5 Ways To Deal with a Non-Paying Affiliate Partner
Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative, but from time to time you may find yourself struggling to grab the money you have earned from your affiliate partner. If you happen to deal with networks such as CJ and LinkShare, you have more leverage to put pressure on your partner. Unfortunately, that is not the case if you are a part of one of those smaller networks. A lot of times, those smaller networks only cover software issues and give your affiliate partner the final say on payments. That can be dangerous if your partner turns out to be a greedy business that’s willing to rob its affiliates out of their commissions.
Trying to get your commission from your affiliate partner can be difficult if you don’t have too much leverage. Once a company decides to go rogue and steal from its affiliates, then all rules are out of the window. That is actually very rare. Most companies that I have personally had issues with have not been rogue. Sometimes there are misunderstandings. It is essential for all affiliates to try their best to reach out their merchants before doing something drastic.
Here are 5 ways I would try to get my commission from my merchants: (more…)
Why Affiliates Should Not Use 3rd Party URL Shorteners
If you have been taking advantage of Twitter, you have probably used URL shorteners to keep your status updates under 140 characters. Third party URL shorteners do make it easy to make your URLs more clean and keep track of clicks and shares of each link. Services such as TinyURL, Bit.ly, and BudURL have all been around for a while and provide a lot of value to those who choose to use them.
There are many reasons why one would want to use these services to track affiliate links. In fact, a lot of gurus suggest that without really thinking about the ramifications. For starters, if you have long term plans for your affiliate portal, you want to brand everything you can, including your link. Using solutions such as Redirection will allow you to create your very own URL shortener without relying on any other company. (more…)
5 Ways To Handle Affiliate Issues
We all want to assume that affiliate programs will honor their agreements and pay up when their affiliates deliver sales for them. There are plenty of affiliate programs that do everything possible to reduce their affiliates’ commissions and avoid paying up. You certainly do not want to work with those programs. At the same time, sometimes even the largest affiliate programs fail to fully pay their affiliates. It’s easy to get stressed out and freak out over these incidents. But if you want to get paid, you want to keep a cool head.
Reputable affiliate programs are often easier to work with in these situations. They care about their reputation, so they do respond if you file your claim. Some large networks do take some time to get back to you, but if your case is valid, you are going to get paid. What you don’t want to do is pick a fight with your merchant. That could have terrible ramifications for your business.
If you have not been paid by your affiliate company, it does not mean that you won’t get paid. You just have to approach things calmly. Here are just a few steps you need to take to solve your non-payment issues:
1. Don’t panic: no matter how much money you have lost, losing it is not going to help you solve your issues. You may need your commission check to stay afloat, but you do not want to make rash decisions without thinking through your strategy first.
2. Be polite: always, and I mean always, be polite with your affiliate manager. A lot of people assume that if they raise their voice on the phone or write a nasty e-mail, they are going to get more attention from their partner. Nobody likes a nasty person. You are more likely to get the help and attention you need by being polite and nice.
3. Explain & follow up: clearly explain what has gone wrong and why you believe you should be paid for your efforts. Do not assume the worst case. Put all the facts on the table and follow up with your merchant. (more…)
Why You Should Have Many Affiliate Tracking IDs
Most newbie affiliate marketers start with large affiliate networks such as Amazon, CJ, and LinkShare. All these networks have their advantages and disadvantages. But one thing is for certain. You do not want to cut corners when managing your affiliate campaigns, no matter which network you are partnering with. Many newbie affiliates start a host of new sites and use the same tracking ID on all of them. While that may save you time when grabbing links from these networks, it does mean that you are going to have a more difficult time figuring out which campaign or website is bringing you the most cash.
Creating multiple tracking IDs are not that difficult as long as you are working with a credible network. Amazon makes it so easy by putting the option on the same page where you can view your payment history. Since all Amazon affiliates are hooked on this page for obvious reasons, they’ll have an easier time creating multiple IDs and tracking their campaigns in a more professional manner. Tracking your campaigns with CJ is easy as well. All you have to do is define a SID:
http://www.dpbolvw.net/click-xxxxxx-xxxxxx?sid=[YourTrackingID]&url=xxxx
E-commerce Theme: Build a Store With Your Own Affiliate Program
Affiliate marketing can be a lucrative business if you are in the right niche at the right time with the right strategy. Those who have mastered the art of affiliate marketing easily pull in 6 figures. Of course, things are more complicated that that. So the stories about people who sleep all day and make a fortune from affiliate marketing is simply not true. Affiliate marketing can be a great field to be involved in. But it can be quite volatile too. That’s why affiliate superstars not only rely on affiliate products to make money, but they come up with a product of their own as well. If you have revenue coming in from multiple sources, you are not going to be affected by Internet tax and other affiliate marketing nonsense as badly as those who solely focus on affiliate marketing.
Starting your very own store and selling your own products is not that hard. There are plenty of templates and plugins that you can pick up to start an online store. You are going to need products to sell, but you shouldn’t have to worry about how you are going to get them listed online. E-commerce theme by Templatic is a very interesting solution if you want to use Wordpress to start your own store. Not only it is clean and looks decent, it also allows you to start your own affiliate program. Talk about going from an affiliate to an affiliate manager overnight.
Should Affiliates Disclose Affiliate Links?
There has been a lot of talks about how affiliates need to be more transparent in the affiliate marketing world. In case you missed it, the FTC did ask advertisers and bloggers to become more transparent and disclose monetary gains when adding advertising links to their websites. While the FTC’s main focus was on fake testimonials, its guidelines will cover affiliate marketing as well. Whether you are reviewing affiliate products or just linking to affiliate products on your website, you will need to disclose your relationship with your advertisers.
Anybody who expected the FTC to be clear with its guidelines was mistaken. That’s not how the FTC does its business. The vagueness does give marketers some room to maneuver, but one shouldn’t mistake that for not having any rules. Just because the FTC is not clear about how you need to disclose doesn’t mean you should not. (more…)
How To Use Lists To Promote Affiliate Products
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that lists are in demand. People seem to eat up lists, no matter what they are about. If you have visited popular websites such as Digg, Delicious, and Reddit, you have probably seen lists make it to the top of their front-pages. Of course, not all lists are created equal. You can always slap a list together and hope for the best. The better way to do it is by adding as much value as you can with your list.
How To Use Google Products To Find Affiliate Partners
A lot of affiliates just assume that in order to make money, you have to partner with Amazon, eBay, and other big stores. There is no question that as long as you play your cards right, you can earn a decent amount of cash from Amazon and other top websites. But you should not forget about small retailers who might be offering better prices on some items than even what Amazon has to offer. One of the best ways to build credibility with your audience is by helping it save money. If you keep sending people to Amazon and eBay without checking prices, you could lose credibility and your traffic in the process. That’s where Google Products (formerly known as Froogle) comes in. It’s a very helpful service by Google that lets you compare prices and find retailers that have the lowest prices for the item you are planning to promote on your website.
Google Products not only helps you provide the best prices to your customers, it also enables you to find products that people are searching for. On the front-page, you can find products that people have recently searched for. So you can easily get an idea what’s hot on any given day. What’s more impressive about Google Product Search is the fact that you can identify those smaller retailers and partner up with them to earn more money with your website.
Affiliate Software Change: Frustration for Affiliates
Affiliate managers are going to use the software that gives them the best options possible. So it’s not too unreasonable for them to make software changes from time to time. If you happen to be partnering with CJ or LinkShare affiliates, chances are you won’t have to worry too much about affiliate software changes. But affiliate programs do jump from one network to another from time to time. That all means that affiliates will have to be alert about the links that they are using on their websites and have a way to keep track of them. Affiliate programs do tend to give affiliates enough time to change their links, but that’s not always a given.
I have seen so many affiliates that are all over the place with their approach to adding links to their websites. It’s so easy to just use a service such as bit.ly to add affiliate links to your website. Sure, the tracking is nice. But if there is a change in your affiliate URLs, you are going to have to do a lot of URL updating. Spending time updating URLs all over your campaigns is not the best way to use your time, which is why you should never use a third party service to handle your affiliate links.
It’s Not All About Your Commission Rate
Everybody likes to earn more money. Whether you are a teacher, a cop, or even a CEO, you wouldn’t mind it if someone offered you more money to get your job done. The same concept applies to affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketers do not have the luxury of a stable income. So if you don’t perform as an affiliate, you are not going to get paid, and you might end up going out of business. Expert affiliate marketers understand how to get the best out of each affiliate program. They don’t necessarily go after the items with the highest commission rates. They focus on products that convert at a high rate. But that can’t be said about newbie affiliate marketers.
A lot of affiliate programs go about recruiting new affiliates by printing up these brochures that talk about how much money you are going to earn per click. The concept of EPC has been around for a while now, and a lot of people assume that an item that comes with a high average EPC is a winner. In truth, many affiliate programs do not remove outliers from their numbers, so you end up with an EPC that is bloated. EPC also doesn’t count the amount of money that you will have to spend to generate a valid lead. Many newbie affiliate marketers don’t take into account their overall CPA, and that could lead to your fast downfall.
I remember when I started with affiliate marketing. I didn’t know exactly what I needed to do, but I knew I wanted to make a lot of money. So I started going after products/services that gave me the largest amount of money per sale without figuring out whether I had a chance in making a profit with my campaigns. It’s true that mortgage companies are willing to pay you crazy amounts per each approved lead, but you are going to have to do a lot work to set up your campaigns in a profitable manner, and you will still be at the mercy of Google Adwords and other pay per click services. Besides, let’s not forget that those high-commission products are usually in mature markets, so you are going against people who have been in business for a while and are ahead of you on the curve. (more…)
