Archives for July 2012

HTML for Solo Email is an affiliate creative option used by 8% of affiliates, according to data in the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, where over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed, we asked, “What are your preferred link types?”.

An HTML for Solo Email is an email that is solely dedicated to promote a product or service through affiliate links.

Some affiliate programs or networks provide this creative to affiliates, and affiliates can also create it on their own.

But it's vitally important to check with an affiliate manager before running creative that you've developed. Get it approved or risk forfeiting commissions.

While you have good intentions, companies don't want the content of their message from their brand in your hands.

Anyhow, you need an email service provider to mail out these emails. My favorite is AWeber.

I like them for many reasons, including their no tolerance stance towards spammers, as well as their features to comply with the CAN-SPAM law.

But also, AWeber makes it really easy to construct an HTML solo email with their library of templates.

Then, you need to build an email list. This is an ongoing process, so get started.

Datafeeds are an affiliate creative option used by 10% of affiliates, according to data in the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, where over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed, we asked, “What are your preferred link types?”

An affiliate datafeed is a text file featuring details on a merchant's products, such as direct links, product image links, categories, prices, and product descriptions.

These datafeeds are downloaded by an affiliate into a database.

The contents and formatting of a datafeed can vary from merchant to merchant. Common formats of dadafeeds are pipe delimited and tab delimited.

Affiliates who use datafeeds are able to maintain a fresh inventory of products on their site, and when the visitor clicks a link, they are taken to the merchant's site.

Working with datafeeds is somewhat advanced, and affiliates will need access to create databases on their server.

But there are some tools to simplify the use of a datafeed as an affiliate.

Years ago, I purchased a software called WebMerge to add datafeeds to my sites, but I never managed to make it work. This was way before I was using WordPress, and my sites were in hand-written HTML.

Since then, services like GoldenCAN and PopShops have emerged that enable affiliates to display datafeeds with little or no technical ability.

But I found a solution I like in the premimum WordPress plugin, datafeedr.

datafeedr is a powerful solution that can be used by beginner, intermediate, and advanced affiliate marketers.

It's a system that enables affiliates to create and embed an affiliate store into a WordPress blog without messing with the datafeed files, learning a programming language, or hiring programmers.

For more information on affiliate datafeeds, have a look at a series of blog posts written on the subject by affiliate Eric Nagel:

• Building a Datafeed Site – Step 1
• Building a Datafeed Site – Step 1b
• Building a Datafeed Site – Step 2
• Building a Datafeed Site – Step 3

Eric has some other posts on using datafeeds – just search datafeeds on his blog.

Landing pages are the affiliate creative of choice for 12% of affiliates, according to data in the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, where over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed, we asked, “What are your preferred link types?”

A landing page is a custom page, provided by an affiliate program or created by an affiliate, that is focused on pre-selling a product or service or capturing a lead.

This form of creative is typically more common among affiliates promoting information products or leads.

Affiliates using landing pages focus on actionable content over distractions like cluttered design. The landing pages are usually text heavy.

In order to have a well performing landing page, it is important to test the elements frequently.

There is a WordPress plugin I've used for split testing called Simple Page Tester.

When it comes to optimizing landing pages, there is a science to it, and there is a great book on the subject from Tim Ash called “Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions“.

While there are lots of templates and resources for sale out there, I'd suggest investing the nominal cost for Tim's book to get a grasp on this area of affiliate creative.