Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards “Affiliate Manager of the Year” Matt McWilliams joins Affiliate ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare discuss how are some ways that affiliates can maximize their communication with their affiliate program managers. A lot of affiliates are shy and hesitate to talk to affiliate managers and outsourced program managers because they “aren’t big enough” or they are afraid they are interrupting the manager. In truth, lots of affiliate managers are very glad to hear from affiliates and would love to give them advise and tips about how to promote their programs.

Some highlights:

*Find out if your merchant has a dedicated affiliate manager or an OPM (Outsourced Program Manager)
*Be sure the affiliate manager/OPM is available whichever way is best for you. Good ones will be available via, phone, email, IM and forums.
*Don’t be afraid to ask for creatives, advise, tips
*If you are promoting them successfully, ask for a commission increase. If you are a promoting a competitor successfully, show them and ask for a commission increase to change some of those links for the new program.

*Advantages of using instant messaging: can drop links to each other, instant feedback for both manager and affiliate

Some links mentioned in the show:
Legacy Learning Affiliate Program Blog
ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum
Legacy Learning Website
Join the Legacy Learning Affiliate Program

Find us on Twitter:
Matt McWilliams
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Affiliate ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Read more here:
Affiliate ABCs #26 Tips About Communicating with Your Affiliate Manager

Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards “Affiliate Manager of the Year” Matt McWilliams joins Affiliate ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare to talk about what affiliates should look for when evaluating a merchant to promote. One of the toughest decisions an affiliate has to make is which merchants to give the real estate on their website to. Matt, Deborah and Vinny have a candid discussion about what to look for to be sure a merchant is worth promoting and is worth “above the fold” attention (or not).

Some highlights:
*Find merchants in the networks you belong to and search by category or keywords

Take a look at the merchant from the Consumer perspective::
*First impression – would you shop there?
*Do they have “leaks” (banners to other sites, adsense, send shoppers away)?
*If there are links to other sites, do they actually track back to the affiliate program? Some merchants cross track with others.
*Easy to navigate? FAQ? Shipping information? Contact information, About Us, Whois Information matches the site About Us information?
*What is the shopping process like? Is it easy or are there roadblocks? Is there a prompt to call to complete the order? Is it secure?

Now look from the Affiliate perspective:
*Compare commissions, cookie duration, other program terms to other similar programs.
*Appropriate banners? Text links?
*Is it a site that you would promote with a datafeed? Do they have one? Is it well categorized? Is it available in 3rd party tools you may be working with?
*Send a note to the affiliate manager if there is something you would like created, see if they respond. Is there contact information?
*For Shareasale merchants: Are they on Auto Deposit?
*For any other network, what happens if the merchant’s balance with the network goes offline? Is there a way to check the merchants online/offline history?

Some links mentioned in the show:

Legacy Learning Affiliate Program Blog
ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum
Legacy Learning Website
Join the Legacy Learning Affiliate Program

Find us on Twitter:
Matt McWilliams
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney ( a.k.a. Loxly)
Affiliate ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Follow this link:
Affiliate ABCs #25 Evaluating Merchants for your Affiliate Site

Merchant ABCs is hosted by Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare of Team Loxly internet marketing. In this first episode they talk to merchants that are considering setting up an affiliate program and outline what merchants need to know before making the jump into creating an affiliate program.

Things we will be doing in future podcasts:
Case Studies
Merchant reviews

Covered in this podcast:
Setting up and starting an affiliate program.
Whether you should have an affiliate program.

What is an affiliate

Our podcasts focus on Retail, not ebooks or information products, or lead generation affiliate marketing

Something that people need

PMS – Solve a problem – Problem Make Solution
Set up your site to sell – affiliates won’t promote a site that isn’t already converting.

Get a consultant to optimize your site for conversions before you even think about about adding an affiliate program.

After your site is optimized to sell, decide if you want to have an inhouse or network affiliate tracking solution.

Affiliates get paid commission, networks get a commission and may have a monthly minimum.

Managing your program – networks don’t manage and recruit, they are just for tracking and payment. We don’t recommend adding the network services for management, they may not be in your best interests.

Some things to think about for your program Terms of Service

Network Vs Inhouse

Set up – Graphics, text links, other creatives

Affiliate Manager – Inhouse or Outsourced. Sales manager or PR person shouldn’t be the guy running the affiliate program. Outsourced Program Manager – OPM – company that manages multiple programs, short term or long term.

OPM – can find you good graphics people, help you decide on a network, introduce your program to appropriate affiliates – they are your shortcut to do things the right way.

Merchant – Affiliate – Network – OPM/Inhouse AM

Affiliate links to your site, the links track through the Network or your inhouse tracking – shopper goes to your site and completes purchase. Network takes the affiliate commission and their fee at the time of the purchase, but is invisible to the shopper.

Links to companies mentioned in the show:
Outsourced Program Managers
Shareasale
Commission Junction
Google Affiliate Network
Linkshare

Zen Cart
osCommerce

Affiliate Summit West and East

Follow us on Twitter:
Merchant ABCs @MerchantABCs
Deborah Carney @loxly
Vinny O’Hare @vinnyohare

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky

Original post:
Merchant ABCs #1 What is an Affiliate Program and How Does it Work

Affiliate ABCs episode 24 is all about networking at Affiliate Summit, focused on the ASW10 in January in Las Vegas. Hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare are joined by Jim Kukral who is the emcee once again. From the interesting including Jim’s session on getting motivated and Deborah’s panel about mommybloggers and affiliate marketing, we highlight some of the fun and seriousness that makes up Affiliate Summit.

Be sure to listen to this podcast too, to see how people who networked made a difference to their bottom line. Affiliate Summit was one piece of that puzzle…

Meet us all at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas – here’s a coupon for $100 off any pass.
Parties at Affiliate Summit

A little more about Jim:
A graduate of The University of Akron with a BA in Public Relations and a minor in Sales & Marketing, Jim has spent time working for publicly traded firms and small businesses alike. Jim’s work and experience in the Internet marketing industry has branded him as a leading thinker and thought-leader in the community.

Follow us all on twitter:
AffiliateSummit
Jim Kukral
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Vinny O’Hare
AffiliateABCs

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky

Go here to see the original:
Affiliate ABCs #24 Affiliate Summit – Why You Should Be There

Affiliate ABCs episode 23 is another in our series of “Back in the Day” profiles of an internet and affliate marketing pioneer. Hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare are joined by Jim Kukral who started his journey online back in 1995. We talk about Jim’s transition from web designer to affiliate marketer to coach and consultant, with a lot of laughs along the way…

We dug up a couple of Jim’s first sites using the Wayback Machine:
iQuit.com (which he eventually sold)
AffiliateMakeover.com

We also talked about how we all got help with affiliate marketing along the way from ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing forum and how networking helps all of us.

Meet us all at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas – here’s a coupon for $100 off any pass.

A little more about Jim:
A graduate of The University of Akron with a BA in Public Relations and a minor in Sales & Marketing, Jim has spent time working for publicly traded firms and small businesses alike. Jim’s work and experience in the Internet marketing industry has branded him as a leading thinker and thought-leader in the community.

Follow us all on twitter:
Jim Kukral
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Vinny O’Hare
AffiliateABCs

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky

View original post here:
Affiliate ABCs #23 Back in the Day with Jim Kukral

Affiliate ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare explain how a stupid post on Twitter found a niche affiliate market by accident. We break down and find a niche after Vinny was slapped on Twitter by a few women after he made a remark about breast feeding.

Things we covered are:
Finding products for the breastfeeding niche.
Finding topics for the site and how he would go about making an affiliate site for the niche.
Using the hashtag on Tweetdeck for finding niches.
Using adwords account to find if there is an interest for a site.
Searching for a domain for the topic.
Developing content based on the adwords keywords search

Twitter links and more:
@clairelouise2
Claire’s Blog
@RadicaLactivist
@kitchenwitch
@Morgaine_LaFay

Follow your hosts on twitter:
@loxly
@vinnyohare
@affiliateabcs
@GeekCast

As always, big thanks to GeekCast for hosting the Affiliate ABCs podcasts.

Read more:
Affiliate ABCs #21 Slapped on Twitter Leads to a Niche

Recently a group of people were invited to a special networking event hosted by the Shareasale network and during casual conversation some information was shared that helped an affiliate make sales for a merchant they hadn’t worked with because they were unaware the merchant had items on his site that fit hers. Well, that spurred a thought process that let to following a trail that spanned 4 years that made those sales.

Billy Kay, Jen Goode, and Carolyn Tang join Affiliate ABCs host Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly at several forums) to talk about how they all came to know each other and banded together to make something special happen. This isn’t a podcast about how to network, but what happens when you *do* network.

Longer than normal, but worth every minute. Share your own networking story in the comments, or email abcs at teamloxly.com to be on our podcast to share your story!

Revenews Article by Billy Kay
Skype
ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum
The Mail Order Shoppe
The Personalized Gifts Affiliate Program
Affiliate Summit
eComExpo

Network with them all on Twitter:
@billykay
@loxly
@jgoode
@catango
@shareasale
@affiliateabcs

Read the original post:
Affiliate ABCs #20 – The Importance of Networking to Your Bottom Line

Shawn Collins shares his insights on the history of affiliate marketing and it’s evolution to the present with Affiliate ABCs host Deborah Carney. This is a little longer than our podcasts generally are, but it is facinating information. So much so that it is the first in a series of podcasts with industry folks that have been around a while that will share their stories about the history of our industry. The show notes are also lengthy and quite amusing and enlightening

This podcast was inspired by a blog post Shawn wrote several years ago on Clickz and his Clickz articles archive is located here.

More fun links:
Club Mom Affiliate Support Site (from Archives.org)
VelocityNYC.com – recently repurposed
babylounge.com – mentioned and now redirected
New York Affiliate Managers Watch out, there’s a pop that firefox blocked for me. Shawn in a bow tie?
Refer-it – Remember them? Plus more great links to historical articles.
Affiliate Summit

If you wrote articles that chronicle the history, feel free to drop them in the comments here, and if you would like to be on an Affiliate ABCs “Back in the Day” Podcast, email me at abcs at teamloxly.com

Be sure to follow AffiliateABCs on Twitter too.

Original post:
Affiliate ABCs #19 History of Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins

In this episode of Affiliate ABCs your host Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly) discusses email marketing with Aweber with Justin Premick, Director of Education Marketing at Aweber. This episode gets into more advanced topics and more depth on the value of building your list, and how to use it effectively.

Post on thank you pages (with free HTML for embedding audio on your own thank you page):
Integrating WordPress with AWeber (includes video):
Integrating Blogger with AWeber (includes video):
Integrating AWeber and Twitter (no video here, sorry):
Twitter:
@aweber
@justinpremick
@loxly
@affiliateabcs

Visit link:
Affiliate ABCs #17 Email Marketing with Aweber Part 2

The following deals have been added to the Shareasale Deals Database, and will be included in the special Black Friday database that Sarah is putting together. We will add to this as we get deals from the rest of our merchants.

For information on getting items to review from *some* of our merchants: Click Here

Merchant Name: Shop7
Offer: Buy 2 Items, Get 1 Free
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23148&m=17925&u=YourSASID
Join Shop7 and Our Handmade Gifts Affiliate Program

Merchant Name: Our Handmade Gifts
Offer: 35% off all orders
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23150&m=17925&u=YourSASID
Join Shop7 and Our Handmade Gifts Affiliate Program

Merchant Name: Loxly Gallery
Offer: 50% off all orders
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23151&m=12245&u=YourSASID
Join Loxly Gallery and Cool Butterflies Posters and Prints Affiliate Program

Merchant Name: Cool Butterflies
Offer: 50% off all orders
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23152&m=12245&u=YourSASID
Join Loxly Gallery and Cool Butterflies Posters and Prints Affiliate Program

Merchant Name: American Tea Room
Offer: 10% off all orders, including already on sale items
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
Deal Code: http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23616&m=24685&u=YourSASID
Join American Tea Room Affiliate Program

Merchant Name: M-Rock Camera Bags
Offer: Take an additional 5% off our already low prices (including our 40% off clearance items!) on our top quality camera bags by shopping on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Coupon code is 5Disc and expires 12/1/2009.
Coupon Code: 5Disc
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
Deal Code: http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23617&m=8611&u=YourSASID
Join M-Rock Camera Bags Affiliate Program

______________________________
The following deals are all with the *same* merchant, see below for details!

Merchant Name: Engravable Gifts 2 Go
Offer: 10% off every order over $50 – including sale items
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
Deal Code: http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23628&m=17498&u=YourSASID

Merchant Name: The Baby Shower Gift Store
Offer: 10% off every order over $50 – including sale items
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
Deal Code: http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23629&m=17498&u=YourSASID

Merchant Name: Engraved Crystal Shoppe
Offer: 10% off every order over $50 – including sale items
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
Deal Code: http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23630&m=17498&u=YourSASID

Merchant Name: Custom Signs and Plaques
Offer: 10% off every order over $50 – including sale items
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
Deal Code: http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23631&m=17498&u=YourSASID

Merchant Name: Custom Ceramic Stoneware
Offer: 10% off every order over $50 – including sale items
Coupon Code: BlackFriday
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
Deal Code: http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23632&m=17498&u=YourSASID

Join The Mail Order Shoppe Affiliate Programs – all the above sites are in the *same* great affiliate program. One sign up and you join them all.

______________________________
Merchant Name: SWAK Designs Plus Sized Apparel
Coupon code: BF35
Offer: 35% off all regularly priced items
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
Deal Link: http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23734&m=12469&u=YourSASID

Merchant Name: SWAK Designs Plus Sized Apparel
Coupon code: BFSALE25
Offer: 25% off already discounted sale and clearance items
Start and End Date: November 26 thru December 1st
Deal Link: http://www.shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=23735&m=12469&u=YourSASID

Join the SWAK Designs Plus Sized Apparel Affiliate Program by clicking here
Be sure to replace YourSASID with your ID number.

View post:
Team Loxly Managed Merchants Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals for Affiliates to Push