'Net Features : Affiliate Programs

Educate Yourself on These Back-to-School Affiliate Programs

Michael Garrity — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 19:30:00 GMT

As the summer draws to an unfortunate close, merchants are scrambling to bring in the rest of the back-to-school shoppers out there preparing for the upcoming academic year. Here at Website Magazine, we’ve already looked at some of the best online marketing practices of e-commerce merchants for this school shopping season, but that leaves out one crucial element of the Internet advertising landscape – affiliates.

A Commission Junction study from earlier this year looked at how back-to-school shoppers use the Web to make their purchasing decisions and determined that affiliate marketing channels are “well-suited” to help marketers reach these consumers. With the school shopping period’s sales peak coming up in the fourth week of August, it’s now or never for affiliate marketers to partner up with one (or more) of these hip affiliate programs to bring in some of that back-to-school cash.

Walmart

Walmart is unquestionably the leader in the retail industry, and it is bound to be the go-to destination for many consumers looking to purchase school supplies, clothing, electronics, dorm room furniture, food, cosmetics, vitamins, chewing gum and a multitude of other goods needed to start the school year off right. The retail giant runs its own affiliate program and offers partners banners and text links, data feeds, RSS feeds, a link generator and more.

Urban Outfitters

This chic clothing retailer offers fashions (as well as fun books and knickknacks) for young men and women from high school through college. Boasting hip apparel that appeals to such a wide range of back-to-school shoppers makes Urban Outfitters an ideal merchant partner. Plus, it will even provide you with reports that track your traffic and earnings, so you can keep up with the performance of your campaign.

Best Buy

Yeah, yeah, I know, Best Buy isn’t exactly doing great right now, but the faltering electronics retailer has at least one more big back-to-school shopping season left in it, and that means that students will inevitably flock to it to purchase new laptops, iPods, home theatre appliances and other accessories. The Best Buy affiliate program pays its affiliate partners based on how much the visitors they direct buy from the site, and helps them out by offering text links, banner ads, widgets and its Best Buy BBY Open API that provides access to the entire Best Buy product catalog. They’ll even throw in weekly newsletters and special announcements highlighting special products, promotions and services.

Justice

If there’s one segment you really want to reach during the back-to-school shopping season, it’s “tween” girls. Justice is an apparel and accessories retailer that does just that, selling products that are unique to the interests of this particular consumer segment. This program offers up to a seven percent commission payout, and Justice has teamed with the renowned Commission Junction affiliate network to offer publishers third-party tracking, real-time reporting and monthly commission checks.

Barnes & Noble

Okay, so this one may not be as immediately obvious as the others, but if you’ve ever had to buy college text books from a university bookstore, you’ll know why looking for the best book deals online is about the smartest decision you can make. Target these eager (and often broke) young scholars by partnering with one of the world’s premier book retailers. Barnes & Noble gives affiliates a variety of marketing tools, including a datafeed and API, provides personal account support and pays out as much as a six percent commission on their books, music, movies, electronics and NOOK products. And, of course, the company is sure to offer a slew of enticing back-to-school textbook promotions.

Optimizing Affiliate Management

Linc Wonham — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:26:00 GMT

There are few opportunities on the Web that give a better return on investment than a well-executed affiliate marketing campaign. It costs next to nothing to get started, but the best ROI requires a little TLC.

That is why the success of any affiliate program falls largely on the way it is managed, whether that’s done by a major network, an outsourced program manager (OPM) or a small business owner forced to wear many hats. Below are some important best practices for managing a profitable affiliate program, all of which can dramatically increase the rewards.

Research, Recruit, Motivate and Communicate
Conduct the appropriate market research necessary to identify the best available opportunities for producing revenues. In particular, look for merchants that exhibit the best potential for growth and efficiency for online marketing campaigns. Conduct the search with professionalism and demand nothing less from prospects. Then motivate new and existing affiliate marketing partners to the point that both parties are working hard to achieve the same goals. Always keep the lines of communication open, whether those communications are positive or (constructively) negative.

Design New Programs
Website owners can expect from their affiliate marketing programs what they put into them, which is why it’s always important to be creating new opportunities. Designing effective lead-generation programs and processes is an integral part of growing online revenue. Many webmasters are content with dropping some seeds in the ground to see what comes up, but affiliate managers that provide constant care to their programs are generally rewarded with healthy commissions throughout the year.

Build a Portfolio
Once the proper research and recruiting has yielded some motivated merchants, and new lead-generation programs are being conceived in perpetuation, repeat the process over and over to build a portfolio of revenue-producing affiliate campaigns. A portfolio can be as large or as small as the additional demands of the business allow, but the greatest rewards will come from campaigns that receive the most attention.

Evaluate Individually
Each campaign will require management on a daily basis, which may include creating marketing materials, performing analysis, reporting on metrics, maintaining advertising compliance, etc. Frequent evaluations and communications with merchant partners are essential parts of this process.

Strategize and Plan
Analyze each campaign and evaluate its long-term performance. Comprehensive reviews will help achieve this goal and enables the program manager to work with merchants on a strategic level in order to capitalize on any opportunities for growth and improve on any areas of concern. After carefully evaluating the individual campaigns, take an overall look at the affiliate program as a whole and see how it could be managed better – there’s almost always room for improvement.

Shuttertweet: Monetized Tweets for Shutterstock Users

MaureenA — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Last week, Website Magazine reported on the love bloggers, photographers and videographers have of Shutterstock’s affiliate program. Today, Shutterstock moves its affiliate program into the Twitterverse with its new tool, Shuttertweet.

Shuttertweet allows Shutterstock submitters to send tweets to their followers whenever their portfolio is added or changed on the image stock website. But that’s not all. Submitters get a commission anytime someone clicks on the link in the tweet and makes a purchase.

In the coverage last week, Mike Phillips, senior editor, noted that affiliates can earn up to 20 percent of each purchase including subscriptions. It is unclear if this applies to the Shuttertweet program as well.

The business of tapping into Twitter’s API is a growing trend as more companies look to capture the millions of Twitter users, and send those users back to their own websites. Back in April, eMarketer estimated that there will be 12.1 million users on the social networking site in 2009 – a number that any company would want to get its hands on.

Do you participate in any affiliate programs that utilize Twitter? Comment below.

Onehub Announces Affiliate Program

MaureenA — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Onehub, an online collaboration service announced its new affiliate program. In the words of Peter Prestipino, WM’s editor-in-chief, “This is the biggest payout I’ve seen.” Affiliates who recommend Onehub’s services to colleagues who then in turn sign up will reap the reward of 100 percent commission from the first month’s subscription fee. According to the release, affiliates can make as much as $499 per recommendation. This is the price of the Enterprise plan which is also the most expensive. Other available plans cost: $19 (Personal Edition), $49 (Basic), $99 (Team), and $249 (Professional).

Onehub allows users to upload, manage and collaborate on files, tasks, and calendar events. It includes a range of widgets for advanced functionality on each hub. In addition, users can brand their hubs with logos and company themes.

According to the announcement, Onehub currently works with more than 25,000 businesses to provide online collaboration. In addition, affiliates get access to all lead information and can follow up on their own.

"We've even provided marketing tools with built-in lead and opportunity tracking to make the entire experience seamless and uncomplicated for the affiliate," said Onehub founder and CEO, Charles Mount in the press release.

Is this the biggest affiliate payout you’ve seen? Comment below.

Elance Affiliate Program

MaureenA — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:41:00 GMT

Elance launched an affiliate program for current members who get new members to sign up and participate in the site. The value-add for Elance is that it receives more companies to post job listings and hire Elance members. And it's a plus for Elance members because they get connected with more hiring companies. It's free to become an affiliate and commission ranges depending on the action by new members.

Affiliates receive:
* $8 when a new member posts their first job opening
* 1 percent during the first six months new members make or receive payments through Elance
* $3 when new members post their first featured job
* $15 when new members post their first business-to-business job opening
* $15 when new members subscribe to the paid membership.

Elance provides links, widgets and banners to help affiliates recruit new members. All sites are encouraged to participate in the new affiliate program, but Elance says they are more focused on creating relationships with affiliates who are more involved in business-to-business networks. And judging by the payout scale, businesses with wide networks of job providers and seekers have the most to gain.

Google Apps Reseller Program Unveiled

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:42:00 GMT

Google announced the launch of an authorized reseller program for Google Apps.

While some might see this as a direct attack on Microsoft's core product line (which it very well may be), Web hosting companies should really be the entities worrying. If web hosting resellers shift from promoting entire Web business configurations over to Google Apps, small hosting companies could end up all but obsolete. For this to happen though, Google will surely need to beef up its own services. But the threat is certainly there.

For those unfamiliar with Google Apps, it is a SaaS package of business applications such as email, calendar, group site creation, and document collaboration (watch a video on Google Apps here). Over 1 million companies already use the product, and some 3,000 new businesses sign up each and every day.

The challenge, however, for Google is that many of the businesses right for Google Apps don't have the expertise or resources to implement it correctly and integrate it into their existing business processes. That's where authorized resellers come in. Google is aiming to steal away some market share from hosting companies by training affiliates to resell its application bundle.

The Google Apps Authorized Reseller program gives affiliates the opportunity to earn product and service revenue (20% on each $50 per user/per year price) from their new and existing customers by deploying Google Apps. Google provides resellers with the standard marketing collateral (sales tools and technical training) and management accounts (console to create and manage customer accounts).

CAP TOC Alerts

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:55:00 GMT

Internet casino affiliate community site CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com (CAP) has announced a new feature, CAP Alerts Terms and Conditions updates, which is designed to keep members informed on the affiliate programs that have been officially certified by CAP.

The service sends notifications via email and private message whenever any changes are posted to a CAP program's published Terms & Condition website page. Members can choose to monitor any or all of the CAP Certified Programs on the company's website. "We want to make sure that the affiliates who come to CAP have every advantage that we can provide," stated Lou Fabiano, President and Founder of CAP.

"It's our sincerest desire to provide our community with the best affiliate marketing services on the planet, and we're confident this new service will do just that, by making the programs here at CAP completely transparent and easy to monitor," continued Fabiano.

Affiliate Program for Rails Performance Management

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:57:00 GMT

Ruby on Rails application performance management solution provider New Relic today announced it has created the New Relic Affiliate Program. Rails development companies, hosting services and Rails user groups can receive commissions for referring new users under the program.

Eight companies and one Rails community user group have already signed on to the program as charter affiliates, including Atlantic Dominion Solutions, CarbonFive, Core Continuum, Designkitchen, Foraker Design, New Leaders, Railsware LLC, and Relevance. "New Relic's monitoring tool is revolutionary," said Robert Bousquet, founder and partner, New Leaders. "We now keep extremely close tabs on dozens of internal and customer applications through one centralized interface."

The program is well suited to application development firms like these, as they can promote the service to existing customers and be paid a fee equal to a portion of the subscription fees paid to New Relic by those who become subscribers. Affiliate can retain the commission or rebate the fees to the end customer. Affiliates will be able to provide free 30-day subscriptions of RPM Gold to their customers during their customer engagements to facilitate the optimization of the customers' Rails applications. Affiliates will also be eligible to use RPM Gold for use on their own internal applications.

Social Spark Affiliate Opps

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:36:00 GMT

IZEA (formerly PayPerPost) announced the release of SocialSpark Affiliate Opportutnities - a marketplace designed exclusively for bloggers.

The program offers performance based marketing programs in which bloggers receive a CPA commission for specific actions such as form leads or online sales. SocialSpark Advertisers provide text links and display ads (IAB display ad units) to bloggers and assign a bounty for each action they want accomplished. Even IZEA realizes however that the most powerful ad unit is the sponsored post (Some things never change!) as it delivers "superior click-throughs and conversions over traditional display ads."

SocialSpark looks like it's taking disclosure and transparency very seriously. The service requires affiliates to post disclosure as a condition of payment (through a machine readable Disclosure Badge seen below). Advertisers are able to select which bloggers can participate in their opportunity by segmenting with SocialSpark tools by age, gender, traffic, category and other criteria based on the needs of the campaign.

Please Note: This is not a sponsred IZEA or SocialSpark post.

LinkConnector in Focus: Four Programs To Consider

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:54:00 GMT

Each week in Website Magazine's Affiliate Insider newsletter, programs available from one specific affiliate/publisher network will be highlighted. This week's edition focuses on new merchants from LinkConnector, the offers and the commission you could earn. If you own or help to operate an affiliate network, contact our editors and you may find your company and its merchants highlighted in the Affiliate Insider newsletter!

Encore Payment Systems
Each lead you send to Encore Payment Systems will net you a hefty $20.00 commission. Perfect for affiliates in the B2B space, Encore offers credit and debit card processing - perfect for those with an audience interested in accepting noncash payments. Wait, one more thing! There's a bonus if the lead eventually purchases the payment system. Not too hard if you've got an active audience, especially with a 365 day tracking cookie.

WinBuyer for Online Retailers
WinBuyer delivers a patent-pending E-commerce application that displays competitive pricing information. The WinBuyer technology positions a retailer's core products as the low cost leader, dramatically affecting their bottom line, increasing conversion to sales and generating lead-based revenue. Affiliates will earn $20 for every approved registration with the WinBuyer program on a 60-day cookie.

Legends Tickets Service
Here's a good one: Legends Tickets Service specializes in tickets for college and pro spoting events in all 50 states. Average order value is in excess of $275. With a 10% commission and one-year tracking, it might be worth your time to investigate and promote.

Greek Gear
No, not togas (well, maybe). GreekGear is offering affiliates a great way to target the college demographic. Average online order value is nearly $80.00. The payout is 10%, but if you generate over $1,000 in a given month, you'll receive 12% per sale. Now's the time to call up your fraternity or sorority sisters! Tracking code is only 60 days but lots of interesting products make this offer one to explore.

ScribeFire Out of Beta

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:59:00 GMT

ScribeFire QuickAds, an ad optimization product for web site publishers and a MediaWhiz property, has just launched out of beta. An advertising platform that lets publishers serve both banners and in-text ads on their sites via a single platform, the service boasts that over 5,000 web site publishers have signed up with QuickAds since July 2008.

ScribeFire QuickAds differentiates its ad inventory management solution with an optimization decision engine, which matches each impression with the highest revenue producing ad. Ads are selected from the MediaWhiz ad inventory pool and relationships with over 100 ad networks.

ScribeFire's display advertising solution accepts high impact Flash and Video banner ads, along with static JPEG, Pop-Unders, and animated GIF ads in IAB-standard ad sizes (e.g. Leaderboard: 728x90, Wide Skyscraper: 160x600, and Medium Rectangle: 300x250).

I have been a member of ScribeFire since their initial launch but never actually tested the platform. I plan on doing so however for a feature article designated for the Affiliate Insider email newsletter scheduled for next week. If you have not yet signed up for the Affiliate Insider newsletter or one of Website Magazine's other industry newsletters, we encourage you to request a free subscription.

Launch An Affiliate Program - Post Affiliate Pro

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:35:00 GMT

Those actually selling goods (virtual or otherwise) on the Internet are finding that launching an affiliate program is an inexpensive, effective way of generating sales and acquiring more Web traffic. While there are hundreds of affiliate networks that merchants and vendors can employ to recruit affiliates willing to sell or resell product, the other option is to go it alone, creating and managing an affiliate or partner program without the assistance, guidance and support of these networks. The downside to using an affiliate network is that it can be expensive to get started and you may just end up paying a share to the network. If the cost is too prohibitive, there are several affiliate program software solutions worth looking into.

Post Affiliate Pro is one such offering. For $149 (actually the cost is $99 for a limited time), you'll receive a fully customizable affiliate software solution that will help to get an affiliate program up and running in minutes. The software is compatible with nearly all merchant accounts payment gateways, shopping cars and membership systems and the feature list is enough to convince even the most critical merchants. Some of what stood out the most for me were the ability to support unlimited affiliates, ability to offer multiple commission types, refund and chargeback management, a rich communication platform and quite extensive flash reporting.

I'm interested in learning whether the merchant-readers of this blog utilize affiliate programs and what software (proprietary or otherwise) is being used. Login or register now and share your comment!

Related reading on affiliate programs from Website Magazine:

Do It Yourself - Start an Affiliate Program
Directory of Affiliate Program Directories

affiliates affiliate program affiliate marketing affiliate software affiliate program software

Directory of Affiliate Program Directories

Administrator — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:37:00 GMT

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(Scroll down for the directory of affiliate program directories)

Recruiting affiliates can be challenging. As an advertiser (those actually operating the affiliate program), services such as CommissionJunction, ShareASale, LinkConnector and others can be cost prohibitive to get started. This is why many merchants simply never get in the game. For those that do however, the rewards are great which is why an entire industry has developed around the business of independent affiliate sites selling the products, services and software of merchants on a cost-per-sale, cost-per-lead or cost-per-click basis.

If you simply don't have the funds to outsource the promotion and management of your affiliate program, there is an alternative - do it yourself. Website Magazine has written a few articles on starting a DIY affiliate program and even provided guidance for those looking to be affiliates in our feature story from back in August 2006.

With millions of potential partners online though, you need to separate your program from that of the competition. Marketing to marketers is often like selling ice to eskimos, so the more clearly you can express the benefit of being your affiliate, the more competitive you can make the payout and the more support you offer (through resources, newsletters, etc.) the more affiliates will join your program and the greater the potential to sell more product.

But where do you find affiliates? We've developed a list of eight top affiliate program directories below with some important statistics on their place in the affiliate industry, how well each of these affiliate directories is performing and what you can possibly expect from a listing at these free resources. Since many affiliate use these directories to locate independent affiliate program, these are a great place to find those that are willing and able to sell what you're offering.

AffiliatesDirectory.com One of the most established affiliate directories on the Web (at least eight years old). Google Pagerank of 4, nearly 8,000 pages indexed, over 2,700 inbound links and an Alexa Rank of 112,521.
AssociatePrograms.com Well respected collection of affiliate programs (over ten years old). Google Pagerank of 5, over 17,000 pages indexed, 32,000 inbound links and an Alexa rank of 32,679.
AffiliateSeeking.com Well structured directory of affiliate programs (four years old). Google Pagerank of 5, nearly 6,000 pages indexed, over 42,000 inbound links an an Alexa rank of 57,190.
AtHomeDirectory.com Pretty new directory (less than two years) of work at home affiliate programs. Google Pagerank of 4, over 6,600 pages indexed, 3,400 inbound links but a rather low Alexa rank of 500,000 plus.
AffiliateShowcase.com A member of the old guard of affiliate directories (more than five years). Google Pagerank of 4, 4,000 pages indexed, over 11,000 inbound links and a respectable Alexa rank of 238,000.
AffiliateTips.com Hands down, one of the top affiliate program directories (aged at over 8 years). Google Pagerank of 4, just 478 pages indexed and only 1,200 inbound links with an Alexa rank of 134,000, AffiliateTips is well structured and helpful from the home page on down.
AffiliateRanker.com Less a directory and more of a search portal, a good resource (at only two 1/2 years old). Google Pagerank of 4, indexed pages at 2,000+, a whopping 27,000+ inbound links and an Alexa rank of just over 134,000.
AffiliateScout.com Another well-structured directory of associate programs (aged at over 4 years). Google Pagerank of just 3, but 7,700+ pages index, 37,000+ inbound links and an impressive Alexa rank of 37,000.

The Planet's Hosting Affiliate Program

Administrator — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:15:00 GMT

The Planet just announced the expansion of its partner offerings with the addition of an affiliate program. This generally would not warrant an announcement but The Planet is one of the largest and most influential dedicated hosting companies around. If you're interested in earning commissions from The Planet by making referrals read on.

When affiliates refer a new dedicated hosting customer, they will receive a one-time, 65 percent commission based on that new customer's monthly recurring revenue after the third full month. That means earning referral commissions start at $44 and go up to $1,000 or more. This is quite the generous payout so if you're a designer or developer looking to build out your own revenue stream this could be a great solution.

Just to sweeten the deal a bit, The Planet also announced a celebratory kick-off promotion for the new program. For the month of February, the company will pay an additional $1,000 to the affiliate member who generates the largest volume of referrals. Another $250 has been designated as a bonus to the member who refers the month’s largest single transaction.

Learn more about the affiliate program at The Planet.