Reading the speaker list I picked up a little when I saw that the first two speakers were Affiliate Marketers. Before I get to the actual speakers I should say that this seminar was very americanised and I din’t think it would work well here in Ireland but it went down better than I thought. It was very much like that seminar scene in the film Yes Man!, there was a lot of high fiving and pats on the back. So to the speakers,  first up was @JamesSchramko from Australia.

James runs a site called Internet Marketing Speed.  He had a very entertaining presentation and engadged with the audience quite well. There was the usual story of working in the rat race and then he discovered affiliate marketing which allowed him to make more money and have the lifestyle he wanted and to work from home. I have to state that this was a free event so I wasn’t expecting many tips and truth be told I didn’t really get any. The event was more geared up as an intro to affiliate marketing for people who had never heard of it and to get you to sign up to their training courses obviously.  There was one thing I would fault James on and that was he recommended to an audience of mostly newbies to buy links! Now in very competitive niches sometimes you have to buy links but if you don’t do it right and get caught it can be a disaster and you could recieve a nasty penalty from Google that will kill your business.

The next speaker was basically a repeat of James, the only difference being that he is based in the U.K. but I have to admit I found his presentation more enjoyable probably due to his andecedotes. Simon Coulsons  story was that he used to work for BT, took redundancy and found himself writing ebooks about overseas property markets after he had invested in one. He began making a few sales and basically repeated the process and diversified until he had built up good revenue streams.

What I liked about Simon’s presentation was that he didn’t state he was making hundreds of thousands from each site. His stratgey seemed to be have loads of sites making maybe a thousand a month each and then repeat the process. Simon talked a lot about his hobby which was a Coldplay tribute band that had been quite successful and even played to audiences of 40,000 and I have to admit this was the feeling I got from both speakers, they were a tribute band. By this I mean, they were no Shoemoney or John Reece, and it was obvious from there presentation slides that they follow some of the same people I do in the affiliate marketing world.

The real question is, is there a market for them and their courses? I’m still on the fence for this, is their information really worth two grand? I mean you could find the same information online probably cheaper if not for free but in saying that how many other affiliate marketing “gurus” have taken the time to visit Ireland and pitched their courses?

At the end of it the highlight of the seminar for me was the chance to meet and talk ideas with some other affiliate marketers from Ireland such as Kevin O’Connor from internetmoney.ie . I enjoy when I get a chance to meet with people in person that I deal with online.

• Selecting Affiliate Campaigns
• Building Affiliate Sites
• Obtaining Backlinks
• Content Creation
• Email Subscriber List Building
• Plugin Management
• How to increase earnings in a niche

Luckily for me and you Mark has actually put the webinar online and I’ve embedded it below. The interview lasts for over an hour so it might take a second to load. Check it out !

• Celldorado – Taiwan paying $2.00/lead with an average EPC of $0.20
• Sivitrol Colon Cleanse paying $36.00/sale with an average EPC of $0.36
• Jamais-Vu Anti-Aging System – Free Trial paying $28.00/sale with an average EPC of $0.28
• VIV Energy Drink – Free Trial paying $30.50/sale with an average EPC of $0.31
• IWON – Toolbar (AU and NZ) paying $2.35/lead with an average EPC of $0.24
• FreeSamples.ca (CANADA) paying $1.20/lead with an average EPC of $0.05
• FreeParentStuff.co.uk (UK) paying $1.20/lead with an average EPC of $0.30

When you look at affiliate marketing more in depth, you’ll realise it’s not just a way to monetise your existing site, it is in fact a business opportunity in itself. Sometimes you’ll find offers and realise you can make more money building sites just dedicated to those offers. The offers available very from CPA (Cost Per Action) to CPS (Cost Per Sale). Online merchants/stores generally run cost per sale. Depending on the amount of products they offer a lot of online merchants offer datafeeds of their products through their affiliate programs. This allows you to build your own online store. Think about it, having your own online store, not having to deal with managing stock, processing sales, etc. and still making money?It’s a no brainer!

This is great but how do you build your affiliate store? Well I’ve found a FREE script which will allow you to do just this! It’s called Affilistore and you can find it at Affilistore.com.

So what does Affilistore do?

Affilistore allows you to pick a niche and develop a store around it. Take for example Perfumes, we could select feeds from Perfum Merchants and build it into our online store. The image below is store built using Affilistore importing feeds from Perfume Point, Cheap Smells, BeautyBay.com, SendMeScent, Jason Shankey and TheFragranceShop.

So Where’s My Affiliate Link?

When a client searches for a product, it will compare the products from all the merchant feeds you have setup as shown below, each one is an affiliate link as shown below:

So download Affilistore today and start building your own online store!

Last night I was going through the blog and I realised after over 20 posts I hadn’t mentioned affiliate networks. Now how are you going to make money online if you don’t know where to find the offers that will pay you a commission? Well now I’m going to rectify that!

If you want to make money online there are a few ways you can monetise your website, theres google ads, banner advertising direct with the client, selling text links but probably the most succesful is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing is a performance based marketing so it pays higher commissions that adwords etc. If you generate a sale or a lead your paid a commission percentage or fee.

Some companies run their own affiliate programs but most run them through affiliate networks. Affiliate Networks are better setup to handle conversion tracking, commissions and acting as a go between for the affiliates.

So without further a do below find a list of Affiliate Networks to signup to so you can start making money!

List of Affiliate Networks

Commission Junction
Probably the most popular affiliate network, Commission Junction also has its share of critics. Finding and joining an appropriate affiliate program is easy. CJ also makes things easy for affiliates by consolidating all payouts into one check. It displays EPC (which to CJ rather oddly means “earnings per 100 clicks”, not earnings per click). CJ is owned by ValueClick, which merged with Be Free.

LinkShare
LinkShare has more than 600 merchants in its affiliate network. Choose from categories such as books, music, flowers, fashion, computers, etc. You’ll find some big name companies here, including Dell, Nordstrom, Target, Disney and American Express. LinkShare is owned by Rakuten, which also owns the controversial OneCause toolbar.

Clickbank
Offers a huge array of downloadable products, mainly ebooks. Because it is cheap and easy for merchants to join, the quality of the products provided varies enormously, from very good to downright awful. It’s a popular place to search for overlooked niches.

Google Affiliate Network
Highly professional site with some well known brands. Clients include: America Online, Blair Corp., Bose, CompUSA, Eddie Bauer, HP Shopping, Kohl’s, L.L.Bean, PC Connection, RedEnvelope, Verizon Wireless, and more than 200 others. Formerly called Performics, which was bought by DoubleClick, which was bought by Google.

ShareaSale
A large network with plenty of programs to search through – pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-click programs. More than 700 merchants. It took over FineClicks.com. Many affiliates praise this network because of its pro-affiliate and anti-parasite attitude. Highly recommended.

Affiliate Window
Professional, UK-based affiliate network. Provides more than 200 merchants to choose from, including well known brands. Offers affiliate programs for web sites running in UK pounds, US dollars and Euros. There are no minimum traffic requirements. “We are fully aware that the low traffic website of today might grow to become what we call premiere partner tomorrow,” Affiliate Window says.

AzoogleAds
This mainly performance-based ad network pays out more $3 million a month. It has more than 100 advertisers, including large companies. It promises “guaranteed highest CPA payouts” and fanatical customer support. Most of your site’s traffic must orignate within the US and Canada and you must receive more than 25,000 impressions a month.

PayDotCom
Mike Filsaime’s fast-growing ClickBank competitor, for physical products and digital products, with a number of features that ClickBank doesn’t have. PayDotCom has more than 400,000 affiliates.

Affiliate Fuel
Small affiliate-friendly affiliate network with a laudable anti-scumware policy. You need to have a United States or Canadian-based web site and a minimum of 2,000 unique visitors a day.

Click2Sales
Click2Sales is a ClickBank competitor with no set-up fees. Vendors can list digital and physical products and subscription products such as membership sites. It offers advanced tracking. Worth keeping an eye on.

clixGalore
A large affiliate network offering more than 2,450 programs. All applicants are accepted immediately, automatically.

MaxBounty
A cost-per-action network launched in 2004 by JP Sauve, who as an affiliate and merchant was disgruntled by the small payouts made to affiliates by the networks. MaxBounty promises “the highest CPAs in the market”. It accepts affiliates from all countries, and pays affiliates in their local currency from local banks, to avoid large check fees. Payments are consolidated into one check. It has added Sub-ID tracking so that affiliates can track which of their surfers signed up for what offer. This is popular with reward site affiliates. MaxBounty allows merchants to run their own affiliate program in an open marketplace format described as similar to that of the big three networks, only at a much more affordable price. Worth keeping an eye on.

ModernClick
Keith Baxter’s ModernClick affiliate network, launched in 2006, offers a wide range of products to promote in dozens of different categories. Tracking is by DirectTrack. It has pay per lead, pay per sale and some pay per click offers. You don’t have to own a website when you apply.

Panthera Network
Panthera Network makes very bold claims. It says it is the “best affiliate network in the world”. It guarantees the “top payout” for any offer advertised. Even better, if you see a higher payout on any other affiliate network, Panthera Network offers to beat the listed payout by 5%. You can choose from over 100 offers to promote. Consolidated commission checks are paid monthly on a net 15 basis for leads generated in the previous month. Has mainly pay per lead programs. Tracking is by DirectTrack. Worth keeping an eye on.

Pepperjam Network was launched in January 2008 by Pepperjam, a U.S. Internet marketing agency that has more than 100 employees. On launch day, it had dozens of advertisers, including well known brands and exclusive clients. Offers datafeeds and a chat facility for merchants and affiliates. This is a very serious attempt to compete with the big affiliate networks. Pepperjam’s founder and CEO is Kris Jones. Recommended.

Trade Doubler
Big European network with hundreds of affiliate programs from that region. Anyone who has a web site can join.

Incentaclick
A parasite-free affiliate network with “Smart” tracking and hundreds of offers. They say their Smart tracking enables you to earn higher returns.

UKaffiliates
More than 350 affiliate programs to choose from, including some big brands.

Adfinity
Launched in 2006, Adfinity promises highest payouts and exclsuive offers. Pays net 15.

AdFish
A performance-based affiliate network. You have to join to see the offers.

Adjal
A Spanish-based CPA network promising top converting offers and prompt payouts. Has pages in Spanish and English.

Adreporting
CPM, CPC and CPA offers.

Ads4dough
CPA network pays weekly. Promises tools not available on any other network.

Adscend Media
Promises superior payouts and good support. Pays net 30.

AdsMarket
Has CPA, CPL, CPC and revenue-share arrangements. It says it has a vast global customer base.

Adteractive
Offers are available to large interactive publishers, networks, and interactive agencies. It says it has paid out tens of millions of dollars.

Advaliant
A performance based affiliate network.

Advertising Revenue Service
Pay-for-performance campaigns – “per click, per sale, per join, per lead and more”.

Advertising.com
In 2004, Advertising.com, which is owned by AOL, launched an affiliate network. It operates in the UK, US, France, Germany and Scandinavia. Only successful applicants get to see what’s offering.

ADXDirect
A Baltimore-based ad network offering all the major pricing models: CPM, CPC, CPL, CPA and CPV. Has big name clients.

AdZacta
Has exclusive offers, premium brands and “highest payouts”.

Affiliate.com
Promises top performing offers, weekly payouts and top support. Run by experienced affiliates. In November, 2008, it changed its name from CPA Empire. In March, 2005, Optinrealbig.com, which owned CPA Empire, was forced into bankruptcy by a $40 million lawsuit.

Affiliateer
A CPA network which has some big name advertisers.

Affiliace
Has hundreds of offers. Pays most affiliates weekly.

Affiliator
Affiliator is part of Swedish-based Getupdated Group and has offices in several countries.

Affiliopolis
Promises top converting campaigns and video hosted exclusives. Will wire commissions to your bank account.

Agami Media
A performance-based network providing a variety of pay per sale and pay per lead offers.

Affiliatebot
If you have a web site, you can join. Affiliatebot consolidates payments into one check.

Affiliate Cop
Offers a variety of pay-per-lead offers. Welcomes international webmasters.

Affiliatefuture
A UK affiliate network offering a wide variety of affiliate companies and products you can promote, including a number of well known brands. Looks good.

Affiliatenetwork
Sites must have more than 3,000 unique visitors a month. Sites must be based in USA, Canada, UK, The Netherlands, Denmark or Sweden.

Affiliator
Launched in 2006. Appears to have a small selection of offers.

Afform
A UK “pay by performance” network carrying pay per click, per lead and per sale offers. You can see the network average EPC (earnings per click) before running a placement.

Amped Media
Has hundreds of pay-per-lead offers covering a wide variety of topics, and some pay-per-sale offers.

Aquasis Media
Exclusive high performing offers, industry leading payouts, and 24/7 support.

AvantLink
AvantLink, launched late in 2005, is a parasite-free, innovative affiliate network “developed by and for affiliate marketing professionals”. It offers sophisticated datafeed solutions, embedded RSS feeds and an affiliate API. It provides dozens of offers for affiliates. Worth watching.

Axill
CPA and CPM offers. Fortnightly payouts. Pays net 15 via Moneybookers or check.

Buy.at
A UK affiliate network with offers from well known brands.

CanadianSponsors
CanadianSponsors is an affiliate network that specializes in CPL (cost-per-lead) and CPA (cost-per-action) advertising. Your website or portion of website must target the Canadian consumer. No campaigns are shown on the site.

CheckMyStats
Provides a wide variety – more than 80 – offers for you to promote, mainly pay-per-lead. Pays via PayPal.

Cibleclick
Popular in French-speaking countries. Here’s the English language sign-up form.

Clickagents
A performance-based online advertising network comprised of a compact group of large vertical sites and top portals. Not for small sites!

ClickBooth
Clickbooth, a division of IntegraClick, says it handles extremely large volume and, “as a result, we take the smallest margins and offer the highest payouts in the industry”. You have to sign up to see the offers.

ClickXchange
Has offers from more than 200 merchants. There are no minimum traffic requirements for affiliates. Offers include per sale, per lead and per click. Advertisers pay for what they want, including leads, clicks and sales. Geo filtering is supported. ClickXchange doesn’t charge any setup fees. It just asks advertisers for a $500 escrow balance to start from which affiliate commissions are drawn. From there advertisers pay as they go. ClickXchange sends the affiliates their checks monthly. Commission is 30% of the affiliates’ earnings. ClickXchange says it has a large number of affiliates.

Commission Monster
An Australian affiliate network with some well known Australian merchants.

CommissionSoup
This affiliate network specializes in providing credit related products.

Commission Shore
No minimum traffic requirement. Consolidates payments into one check or payment via PayPal.

Convert2Media
Run by an experienced affiliate, Ralph Ruckman. Has original offers.

Copeac
Copeac affiliate network says it reaches more than 100 million consumers a month. It is a division of Intermark Media.

CoProsper
An affiliate network with a variety of offers. Will pay top affiliates daily.

CPAeMarket
Has some well known merchants. Promises highest payouts. Has some exclusive offers paying $18 per lead. Net 45 payments. Pays via check or PayPal. Launched 2007.

CPAQuality
Promises quality offers for quality affiliates.

CPA Storm
Has hundreds of offers, including exclusives. Has some big name merchants.

Cunna.com
A CPA network.

Cyberbounty
Has a wide variety of big name, high quality, high paying “cost per action” sponsors. High tech control panel, live stats. Includes a free fully maintained freebie website and referral program.

DarkBlue
DarkBlue offers more than 130 affiliate programs. It has an unusual operating method which it says allows it to pay some of the best CPA commissions on the Internet. Payouts are consolidated into one payment.

DirectLeads
Pay-per-click, pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale offers. In January, 2006, the company was bought was Digital River.

DMI CPA Cafe
Promises exclusive campaigns, customized private label sites and highest payouts. Launched 2006.

eAdvertising.com
A CPA (cost-per-action) or pay-for-performance network. Sites must be from the US or Canada and must have a minimum of 2,000 unique visitors per day. Exceptions will be considered for highly targeted traffic. Says its payouts on average are 15% to 25% higher than those of other major networks but you can’t see the details until after you’ve joined.

eAffiliatez
A pay for performance network offering a variety of programs.

eComLeads
Has a number exclusive offers, especially in the loans niche.

Elite Commission
A CPA network founded in 2007.

Emagin AdBank
Based in Kuala Lumpur, Emagin AdBank is an affiliate network run by Asians for Asia. It is expanding into India and China.

EnvisionAds
A pay-for-performance ad network with dozens of pay-per-sale and pay-per-lead offers. Many countries are excluded. Check the application form before you apply.

Epicenter Network
Epicenter Network promises exclusive CPA offers, high-paying feeds, contextual ads, CPM, and co-registration offers.

Epurple Media
Has a small number of products you can promote.

Express Revenue
Promises to match any campaign payouts you can find elsewhere. Has some big name partners. Founded in 2008.

Extremerevenue
A pay-for-performance ad network.

Filinet
Claims to be the Internet’s fastest growing affiliate network. You have to apply through a tiresome multi-step application process.

FineClicks
A variety of offers. A minimum of 75% of all traffic produced must be U.S. traffic. Short links are provided for newsletter publishers. FineClicks is owned by Shareasale.

FlexOffers
Has a wide variety of offers. Provides datafeeds. From the owners of CardOffers.com.

Floppybank Affiliate Network
Ad network offers CPC, CPA and sales lead commission programs, with a central administration and paycheck system.

FluxAds
Has a variety of CPA offers.

FusionQuest
Did you wonder what happened to FreeFiliate? It became FusionQuest.

GetAds
Ad agency.

GMB Track
Promises exclusive offers.

High Profits
Specializes in digital products, mainly in the “make money online” niche. Launched 2009.

Hydra Network
Hydra Networkwork, a performance-based advertising network set up in 2003, has a large variety of offers.

icommissions.com
Has pay-per-lead offers for credit cards, health services, financial services and legal services.

IncentReward
Offers dozens of CPA campaigns in a variety of niches. Various payment choices including via Payoneer prepaid MasterCard, which can be used globally.

InstantDollarz
Has its own network of sites on which it tests a wide variety of offers.

IronOffers
Yet another one! Launched 2007.

Jumbo Affiliates
An Australian affiliate network with a variety of Australian affiliate merchants. Pays by check, PayPal or bank transfer (for Australian affiliates). Welcomes affiliates from other countries.

Kolimbo
A network of hundreds of merchants using My Affiliate Program affiliate tracking software by KowaBunga Technologies to run their affiliate programs. You can view aggregated stats and join new programs with “one click”.

Lead Hound
Another smallish network. Recently upgraded stats reporting and over a 100 programs makes this worth a look.

LeaderMarkets
LeaderMarkets says it has more than 500 offers and more than 26,000 affiliates. It wants U.S. affiliates. In rare cases, foreign affiliates are accepted. Says it pays the highest commissions, and matches them if higher commissions are spotted.

LeadFlash
LeadFlash specializes in cash advance programs. Most pay $25 per lead.

LeadGen Marketing
Website provides few details.

LevelClick
Says it has the highest per lead payouts in the industry, exclusive campaigns and 24/7 support.

LinkConnector
LinkConnector offers pay per click, pay per lead and pay per sale programs.

LinkProfits.net
Exclusive, unadvertised performance-based offers. You must have “adequate” traffic or a sizable opt-in subscriber email list.

LinkRevenue Ads
LinkRevenue Advertising is a CPA network. It welcomes sites which have at least 3,000 page views a month.

LinkValu
Says is has paid millions of dollars in affiliate payments since 1999.

LogicalMedia
Has many exclusive offers, high payouts, new campaigns added daily. Says it has only programs that it has tested to make sure they convert.

LynxTrack
Says it has unique and exclusive CPA offers. You have to sign up to see what is available.

MarketDraw
A CPA network promising high-paying offers and a huge selection of offers. You have to sign up to see what is available.

MarketHealth
Specializes in a wide range range of high paying health and beauty offers. You can choose from more than 100 offers including herbal supplements, skin care, vitamins, beauty products, health care, weight loss, etc. (Changed name from JoeBucks.)

MarketLeverage
A pay-for-performance affiliate marketing network.

Media Mouse
An Australian affiliate network, launched 2009.

MediAdNet
Promises exclusives, no junk, and new daily campaign offers.

MetaReward
You have to sign up and wait to be contacted to find out more.

MerchantZoo
MerchantZoo uses a link masking technique which makes it look as though you are using straight links, not affiliate links. You can link to any page on a merchant’s site – handy for linking to the exact product you’re promoting. It has a small number of offers, some rather unusual. Pays monthly via check or PayPal. Easy to join.

Modern Vision Media
A CPA network which says it specializes in providing exclusive offers.

MoreNiche
This affiliate network specializes in weight loss, “make money” products, gambling and adult products.

Motive Interactive
Promises “highest payouts” and “top performing offers”. Has more than 200 offers.

MyHelpHub
WCCL Network promotes self-development tools, Windows utilities, and products for writers and artists, through a network of affiliated sites.

MyReferer
Has a variety of offers. Merchants track referrals by both cookie and IP. You can choose encrypted affiliate links if you wish.

Myresellers.com
Has a small numbers of offers.

NetPartner.com
Promises the highest payouts from a wide range of advertisers and exclusive offers.

NeverBlueAds
Says it has exclusive offers.

Niva Network
Launched 2009. Niva is choosy about which affiliates it deals with. You’re sent a questionnaire as part of the qualification process.

Offerratti
Jim Lillig’s Offerratti is an exclusive network specializing in “biz opps”. It does daily split testing experiments.

OfferForge SA
OfferForge South Africa has about 40 campaigns to choose from.

OfferForge USA
Has a few dozen carefully selected offers.

Offer Alliance
Promises unique pre-tested offers.

Offer Fusion
A performance-based (CPA) network. Your site must be geared to US traffic and must receive a minimum of 5,000 unique visitors a month.

OffersQuest
This revenue sharing network provides a variety of offers. Merged with Puzz.com. You need a minimum of 3,000 unique page views a month.

OfferWeb
A cost-per-action network providing a wide variety of offers, including exclusive offers. Consolidates payouts into one monthly check or PayPal payment. Claims to be the fastest growing affiliate network on the Internet. You need only 100 visitors a month.

OfferWise
Specializes in market research/surveys campaigns. Promises top payout rates.

OurFreeStuff.net
Offers CPA and CPL free offers for all major countries. Provides a variety of tools to help affiliates. The networkwork is run by CanadianSponsors.com.

Paid On Results
Specializes in U.K. merchants. Has well over 100 merchants listed. “No spyware/adware” policy. Provides datafeeds.

Partner2Profit
Weight loss, finance, and other offers.

Partner Weekly
A CPA network which pays its affiliates weekly by check or via PayPal.

PlatinumPartner
Lists more than 500 ClickBank products.

PrimaryAds
A “pay for performance” network that specializes in cost-per-action advertising. It has pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale programs. Campaigns include text links, banners and HTML advertisements. Dozens of offers to choose from.

RedGaloshes
A small affiliate network with a group of about 20 merchants, paying 10% residual commission, mainly on such things as bridal gear, gifts, jewelry, apparel and accessories.

RevenueAds
Promises best offers, top payouts, large inventory of hundreds of offers, all non-incentive. Payments net 15, via FedEx. RevenueAds and IncentReward are owned by LeadVision Media.

Revenue Gateway
Dozens of CPL and CPA offers, many paying between $1 and $1.50, with some paying considerably more. Has a few exclusive offers. Revenue Gateway rejects affiliates from a long list of countries.

Revenue Street
Promises highest payouts and exclusive offers./p>

RevenueLoop
Calls itself the first transparent affiliate network. Affiliates receive what the advertiser pays, less a service fee of 15% to 25%, depending on volume.

Revenue Pilot
A pay-per-click network. You earn a percentage when someone performs a search. Revenue Pilot pays only for traffic coming from the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

Rextopia
You have to sign up before you can see what is available.

RocketProfit
Has exclusive offers – ringtones, sweepstakes, dating, finance, etc. Its parent company is Atrinsic.

ROI Rocket
Offers a variety of pay-per-sale programs in a variety of categories. Many of the offers are for U.S. traffic only. It says it pays more than $2 million in commissions each month.

Rowise
Rowise says the company owns and operates several of the offers in its network, and also tests offers before adding them to the network. You have to sign up before you can see what is available.

Search4Clicks
An education affiliate network specializing in leads for financial aid, scholarships, internships, testing, schools and other educational resources. It has more than 100 college programs available.

SellShareware
Offers various software programs available for people to download and try before they buy.

SearchCactus
SearchCactus is a pay-per-click search engine which offers incentives to searchers and also has cost-per-action offers for web site publishers.

ShareBucks
Has a small selection of offers.

ShareResults
Promises affiliates and merchants reliable tracking and reporting. “A simple user interface enables affiliate marketers to easily maximize results. Our dedicated affiliate team provides responsive, personalized support to build profitable affiliate relationships,” ShareResults says. Some merchants have been signed up and should appear on the site soon. Worth keeping an eye on.

Sitelink
An Australian based affiliate network.

SpecialOffer
CPA programs for magazines and free CDs. 24/7 reporting, monthly payments.

The Performance Network
An Australian network. The site gives you little information about the offers available.

TheUseful
CPA and CPL offers.

TrafficDiffusion
Another affiliate network.

TriadMedia
Has hundreds of offers, industry leading payouts, ads in a variety of formats, and exclusive offers.

Trienta Affiliates
A performance-based Internet marketing network. More than 200 offers.

Turn2Offers
Promises high payouts, exclusive offers. Parasite free.

ValuedNetwork
Promises exclusive, top converting offers, 24/7 support and innovative advertising techniques not found elsewhere.

VHMnetwork
New York based network has a variety of pay per lead and pay per sale offers.

Vintacore
Has some well known publishers. Promises industry-leading payouts. Pays net 15. Pays via PayPal, check or wire transfer.

Viralytics Media
Promises highest CPA payouts. Has some well known advertisers.

Webgains
Has weekly payments, datafeeds and comprehensive reporting of stats.

WPS Affiliate Network
A network based in India.

XorClicks
Promises exclusive offers and unwavering support. Very fast payouts to top performing affiliates.

XY7
Promises exclusive offers and best payouts.

Zanox
A multiple merchant opportunity directory. Real-time tracking and reporting.

When it comes to picking affiliate offers, its never a clear cut decision. Some offers convert, some offers don’t, its just the reality of affiliate marketing. Selecting the right offer at the right time can have such an effect on your bank balance, it can be the difference of eating at a fancy restaurant or surviving on beans and toast for the rest of the month! Therefore selecting the right offers has never been more crucial in the current times of recession.

So much of affiliate marketing comes back to Psychology. We split test our landing pages to see what colours or copy convert more, relying on what appeals to the psyche of our customers. We select our keywords for ppc carefully, trying to catch our customers in the right mindset, i.e. just before they make a purchase. When it comes to selecting our Affiliate offers it’s no different, we have to put ourselves into our customers mindset.

At the current time there is a global financial crisis. This crisis is effecting each country differently. The U.S. is expected to be out of recession by the end of the year, meanwhile here in Ireland we are in the grips of a severe recession. Unemployment is set to hit half a million this year and we have a national banking crisis along with a property crash and all forms of credit have dried up. The mindset between Irish and U.S. consumers couldnt be more different, therefore when selecting your affiliate offers consider the economics of the country of where the offer is targeted.

Considering the economics of Ireland, offers for high price luxury items won’t convert. So what will convert in a recession? Well I’m going to give you some examples of obvious ones and some not so obvious.

Gambling – Gambling seems to increase in a recession. With high job losses gambling becomes a more attractive option to generate income when all other income avenues begin to try up. Paddy Power, an irish bookie runs a very good affiliate program. A quick look at the number of jobs advertised from their corporate site shows that unlike other companies in the current climate they aren’t considering job cuts. A recent anouncement of their expansion into Australia through the acquisition of Sportsbet.com.au for €140m combined with their current job openings definitely points that their business in more recession proof than most.

Now the next offers are pretty obvious when you put yourself into the mindset of someone in a recession.

Lack of Credit – Since the banking crisis all forms of credit have dried up but people still need to conduct transactions online. Offers for prepaid credit cards should convert in the current climate. 3V a company with an irish arm have an affiliate program run through buy.at.

Utilities – In the recession people will cut luxury services all together but utilities are a necessity. Consumers will be swayed by which every utilities company offers the best deal. Both Eircom and Perlico (Irish Phone Providers) run affiliate programs through tradedoubler. Eircom are even offering up to €80 commission for people signing up to their bundle offers.

So remember when you are selecting your affiliate offers in the recession put yourself in the mindset of the consumer. Try and decide if the offer your pitching is a luxury item or a neccessity. If you know of any other offers that will convert in a recession, let me know in the comments!

When you first get involved in Affiliate Marketing you will come across a lot of new terminology. One of the words you’ll come across is Landing Pages. Landing pages are where people go to once they click on an online advertisement or natural search listing. Landing pages are designed to be highly relevant to the advertisement or search listing and encourage users to complete a “call to action”.

There are two types of landing pages, reference and transactional. A reference landing page or webverts marketing goal focuses on lead generation and interaction with the visitor. A webvert is not ‘transactional’ in nature. A webvert is a reference based, ethical landing page.

The traffic is driven from Google Adwords and is designed for two specific marketing tactics;

1) To attain high Google Adwords landing page quality scores, the benefit being any Adwords campaign costs are minimized.

2) The webvert has a clear call to action, usually a reply form.

The visitor traffic is immediate as the webvert relies on Google advertising to drive visitors to the webvert.

A transactional landing page seeks to persuade a visitor to complete a transaction such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the landing page, with the goal being the immediate or eventual sale of a product or service. If information is to be captured, the page will usually withhold information until some minimal amount of visitor information is provided, typically an email address and perhaps a name and telephone number as well – enough to “capture the lead” and add the prospect to a mailing list.

So What Makes A Good Landing Page?

In a previous life I used to do graphic design and printing of flyers. I immediately found comparisons between landing page design and flyer design. Below I have listed the main aspects to consider when designing your landing pages which I got from econsultancy.com’s blog. I have also shown an example of a flyer I designed a few years ago and an example of a landing page I downloaded from zacjohnson.com.

1. Brevity
Keep it short and to the point. Paragraphs should be no longer than three lines, if they are used at all. One idea per paragraph is plenty of information fodder.

2. Relevancy
In the case of PPC landing pages you need to match the offer to your text ad copy. Keywords should be highlighted or displayed prominently. Keep it relevant to that person’s search query, because that’s all they care about.

3. A direct approach
Bullet points work well online, to help communicate the benefits of a product or service. Keep in mind that people skim read on the web. Use bold text to reinforce key messages.

4. A clear call-to-action
That potentially means a big Buy Now button, above the fold…

5. Fact over fiction
Stick to the key facts and be transparent, especially when the landing page is related to an ad campaign. Do not hide the price. Avoid flowery prose. This ain’t a press release. Product features, product features, product features.

6. Persuasion
Persuasion means removing any links that might distract, focusing the consumer’s mind on the end goal: the checkout. This means writing compelling copy. Persuade visitors not to drop out by limiting their options - remove link navigation, for example. Prominently display delivery options and costs. Sell the goddamned product…

7. Clear scent trails
How easy is it for a novice web user to get from A to B? You need to encourage visitors to walk / run down that conversion path. Conducting usability testing on your landing page templates may also provide you with some answers.

8. Grammatical accuracy
Its important, innit? Because people dont like spelling misteaks and stuff like that. First impressions count.

9. Reinforcing credibility
Testimonials, press, kitemarks, partners, visible customer support options. All these things convey trust and respectability. They ease the mind of the prospective buyer, who might not know your brand. Trust is very important.

10. Good use of images and colour
Presentation (eg: colours, graphics, icons) can play a big role in reinforcing purchase intent. Avoid clutter. White space and big fonts. Smart layout.

In this flyer you can see straight away that the benefits to the perspective client are listed on the right hand side in almost bullet point form. The copy is kept short for scanability. The opening headline is backed up by a background image of the service they provide. Credibilty is added by listing the national health companies of where they are registed. The call to action in this case is their contact details which are highlighted prominintly at the bottom of the flyer and also in the map provided.

In the above landing page from zacjohnson.com we can see that the headline is backed up by the image on the left of the girl with the tape measure. All of the benefits of the product are listed in bullet points. Credibility has been added by listing the t.v. programs the product has appeared on and also through the use of client testimonials and before and after pictures. There is a clear call to action in the “try it now” buttons.

So remember the next time your looking for inspiration for your landing pages look no further than the flyers that come through your front door.

On a side note, another succesful affiliate marketer that has taken his experience with flyer marketing and transfered it to online success is Yaro Starak from entrepreneurs-journey.com . Check out his blog post about flyer/poster marketing

In fact a good chunk of the presentation is devoted to wordpress, and if your new to blogging or affiliate marketing and are planning to use wordpress for your cms, definitely check it out above.

Now as much as I love wordpress, this is an affiliate marketing blog, so I want to discuss the slides that seem to be aimed at this area. Now what you’ll notice is that slides 42-44 seem to be aimed at the affiliate marketing industry.

Now unfortunately the video of the presentation isn’t up so I can’t see what he actually said during these slides but from the looks of the presentation he wasn’t painting it in a good light. Slide 42 & 43 seem to show two typical “Make Money Online” landing pages, albeit specifically aimed at making money from google. Like I said this is only an assumption so I’m not going to pay too much attention to them but what did catch my eye was slide 44.

Why did Slide 44 catch my eye?

Well in Slide 44 he deals with paid posts for blogs. It actually states

Avoid Paid Posts:
He recommends not to do paid posts that:
contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites.

Now what makes this interesting is that on June 12th Matt Cutts publicaly tweeted on twitter that he was unfollowing Jeremy “Shoemoney” Shoemaker because of a sponsored tweet he did.

Now what does all this mean? I’m not sure to be honest but I suspect Google have affiliate marketers in their sights and will be cracking down in the next few months. Let me know what your opinion is in the comments.

PPC Web Spy

PPC Web Spy is a firefox plugin that will show you the destination url of any adwords. It will allow you to spot affiliate urls in PPC Advertising. In the below example I’ve highlighted where it’s showing an affiliate url:

The next nice feature is you can view some of the other keywords they are bidding on:

In the above example it shows that the affiliates are using direct linking, where they aren’t using their own landing pages, the next tool I’m going to show you will allow you to analyse an affiliates landing page:

SpyFu.com

SpyFu.com allows you to analyse an affiliates landing page and see what keywords they are bidding on and what they are spending in google adwords on a daily basis. For this example I’m going to use an affiliate website I came across call getdietsolutions.com.

When we put this site into SpyFu we get the following results:

Now straight away we can see that this is a big affiliate, they are spending between $500-$2500 daily and they have a keyword list of over a 1,500. The free version of spyfu only shows 10 keywords but the paid version will allow us access to all the keywords.

I hope you find these tools useful. If you know of any other tools as good as these please leave a comment!

How do you make money from Affiliate Marketing?

There are 3 ways to make money from Affiliate Marketing:

1. Pay Per Click — Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by “clicking” on the link leading to the merchant’s website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate’s account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.

2. Pay Per Sale — Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate’s website, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

3. Pay Per Lead — Every time a potential client registers at the merchant’s website as a result of the advertisement on the affiliate’s account, a previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

History of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing has only come to promenance since 1994 with the birth of successful ecommerce portals such as CDNOW and Amazon.com. CDNOW launched it’s affiliate program in 1994 called BuyWeb and Amazon launched its affiliate program in 1996. Amazon associates placed a banner or text ad on their website and if a visitor clicked on these links they would be taken to Amazons website. If they proceded to purchase an item from Amazon, the associate received a commission.

The Future of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is experiencing rapid growth. According to a report by MarketingSherpa’s in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs such as Google AdSense.

The increase in online transactions and the low barrier of entry to ecommerce is fueling this growth. The main market for Affiliate Marketing is in the United States who were the earlier adopters of this form of marketing but the U.K. is starting to embrace it at a rapid pace too. In Ireland it is still a very small industry with only a handfull of companies running affiliate programs.

I feel that this is definitely going to be a growth industry in Ireland over the next few years much like the rise in the Search Engine Optimisation Industry in Ireland. For anybody reading this I’d love to hear your views on the future of affiliate marketing in Ireland and the U.K., please comment below!