Affiliate Programs

• Choose a Merchant that offers high paying commissionable tiers (20% and above is excellent) Why would you waste your time trying to make 8% of a $12.00 sale?
• Choose a Merchant that offers easy to sell LOW price point items that are profitable for you to sell (Example you make 12% on a product sold for $19.99 whoopee that's $2.39, you would have to make 11 additional sales to equal the commission you would make from selling 1 of our X10 products! Focus on selling products with commission above 20% that are an easy sell, for example our XCam 2 sells for $79.99 x 30% = $23.97 in commission a MUCH larger check.)
• Become or sign up with a merchant if their affiliate team is WILLING to communicate and help you succeed. Do not bother joining programs where there is no communication, if there is no one for you to call with questions, if there is no one willing to check your tracking code or sales questions forget the program, y're finished before you started
• Choose the merchant based on the OFFERS they have for your consumer market. Is the merchant offering; bonuses? Coupons? Free gifts with purchase on thier banners or other affiliate creative? Branded banners with no offers or consumer incentives are for the benefit of the merchant (Free advertising) not the affiliate; gaining a conversion from a banner with a specific product offer that lands on that product landing page converts higher then a branded banner that takes the consumer to the home page of the merchants website.
• Affiliate tools — Will the merchant give you a free website? Check out the free website X10 affiliates get here, www.X10-Free-Website.com. Affiliate managers should have many new and exciting types of creative for you, if the affiliate program manager does not offer you content – dynamic landing pages – html emails etc find a program with better tool
• Check out the banners and other media creative the merchant has what is their offer? What are they selling? Many affiliates like the pretty colors of the banners or the style of the banners get past that and look deep into their IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications) methodology. If it is profitable to sell, if the merchant makes it easy to sell, if the merchant is willing to help you sell, then sign up for the program.
• Landing pages, are your consumers taken to the merchants website where there is a phone number? Do you get phone sales commission? I suggest finding out where your consumer will land when they click on one of your affiliate links! There are many programs now that offer phone sales commission, choose the program based on their tools.
• Is the merchant allowing you the opportunity to bid on keywords in Google and Overture? Has the merchant sent you a list of words you can use? If they are not allowing you the ability to properly market yourself WHY would you join?

Commission Junction

Here is a great tip concerning tracking PPC Keywords within the Commission Junction Network.

As you know the merchants will not allow you to have your Google conversion pixel or Overture conversion Pixel on their website.

Many of you are having a hard time determining which keywords are bringing in the sales. Optimizing your campaign is important to increase conversion and minimize costs in the PPC arena.

Here is a way to help you manage your keyword list and it is really quite simple.

In CJ you can add as many sites as you would like to your account, each site is given a PID (performance ID) to track sales for that website.

Instead of adding a new website to your CJ account, add a keyword (name it "Your Keyword" Overture or "My Keyword" Google)! Generate links for the PID associated with that keyword and you have keyword tracking!!