If you promote affiliate products, this WordPress affiliate theme should be on your radar. Not only is it stunningly beautiful (in my opinion), but I’d bet the layout will increase conversions. Here’s a screenshot of the demo.

Is it just me, or do you agree that’s one hot affiliate theme?

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate products, affiliate theme, Theme, WordPress
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31 Conversion Optimization Tips – and Counting

How can you reduce Distraction on your pages? How many links can you eliminate? … You don’t sell features. You sell solutions to problems.

>> Follow Chris Goward

Copy that Converts: Interview with Copywriting Maven Roberta Rosenberg

You need the words to make the sale, period. Whether we’re looking at text-only email, a simple direct mail letter or even skywriting for that matter, the words are the key to the message. However, as I mentioned in a previous response, good design supports the message and makes it easy, even pleasant to read. It also helps direct the reader from point to point, acting as a visual roadmap to the essential bits and pieces that deserve particular attention. However, what’s even more important than the creative – copy or design – is a strong, attractive offer and visitors who are hungry for what you have to promote.

>> Follow Roberta Rosenberg

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate products, Chris Goward, Conversions, Marketing
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As you are aware, I make my living online. A large portion of that income comes from sites I own which promote affiliate products that I believe are of value. Over the years, I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t when promoting affiliate products. In addition, I’ve paid attention when successful affiliate marketers (and non-affiliate marketers) shared their secrets. On top of that, I’ve been coaching clients for the last couple of years, helping them bring their ideas to life on the web. My learning, my experience, and my teaching led me to realize that there was something missing from the product lineups I’ve come across. I decided to fill that gap.

I’ve put together the Q&A Affiliate Formula. The product consists of not just an ebook that describes the formula, but also a valid XHTML/CSS static website template (and a WordPress theme as well). This way, you aren’t merely reading a formula, but have a template to use that makes it extremely easy to follow. Speaking of easy…some people might look at it and say, “Wow, this is simple. Maybe too simple to pay for?” But of course, I disagree. I believe the hard work I put into making it so simple is a large part of it’s actual value. And since I’m not charging a lot for it (just $27), I don’t feel bad about making it a paid product at all.

The gist of this product is a formula designed to increase conversion rates for people who are promoting affiliate products within their niche, combined with a template designed to use that formula. If you aren’t satisfied with the size of your monthly affiliate checks, the Q&A Affiliate Formula was created for you.

If you want to get more details, just head on over to the Q&A Affiliate Formula site. You can also become an affiliate of the Q&A Affiliate Formula from there as well.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Affiliate marketing, affiliate products, Conversions
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Datafeedr lets you build an affilate store by selecting products from nearly 6,000 merchants. You define the product categories you’re interested in, and fill those categories with relevant products. You aren’t limited to using just one datafeed from one merchant. Instead, you can sign up with many merchants, from many different affiliate networks, and meld all their products together into one awesome, unified store.

There are other tools that make this multiple-merchant/multiple-network store possible, but Datafeedr goes a few steps further in making this a well-rounded system.

• Datafeedr integrates with WordPress, so your store will match your blog’s theme.
• You don’t need to be a programmer, or hire one, to make use of datafeeds.
• It supports many affiliate networks including CJ, Pepperjam, Regnow, Linkshare, Shareasale, Clickbank, and many more.
• You can easily embed products right into your blog posts, in addition to having a dedicated section for your store. This way, even when users aren’t viewing your store, they can still be introduced to the products within your blog posts.

One of the most interesting features is the Drip functionality, in which the system can automatically post products to your blog, as posts – and you control how often, and in what manner. This is really powerful, and can be great for filling in gaps in your posting schedule. Imagine this scenario. You post regularly on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. You take Fridays off, so you can consistently have a 4-Day Work Week, with long weekends every week. You would love to be able to fill in the gaps and let people know about some of the products that they may be interested in, so you schedule Datafeedr to create a blog post every Friday that details one of the products from your store. Think about that for a minute. Cool, huh?

There are lots more great features, but I’ll just highlight a few of my favorites for you.

• No datafeed access fees
• Keep 100% of your commissions
• Manage your affiliate IDs in one place
• Pick the products you want; pick the merchants you want
• Include up to 100,000 products per store
• Unbranded – No ‘Powered by …’ text or link
• Search engine friendly URL’s
• Dynamic/custom product and category meta descriptions
• Complete customization of every page of your store
• Edit category and product titles and descriptions (great for ensuring unique content)
• Every store page can have HTML embedded anywhere on the page (more unique content)
• Create new pages based on keywords
• Tag products with multiple keywords (ie. featured, holiday special, etc…)
• and on and on and on…

This is the kind of product that I used to wish I could build, but just didn’t have the time it would have taken to create such an amazingly robust, do-it-all-and-more type of system.

The biggest problem with Datafeedr is that it isn’t free, and you know how much I love free. But at $27/month, it is far cheaper than I would have charged if I’d built the system. Most of the affiliate products I refer pay me more than $27 in commission for each one sold. So just one conversion per month is all it takes to cover the cost, and well…frankly…it would be hard to imagine converting less than one per month with all this power under the hood.

For me, this is the perfect combination for a great site. You – using a great tool like WordPress – create an interesting site in your specialty niche. You blog. You interact with users. You supply free information to those users. In addition, you use another great tool like Datafeedr to supplement all the free information you supply your readers with products that you’ve chosen that’s perfectly relevant to your audience, and your niche. Each of those components is key to success. You. Your unique take on things. Your supply of information, free to your users. Your ability to monetize by referring relevant products to people interested in the topic. The tools to allow you to add those products, easily, but still gives you the flexibility to make each one unique, and not just some cookie-cutter thin affiliate site. I’m not sure I could come up with a better system if I programmed it myself.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affilate store by selecting products, affiliate networks, affiliate products, plugin, WordPress
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There are many ways to monetize an informational web site or blog, and each site owner has to determine the best methods for her own site. And as I’ve mentioned before, since Diversity is a key, you will usually want to have several methods of monetization working for you at all times. Today, we’ll touch on earning commissions from affiliate sales. I’ve earned quite a bit of money from affiliate sales over the years, and along the way I’ve learned a thing or two about it.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

First, let’s make sure everyone understands what affiliate sales is all about. Let’s say you know lots about kites, but you don’t actually sell kites or anything related to kites. You’ve set up a blog where you can teach the rest of us everything we might need to know about kites and kite-flying. You can join a kite store’s affiliate program which allows you to refer your readers to their online kite store. If any of your readers purchase anything from their store, you earn a commission because you referred the customer to the company. So, you see, you don’t have to sell your own products. You can simply make commissions when your readers purchase a product you’ve recommended.

When you join a company’s affiliate program, you’ll be given special code to use that will create either links or banner ads. You place the code on your blog (either in a blog post or in the sidebar). When one of your readers clicks the link or banner ad, they are taken to the company’s site. At that point, the company knows that the reader came from your site, and any purchase that reader makes will earn you a commission. (Some affiliate programs pay based on actions other than sales, such as leads, but affiliate sales is what I’m most familiar with).

As in all monetization methods, you’ll need to test things and determine what works best for you. However, in general, I’d say that actually reviewing products and using the text-only affiliate link within the review itself is often the best way to market affiliate products. Banner ads are fine, but actual text links within reviews nearly always work better for me. This way, the reader knows that you’ve tested the product and your recommendation is more likely to cause them to purchase the product.

If you need to find products that relate to your niche, or companies in your niche that offer affiliate programs, you can simply search for “your niche keywords affiliate” in your favorite search engines. That’s a great way to find some independent affiliate programs that may not be known by everyone. I always start with this type of search first. Once I’ve exhausted all possible affiliate programs this way, I then move on to the affiliate networks to see what they have to offer in my niche.

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of affiliate networks, but I’ve only dealt with a few of them. I’ll list the ones I’ve used below. These are the ones most people have heard of, and they are at least reliable in that they make payments and they’ve been around for some time. I don’t make any guarantees about them, of course, but I’ve personally never had a problem with any of them. I usually use at least 2 or 3 networks for each site.

Naturally, Commission Junction is first on the list, as they are the “biggies” of the group. They have thousands of programs offering tons of products, with many of them being major brands. I always check here to see what programs fit my niche.

Next up is LinkShare.com Similar in scope to cj.com, they are large and have lots of programs and products, including major brands.

I also like Shareasale because although they have lots of programs and products, most of them are from smaller, more unique companies and there may be less competition for these products.

Delving into the even more unique niches is the Niche Retail Partner Program which is much smaller, but caters to some nice unique niches such as baby strollers, watches, etc. If your niche fits with these programs, it’s a great fit. Mommy bloggers especially should check it out.

If your niche lends itself well to software products, then OneNetworkDirect is worth joining.

And along those same lines, but on a broader scale, ClickBank is the place to go for all kinds of digital products (ebooks, software, etc.)

Finally, I’d check out AffilateBot. I haven’t used them yet, but I’ve been hearing good things about them, so they may be worth looking into.

You might also want to subscribe to Revenue Magazine (ad shown below). The affiliate articles are interesting and informative, but the ads are as well. The ads are a great way to find new affiliate programs that might be perfect for your niche site.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate networks, affiliate products, ClickBank, digital products, favorite search engines, informational web site, niche site, online kite store, Revenue Magazine, search first, site owner
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