

Santa’s Ornament Shop

Customer Coupons:

• Free shipping on orders of 5 or more items at Santa’s Ornament Shop (Offer expires December 31, 2009)
• Save $10 off your Santa’s Ornament Shop orders over $100 (Offer expires December 31, 2009)
• Save $10 off Personalized Christmas Ornament orders over $100 (Offer expires December 31, 2009

Special Affiliate Promotion:

• 3 Prize Draws of $100 CASH! – To enter, you must submit a link of where you are featuring an SOS banner ad on your site. Email le@shareresults.com .
• You can earn up to 15% commission in December

Placements Allowed:

• 120-day program cookie
• Email creatives. Please email us for HTML creative, suppression list and suggested subject lines.
• Incentivized
• Paid search direct to SantasOrnamentShop.com site (no brand name bidding permitted)
• Banner & Text
• Coupon codes
• Full Product Feed of 3,500+ ornaments

Below are Imaginary Greetings’ last ordering dates for customers to receive their Letters from Santa in time for Christmas:

• First Class Mail – Last day to order will be Thursday, December 17th, 2009
• Priority Mail – Last day to order will be Sunday, December 20th, 2009
• Express Mail – Last day to order will be Monday, December 21st, 2009

Here are a few important things you need to know about this great Christmas offer:

• You earn 30% commission on the sale of every Letter from Santa Claus
• You earn 25% commission on all other products such as Personal Phone Calls from Santa, Santa Evidence Kit, Santa’s Boot Print Kit and Good List Certificates
• 365-day cookie
• Letters sold to US & Canadian customers

Placements Allowed:

• Email
• Coupons
• Incentivized
• Paid search
• Banner & Text
• Deep and Direct Link

Your customers will also enjoy the following great perks every time they purchase a Letter from Santa Claus:

• Free personalized follow-up oversized postcard and door hanger with every letter purchase
• Buy 3 letters, receive the 4th one free
• Free Phone call from Santa with every Letter from Santa with special gift certificate code (login to grab code)

Please login to your Share Results affiliate account directly to obtain your Letters from Santa Claus, Personal Phone Calls from Santa, Santa Evidence Kit, Santa’s Boot Print Kit and Good List Certificates banner and text linking code. If you would like us to help put together your linking code, please email us directly at le@shareresults.com

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Christmas Affiliate Programs

Do you ever feel like you want to get out of this town? If you live anywhere in a snowy part of Canada or the United States and hate winter, then you will probably agree. Some companies within the hotel and travel industry are seeing some positive signs that customers are indeed interested in flying again. According to the Associated Press, Delta and American airlines are among the businesses not only seeing an increase in leisure travel, but they are also seeing an increase at the business and premium levels as well. Overall, more travelers are flying international, which bodes well not only for airlines and hotels, but for affiliates promoting travel merchants to internet users.

This past September, we launched the Barcelo Hotels & Resorts affiliate program, which is a well-known international hotel chain based in Spain. They have hotels located all over the world including Mexico, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Turkey and Morroco. This winter, they’re offering awesome deals to some of their sunnier travel destinations. Considering this is the season when many newlyweds and older couples, snowbirds, and any enthusiastic travelers are looking at the last minute for winter getaways, Barcelo is sure to help affiliates earn revenue this holiday season and beyond.

The beauty of promoting within the travel sector in the affiliate marketing space is the fact that there are higher commissions to be earned. The Barcelo brand in particular sees average bookings of around $700-$800, and with their wide array of banners and text links in both English and Spanish, it helps to have special promotions and tools to increase conversions of clicks to sales.

The majority of Barcelo customers lean more toward the ages of 35 and up, and are college educated. Because of these qualities, they have a little more income to afford travel (we’re talking an average salary of $40k or higher). People are definitely looking for the best deals online, so Barcelo has great promotions available for affiliates to promote to potential travelers. Among the recent travel promotions that are available include a 20% discount on bookings to Mexico, which entail all-inclusive packages to the sunny hot spot down south. Affiliates will be thrilled to know that this is a long-term offer valid up to April 30, 2010. This means there’s no need for affiliates to switch their banners for at least four months if campaigns are launched this month.

Also beneficial to affiliates are the specially branded banner creative some of which feature a 30% discount on bookings to the Canary Islands. This offer is more short-term, but high converting because of its appeal to travelers who are looking for discount winter warmers.

If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate, it’s fairly simple to join. You simply have to have quality travel content on your site and can target traffic from virtually any country. You can register with your site in Share Results, just click here to sign up to Barcelo’s travel affiliate program. If you are an existing affiliate of Share Results, you can also log in to your affiliate account and search for Barcelo under the Merchants menu.

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Tis the Season for Travel Affiliate Programs

We wanted to let you know about the latest Share Results Cool Coupon Deals for December 2009.

After Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, everyone is still on the lookout for the perfect Christmas gifts for their love ones. What’s a better way to shop then with free shipping and discount promotions thrown on top?

If you own a holiday-themed site, you will love SantasOrnamentShop, Imaginary Greetings and T-Shirtmonster’s Christmas-themed products.

This month there are 16 Holiday Promos being offered and we hope you take advantage of them. The best way to do this is to log into your affiliate account and join the programs that interest you under the Share Results MERCHANTS menu.

Santa’s Ornament Shop

Affiliate Promotion: 3 Prize Draws of $100 CASH! – To enter, affiliates must submit a link of where they are featuring an SOS banner ad on their site.

Offer expires December 31, 2009

Free Shipping Coupon: : Free shipping on orders of 5 or more items at Santa’s Ornament Shop
- Promo code only accessible to affiliates
Offer expires after December 31, 2009

2 Holiday Coupons: Save $10 off Santa’s Ornament Shop orders over $100 – Promo code only accessible to affiliates

Save $10 off Personalized Christmas Ornament orders over $100 – Promo code only accessible to affiliates
Offer expires December 31, 2009

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Imaginary Greetings

Coupon Code: Get a free personalized phone call with purchase of a Santa Letter
Coupon Code – Promo code only accessible to affiliates
Offer expires December 31, 2009

Coupon code can only be used once by one customer and cannot be combined with other promotions

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UnderGroundHipHop.com

3 Holiday Coupons:
*$10 Off orders $75 or more – Promo code only accessible to affiliates
*$25 Off orders $150 or more – Promo code only accessible to affiliates
*10% Off orders all orders – Promo code only accessible to affiliates
Offers cannot be combined. Expires December 31, 2009

Affiliate Bonus:
Top affiliate with highest sales during November and December 2009 will receive a $500 GIFT CERTIFICATE. Affiliate can redeem this certificate on UndergroundHipHop.com, which has over 20,000 items to choose from.

Offer expires December 31, 2009

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Barcelo Hotels & Resorts

Customer Promo: 25% Off all-inclusive Barcelo Resorts in Mexico (No Coupon Required)
Offer expires April 30, 2010

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Tundra Gear

3 Coupon Codes:Customers get 10% OFF any hat
*Customers save 10% on all products
*Buy 2 hats, get a 3rd hat free

All offers expire after December 31, 2009 and cannot be combined

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T-Shirtmonster.ca

Holiday Coupon: 10% Off all T-Shirt Orders – Promo code only accessible to affiliates

Offer expires December 31, 2009

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To see more of our exclusive holiday offers, please visit: http://www.shareresults.com/pressrelease_detail.php?prid=177

Feel free to send us any questions via email at affiliates@shareresults.com.

The Share Results team wishes you a happy holiday season!

Read the original post:
December Cool Coupon Deals from Share Results

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone as online retailers prepared for consumers buying in less quantities by being more strategic with their campaigns. This proved to be a winning approach as earlier predictions for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales were smashed this past weekend when the final numbers rolled in.

The proof is in the Christmas pudding (courtesy of Coremetrics data):

- Sales were up 13.7 percent compared to Cyber Monday 2008

- Cyber Monday continued the momentum set by Black Friday. Sales were up 24.1 percent compared to Black Friday 2009.

- The average dollar amount consumers spent per online order rose 38.2 percent from Cyber Monday 2008 ($180.03 versus $130.24), led by apparel retailers.

With many retailers offering huge savings and free shipping, shoppers indeed took advantage of their offers and this was especially apparent for apparel retailers. According to Coremetrics, apparel retailers and jewelry retailers reported the biggest jumps in the average dollar amount consumers spent per online order, up 26.4 percent and 14.3 percent respectively.

Shoppers looking for the best possible deal were not disappointed. For example, plus-size fashion leader AdditionElle, Penningtons and MXM offered a wide variety of savings ranging from free shipping, to dollar savings, to my personal favorite BOGO (Buy One Get One).

All in all, it was a very successful weekend that officially kicked off this season’s holiday shopping spree. It looks as though Santa will be generous this year .

Credit:
Cyber Monday 2009 Surpasses Expectations

It’s that time of year again. The time to eat, drink and be merry – or overeat, drink a little too much and pass out during football. Whatever your Thanksgiving weekend brings you, it won’t be complete without some shopping!

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday this holiday weekend, this is the prime time for amazing deals and timely gift shopping. Almost all merchants are running fantastic deals this weekend and this means we benefit from huge savings!

Been waiting all year to buy a new LCD TV? Me too, which is why this weekend I’m going to take care of that and take advantage of the savings.

To get a head start on what’s being offered, you can check our Special Holiday Edition of the Hot Deals Affiliate Newsletter, which showcases the best deals from our merchants. This includes both Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts for your visitors, as well as performance bonuses and coupon codes valid right through till New Year’s Eve. Furthermore, if you are an affiliate looking to maximize your sales during this busy spending period, you can read about the trends of the New Holiday Consumer on our Share Results Affiliate Blog.

There’s lots to be had out there, so be sure to look out for great deals and get your shopping done early this year.

Good luck!

The rest is here:
Black Friday Kicks off Holiday Shopping