Affiliate Marketing Industry Under Attack!

The times are tough and many businesses are struggling to stay afloat. A lot of affiliate marketers are hurting these days as well. Many companies have already been forced to close their affiliate programs. But the threat to the affiliate marketing industry is not coming from the recession but rather the lawmakers around this country. Many states are looking for ways to boost their revenue in these tough times, and what a better way to do that than by imposing a sales tax on online retailers?

Have you noticed that you won’t have to pay a sales tax to Amazon when you purchase a book? That’s going to change if and when the lawmakers get their way. The introduction of sales tax can effectively wipe up a significant portion of the affiliate marketing industry. We all remember what happened with Overstock and its affiliates in the state of New York. Thousands of websites had their agreements with Overstock terminated as a piece of legislation was put into place to enforce online sales tax in NY.

Things are not as bad as they seem. They are worse. According to Businessweek, more taxes are on the way:

Minnesota’s House of Representatives is due to consider a bill introduced by Representative Jim Davnie that would levy a sales tax on digital downloads of e-books, music, movies, and even ringtones.

The affiliate marketing industry doesn’t seem to get a break these days. There will always be products and services to promote that are not affected by these tax laws. But think about what happens if eBay, Amazon, and big online retailers terminate their agreements with their affiliates. That would simply cripple a lot of smaller affiliates.

I don’t have a problem with paying taxes. But increasing taxes in these tough economic conditions is just not an smart way to go. I am not saying that as a Republican or a Democrat. The affiliate marketing industry is neutral politically. But I wouldn’t hesitate to favor the party that will protect smaller affiliates from these tax hikes. It’s true that affiliates are not directly getting taxed here, but if these tax hikes lead to a lot of affiliates losing some of their income, that is wrong to do. Affiliates pay taxes as well and the less they make, the less tax they’ll pay. You don’t go around taxing people in an economic recession. We should all hope that Quill v. North Dakota is not overturned, but at this point the local and federal government seem to be more concerned about taxing than helping small businesses, and that is truly sad to see. I do believe that the government will find a way to impose online sales tax. That doesn’t mean we affiliates shouldn’t up a fight against it.

Don’t forget to check the tips put out by ShareASale on how to fight this new wave of attacks on affiliate marketing industry. This fight is not about paying less taxes. It’s about giving small businesses around this country a chance to stay in business and grow.

Flip Mino HD: An Affiliate’s Best Friend

Affiliate marketing is a very competitive business. If you intend to keep making money in the affiliate marketing industry, you’ve got to take time to learn new tricks and innovate yourself and your campaigns to make more money. One of the best ways to innovate your campaigns is by adding videos to increase your sales. Video blogging is one the rise, and it is no longer something only early adopters do. Most bloggers, affiliate marketers, and industry experts have started their vlogs. Video can help you increase your sales dramatically in more ways than one. For starters, prospects seem to eat up great video content. If you are planning to sell a product, you can do a video review on it. If you plan to sell a service, you can provide free video tips. As long as you don’t ramble on, provide real value, and sell your product in your videos, you can expect to convert more folks.

A few years ago, it wasn’t really possible to create videos without having to spend $500-$1000 on a camcorder. Not everyone afforded that kind of money and cheap camcorders were not exactly great for creating affiliate videos. But devices such as Flip Mino have made it extremely easy to shoot affiliate videos fast. Flip Mino HD is designed for video-bloggers. It’s a portable mini camcorder that allows you to shoot decent quality videos without having to break the bank (see a preview here).

What I like about Flip Mino HD is that you don’t have to read a 200 page manual to get a handle of this gadget. It’s so easy even a caveman can do it. All you have to do is press the record button and keep the camcorder steady. Once you have recorded your videos, you can use the USB feature to upload them to your computer and use FlipShare software to put your videos on YouTube. If you can afford to host your own videos, that’s even better. But the moral of story is, you don’t have to be a rich affiliate to make videos when you can buy Flip Video MinoHD for about $200. And the SEO benefits that you get by putting videos online is going to make it all worth your while. Affiliate videos are not the only thing you need to concentrate on, but it’s a great way to compliment your campaigns in other channels and bring down your overall CPA.

10 Affiliate Marketing Networks For Beginners

Many new affiliates have trouble finding products to promote. Believe me, I have been there and done that. When you are trying to find your feet in this business, you hear a lot of things from the gurus that don’t make sense. The problem is, a lot of these gurus have no idea how to convey information to beginners in this industry. A guru may be making millions of dollars from PayDotCom, but that doesn’t mean you can too. For example. a super affiliate who has 500,000 e-mail subscribers and a couple of products of her own can sell high-end products easier. After all, she can always give her own products for free in exchange for folks using her affiliate links to buy those $1997 or more affiliate products. A newbie may be great in SEO and all other technical things, but he/she is still going to struggle to sell those high-end products without a good bonus and a decent plan.

In reality, there are many networks that beginners and intermediate affiliate marketers can use to make money and take their game to the next level. There are many products out there, and as long as you find the right product in the right niche, and you know what you are doing, there is no reason you can’t make things happen. With that in mind, here are 10 networks that can help you get started with affiliate marketing fast:

1. Amazon: Amazon’s Associates Program is still one of the best affiliate marketing programs out there. There is a lot of money to be earned here. And you won’t have trouble making people want to buy from Amazon.
2. eBay Publisher Network: eBay’s affiliate program is another one of those programs that keeps making you money even if you don’t want to. It’s just not that hard.
3. ClickBank: ClickBank is the place to grab digital products and promote them. Who doesn’t like getting 50% or more in commission?
4. LinkShare: LinkShare is a great place to start for newbie affiliates. There are a lot of merchants available. LinkShare folks keep things simple too!
5. PepperJam Network: this network is growing fast, it’s not even funny. You are going to have a lot of fun promoting some of these products.
6. Hydra Network: Hydra Network is a great CPA network that makes it easy to earn money from sign ups and all kinds of actions.
7. Google Network: Google Affiliate Network (Performics) is another great place to get started and make money online.
8. ClixGalore: ClixGalore is another one of those CPA networks that helps you make money online fast!
9. Shareasale: Shareasale is similar to LinkShare and CJ and provides you with lots of advertisers to work with.
10. aZoogleAds: aZoogle Ads is a great place for sign ups and other cool CPA offers. There is a lot of money to be earned here, and these offers can keep you busy for a while.

As you can see, there are many places that you can look to find products to promote online. But you can have the best products at your disposal, but if you don’t promote them right, you are not going to make money. If you are not too advanced in this business, take your time and get the basics down. You don’t want to waste time searching for products when you don’t know how to properly promote them.

Your take: what’s your favorite affiliate network?

13 Outsourcing Sources For Affiliate Marketers

Affiliate marketing is more than just finding a great product and driving leads to it. If you have been making money online for a while now, you know that you’ll have to do a lot of little things to keep making money online. That’s why a lot of top affiliate marketers outsource their non-core activities. If you don’t know coding, outsource it. If you don’t know web design, out source it. If you don’t want to deal with the social media (which I recommend you do), you should outsource that as well.

Thankfully, there are many places that you can go to to find highly qualified outsourcing partners. You can find works in Asia, Europe, and even Africa on these sites. If you are looking to get more done in less time, you won’t go wrong with outsourcing.

Here is a list of outsourcing sites for affiliate tasks:

• Rent a Coder: RAC is a great place to find coders, writers, and everything in between. Anything that you want to do is covered here. There are hundreds of categories to choose from, and these guys take care of you. You won’t be robbed on this site.
• oDesk: oDesk is another one of those top outsourcing sites that is designed to gain you access to the global markets. They too provide you with tools to manage your projects more effectively.
• Guru.com: Guru.com is a great site to reach out to startups and smaller companies and get more sophisticated projects done. I have seen highly complicated projects posted there (e.g. Web 2.0 start-ups).
• LimeExchange: LimeExchange another decent site to hire freelancers from around the world.
• Elance: Elance is not only a great place to find work but also those who provide services.
• LivePerson: LivePerson a great place to outsource programming. If you are looking for coders, this is a decent place to look.
• PartnerUp: PartnerUp is a great place to find partners and service providers.
• Affordable Progammers: AP is another great way to reach out to cheap programmers.
• Virtual Employee: Virtual Employee helps you find virtual assistants and all kinds of help.
• Freelancer China: looking for Chinese employees? Freelancer China is the way to go.
• TheFreeLanceNation: TheFreeLanceNation is another place to look for programmers and elancers.
• HireMyMom: HMM is a great place to find professional moms.
• iFreeLance: if you are out of luck so far, you cna give iFreeLance another try.

There are many other places to look for freelancers, but I would stick with these as most top service providers are available on these sites. At the end of the day you want to spend more time doing work and less time window shopping.

Your take: which one is your favorite outsourcing service?

Promote Your Affiliate Content With Market Samurai

If you have been paying attention to the online marketing industry in the past few months, there is a good chance you have heard of Market Samurai. I was personally introduced to Market Samurai through the Immediate Edge. At the time, I was using WordTracker and Google Keyword tool to find niches and do my market research. But affiliate marketing can be tough if you do these things by hand. There is no reason you should spend more time than you have to get your research process done. Market Samurai does all the research process for you and more. But what I was impressed about was how you could use it to find backlinks to your affiliate sites. We are not talking about any backlink but the “do follow” ones.

Here is how it works. Once you have identified a core keyword for your market, it’s time to get down and do some research to find places you get links from to your blog or affiliate website. Market Samurai has a buit-in system that lets you find juicy sites fast.

You can find related pages on hubpages, Squidoo, Weebly, and forums in your niche. This is not something that can’t be done by hand. But think about it. How much time would you have to spend to find places you can post your link and get involved to drive traffic back to your affiliate website.

Now here is the killer part. You can sort through these sites based on their Page-Rank, Follow-No follow attribute, and even the number of backlinks to them. If you are planning to move your site to the top of the search engines, getting links (tons of them) is one of the best way to go. With Market Samurai, you won’t even have to make more than 2 clicks to get all this data. That’s what I call proper outsourcing. And best of all, there is no human error involved.

Stay tuned for a more comprehensive Market Samurai review!