Webmasters – Webmasters are people building sites and people who own sites. There are an infinite number of webmasters out there who are in various stages of expertise and development of their website, or multiple website, that will likely have signed up for a CJ or Shareasale, and you can meet them through there and you can also flat out contact their website if you find it and say, “Hello, I found your website, I’d love to partner with you. This is pay out we can offer.” If you do it in large amounts you’ll get a certain amount of response.

Search Affiliates – SEO, PPC, media buying – there is a whole crop of affiliates who spend their own money and really try to leverage the search engines, Facebook advertising, and various other paid advertising models in order to generate an ROI for themselves with affiliate offers. This is a whole sub-culture, really you could say, because they are usually very entrepreneurial business minded, smart people, testing different things. These are affiliates you want to have as partners as long as they are following the right procedures and rules. SEO and media buying affiliates can really drive a ton of traffic and revenue for you. So these affiliates need to be catered to and made friends with.

Bloggers – bloggers are great for posting content about your company, reviewing new products, you can send them samples, you can say “hey review our product on your site, here is a sample”, which can be very effective at spreading the word. Not only that, anything bloggers write about tends to rank organically in the search engine. So its never bad when you have a blogger who is willing to promote your company or do a product review for your company as an affiliate. Mommy bloggers are very good affiliates and there’s probably an infinite amount of mommy bloggers that aren’t even in affiliate marketing right now that can be approached and proposed a business deal where they are being compensated on what they produce via their blogs.

Coupon Sites – couponing has become very, very big. It has really exploded in the last couple of years with the recession, where people are going searching for coupons for particular merchants prior to purchase and they also find merchants before even thinking about purchasing via coupon sites. It’s a little bit of a double edge sword, in that you will get additional volume from the coupon sites, but you will see coupon sites sort of capitalizing on organic rankings related to your company name and the word “coupon code.” So you have to sort of take the good with the bad and really try to maximize the good and not really trouble yourself too much with who’s ranking organically with your company name and the word coupon code, because it’s going to happen as soon as you launch an affiliate program. But there is a tremendous amount of potential with coupon code affiliate sites because they likely have member bases and they usually drive a lot of traffic.

Review Sites – review sites are pretty popular among affiliate marketers. Affiliates will build a site that reviews five or six different advertisers in a particular niche, hosting is big with review sites, also dating, phone companies, flowers, basically anything where you can take four or five different advertisers and put them on one site and then drive paid search or organic search through those pages that feature different reviews, usually in a chart format. The affiliate would then earn a commission whenever he refers business to anyone of those advertisers. So that’s a very big and well converting demographic of affiliates traffic.

Loyalty Portals– loyalty portals are very, very big. These are companies who have large membership basis and they are able to expose your advertiser offer to the membership base and there may even be a cash back component. There is many, many loyalty portals out there that you can place your offer in and it’s on a performance basis, so they have to be hunted down. Mall Networks is a good example of a loyalty affiliate publisher.

Incentive Programs – This is where you are running into volume, but you are also running into possible issues because people taking actions when they are being awarded points can tend to skew down quality of leads certainly and then possibly sales and possibly increase the return rate. Virtual currency is another — it’s a quickly growing industry that kind of was born out the social networking thing where people are earning virtual currency and then there is companies who leverage affiliate advertisers to let people redeem their virtual currency and make purchases and save money and so forth. But again, a double edge sword, as you can get good volume, but you can also get some “iffy” sales and some sales that can tend to have a higher return rate.

Email Marketing – Email marketing has been around for years and it’s gone through a few different revolutions let’s say and it went from the wild west to something a little more regulated, and from what I can tell its pretty much the wild west again. It’s all about getting into the inbox. My recommendation is being very picky with it and don’t use everyone but pick maybe four or five email vendors that can blast your offer on a performance basis and just make sure everything is CAN-SPAM compliant and you shouldn’t have issues, and it should be an additional revenue source for you.

Partnerships and Business Development– who in your company is handling business development? Is it someone who is pro-actively reaching out? Is it someone who is going after companies saying, “Hi I found your website or I found your company, we would love to partner with you on a rev share basis. Here is what we pay out by join our affiliate program and running it through our direct tracking program on site.” So you have to reach out to a lot of possible partnerships in order to get handfuls, but once you have a really good partnership on rev share or CPA basis, it tends to be a good producer and it tends to last a long time. So always look for partnerships and it kind of falls outside the realm of affiliate marketing. It’s one of those things you handle internally with a Biz Dev person, a business development director, that should be a very proactive person who follows up a lot. Yhey can definitely be going out and getting rev share deals for your company.

Big Web Properties – Big Web Properties are great! What’s better than a site that gets a couple a million visitors a month with your banner on it. You have several large websites in the affiliate networks, one that comes to mind the Meredith Corp, they publish 10 huge magazines and huge online web properties. Big web properties are definitely more receptive to CPA deals and rev share deals than they ever have been and the more inventory they have, the more they need to fill that inventory with something that converts for them to make the money, hence affiliate offers.

Traditional Media – You can get TV, print, and radio on a CPA basis on a rev share, it’s doable, it can be done, it has been done, I’ve done it myself. You have to propose these deals to the different media outlets and individual stations and say, “can you run some of your remnant inventory with our ads, and we’ll pay you on a performance basis, we’ll set up a dedicated 800 number, we’ll set up a coupon code, a dedicated URL.” You can run traditional media on a performance basis. So look for those type deals as well and there are few companies that specialize in that.

Phone Calls – generating phone calls on performance basis, usually done on a per call basis or a warm transfer basis or live transfer where you are paying extra amount for that transfer to the call centers. But there are companies out there who will do it on a strictly per sale basis. So you just have to find those companies and get your company kind of in with them and run the campaign. See if it works for both parties. If it does you continue, if not you move on and say thanks for trying or you can do it on a different metric and see if you can make that work.

These are some of the various different types of affiliate marketers you can work with on a performance-basis! Hope you enjoyed the read. You can see that are so many different types of affiliate marketers that can be brought into your affiliate program. You definitely good, competent affiliate management to bring in and then work with all these different types of affiliates. You have the knowledge now go leverage it!

Evan Weber, CEO
Experience Advertising, Inc.
954-662-8010
evan@experienceadvertising.com

Hey everyone! I hope you had a really nice 2013 and are ready to crush it in 2014 with your affiliate marketing and online marketing projects. The “New Year” brings a whole flood of potential circumstances and issues into people’s lives that can be targeted with content on websites,  blogs, and social media. People will be actively searching for topics related to their new years resolutions, so make sure to heavily focus on niches like self-improvement to fully capitalize the surge in search volume. Also, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, so make sure to start posting content and creating pages about Valentine’s Day topics and products to stay ahead of the curve. So, I wanted to discuss some ways web marketers can take advantage of the New Year to earn more commissions and generate more website traffic. Here is a list of ways affiliate marketers can market online better and be more effective at generating revenue during the Q1 time-frame:

1. Focus on New Years Resolution Products and Services – during the new year time-frame (January 1-April), people are extremely focused on topics like:

• Losing weight – dieting, eating healthy, healthy lifestyle
• Quitting smoking – e-cigarettes, therapy, books
• Finding love – dating, finding a soul mate
• Getting in shape – fitness, working out, running, lifting weights
• Finding a new job – switching careers, adding skills, improving your LinkedIn Profile
• Saving money – switching services, managing money, getting a raise
• Starting on taxes – finding a tax service, finding a CPA
• Getting organized – home, life, finances
• Reducing debt – paying down debt, refinancing credit cards
• Traveling – planning a trip, planning a vacation
• Getting Married – finding wedding services of all types, buying attire
• Budgeting – saving money, managing money
• Switching/adding – insurances, policies, membership plans
• Moving – new house, moving services, car moving
• Kids – new babysitter, nanny, tutoring, education, devices

…and many other related types of life objectives. So make sure to heavily promote “New Years Resolution” oriented products and services on your sites and blogs because they tend to have a large amount of search traffic and covert really well during the Q1 (January through April really) time period. People will be flocking to Google, Bing, and Yahoo to search for various types of content and media like:  information, strategies, videos, and products related to achieving their new years resolutions.  So you want to create content on your websites talking about these types is subjects, so your pages can rank in the search results and you can possibly get those visitors to your site. Likewise, you should be posting on your Facebook Page and tweeting helpful information and articles designed to help people, and also save them money with promotions and coupons from great companies you are affiliated with through the affiliate networks. And what a great time to email your subscribers with helpful articles about new year’s resolutions and how to attain them! Make sure to craft your blog posts, page titles, and content really specifically so you can get search rankings under various keyword phrases related to new years resolutions and the issues associated with them. Set up Google Alerts for certain keyword phrases you are interested in following online, which is a great way to keep yourself up to date on all the latest news and Internet published content about any subject, so make sure to take advantage of that Google tool..it’s great!

2. Focus on Building Your Email/Subscriber List – Make sure you are prominently displaying your newsletter sign-up, Twitter account, and Facebook Fan Page widget on your sites and blogs in order to increase the overall rate at which you gain new subscribers, fans, and followers. This is always a good idea because you can re-market to your fans, followers, and subscribers throughout the year. Also, running a sweepstakes or contest on your website is another great way to opt-in your site visitors and subscribers and capture their contact information so they can become part of the growing audience you are marketing to and engaging with. If you have a decent amount of site traffic take a look at aweber.com, which collects name and email via a pop-up widget on your site. It’s a great way to maximize your site traffic and grow your email list. Aweber.com also features Facebook integration which makes for sure fast opt-ins from your site traffic. Email is still the best way to generate web sales, so make sure you are always focused on building your emails lists by offering some value in exchange for their subscriber-ship.

3. Syndicate Your Content Better – Once you have written and posted a new review or blog post, make sure you are “syndicating” your content by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Stumbleupon, and your other favorite social networking sites. You should have a process you go through of sharing your new content on your social networks after posting it, which helps each piece of content or page get more exposure and traffic back to your site. By sharing each page or blog post you are spreading it around for others to share or like, which allows their friends to be exposed to your content. I use Hootsuite to post my new pages/posts to all of my social networks at once, it’s a great tool. Also, consider launching online press releases which will build inbound links to your site and can also get your site  additional organic search engine rankings depending on your press release release title and release content. This is a very cost-effective way to spread the word about your site or company. Over time, as you do more releases you will see your traffic increasing from your releases. It’s another way to broaden your content beyond your own website and your social networks.

4. Increase Your Social Networking Presence – Always make sure to add new Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, Instagram followers, Foursquare friends, Pinterest friends, and connect with people on forums and other types of sites that allow you to build friends. Make sure to use these sites’ mass friend invite features to really ramp up your connections. Spending time building your connections is always time well spent and will pay dividends in the future. Building more friends and followers is a great idea because you can interact with them later and share your content and pages with them via your status updates. You can never have too many friends, followers, and subscribers to your content. But I don’t recommend buying likes or followers, it will do nothing for you except create headaches down the road. You should be focused on building all of these areas so you have more people overall to market your content to. Rapportive is an amazing tool that connects right in your gmail account and allows you to invite anyone in your email box to connect with you on all their social networks.

5. Message Your Fans and Subscribers More Effectively – Now that you have fans and subscribers to your newsletter, what are you messaging them? Make sure you are sending quality, purposeful messages and emails that will be well-received and deliver value. This is a process that should improve over time until you are sending really professional, effective messages to your subscriber bases. Send timely types of promotions and balance your promotions with good content and articles so it will be better received and not perceived as just marketing to them. Try to enrich people’s lives with your website’s wonderful published content and also articles from respected 3rd-party sources. Don’t forget to be super-friendly to your fans and followers and seek to engage them in discussions. Also, polling and surveying your fans is a great way to spur interaction on your Facebook wall and get the sharing ramped up. Try Facebook Boosted Posts, which allow more fans to see and interact with your content…they work great!

6. Build Your “Social Networking Karma” – Social networking is the most power tool there is in online marketing to get your content out there, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, so it’s imperative to take advantage of the medium to the fullest. Make sure you are pro-actively interacting with your friends and followers by sharing, commenting, retweeting, and liking their posts (where appropriate). By doing this you will build up a lot of good “social karma”, which increases the likelihood your own connections will share, comment, like, and retweet your content, which helps it go viral and get more traffic. I usually spend a good part of my day going through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn looking for status updates I can interact with. I always notice an uptick in activity on my own content when I do this regularly. This is something you have to work at, to become more effective at interacting with other people. The more you interact with others the more they will interact with your posting which makes it go viral and increases website traffic. Over time, you will build up a tremendous amount of social karma and have an army of people sharing your content with their audiences.

7. Ask for Higher Commissions and Paid Placements – Make sure to ask your affiliate merchants and affiliate managers for higher commission amounts in the new year, especially if you have produced for the company in the past or have the capacity to produce in the new year. Most advertisers hold back what they can ultimately payout, so there is room to go up with commission amounts. If they balk at your request, tell them you will go to their competitor and I bet they change their tune quickly. Tell them you can produce more sales if you were at a higher commission rate. Some companies may reward content-based publishers more than other types of affiliates, so if you have an impressive blog or content site you should be able to get a higher commission rate than what is published on the affiliate network. Sometimes you can even get an advertiser to sponsor a contest or sweepstakes you are running, which can be a great way to whip up excitement on your site and social networks. If you have a large enough audience you can create a “rate card” of all of your paid placements, and see which companies you are affiliates with might be interested in getting in front of your audience for a fee. Some options for paid placements include:  solo email advertisement, email newsletter placement, homepage placement, top of side column placement, Facebook Boosted post, Twitter sponsored tweet, Instagram post. Over time, if you build up your audience sizes in their mediums, you can get paid advertisers to buy the placement, with a commissions as well on the back-end sales that are generated.

8. Make Sure to Promote Deals from Your Advertisers – People LOVE deals and discounts! In fact, these days they likely won’t buy without one. So make sure you are promoting current deals and coupon codes from your advertisers because people like getting and using deals, not to mention promoting coupons and deals increases the “conversion rate-to-sale” on your click-throughs to companies you are affiliated with. If people come to your site and don’t find promotions or coupons they may go elsewhere looking and some other referrer may get the sale. Promotions and discounts tend to increase the likelihood a visitor will make a purchase, so make sure to offer people coupons and discounts when you promote and share posts about companies. You can mention it’s a special discount and even get a “vanity” coupon code which will match the name of your site. This can increase branding and make people remember your site in the future if they think they can get special discounts through your site.

9. Learn from other Affiliate Marketers – Making friends and learning from other affiliate marketers is a great way to further your own knowledge. Don’t be afraid to share what you know with others so you can get ahead together. Don’t get sucked into “make money online” courses and systems, as they usually are worthless and just want your money. There is plenty of free information out there on the Internet to guide your online marketing efforts. Making friends with other bloggers or webmasters can lead to opportunities like guest posts and blog roll links that can help your SEO rankings a little bit. Do your research and see what other websites in your niche look like and what they are doing, and do similar things.

10. Ask for Products to Review (Samples) – Reviewing products and services is a great way to provide valuable content for your readers and subscribers. Providing an actual product review can be very effective at selling the benefits of the company or products you are promoting on your site. Also, you can ask for sponsored prizes to give away in your sweepstakes and contests. Check out Woobox.com or Rafflecopter, for inexpensive ways to run sweepstakes and contests. That way you can really ramp up the excitement level on your sites or fan pages. If you can’t get a prize donated, you can try a $25 gift card to kick off the sweepstakes!

11. Produce More Content – Content is everything, so make sure to write until your little fingers fall off, or outsource your content writing to get more content written and published faster. Websites tend to rank better in the free traffic results when posting frequent and original content, so don’t be afraid to post several times a day to your site. And make sure you are socially sharing all of your new posts. The more pages of original content you have on your site the more free traffic you can bring in from Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Bing. So make sure to post like crazy so you can build your free traffic up over time. Look at your site like a house you build bigger and bigger, until it’s a mansion that gets a ton of traffic! Make sure to post about new year resolution oriented topics, issues, and problems during this time of year. Then you can go back next year and refresh those posts for the following year so they stay relevant.

12. Stay Focused – having too many sites or blogs can really put a damper on your efforts to grow on the web. Pick some main sites and really grow them with content.

13. Become a Merchant – becoming a merchant yourself will allow you to sell products online and make a large margin per sale. Check out Shopify.com which allows you to start your own ecommerce storefront. They even have companies you can partner with that will create and fulfill your product sales on things like Tshirts, posters, mugs, and more. Check out Merchify to create your own product storefront.

These are some ways to improve your affiliate marketing efforts in the new year. Let me know if you have any questions at all about these strategies, I would love to review them with you on the phone or email. Now get to it and build out the web with a bunch of great content and share it! Good luck in your 2014 affiliate marketing goals!