Affiliate Classroom Blog Archives

Your Landing Page Will Effect Your Adwords Now…

Tuesday, December 13th, 2005 at 12:06 pm by Anik Singal

Google is now going to begin evaluating the page you send your adwords visitors to. Based on their evaluation, you may need to pay more because of your landing page…

Here is a quote directly from the article:

“Advertisers who are providing robust and relevant content will see little change. However, for those who are providing a less positive user experience, the Quality Score may decrease and in turn increase the minimum bid required for the keyword to run. To help define site quality, we’ve created a general set of website design tips and guidelines that should help you evaluate and optimize your site.”

Having been a major advocate of having “direct sales” driven landing pages, this could potentially have a huge impact on many “adwords affiliates…”

To read the full article, click here…

What Affiliates Want/Need…

Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 1:14 pm by Anik Singal

Recently Affiliate Classroom conducted a survey of our students that can still be contributed to at:
Affiliate Classroom Survey

The results have been very interesting and although we cannot share all of our results, we do want to share an important chunk that can help affiliate managers quite a bit:

Our affiliates range from complete beginners to absolute experts. I would say that a large majority of our affiliate students are in the intermediate arena.

When we asked the question:

“What is Your #1 Obstacle? What is the biggest thing holding you back right now?”

The reply was interesting (but mostly what we expected):

Two biggest problems:
Traffic Generation - 21%
Building Website - 20.5%

As you can see, those are neck to neck. However, in our other question and free-response answer, “site development” issues seemed to rank on TOP. As an affiliate manager, you need to recognize this and find ways to help your affiliates build websites.

During the Affiliate Summit Conference, on the 11th of January, Affiliate Classroom is running a 4 hour “Affiliate Manager Bootcamp” in which we are going to reveal the best tools you can give your affiliates to help them wite site building.

The next question we asked was:

“How often do affiliates want to hear?”

Now the results to this question may not specfically apply to your program, since we asked how often they wanted to hear from Affiliate Classroom…

The results here were a bit shocking. I was expecting that they would stick to “once a day.” However, a overwhelming number of people actually want to hear from Affiliate Classroom every few days and even EVERY DAY!

Results:
Every Few Days - 31.7%
Once a week - 28.9%

If nothing else, this proves that contacting your affiliates is very important.

We want to thank everyone who participated in this survey. The results are really going to help us improve our services drastically.

Yahoo Publishing Network Expands…

Thursday, December 8th, 2005 at 3:39 pm by Anik Singal

As reported in the Search Engine Journal Blog, Yahoo is now expanding their publishing network and issuing another 1,000 invites for BETA testers. Their initial goal was to reach 2,000 and they claim that they have done that now (hence, the 1000 additional invites).

Read the article here…

To apply to become a BETA tester for Yahoo, click here…

Calling All Affiliates…

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 4:09 pm by Anik Singal

We need your help - please pitch in and fill out the following survey - it is only 5 questions and should not take very long at all.

Affiliate Classroom Survey

Thank you,

Anik Singal

O So Many Networks…

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 1:55 pm by Anik Singal

Greg Shepard, CEO of NetTraction.com and a contributing author for Revenews.com made a great entry recently that I wanted to sum up here.

“Now that technology companies have started offering affiliate network software, it seems new affiliate networks pop up each week, maybe even daily. In the past 12 months alone there have been over 200 new affiliate networks.”

Very interesting point that Greg made there - I knew networks were coming out rapidly, but 200 new ones?! Wow…

My look on this is just that this is a sign of the growing demand for affiliates and the growing industry. As an affiliate, this is a winning situation for you. Eventually, these networks are going to compete with each other to get your attention.

That basically will mean, higher payouts, more care and maybe even free lunches ;)

Read the entire entry - Click here…

What is the future of Affiliate Marketing?

Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 at 11:23 am by Anik Singal

Question: “What is the future of affiliate marketing?”

This question seems to be going around quite a bit lately so I thought I’d give it a try myself.

I think it’s no question that I am a big believer in the future of affiliate marketing or else I would NEVER spend the time/energy with Affiliate Classroom that I do.

We are coming out with some very detailed predictions for 2006 in our up-coming magazine, but here is a small sample of what you will read about:

1. More Investment Into Affiliate Marketing

2005 saw nearly a 35% increase in online ad revenue versus a very small (in the single digits) ad revenue increase offline. This means there is a huge focus on online advertising right now.

Furthermore, this means that companies are finally sniffing around the internet seriously for advertising channels. Well, affiliate marketing just happens to be the highest ROI form of online advertising.

Expect to see affiliate marketing attract bigger budgets and more attention in 2006.

2. More Focus on Affiliates

One of the things that I am tired of is companies wanting the biggest and best affiliates, yet never really treating them right. Some companies straight out STEAL from their affiliates.

Well, this is going to start coming to an end in 2006. Also, the HUGE focus on treating your top 1 or 2 affiliates like god is going to die down. There will be more focus on a larger population of affiliates.

3. Major Dent in the 95/5 Rule

If Affiliate Classroom has anything to say about things, there will be a major dent in the 95/5 rule that has plagued affiliate programs since the beginning.

This means that more programs find that only 5% (or much less) of their affiliates actually do anything.

Well, as affiliate marketing (as an industry) matures, we are finding out what the reasons are - what the major obstacles are. 2006 will see far more active affiliates, yes, even the complete beginners.

4. Big Fight on Spyware

There have been some major battles against spyware in 2005 and I think this is just the beginning. Recently an entire committee FINALLY agreed on a single definition of spyware (This is just the first step).

There will be a greater focus in 2006 on getting rid of spyware and other unethical techniues that are getting in the way of the honest affiliate.

For more detail on my predictions, get ready for the December magazine issue.

If you’re an affiliate right now, you’re in for a true ride this year!

This Guy Thinks Google Is Coming To An End?

Friday, December 2nd, 2005 at 12:33 pm by Anik Singal

Alright, I don’t want to crack on anybody, but this article was a bit “funny.” Just as Google is growing faster than they ever have, have BILLIONS of CASH, and according to BusinessWeek (last week) they now have a market cap that is many times larger than Yahoo and some other enormous companies.

Anyways, there were some points made in this article that I would like to respectfully disagree with:

#1:
There is *hint* at the fact that Google should have acquired the piece of CraigsList that eBay did.

My Argument: Sure, maybe they missed one opportunity - but what company doesn’t? Also, I think (for now) the business behind CraigsList is not exactly what Google does, but it is a great fit for eBay…maybe Google actually made a smart decision!

#2
The author claims that RupeWeb, Yahoo and MSN have “put a bite” into Google’s Adsense program.

My argument: Maybe so, but I don’t hear Google crying with their double digit increases in ad revenue. Sure Yahoo has a publisher program now, when’s the last time you REALLY heard much about it though?

Also, Google now made an AFFILIATE program for their adsense program (they are still way ahead of all competition).

#3
Amazon won one against Google…

My argument: Ok, here is one where the author seems to be correct (to a degree). Google has been trying to launch this major “book search engine” and they are getting knocked around pretty badly on this one (Amazon being one that is fit to really compete with them). Yet, they continue to do it.

Honestly, I would LOVE a great “useful” search engine that lets me go through ALL public domain material (who better to do this than Google).

#4
“Having plunged into too many businesses at once, Google had become distracted”

My argument: I only WISH that my company could be “so diversified” and yet continue to have such massive growth!! I used to also think that Google is doing way too many things at one time. But, think about it…

With a staff as large as theirs and the amount of pure “genius” they have - who can help it? Also, this is exactly how they will find “home run” ideas like adsense.

I don’t think Google is distracted at all - actually I think they’re way more focused now that they are a public company…

#5
Google is “out of the desktop software business” (implied by author)…

My argument: Not sure I agree with that, last I heard, Google is “secretly” working on a desktop system that will actually compete with Windows head-on (and may even be FREE)…

Overall, I think the author brings up some interesting points - but NOTHING nearly enough that could bring Google to and end…

Read the article by clicking here…

Adwords Makes Some Changes…

Thursday, December 1st, 2005 at 8:13 pm by Anik Singal

Google has announced some major new initiatives in the Adsense and Adwords programs. If you’re making money from Adsense, here’s the ones to watch…

You can now do separate Adwords bids for Google’s content network. That means advertisers can place one bid for ads that run on content sites and a different bid for ads that run on search sites. This is being launched in conjunction with Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up, which allows AdSense publishers to sign up advertisers directly from their pages.

There’s literally so much going on at Google right now, I’m gfinding that the best place to stay up to date is on Google’s blog: http://adsense.blogspot.com/

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