I’ve been following a thread on Wickedfire closely over the past few days that talks about dodgy affiliate networks. I realised that I’d never really covered this topic in any detail on the blog, so here’s my spin on it all.

Dodgy Merchants

It’s inevitable that if you’re trying out hundreds of merchants every month you’ll eventually run into a few dodgy ones. It’s easy to think that everyone in this industry is nice & “looking out for one another” but if you think that then you need a serious reality check.

You’ve got three types of merchants

1. Those that manage their affiliate program in house with a dedicated team
2. Those that outsource the management to a network but still approve the leads/purchases themselves
3. Those that manage the program by themselves (1 man show)

Speaking from experience I’ve had trouble from all three types. But, most of the time it’s from numbers 2 & 3.

So what are the ways that merchants can cheat you out of your well fought after commissions? Read More…

I’ve been trying to write at least one solid post per week, but unfortunately like Eli over at Blue Hat Seo I’ve been under a wave of DDOS attacks for the past few weeks. It doesn’t seem to be to quite the same extent but I’ve put the appropriate measures in place to make sure it has been contained.

Major thanks to all the guys over at SLHost for their support in solving any issues fast. If you ever need to get your hands on a decent VPS you really can’t go far wrong.

In the meantime, if you have any great Guest Posts that cover any affiliate marketing topics send them through to earnersblog@gmail.com & I’ll sort through the best ones

Thanks for your support.

Is your PPC campaign dull & lacking that oomph? Good, today is the day to take action & turn things around. Follow these simple steps & explode your PPC Campaign:

1. Try to avoid Phrases with less than 3 Words

There’s a huge difference between “affiliate marketing” & “affiliate marketing blog.” The more words contained within a keyphrase the more targeted your keyphrase is likely to be for that query. Put yourself in the shoes of the searcher, people looking for information will type “affiliate marketing” people who specifically want to read an affiliate marketing blog will type the latter. Read More…

If you’ve ever been on eBay you’ll no doubt have seen this:

or this: Read More…

If you’re a full time affiliate marketer there’s a very good chance that you probably don’t use internet explorer anymore. There’s a number of reasons most people switch, but the most common, is the lack of plugin functionality & 3rd party integration.

Firefox has really embraced these types of applications & allows you to integrate them seamlessly into your regular workflow, helping you to do tasks or use functions that the original developers didn’t hardcode.

I use quite a number of Firefox Extensions that really make a huge difference to my workflow & productivity, but the aim of this post to be the definitive list of Firefox Plugins for Affiliate Marketers: Read More…

If you’re familiar with the eBay affiliate program you’ll also be very familiar with Commission Junction. These two have gone hand in hand with each other like Strawberry’s & Cream for as long as I can remember. The program has also been a very very consistent earner for me over the years.

But in a move that really didn’t take me by surprise, eBay have decided now to take the Affiliate Management & Reporting in house with the creation of the eBay Partner Network, a global affiliate management network encompassing all of the eBay sites into one manageable interface:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

Now you’ll be able to promote every eBay localisation without having to go through the sign up process for each, which will allow for much more diversification in who you target & also allow you to Geo Target regions you may not have been able to before. The network also takes out the middleman when it comes to support & affiliate issues.

I’m keen to see the new reporting features, as the current ones provided over at CJ are extremely limited, unless you download the daily report via .csv. I’m also interested to see if they provide Geo Targeted ad blocks (similar to what Auctionads was doing).

My heart goes out to Commission Junction, I can’t imagine how much of a hit losing eBay will have on their bottom line, but the move makes sense. eBay’s Tradera AB, ProStores, Inc, Reseller Marketplace, Media Marketplace, eBay Stores & StubHub will however continue with CJ as normal so all is not lost.

The network opens on April 1st 2008 & all links must be migrated over by May 1st 2008. If you migrate over in April you’ll get a 5% bonus to all traffic for that month only.I’ll report more info when I get it & expect a full review of the new interface & reporting when I get access.

I came across both of these vouchers in a magazine yesterday, they’re only for people living in Australia. Enjoy.

$50 Adwords Voucher for new Advertisers

$100 YSM Voucher for new Advertisers

Email is one of those things that has the ability to really zap away much of the precious ‘work’ time that you have during the day. If you’re a compulsive ‘email checker’ then perhaps this tutorial isn’t for you, but if you have to manage a large number of email accounts & addresses all at once then this tutorial will save you so much time & hassle that you’ll never, ever look back.

Since I have a load of different websites with their own mailboxes it’s safe to say that I have a lot of ‘accounts’ in my Thunderbird that send & receive mail from each of the sites. Recently this method was becoming very cumbersome, I was getting increased amounts of spam & I was really finding it difficult to check mail on the go (via squirrelmail).

This called for action, I realised that somehow I:

• wanted to consolidate all of my mail into one account, but still be able to utilise all the addresses
• be able to read all my mail from the web from one login
• eliminate the insane amount of spam I was receiving
• still be able to download all my mail via pop to thunderbird

Read More…